Throughout the pages of this book there will be some recital of the victories won by the fire-maker, the electrician, the photographer, and many more in the peerage of experiment and research. Underlying the sketch will appear the significant contrast betwixt accessions of minor and of supreme dignity. The finding a new wood, such as that of the yew, means better bows for the archer, stronger handles for the tool-maker; the subjugation of a universal force such as fire, or electricity, stands for the exaltation of power in every field of toil, for the creation of a new earth for the worker, new heavens for the thinker. As a corollary, we shall observe that an increasing width of gap marks off the successive stages of human progress from each other, so that its latest stride is much the longest and most decisive. And it will be further evident that, while every new faculty is of age-long derivation from older powers and ancient aptitudes, it nevertheless comes to the birth in a moment, as it were, and puts a strain of probably fatal severity on those contestants who miss the new gift by however little. We shall, therefore, find that the principle of permutation, here merely indicated, accounts in large measure for three cardinal facts in the history of man: First, his leaps forward; second, the constant accelerations in these leaps; and third, the gap in the record of the tribes which, in the illimitable past, have succumbed as forces of a new edge and sweep have become engaged in the fray.[6]

The interlacements of the arts of fire and of electricity are intimate and pervasive. While many of the uses of flame date back to the dawn of human skill, many more have become of new and higher value within the last hundred years. Fire to-day yields motive power with tenfold the economy of a hundred years ago, and motive power thus derived is the main source of modern electric currents. In metallurgy there has long been an unwitting preparation for the advent of the electrician, and here the services of fire within the nineteenth century have won triumphs upon which the later successes of electricity largely proceed. In producing alloys, and in the singular use of heat to effect its own banishment, novel and radical developments have been recorded within the past decade or two. These, also, make easier and bolder the electrician's tasks. The opening chapters of this book will, therefore, bestow a glance at the principal uses of fire as these have been revealed and applied. This glance will make clear how fire and electricity supplement each other with new and remarkable gains, while in other fields, not less important, electricity is nothing else than a supplanter of the very force which made possible its own discovery and impressment.

[Here follow chapters which outline the chief applications of flame and of electricity.]

Let us compare electricity with its precursor, fire, and we shall understand the revolution by which fire is now in so many tasks supplanted by the electric pulse which, the while, creates for itself a thousand fields denied to flame. Copper is an excellent thermal conductor, and yet it transmits heat almost infinitely more slowly than it conveys electricity. One end of a thick copper rod ten feet long may be safely held in the hand while the other end is heated to redness, yet one millionth part of this same energy, if in the form of electricity, would traverse the rod in one 100,000,000th part of a second. Compare next electricity with light, often the companion of heat. Light travels in straight lines only; electricity can go round a corner every inch for miles, and, none the worse, yield a brilliant beam at the end of its journey. Indirectly, therefore, electricity enables us to conduct either heat or light as if both were flexible pencils of rays, and subject to but the smallest tolls in their travel.

We have remarked upon such methods as those of the electric welder which summon intense heat without fire, and we have glanced at the electric lamps which shine just because combustion is impossible through their rigid exclusion of air. Then for a moment we paused to look at the plating baths which have developed themselves into a commanding rivalry with the blaze of the smelting furnace, with the flame which from time immemorial has filled the ladle of the founder and moulder. Thus methods that commenced in dismissing flame end boldly by dispossessing heat itself. But, it may be said, this usurping electricity usually finds its source, after all, in combustion under a steam-boiler. True, but mark the harnessing of Niagara, of the Lachine Rapids near Montreal, of a thousand streams elsewhere. In the near future motive power of Nature's giving is to be wasted less and less, and perforce will more and more exclude heat from the chain of transformations which issue in the locomotive's flight, in the whirl of factory and mill. Thus in some degree is allayed the fear, never well grounded, that when the coal fields of the globe are spent civilization must collapse. As the electrician hears this foreboding he recalls how much fuel is wasted in converting heat into electricity. He looks beyond either turbine or shaft turned by wind or tide, and, remembering that the metal dissolved in his battery yields at his will its full content of energy, either as heat or electricity, he asks, Why may not coal or forest tree, which are but other kinds of fuel, be made to do the same?

One of the earliest uses of light was a means of communicating intelligence, and to this day the signal lamp and the red fire of the mariner are as useful as of old. But how much wider is the field of electricity as it creates the telegraph and the telephone! In the telegraph we have all that a pencil of light could be were it as long as an equatorial girdle and as flexible as a silken thread. In the telephone for nearly two thousand miles the pulsations of the speaker's voice are not only audible, but retain their characteristic tones.

In the field of mechanics electricity is decidedly preferable to any other agent. Heat may be transformed into motive power by a suitable engine, but there its adaptability is at an end. An electric current drives not only a motor, but every machine and tool attached to the motor, the whole executing tasks of a delicacy and complication new to industrial art. On an electric railroad an identical current propels the train, directs it by telegraph, operates its signals, provides it with light and heat, while it stands ready to give constant verbal communication with any station on the line, if this be desired.

In the home electricity has equal versatility, at once promoting healthfulness, refinement and safety. Its tiny button expels the hazardous match as it lights a lamp which sends forth no baleful fumes. An electric fan brings fresh air into the house—in summer as a grateful breeze. Simple telephones, quite effective for their few yards of wire, give a better because a more flexible service than speaking-tubes. Few invalids are too feeble to whisper at the light, portable ear of metal. Sewing-machines and the more exigent apparatus of the kitchen and laundry transfer their demands from flagging human muscles to the tireless sinews of electric motors—which ask no wages when they stand unemployed. Similar motors already enjoy favour in working the elevators of tall dwellings in cities. If a householder is timid about burglars, the electrician offers him a sleepless watchman in the guise of an automatic alarm; if he has a dread of fire, let him dispose on his walls an array of thermometers that at the very inception of a blaze will strike a gong at headquarters. But these, after all, are matters of minor importance in comparison with the foundations upon which may be reared, not a new piece of mechanism, but a new science or a new art.

In the recent swift subjugation of the territory open alike to the chemist and the electrician, where each advances the quicker for the other's company, we have fresh confirmation of an old truth—that the boundary lines which mark off one field of science from another are purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Even the briefest glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound debt to the new theories as to the bonding of atoms to form molecules, and of the continuity between solution and electrical dissociation. However much these hypotheses may be modified as more light is shed on the geometry and the journeyings of the molecule, they have for the time being recommended themselves as finder-thoughts of golden value. These speculations of the chemist carry him back perforce to the days of his childhood. As he then joined together his black and white bricks he found that he could build cubes of widely different patterns. It was in propounding a theory of molecular architecture that Kekule gave an impetus to a vast and growing branch of chemical industry—that of the synthetic production of dyes and allied compounds.

