From the time of Hero to the seventeenth century ensues a wide hiatus, although in the meantime there were not wanting some who now and again added slightly to the body of knowledge which the world possessed on the subject. Of these we might mention such names as Archimedes in the second century B.C., and Mathesius in the sixteenth century A.D. But Solomon de Caus, or Carrs, in the first half of the seventeenth century showed that the steam given off by boiling water could be used for raising water, and Giovanni Branca, about the same time, brought about what is really the progenitor of the modern turbine. In this seventeenth century, also, another ingenious Italian, Evangelista Torricelli, proved that the atmosphere in which we live possessed weight, and to-day everyone is aware that this is so, and that the pressure of the air is 15 lb. per square inch. The working of the mercurial barometer is the simplest proof of this. We shall see presently how an isolated fact unearthed in one age becomes the foundation of the mighty success of a later inventor, and thus the assertion which we made on an earlier page, that the credit of inventing the steamboat belongs neither to one man nor to one age, is not devoid of truth. Otto von Guericke, about the middle of the same century, showed the practical utility of producing a vacuum, of which the syringe and the common suction pump are such excellent examples. But we are not writing a history of inventions, nor of steam, but of the steamship, and we shall pass on presently to see how each of these separate important discoveries eventually blended to form the subject of our present study. In 1663 Edward Somerset, the second Marquis of Worcester, to whom we have already referred, also published his description of “An Admirable and most Forcible Way to drive up Water by Fire,” and in this year he obtained protection by Act of Parliament for his “water commanding engine.” When he had interested himself so much in the problem of sending a craft against a current, and simultaneously was obtaining success in the development of steam power, it certainly seems a little strange that the Marquis did not advance just that one step farther which was necessary to complete the syllogism, and apply steam for the purpose of solving the problem of going against the tide or stream. That, however, was reserved for another inventor, and of a different nationality.