The Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester: To which is added a reprint of his Century of Inventions, 1663, with a Commentary thereon.Dircks, Henry
History
The Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester: To which is added a reprint of his Century of Inventions, 1663, with a Commentary thereon.
Dircks, Henry
Industrial arts -- History; Inventions; Worcester, Edward Somerset, Marquis of, 1601-1667
With this apparatus, the operator can conceal the connection between
the two cisterns, and that between the bottoms to admit steam. The
water is now seen at the same level in “two vessels,” and with a
perforated shelf about an inch below the surface of each. We may
now find, “if a globe be cast in,” the water “instead of rising, it
presently ebbeth, and so remaineth,” doing nothing further “until
a like globe be cast into the other vessel; which the water is no
sooner sensible of, but _that_ vessel presently ebbeth, and the other
floweth.” For it must be observed, the first globe was placed in the
centre, over a steam pipe, its nozzle protected with a valve, and on
letting in the steam, being otherwise empty and the valve purposely
opened for the escape of steam and air, but which its weight closed
as soon as permitted to act, and thereon condensation followed, the
water flowed into that vessel, but ebbed in the other. We then insert a
second globe, in the second cistern, under like conditions; and as soon
as the rising water has opened the top valve of the first globe, this
second globe will repeat the operation, “and so continueth ebbing and
flowing until one or both the globes be taken out.” And this ebbing and
flowing, this rising, and these changing heights in the water in the
two tanks or cisterns, may easily be adapted for “working some little
effect besides its own motion, without the help of any man within sight
or hearing,” and of course too far off to be the acting agent in such
additional “working of some little effect,” some see-sawing action,
to work automata or like “little effects” for the delectation of the
ingenious and the delight of all the lovers of the marvellous. And
note “if during the ebbing,” when that globe and that cistern is all
but empty, “you take out the globe, the water of that vessel presently
returneth to flow,” showing that the globe thus removed was quite
empty; and therefore would be shown as part of the miracle, the same
empty globe had been performing such strange motions in the water.
But let “the globe be returned (empty as it was before) into it [the
cistern], and then the motion beginneth as before.”
If we are correct in this conjecture, the principle involved would
easily account for the inventions couched in the terms of articles No.
22, An ebbing and flowing river; and No. 23, An ebbing and flowing
Castle Clock.
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