It was in pure research, in paths undirected to the market-place, that such theories have been thought out. Let us consider electricity as an aid to investigation conducted for its own sake. The chief physical generalization of our time, and of all time, the persistence of force, emerged to view only with the dawn of electric art. When it was observed that electricity might become heat, light, chemical action, or mechanical motion, that in turn any of these might produce electricity, it was at once indicated that all these phases of energy might differ from each other only as the movements in circles, volutes, and spirals of ordinary mechanism. The suggestion was confirmed when electrical measurers were refined to the utmost precision, and a single quantum of energy was revealed a very Proteus in its disguises, yet beneath these disguises nothing but constancy itself.

"There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." Because the geometers of old patiently explored the properties of the triangle, the circle, and the ellipse, simply for pure love of truth, they laid the corner-stones for the arts of the architect, the engineer, and the navigator. In like manner it was the disinterested work of investigation conducted by Ampere, Faraday, Henry and their compeers, in ascertaining the laws of electricity which made possible the telegraph, the telephone, the dynamo, and the electric furnace. The vital relations between pure research and economic gain have at last worked themselves clear. It is perfectly plain that a man who has it in him to discover laws of matter and energy does incomparably more for his kind than if he carried his talents to the mint for conversion into coin. The voyage of a Columbus may not immediately bear as much fruit as the uncoverings of a mine prospector, but in the long run a Columbus makes possible the finding many mines which without him no prospector would ever see. Therefore let the seed-corn of knowledge be planted rather than eaten. But in choosing between one research and another it is impossible to foretell which may prove the richer in its harvests; for instance, all attempts thus far economically to oxidize carbon for the production of electricity have failed, yet in observations that at first seemed equally barren have lain the hints to which we owe the incandescent lamp and the wireless telegraph.

Perhaps the most promising field of electrical research is that of discharges at high pressures; here the leading American investigators are Professor John Trowbridge and Professor Elihu Thomson. Employing a tension estimated at one and a half millions volts, Professor Trowbridge has produced flashes of lightning six feet in length in atmospheric air; in a tube exhausted to one-seventh of atmospheric pressure the flashes extended themselves to forty feet. According to this inquirer, the familiar rending of trees by lightning is due to the intense heat developed in an instant by the electric spark; the sudden expansion of air or steam in the cavities of the wood causes an explosion. The experiments of Professor Thomson confront him with some of the seeming contradictions which ever await the explorer of new scientific territory. In the atmosphere an electrical discharge is facilitated when a metallic terminal (as a lightning rod) is shaped as a point; under oil a point is the form least favourable to discharge. In the same line of paradox it is observed that oil steadily improves in its insulating effect the higher the electrical pressure committed to its keeping; with air as an insulator the contrary is the fact. These and a goodly array of similar puzzles will, without doubt, be cleared up as students in the twentieth century pass from the twilight of anomaly to the sunshine of ascertained law.

"Before there can be applied science there must be science to apply," and it is by enabling the investigator to know nature under a fresh aspect that electricity rises to its highest office. The laboratory routine of ascertaining the conductivity, polarisability, and other electrical properties of matter is dull and exacting work, but it opens to the student new windows through which to peer at the architecture of matter. That architecture, as it rises to his view, discloses one law of structure after another; what in a first and clouded glance seemed anomaly is now resolved and reconciled; order displays itself where once anarchy alone appeared. When the investigator now needs a substance of peculiar properties he knows where to find it, or has a hint for its creation—a creation perhaps new in the history of the world. As he thinks of the wealth of qualities possessed by his store of alloys, salts, acids, alkalies, new uses for them are borne into his mind. Yet more—a new orchestration of inquiry is possible by means of the instruments created for him by the electrician, through the advances in method which these instruments effect. With a second and more intimate point of view arrives a new trigonometry of the particle, a trigonometry inconceivable in pre-electric days. Hence a surround is in progress which early in the twentieth century may go full circle, making atom and molecule as obedient to the chemist as brick and stone are to the builder now.

The laboratory investigator and the commercial exploiter of his discoveries have been by turns borrower and lender, to the great profit of both. What Leyden jar could ever be constructed of the size and revealing power of an Atlantic cable? And how many refinements of measurement, of purification of metals, of precision in manufacture, have been imposed by the colossal investments in deep-sea telegraphy alone! When a current admitted to an ocean cable, such as that between Brest and New York, can choose for its path either 3,540 miles of copper wire or a quarter of an inch of gutta-percha, there is a dangerous opportunity for escape into the sea, unless the current is of nicely adjusted strength, and the insulator has been made and laid with the best-informed skill, the most conscientious care. In the constant tests required in laying the first cables Lord Kelvin (then Professor William Thomson) felt the need for better designed and more sensitive galvanometers or current measurers. His great skill both as a mathematician and a mechanician created the existing instruments, which seem beyond improvement. They serve not only in commerce and manufacture, but in promoting the strictly scientific work of the laboratory. Now that electricity purifies copper as fire cannot, the mathematician is able to treat his problems of long-distance transmission, of traction, of machine design, with an economy and certainty impossible when his materials were not simply impure, but impure in varying and indefinite degrees. The factory and the workshop originally took their magneto-machines from the experimental laboratory; they have returned them remodelled beyond recognition as dynamos and motors of almost ideal effectiveness.

A galvanometer actuated by a thermo-electric pile furnishes much the most sensitive means of detecting changes of temperature; hence electricity enables the physicist to study the phenomena of heat with new ease and precision. It was thus that Professor Tyndall conducted the classical researches set forth in his "Heat as a Mode of Motion," ascertaining the singular power to absorb terrestrial heat which makes the aqueous vapours of the atmosphere act as an indispensable blanket to the earth.

And how vastly has electricity, whether in the workshop or laboratory, enlarged our conceptions of the forces that thrill space, of the substances, seemingly so simple, that surround us—substances that propound questions of structure and behaviour that silence the acutest investigator. "You ask me," said a great physicist, "if I have a theory of the universe? Why, I haven't even a theory of magnetism!"

The conventional phrase "conducting a current" is now understood to be mere figure of speech; it is thought that a wire does little else than give direction to electric energy. Pulsations of high tension have been proved to be mainly superficial in their journeys, so that they are best conveyed (or convoyed) by conductors of tubular form. And what is it that moves when we speak of conduction? It seems to be now the molecule of atomic chemistry, and anon the same ether that undulates with light or radiant heat. Indeed, the conquest of electricity means so much because it impresses the molecule and the ether into service as its vehicles of communication. Instead of the old-time masses of metal, or bands of leather, which moved stiffly through ranges comparatively short, there is to-day employed a medium which may traverse 186,400 miles in a second, and with resistances most trivial in contrast with those of mechanical friction.

