The power of steam to drive water from a lower to a higher level had been shown by Solomon de Caus,[73] who, in his work, _Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes_, published in A.D. 1615, had described a hot-water fountain operated by heating water in a globe. In Van Etten’s _Récreation Mathematique_ of 1629 was an experiment, described fifty years later by Nathaniel Nye in his _Art of Gunnery_ as a “merry conceit,” showing how the force of steam could be used to discharge a cannon. As the century advanced the ornamental was gradually superseded by the utilitarian; the usefulness of steam for draining fens, pumping out mines, was realized; and applications for patents to cover the use of new and carefully guarded inventions began to appear. Gunpowder as a medium was a strong competitor of steam. In 1661 King Charles granted to Sir Samuel Morland, his master of mechanics, “for the space of fourteen years, to have the sole making and use of a new invention of a certain engine lately found out and devised by him, for the raising of water out of any mines, pits, or other places, to any reasonable height, and by the force of air and powder conjointly.” What form the engine took is not known; whether the gunpowder was used to produce a gaseous pressure by which the work was done, or whether its function was to displace air and thus cause a vacuum as its gases cooled. In France, too, efforts were made at this time to produce a gunpowder engine. In 1678 a Jean de Hautefeuille raised water by gunpowder, but authorities differ as to whether he employed a piston--which were then in use as applied to pumps--or whether he burned the powder so that the gases came in actual contact with the water. In the following year an important advance was made. Huyghens constructed an engine having a piston and cylinder, in which gunpowder was used to form a vacuum, the atmospheric pressure providing the positive force to produce motion; and in 1680 he communicated to the Academy of Sciences a paper entitled, “A new motive power by means of gunpowder and air.” But it was to his brilliant pupil, Denis Papin, that we are indebted for a further step in the materialization of the steam engine. Papin suggested the use of steam for gunpowder.