The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculatorsLardner, Dionysius
History
The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculators
Lardner, Dionysius
Steam-engines -- Early works to 1850
(_e_) To the plates of the English edition has been added one, (plate
A) representing a high-pressure engine as constructed by the West
Point Foundry in the state of New York. The principal parts will be
readily distinguished from their resemblance to the analogous parts of
a condensing engine. The condenser and air-pump of that engine, it
will be observed, are suppressed. At _v x_ and _y z_ are forcing-pumps
by which a supply of water is injected into the boiler at each motion
of the engine. For the four-way cock, used in the English
high-pressure engines, a slide valve at _r s_, is substituted, and is
found to work to much greater advantage. It is set in motion by an
eccentric, in a manner that will be more obvious from an inspection of
the plate than from any description.--A. E.
(_f_) A very safe and convenient boiler for a high-pressure engine has
been invented in the United States by Mr. Babcock. The boiler consists
of small tubes, into which water is flashed by a small forcing-pump at
every stroke of the engine. The tubes are kept so hot in a furnace, as
to generate steam of the required temperature, but not hot enough to
cause any risk of the decomposition of the water. The strength of the
apparatus is such, and the quantity of water exposed to heat at one
time so small, as to leave hardly any risk of danger.--A. E.
(83.) Two years after the date of the patent of this engine, its
inventor constructed a machine of the same kind for the purpose of
moving carriages on railroads; and applied it successfully, in the
year 1804, on the railroad at Merthyr Tydvil, in South Wales. It was
in principle the same as that already described. The cylinder however
was in a horizontal position, the piston-rod working in the direction
of the line of road: the extremity of the piston-rod, by means of a
connecting rod, worked cranks placed on the axletree, on which were
fixed two cogged wheels: these worked in others, by which their motion
was communicated finally to cogged wheels fixed on the axle of the
hind wheels of the carriage, by which this axle was kept in a state of
revolution. The hind wheels being fixed on the axletree, and turning
with it, were caused likewise to revolve; and so long as the weight of
the carriage did not exceed that which the friction of the road was
capable of propelling, the carriage would thus be moved forwards. On
this axle was placed a fly-wheel to continue the rotatory motion at
the termination of each stroke. The fore wheels are described as being
capable of turning like the fore wheels of a carriage, so as to guide
the vehicle. The projectors appear to have contemplated, in the first
instance, the use of this carriage on turnpike roads; but that notion
seems to have been abandoned, and its use was only adopted on the
railroad before mentioned. On the occasion of its first trial, it drew
after it as many carriages as contained 10 tons of iron a distance of
nine miles; which stage it performed without any fresh supply of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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