And what is friction in the last analysis but the production of motion in undesired forms, the allowing valuable energy to do useless work? In that amazing case of long distance transmission, common sunshine, a solar beam arrives at the earth from the sun not one whit the weaker for its excursion of 92,000,000 miles. It is highly probable that we are surrounded by similar cases of the total absence of friction in the phenomena of both physics and chemistry, and that art will come nearer and nearer to nature in this immunity is assured when we see how many steps in that direction have already been taken by the electrical engineer. In a preceding page a brief account was given of the theory that gases and vapours are in ceaseless motion. This motion suffers no abatement from friction, and hence we may infer that the molecules concerned are perfectly elastic. The opinion is gaining ground among physicists that all the properties of matter, transparency, chemical combinability, and the rest, are due to immanent motion in particular orbits, with diverse velocities. If this be established, then these motions also suffer no friction, and go on without resistance forever.

As the investigators in the vanguard of science discuss the constitution of matter, and weave hypotheses more or less fruitful as to the interplay of its forces, there is a growing faith that the day is at hand when the tie between electricity and gravitation will be unveiled—when the reason why matter has weight will cease to puzzle the thinker. Who can tell what relief of man's estate may be bound up with the ability to transform any phase of energy into any other without the circuitous methods and serious losses of to-day! In the sphere of economic progress one of the supreme advances was due to the invention of money, the providing a medium for which any salable thing may be exchanged, with which any purchasable thing may be bought. As soon as a shell, or a hide, or a bit of metal was recognized as having universal convertibility, all the delays and discounts of barter were at an end. In the world of physics and chemistry the corresponding medium is electricity; let it be produced as readily as it produces other modes of motion, and human art will take a stride forward such as when Volta disposed his zinc and silver discs together, or when Faraday set a magnet moving around a copper wire.

For all that the electric current is not as yet produced as economically as it should be, we do wrong if we regard it as an infant force. However much new knowledge may do with electricity in the laboratory, in the factory, or in the exchange, some of its best work is already done. It is not likely ever to perform a greater feat than placing all mankind within ear-shot of each other. Were electricity unmastered there could be no democratic government of the United States. To-day the drama of national affairs is more directly in view of every American citizen than, a century ago, the public business of Delaware could be to the men of that little State. And when on the broader stage of international politics misunderstandings arise, let us note how the telegraph has modified the hard-and-fast rules of old-time diplomacy. To-day, through the columns of the press, the facts in controversy are instantly published throughout the world, and thus so speedily give rise to authoritative comment that a severe strain is put upon negotiators whose tradition it is to be both secret and slow.

Railroads, with all they mean for civilization, could not have extended themselves without the telegraph to control them. And railroads and telegraphs are the sinews and nerves of national life, the prime agencies in welding the diverse and widely separated States and Territories of the Union. A Boston merchant builds a cotton-mill in Georgia; a New York capitalist opens a copper-mine in Arizona. The telegraph which informs them day by day how their investments prosper tells idle men where they can find work, where work can seek idle men. Chicago is laid in ashes, Charleston topples in earthquake, Johnstown is whelmed in flood, and instantly a continent springs to their relief. And what benefits issue in the strictly commercial uses of the telegraph! At its click both locomotive and steamship speed to the relief of famine in any quarter of the globe. In times of plenty or of dearth the markets of the globe are merged and are brought to every man's door. Not less striking is the neighbourhood guild of science, born, too, of the telegraph. The day after Roentgen announced his X rays, physicists on every continent were repeating his experiments—were applying his discovery to the healing of the wounded and diseased. Let an anti-toxin for diphtheria, consumption, or yellow fever be proposed, and a hundred investigators the world over bend their skill to confirm or disprove, as if the suggester dwelt next door.

On a stage less dramatic, or rather not dramatic at all, electricity works equal good. Its motor freeing us from dependence on the horse is spreading our towns and cities into their adjoining country. Field and garden compete with airless streets. The sunny cottage is in active rivalry with the odious tenement-house. It is found that transportation within the gates of a metropolis has an importance second only to the means of transit which links one city with another. The engineer is at last filling the gap which too long existed between the traction of horses and that of steam. In point of speed, cleanliness, and comfort such an electric subway as that of South London leaves nothing to be desired. Throughout America electric roads, at first suburban, are now fast joining town to town and city to city, while, as auxiliaries to steam railroads, they place sparsely settled communities in the arterial current of the world, and build up a ready market for the dairyman and the fruit-grower. In its saving of what Mr. Oscar T. Crosby has called "man-hours" the third-rail system is beginning to oust steam as a motive power from trunk-lines. Already shrewd railroad managers are granting partnerships to the electricians who might otherwise encroach upon their dividends. A service at first restricted to passengers has now extended itself to the carriage of letters and parcels, and begins to reach out for common freight. We may soon see the farmer's cry for good roads satisfied by good electric lines that will take his crops to market much more cheaply and quickly than horses and macadam ever did. In cities, electromobile cabs and vans steadily increase in numbers, furthering the quiet and cleanliness introduced by the trolley car.

A word has been said about the blessings which electricity promises to country folk, yet greater are the boons it stands ready to bestow in the hives of population. Until a few decades ago the water-supply of cities was a matter not of municipal but of individual enterprise; water was drawn in large part from wells here and there, from lines of piping laid in favoured localities, and always insufficient. Many an epidemic of typhoid fever was due to the contamination of a spring by a cesspool a few yards away. To-day a supply such as that of New York is abundant and cheap because it enters every house. Let a centralized electrical service enjoy a like privilege, and it will offer a current which is heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power, and all at a wage lower than that of any other servant. Unwittingly, then, the electrical engineer is a political reformer of high degree, for he puts a new premium upon ability and justice at the City Hall. His sole condition is that electricity shall be under control at once competent and honest. Let us hope that his plea, joined to others as weighty, may quicken the spirit of civic righteousness so that some of the richest fruits ever borne in the garden of science and art may not be proffered in vain. Flame, the old-time servant, is individual; electricity, its successor and heir, is collective. Flame sits upon the hearth and draws a family together; electricity, welling from a public source, may bind into a unit all the families of a vast city, because it makes the benefit of each the interest of all.

But not every promise brought forward in the name of the electrician has his assent or sanction. So much has been done by electricity, and so much more is plainly feasible, that a reflection of its triumphs has gilded many a baseless dream. One of these is that the cheap electric motor, by supply power at home, will break up the factory system, and bring back the domestic manufacturing of old days. But if this power cost nothing at all the gift would leave the factory unassailed; for we must remember that power is being steadily reduced in cost from year to year, so that in many industries it has but a minor place among the expenses of production. The strength and profit of the factory system lie in its assembling a wide variety of machines, the first delivering its product to the second for another step toward completion, and so on until a finished article is sent to the ware-room. It is this minute subdivision of labour, together with the saving and efficiency that inure to a business conducted on an immense scale under a single manager, that bids us believe that the factory has come to stay. To be sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of peculiar skill may thrive at his loom or wheel at home; but such a man is far from typical in modern manufacture. Besides, it is very questionable whether the lamentations over the home industries of the past do not ignore evil concomitants such as still linger in the home industries of the present—those of the sweater's den, for example.

