Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Tonya Allen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. STEAM STEEL AND ELECTRICITY By JAMES W. STEELE CONTENTS THE STORY OF STEAM. What Steam is.--Steam in Nature.--The Engine in its earlier forms.--Gradual explosion.--The Hero engine.--The Temple-door machine.--Ideas of the Middle Ages.--Beginnings of the modern engine.--Branca's engine.--Savery's engine.--The Papin engine using cylinder and piston.--Watt's improvements upon the Newcomen idea.--The crank movement.--The first use of steam expansively.--The "Governor."--First engine by an American Inventor.--Its effect upon progress in the United States.--Simplicity and cheapness of the modern engine.--Actual construction of the modern engine.--Valves, piston, etc., with diagrams. THE AGE OF STEEL. The various "Ages" in civilization.--Ancient knowledge of the metals.--The invention and use of Bronze.--What Steel is.--The "Lost Arts."--Metallurgy and chemistry.--Oriental Steel.--Modern definition of Steel.--Invention of Cast Steel.--First iron-ore discoveries in America.--First American Iron-works.--Early methods without steam.--First American casting.--Effect of iron industry upon independence.--Water-power.--The trip-hammer.--The steam-hammer of Nasmyth.--Machine-tools and their effects.--First rolling-mill.--Product of the iron industry in 1840-50.--The modern nail, and how it came.--Effect of iron upon architecture.--The "Sky-Scraper."--Gas as fuel in iron manufactures.--The Steel of the present.--The invention of Kelley.--The Bessemer process.--The "Converter."--Present product of Steel.--The Steel-mill. THE STORY OF ELECTRICITY. The oldest and the youngest of the sciences.--Origin of the name.--Ancient ideas of Electricity.--Later experiments.--Crude notions and wrong conclusions.--First Electric Machine.--Frictional Electricity.--The Leyden Jar.--Extreme ideas and Fakerism.--Franklin, his new ideas and their reception.--Franklin's Kite.--The Man Franklin.--Experiments after Franklin, leading to our present modern uses.--Galvani and his discovery.--Volta, and the first "Battery."--How a battery acts.--The laws of Electricity, and how they were discovered.--Induction, and its discoverer.--The line at which modern Electricity begins.--Magnetism and Electricity.--The Electro-Magnet.--The Molecular theory.--Faraday, and his Law of Magnetic Force. MODERN ELECTRICITY.