This rapid survey of what electricity has done and may yet do—futile expectation dismissed—has shown it the creator of a thousand material resources, the perfector of that communication of things, of power, of thought, which in every prior stage of advancement has marked the successive lifts of humanity. It was much when the savage loaded a pack upon a horse or an ox instead of upon his own back; it was yet more when he could make a beacon-flare give news or warning to a whole country-side, instead of being limited to the messages which might be read in his waving hands. All that the modern engineer was able to do with steam for locomotion is raised to a higher plane by the advent of his new power, while the long-distance transmission of electrical energy is contracting the dimensions of the planet to a scale upon which its cataracts in the wilderness drive the spindles and looms of the factory town, or illuminate the thoroughfares of cities. Beyond and above all such services as these, electricity is the corner-stone of physical generalization, a revealer of truths impenetrable by any other ray.

The subjugation of fire has done much in giving man a new independence of nature, a mighty armoury against evil. In curtailing the most arduous and brutalizing forms of toil, electricity, that subtler kind of fire, carries this emancipation a long step further, and, meanwhile, bestows upon the poor many a luxury which but lately was the exclusive possession of the rich. In more closely binding up the good of the bee with the welfare of the hive, it is an educator and confirmer of every social bond. In so far as it proffers new help in the war on pain and disease it strengthens the confidence of man in an Order of Right and Happiness which for so many dreary ages has been a matter rather of hope than of vision. Are we not, then, justified in holding electricity to be a multiplier of faculty and insight, a means of dignifying mind and soul, unexampled since man first kindled fire and rejoiced?

We have traced how dexterity rose to fire-making, how fire-making led to the subjugation of electricity. Much of the most telling work of fire can be better done by its great successor, while electricity performs many tasks possible only to itself. Unwitting truth there was in the simple fable of the captive who let down a spider's film, that drew up a thread, which in turn brought up a rope—and freedom. It was in 1800 on the threshold of the nineteenth century, that Volta devised the first electric battery. In a hundred years the force then liberated has vitally interwoven itself with every art and science, bearing fruit not to be imagined even by men of the stature of Watt, Lavoisier, or Humboldt. Compare this rapid march of conquest with the slow adaptation, through age after age, of fire to cooking, smelting, tempering. Yet it was partly, perhaps mainly, because the use of fire had drawn out man's intelligence and cultivated his skill that he was ready in the fulness of time so quickly to seize upon electricity and subdue it.

Electricity is as legitimately the offspring of fire as fire of the simple knack in which one savage in ten thousand was richer than his fellows. The principle of permutation, suggested in both victories, interprets not only how vast empire is won by a new weapon of prime dignity; it explains why such empires are brought under rule with ever-accelerated pace. Every talent only pioneers the way for the richer talents which are born from it.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Permutations are the various ways in which two or more different things may be arranged in a row, all the things appearing in each row. Permutations are readily illustrated with squares or cubes of different colours, with numbers, or letters.

Permutations of two elements, 1 and 2, are (1 x 2) two; 1, 2; 2, 1; or a, b; b, a. Of three elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3) six; 1, 2, 3; 1, 3, 2; 2, 1, 3; 2, 3, 1; 3, 1, 2; 3, 2, 1; or a, b, c; a, c, b; b, a, c; b, c, a; c, a, b; c, b, a. Of four elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3 x 4) twenty-four; of five elements, one hundred and twenty, and so on. A new element or permutator multiplies by an increasing figure all the permutations it finds.

[6] Some years ago I sent an outline of this argument to Herbert Spencer, who replied: "I recognize a novelty and value in your inference that the law implies an increasing width of gap between lower and higher types as evolution advances."



COUNT RUMFORD IDENTIFIES HEAT WITH MOTION.

[Benjamin Thompson, who received the title of Count Rumford from the Elector of Bavaria, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753. When thirty-one years of age he settled in Munich, where he devoted his remarkable abilities to the public service. Twelve years afterward he removed to England; in 1800 he founded the Royal Institution of London, since famous as the theatre of the labours of Davy, Faraday, Tyndall, and Dewar. He bequeathed to Harvard University a fund to endow a professorship of the application of science to the art of living: he instituted a prize to be awarded by the American Academy of Sciences for the most important discoveries and improvements relating to heat and light. In 1804 he married the widow of the illustrious chemist Lavoisier: he died in 1814. Count Rumford on January 25, 1798, read a paper before the Royal Society entitled "An Enquiry Concerning the Source of Heat Which Is Excited by Friction." The experiments therein detailed proved that heat is identical with motion, as against the notion that heat is matter. He thus laid the corner-stone of the modern theory that heat light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and all other forms of energy are in essence motion, are convertible into one another, and as motion are indestructible. The following abstract of Count Rumford's paper is taken from "Heat as a Mode of Motion," by Professor John Tyndall, published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. This work and "The Correlation and Conservation of Forces," edited by Dr. E. L. Youmans, published by the same house, will serve as a capital introduction to the modern theory that energy is motion which, however varied in its forms, is changeless in its quantity.]

Being engaged in superintending the boring of cannon in the workshops of the military arsenal at Munich, Count Rumford was struck with the very considerable degree of heat which a brass gun acquires, in a short time, in being bored, and with the still more intense heat (much greater than that of boiling water) of the metallic chips separated from it by the borer, he proposed to himself the following questions:

"Whence comes the heat actually produced in the mechanical operations above mentioned?

"Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated from the metal?"

If this were the case, then the capacity for heat of the parts of the metal so reduced to chips ought not only to be changed, but the change undergone by them should be sufficiently great to account for all the heat produced. No such change, however, had taken place, for the chips were found to have the same capacity as slices of the same metal cut by a fine saw, where heating was avoided. Hence, it is evident, that the heat produced could not possibly have been furnished at the expense of the latent heat of the metallic chips. Rumford describes these experiments at length, and they are conclusive.

He then designed a cylinder for the express purpose of generating heat by friction, by having a blunt borer forced against its solid bottom, while the cylinder was turned around its axis by the force of horses. To measure the heat developed, a small round hole was bored in the cylinder for the purpose of introducing a small mercurial thermometer. The weight of the cylinder was 113.13 pounds avoirdupois.

The borer was a flat piece of hardened steel, 0.63 of an inch thick, four inches long, and nearly as wide as the cavity of the bore of the cylinder, namely, three and one-half inches. The area of the surface by which its end was in contact with the bottom of the bore was nearly two and one-half inches. At the beginning of the experiment the temperature of the air in the shade, and also that of the cylinder, was 60 deg. Fahr. At the end of thirty minutes, and after the cylinder had made 960 revolutions round its axis, the temperature was found to be 130 deg..

Having taken away the borer, he now removed the metallic dust, or rather scaly matter, which had been detached from the bottom of the cylinder by the blunt steel borer, and found its weight to be 837 grains troy. "Is it possible," he exclaims, "that the very considerable quantity of heat produced in this experiment—a quantity which actually raised the temperature of above 113 pounds of gun-metal at least 70 deg. of Fahrenheit's thermometer—could have been furnished by so inconsiderable a quantity of metallic dust and this merely in consequence of a change in its capacity of heat?"

"But without insisting on the improbability of this supposition, we have only to recollect that from the results of actual and decisive experiments, made for the express purpose of ascertaining that fact, the capacity for heat for the metal of which great guns are cast is not sensibly changed by being reduced to the form of metallic chips, and there does not seem to be any reason to think that it can be much changed, if it be changed at all, in being reduced to much smaller pieces by a borer which is less sharp."

He next surrounded his cylinder by an oblong deal-box, in such a manner that the cylinder could turn water-tight in the centre of the box, while the borer was pressed against the bottom of the cylinder. The box was filled with water until the entire cylinder was covered, and then the apparatus was set in action. The temperature of the water on commencing was 60 deg..

"The result of this beautiful experiment," writes Rumford, "was very striking, and the pleasure it afforded me amply repaid me for all the trouble I had had in contriving and arranging the complicated machinery used in making it. The cylinder had been in motion but a short time, when I perceived, by putting my hand into the water, and touching the outside of the cylinder, that heat was generated.

"At the end of one hour the fluid, which weighed 18.77 pounds, or two and one-half gallons, had its temperature raised forty-seven degrees, being now 107 deg..

"In thirty minutes more, or one hour and thirty minutes after the machinery had been set in motion, the heat of the water was 142 deg..

"At the end of two hours from the beginning, the temperature was 178 deg..

"At two hours and twenty minutes it was 200 deg., and at two hours and thirty minutes it actually boiled!"

"It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonishment expressed in the countenances of the bystanders on seeing so large a quantity of water heated, and actually made to boil, without any fire. Though, there was nothing that could be considered very surprising in this matter, yet I acknowledge fairly that it afforded me a degree of childish pleasure which, were I ambitious of the reputation of a grave philosopher, I ought most certainly rather to hide than to discover."

He then carefully estimates the quantity of heat possessed by each portion of his apparatus at the conclusion of the experiment, and, adding all together, finds a total sufficient to raise 26.58 pounds of ice-cold water to its boiling point, or through 180 deg. Fahrenheit. By careful calculation, he finds this heat equal to that given out by the combustion of 2,303.8 grains (equal to four and eight-tenths ounces troy) of wax.

He then determines the "celerity" with which the heat was generated, summing up thus: "From the results of these computations, it appears that the quantity of heat produced equably, or in a continuous stream, if I may use the expression, by the friction of the blunt steel borer against the bottom of the hollow metallic cylinder, was greater than that produced in the combustion of nine wax-candles, each three-quarters of an inch in diameter, all burning together with clear bright flames.

"One horse would have been equal to the work performed, though two were actually employed. Heat may thus be produced merely by the strength of a horse, and, in a case of necessity, this heat might be used in cooking victuals. But no circumstances could be imagined in which this method of procuring heat would be advantageous, for more heat might be obtained by using the fodder necessary for the support of a horse as fuel."

[This is an extremely significant passage, intimating as it does, that Rumford saw clearly that the force of animals was derived from the food; no creation of force taking place in the animal body.]

"By meditating on the results of all these experiments, we are naturally brought to that great question which has so often been the subject of speculation among philosophers, namely, What is heat—is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there anything that, with propriety, can be called caloric?

"We have seen that a very considerable quantity of heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given off in a constant stream or flux in all directions, without interruption or intermission, and without any signs of diminution or exhaustion. In reasoning on this subject we must not forget that most remarkable circumstance, that the source of the heat generated by friction in these experiments appeared evidently to be inexhaustible. [The italics are Rumford's.] It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in those experiments, except it be MOTION."

When the history of the dynamical theory of heat is written, the man who, in opposition to the scientific belief of his time, could experiment and reason upon experiment, as Rumford did in the investigation here referred to, cannot be lightly passed over. Hardly anything more powerful against the materiality of heat has been since adduced, hardly anything more conclusive in the way of establishing that heat is, what Rumford considered it to be, Motion.



VICTORY OF THE "ROCKET" LOCOMOTIVE.

[Part of Chapter XII. Part II, of "The Life of George Stephenson and of His Son, Robert Stephenson," by Samuel Smiles New York, Harper & Brothers, 1868.]

The works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway were now approaching completion. But, strange to say, the directors had not yet decided as to the tractive power to be employed in working the line when open for traffic. The differences of opinion among them were so great as apparently to be irreconcilable. It was necessary, however, that they should, come to some decision without further loss of time, and many board meetings were accordingly held to discuss the subject. The old-fashioned and well-tried system of horse-haulage was not without its advocates; but, looking at the large amount of traffic which there was to be conveyed, and at the probable delay in the transit from station to station if this method were adopted, the directors, after a visit made by them to the Northumberland and Durham railways in 1828, came to the conclusion that the employment of horse-power was inadmissible.

Fixed engines had many advocates; the locomotive very few: it stood as yet almost in a minority of one—George Stephenson....

In the meantime the discussion proceeded as to the kind of power to be permanently employed for the working of the railway. The directors were inundated with schemes of all sorts for facilitating locomotion. The projectors of England, France, and America seemed to be let loose upon them. There were plans for working the waggons along the line by water-power. Some proposed hydrogen, and others carbonic acid gas. Atmospheric pressure had its eager advocates. And various kinds of fixed and locomotive steam-power were suggested. Thomas Gray urged his plan of a greased road with cog-rails; and Messrs. Vignolles and Ericsson recommended the adoption of a central friction-rail, against which two horizontal rollers under the locomotive, pressing upon the sides of this rail, were to afford the means of ascending the inclined planes....

The two best practical engineers of the day concurred in reporting substantially in favour of the employment of fixed engines. Not a single professional man of eminence could be found to coincide with the engineer of the railway in his preference for locomotive over fixed engine power. He had scarcely a supporter, and the locomotive system seemed on the eve of being abandoned. Still he did not despair. With the profession against him, and public opinion against him—for the most frightful stories went abroad respecting the dangers, the unsightliness, and the nuisance which the locomotive would create—Stephenson held to his purpose. Even in this, apparently the darkest hour of the locomotive, he did not hesitate to declare that locomotive railroads would, before many years had passed, be "the great highways of the world."

He urged his views upon the directors in all ways, in season, and, as some of them thought, out of season. He pointed out the greater convenience of locomotive power for the purposes of a public highway, likening it to a series of short unconnected chains, any one of which could be removed and another substituted without interruption to the traffic; whereas the fixed-engine system might be regarded in the light of a continuous chain extending between the two termini, the failure of any link of which would derange the whole. But the fixed engine party was very strong at the board, and, led by Mr. Cropper, they urged the propriety of forthwith adopting the report of Messrs. Walker and Rastrick. Mr. Sandars and Mr. William Rathbone, on the other hand, desired that a fair trial should be given to the locomotive; and they with reason objected to the expenditure of the large capital necessary to construct the proposed engine-houses, with their fixed engines, ropes, and machinery, until they had tested the powers of the locomotive as recommended by their own engineer. George Stephenson continued to urge upon them that the locomotive was yet capable of great improvements, if proper inducements were held out to inventors and machinists to make them; and he pledged himself that, if time were given him, he would construct an engine that should satisfy their requirements, and prove itself capable of working heavy loads along the railway with speed, regularity, and safety. At length, influenced by his persistent earnestness not less than by his arguments, the directors, at the suggestion of Mr. Harrison, determined to offer a prize of L500 for the best locomotive engine, which, on a certain day, should be produced on the railway, and perform certain specified conditions in the most satisfactory manner.[7]

The requirements of the directors as to speed were not excessive. All that they asked for was that ten miles an hour should be maintained. Perhaps they had in mind the animadversions of the Quarterly Review on the absurdity of travelling at a greater velocity, and also the remarks published by Mr. Nicholas Wood, whom they selected to be one of the judges of the competition, in conjunction, with Mr. Rastrick, of Stourbridge, and Mr. Kennedy, of Manchester.

It was now felt that the fate of railways in a great measure depended upon the issue of this appeal to the mechanical genius of England. When the advertisement of the prize for the best locomotive was published, scientific men began more particularly to direct their attention to the new power which was thus struggling into existence. In the meantime public opinion on the subject of railway working remained suspended, and the progress of the undertaking was watched with intense interest.

During the progress of this important controversy with reference to the kind of power to be employed in working the railway, George Stephenson was in constant communication with his son Robert, who made frequent visits to Liverpool for the purpose of assisting his father in the preparation of his reports to the board on the subject. Mr. Swanwick remembers the vivid interest of the evening discussions which then took place between father and son as to the best mode of increasing the powers and perfecting the mechanism of the locomotive. He wondered at their quick perception and rapid judgment on each other's suggestions; at the mechanical difficulties which they anticipated and provided for in the practical arrangement of the machine; and he speaks of these evenings as most interesting displays of two actively ingenious and able minds stimulating each other to feats of mechanical invention, by which it was ordained that the locomotive engine should become what it now is. These discussions became more frequent, and still more interesting, after the public prize had been offered for the best locomotive by the directors of the railway, and the working plans of the engine which they proposed to construct had to be settled.

One of the most important considerations in the new engine was the arrangement of the boiler, and the extension of its heating surface to enable steam enough to be raised rapidly and continuously for the purpose of maintaining high rates of speed—the effect of high pressure engines being ascertained to depend mainly upon the quantity of steam which the boiler can generate, and upon its degree of elasticity when produced. The quantity of steam so generated, it will be obvious, must chiefly depend upon the quantity of fuel consumed in the furnace, and, by necessary consequence, upon the high rate of temperature maintained there.

It will be remembered that in Stephenson's first Killingworth engines he invited and applied the ingenious method of stimulating combustion in the furnace by throwing the waste steam into the chimney after performing its office in the cylinders, thereby accelerating the ascent of the current of air, greatly increasing the draught, and consequently the temperature of the fire. This plan was adopted by him, as we have seen, as early as 1815, and it was so successful that he himself attributed to it the greater economy of the locomotive as compared with horse-power. Hence the continuance of its use upon the Killingworth Railway.

Though the adoption of the steam blast greatly quickened combustion and contributed to the rapid production of high-pressure steam, the limited amount of heating surface presented to the fire was still felt to be an obstacle to the complete success of the locomotive engine. Mr. Stephenson endeavoured to overcome this by lengthening the boilers and increasing the surface presented by the flue-tubes. The "Lancashire Witch," which he built for the Bolton and Leigh Railway, and used in forming the Liverpool and Manchester Railway embankments, was constructed with a double tube, each of which contained a fire, and passed longitudinally through the boiler. But this arrangement necessarily led to a considerable increase in the weight of those engines, which amounted to about twelve tons each; and as six tons was the limit allowed for engines admitted to the Liverpool competition, it was clear that the time was come when the Killingworth engine must undergo a farther important modification.

For many years previous to this period, ingenious mechanics had been engaged in attempting to solve the problem of the best and most economical boiler for the production of high-pressure steam.

The use of tubes in boilers for increasing the heating surface had long been known. As early as 1780, Matthew Boulton employed copper tubes longitudinally in the boiler of the Wheal Busy engine in Cornwall—the fire passing through the tubes—and it was found that the production of steam was thereby considerably increased. The use of tubular boilers afterwards became common in Cornwall. In 1803, Woolf, the Cornish engineer, patented a boiler with tubes, with the same object of increasing the heating surface. The water was inside the tubes, and the fire of the boiler outside. Similar expedients were proposed by other inventors. In 1815 Trevithick invented his light high-pressure boiler for portable purposes, in which, to "expose a large surface to the fire," he constructed the boiler of a number of small perpendicular tubes "opening into a common reservoir at the top." In 1823 W. H. James contrived a boiler composed of a series of annular wrought-iron tubes, placed side by side and bolted together, so as to form by their union a long cylindrical boiler, in the centre of which, at the end, the fireplace was situated. The fire played round the tubes, which contained the water. In 1826 James Neville took out a patent for a boiler with vertical tubes surrounded by the water, through which the heated air of the furnace passed, explaining also in his specification that the tubes might be horizontal or inclined, according to circumstances. Mr. Goldsworthy, the persevering adaptor of steam-carriages to travelling on common roads, applied the tubular principle in the boiler of his engine, in which the steam was generated within the tubes; while the boiler invented by Messrs. Summer and Ogle for their turnpike-road steam-carriage consisted of a series of tubes placed vertically over the furnace, through which the heated air passed before reaching the chimney.

About the same time George Stephenson was trying the effect of introducing small tubes in the boilers of his locomotives, with the object of increasing their evaporative power. Thus, in 1829, he sent to France two engines constructed at the Newcastle works for the Lyons and St. Etienne Railway, in the boilers of which tubes were placed containing water. The heating surface was thus considerably increased; but the expedient was not successful, for the tubes, becoming furred with deposit, shortly burned out and were removed. It was then that M. Seguin, the engineer of the railway, pursuing the same idea, is said to have adopted his plan of employing horizontal tubes through which the heated air passed in streamlets, and for which he took out a French patent.

In the meantime Mr. Henry Booth, secretary to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, whose attention had been directed to the subject on the prize being offered for the best locomotive to work that line, proposed the same method, which, unknown to him, Matthew Boulton had employed but not patented, in 1780, and James Neville had patented, but not employed, in 1826; and it was carried into effect by Robert Stephenson in the construction of the "Rocket," which won the prize at Rainhill in October, 1829. The following is Mr. Booth's account in a letter to the author:

"I was in almost daily communication with Mr. Stephenson at the time, and I was not aware that he had any intention of competing for the prize till I communicated to him my scheme of a multitubular boiler. This new plan of boiler comprised the introduction of numerous small tubes, two or three inches in diameter, and less than one-eighth of an inch thick, through which to carry the fire instead of a single tube or flue eighteen inches in diameter, and about half an inch thick, by which plan we not only obtain a very much larger heating surface, but the heating surface is much more effective, as there intervenes between the fire and the water only a thin sheet of copper or brass, not an eighth of an inch thick, instead of a plate of iron of four times the substance, as well as an inferior conductor of heat.

"When the conditions of trial were published, I communicated my multitubular plan to Mr. Stephenson, and proposed to him that we should jointly construct an engine and compete for the prize. Mr. Stephenson approved the plan, and agreed to my proposal. He settled the mode in which the fire-box and tubes were to be mutually arranged and connected, and the engine was constructed at the works of Messrs. Robert Stephenson & Co., Newcastle-on-Tyne.

"I am ignorant of M. Seguin's proceedings in France, but I claim to be the inventor in England, and feel warranted in stating, without reservation, that until I named my plan to Mr. Stephenson, with a view to compete for the prize at Rainhill, it had not been tried, and was not known in this country."

From the well-known high character of Mr. Booth, we believe his statement to be made in perfect good faith, and that he was as much in ignorance of the plan patented by Neville as he was of that of Seguin. As we have seen, from the many plans of tubular boilers invented during the preceding thirty years, the idea was not by any means new; and we believe Mr. Booth to be entitled to the merit of inventing the method by which the multitubular principle was so effectually applied in the construction of the famous "Rocket" engine.

The principal circumstances connected with the construction of the "Rocket," as described by Robert Stephenson to the author, may be briefly stated. The tubular principle was adopted in a more complete manner than had yet been attempted. Twenty-five copper tubes, each three inches in diameter, extended from one end of the boiler to the other, the heated air passing through them on its way to the chimney; and the tubes being surrounded by the water of the boiler, it will be obvious that a large extension of the heating surface was thus effectually secured. The principal difficulty was in fitting the copper tubes in the boiler ends so as to prevent leakage. They were manufactured by a Newcastle coppersmith, and soldered to brass screws which were screwed into the boiler ends, standing out in great knobs. When the tubes were thus fitted, and the boiler was filled with water, hydraulic pressure was applied; but the water squirted out at every joint, and the factory floor was soon flooded. Robert went home in despair; and in the first moment of grief he wrote to his father that the whole thing was a failure. By return of post came a letter from his father, telling him that despair was not to be thought of—that he must "try again;" and he suggested a mode of overcoming the difficulty, which his son had already anticipated and proceeded to adopt. It was, to bore clean holes in the boiler ends, fit in the smooth copper tubes as tightly as possible, solder up, and then raise the steam. This plan succeeded perfectly, the expansion of the copper tubes completely filling up all interstices, and producing a perfectly water-tight boiler, capable of withstanding extreme external pressure.

The mode of employing the steam-blast for the purpose of increasing the draught in the chimney was also the subject of numerous experiments. When the engine was first tried, it was thought that the blast in the chimney was not sufficiently strong for the purpose of keeping up the intensity of fire in the furnace, so as to produce high-pressure steam with the required velocity. The expedient was therefore adopted of hammering the copper tubes at the point at which they entered the chimney, whereby the blast was considerably sharpened; and on a farther trial it was found that the draught was increased to such an extent as to enable abundance of steam to be raised. The rationale of the blast may be simply explained by referring to the effect of contracting the pipe of a water-hose, by which the force of the jet of water is proportionately increased. Widen the nozzle of the pipe, and the jet is in like manner diminished. So it is with the steam-blast in the chimney of the locomotive.

Doubts were, however, expressed whether the greater draught obtained by the contraction of the blast-pipe was not counterbalanced in some degree by the negative pressure upon the piston. Hence a series of experiments was made with pipes of different diameters, and their efficiency was tested by the amount of vacuum that was produced in the smoke-box. The degree of rarefaction was determined by a glass tube fixed to the bottom of the smoke-box and descending into a bucket of water, the tube being open at both ends. As the rarefaction took place, the water would, of course, rise in the tube, and the height to which it rose above the surface of the water in the bucket was made the measure of the amount of rarefaction. These experiments proved that a considerable increase of draught was obtained by the contraction of the orifice; accordingly, the two blast-pipes opening from the cylinders into either side of the "Rocket" chimney, and turned up within it, were contracted slightly below the area of the steam-ports, and before the engine left the factory, the water rose in the glass tube three inches above the water in the bucket.

The other arrangements of the "Rocket" were briefly these: the boiler was cylindrical, with flat ends, six feet in length, and three feet four inches in diameter. The upper half of the boiler was used as a reservoir for the steam, the lower half being filled with water. Through the lower part the copper tubes extended, being open to the fire-box at one end, and to the chimney at the other. The fire-box, or furnace, two feet wide and three feet high, was attached immediately behind the boiler, and was also surrounded with water. The cylinders of the engine were placed on each side of the boiler, in an oblique position, one end being nearly level with the top of the boiler at its after end, and the other pointing toward the centre of the foremost or driving pair of wheels, with which the connection was directly made from the piston-rod to a pin on the outside of the wheel. The engine, together with its load of water, weighed only four tons and a quarter; and it was supported on four wheels, not coupled. The tender was four-wheeled, and similar in shape to a waggon—the foremost part holding the fuel, and the hind part a water cask.

When the "Rocket" was finished it was placed upon the Killingworth Railway for the purpose of experiment. The new boiler arrangement was found perfectly successful. The steam was raised rapidly and continuously, and in a quantity which then appeared marvellous. The same evening Robert despatched a letter to his father at Liverpool, informing him, to his great joy, that the "Rocket" was "all right," and would be in complete working trim by the day of trial. The engine was shortly after sent by waggon to Carlisle, and thence shipped for Liverpool.

The time so much longed for by George Stephenson had now arrived, when the merits of the passenger locomotive were about to be put to the test. He had fought the battle for it until now almost single-handed. Engrossed by his daily labours and anxieties, and harassed by difficulties and discouragements which would have crushed the spirit of a less resolute man, he had held firmly to his purpose through good and through evil report. The hostility which he experienced from some of the directors opposed to the adoption of the locomotive was the circumstance that caused him the greatest grief of all; for where he had looked for encouragement, he found only carping and opposition. But his pluck never failed him; and now the "Rocket" was upon the ground to prove, to use his own words, "whether he was a man of his word or not."

On the day appointed for the great competition of locomotives at Rainhill the following engines were entered for the prize:

1. Messrs. Braithwaite and Ericsson's "Novelty."

2. Mr. Timothy Hackworth's "Sanspareil."

3. Messrs. R. Stephenson & Co.'s "Rocket."

4. Mr. Burstall's "Perseverance."

The ground on which the engines were to be tried was a level piece of railroad, about two miles in length. Each was required to make twenty trips, or equal to a journey of seventy miles, in the course of the day, and the average rate of travelling was to be not under ten miles an hour. It was determined that, to avoid confusion, each engine should be tried separately, and on different days.

The day fixed for the competition was the 1st of October, but, to allow sufficient time to get the locomotives into good working order, the directors extended it to the 6th. It was quite characteristic of the Stephensons that, although their engine did not stand first on the list for trial, it was the first that was ready, and it was accordingly ordered out by the judges for an experimental trip. Yet the "Rocket" was by no means the "favourite" with either the judges or the spectators. Nicholas Wood has since stated that the majority of the judges were strongly predisposed in favour of the "Novelty," and that "nine-tenths, if not ten-tenths, of the persons present were against the "Rocket" because of its appearance." Nearly every person favoured some other engine, so that there was nothing for the "Rocket" but the practical test. The first trip made by it was quite successful. It ran about twelve miles, without interruption, in about fifty-three minutes.

The "Novelty" was next called out. It was a light engine, very compact in appearance, carrying the water and fuel upon the same wheels as the engine. The weight of the whole was only three tons and one hundred-weight. A peculiarity of this engine was that the air was driven or forced through the fire by means of bellows. The day being now far advanced, and some dispute having arisen as to the method of assigning the proper load for the "Novelty," no particular experiment was made further than that the engine traversed the line by way of exhibition, occasionally moving at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour. The "Sanspareil," constructed by Mr. Timothy Hackworth, was next exhibited, but no particular experiment was made with it on this day. This engine differed but little in its construction from the locomotive last supplied by the Stephensons to the Stockton and Darlington Railway, of which Mr. Hackworth was the locomotive foreman.

The contest was postponed until the following day; but, before the judges arrived on the ground, the bellows for creating the blast in the "Novelty" gave way, and it was found incapable of going through its performance. A defect was also detected in the boiler of the "Sanspareil," and some further time was allowed to get it repaired. The large number of spectators who had assembled to witness the contest were greatly disappointed at this postponement; but, to lessen it, Stephenson again brought out the "Rocket," and, attaching it to a coach containing thirty persons, he ran them along the line at a rate of from twenty-four to thirty miles an hour, much to their gratification and amazement. Before separating, the judges ordered the engine to be in readiness by eight o'clock on the following morning, to go through its definite trial according to the prescribed conditions.

On the morning of the 8th of October the "Rocket" was again ready for the contest. The engine was taken to the extremity of the stage, the fire-box was filled with coke, the fire lighted, and the steam raised until it lifted the safety-valve loaded to a pressure of fifty pounds to the square inch. This proceeding occupied fifty-seven minutes. The engine then started on its journey, dragging after it about thirteen tons' weight in waggons, and made the first ten trips backward and forward along two miles of road, running the thirty-five miles, including stoppages, in an hour and forty-eight minutes. The second ten trips were in like manner performed in two hours and three minutes. The maximum velocity attained during the trial trip was twenty-nine miles an hour, or about three times the speed that one of the judges of the competition had declared to be the limit of possibility. The average speed at which the whole of the journeys was performed was fifteen miles an hour, or five miles beyond the rate specified in the conditions published by the company. The entire performance excited the greatest astonishment among the assembled spectators; the directors felt confident that their enterprise was now on the eve of success; and George Stephenson rejoiced to think that, in spite of all false prophets and fickle counsellors, the locomotive system was now safe. When the "Rocket," having performed all the conditions of the contest, arrived at the "grand stand" at the close of its day's successful run, Mr. Cropper—one of the directors favourable to the fixed engine system—lifted up his hands, and exclaimed, "Now has George Stephenson at last delivered himself...."

The "Rocket" had eclipsed the performance of all locomotive engines that had yet been constructed, and outstripped even the sanguine expectations of its constructors. It satisfactorily answered the report of Messrs. Walker and Rastrick, and established the efficiency of the locomotive for working the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and, indeed, all future railways. The "Rocket" showed that a new power had been born into the world, full of activity and strength, with boundless capability of work. It was the simple but admirable contrivance of the steam-blast, and its combination with the multitubular boiler, that at once gave locomotion a vigorous life, and secured the triumph of the railway system.[8]



FOOTNOTES:

[7] The conditions were these:

1. The engine must effectually consume its own smoke.

2. The engine, if of six tons' weight, must be able to draw after it, day by day, twenty tons' weight (including the tender and water-tank) at ten miles an hour, with a pressure of steam on the boiler not exceeding fifty pounds to the square inch.

3. The boiler must have two safety-valves, neither of which must be fastened down, and one of them be completely out of the control of the engine-man.

4. The engine and boiler must be supported on springs, and rest on six wheels, the height of the whole not exceeding fifteen feet to the top of the chimney.

5. The engine, with water, must not weigh more than six tons; but an engine of less weight would be preferred on its drawing a proportionate load behind it; if of only four and a half tons, then it might be put on only four wheels. The company will be at liberty to test the boiler, etc., by a pressure of one hundred and fifty pounds to the square inch.

6. A mercurial gauge must be affixed to the machine, showing the steam pressure above forty-five pounds per square inch.

7. The engine must be delivered, complete and ready for trial, at the Liverpool end of the railway, not later than the 1st of October, 1829.

8. The price of the engine must not exceed L550.

Many persons of influence declared the conditions published by the directors of the railway chimerical in the extreme. One gentleman of some eminence in Liverpool, Mr. P. Ewart, who afterward filled the office of Government Inspector of Post-office Steam Packets, declared that only a parcel of charlatans would ever have issued such a set of conditions; that it had been proved to be impossible to make a locomotive engine go at ten miles an hour; but if it ever was done, he would undertake to eat a stewed engine-wheel for his breakfast.

[8] When heavier and more powerful engines were brought upon the road, the old "Rocket," becoming regarded as a thing of no value, was sold in 1837. It has since been transferred to the Museum of Patents at South Kensington, London, where it is still to be seen.

Transcriber's Notes:

Page 30—imployed changed to employed.

Page 31—subsequenty changed to subsequently.

Page 47—build changed to building.

Page 147—suggestor changed to suggester.

Page 166—supgestion changed to suggestion.

Footnote 7—Changed question mark for a period.

Inconsistencies in hyphenated words have been made consistent.

Obvious printer errors, including punctuation, have been corrected without note.

THE END