Section I.—The Period of Speculation—from Hero to Worcester, b. c. 200 to a. d. 1650.

A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine by Robert Henry Thurston is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Section I.—The Period of Speculation—from Hero to Worcester, b. c. 200 to a. d. 1650.

Section I.—The Period of Speculation—from Hero to Worcester, b. c. 200 to a. d. 1650.

One of the greatest of modern philosophers—the founder of that system of scientific philosophy which traces the processes of evolution in every department, whether physical or intellectual—has devoted a chapter of his “First Principles” of the new system to the consideration of the multiplication of the effects of the various forces, social and other, which are continually modifying this wonderful and mysterious universe of which we form a part. Herbert Spencer, himself an engineer, there traces the wide-spreading, never-ceasing influences of new inventions, of the introduction of new forms of mechanism, and of the growth of industrial organization, with a clearness and a conciseness which are so eminently characteristic of his style. His illustration of this idea by reference to the manifold effects of the introduction of steam-power and its latest embodiment, the locomotive-engine, is one of the strongest passages in his work. The power of the steam-engine, and its inconceivable importance as an agent of civilization, has always been a favorite theme with philosophers and historians as well as poets. As Religion has always been, and still is, the great moral agent in civilizing the world, and as Science is the great intellectual promoter of civilization, so the Steam-Engine is, in modern times, the most important physical agent in that great work.

It would be superfluous to attempt to enumerate the benefits which it has conferred upon the human race, for such an enumeration would include an addition to every comfort and the creation of almost every luxury that we now enjoy. The wonderful progress of the present century is, in a very great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam-engine, and to the ingenious application of its power to kinds of work that formerly taxed the physical energies of the human race. We cannot examine the methods and processes of any branch of industry without discovering, somewhere, the assistance and support of this wonderful machine. Relieving mankind from manual toil, it has left to the intellect the privilege of directing the power, formerly absorbed in physical labor, into other and more profitable channels. The intelligence which has thus conquered the powers of Nature, now finds itself free to do head-work; the force formerly utilized in the carrying of water and the hewing of wood, is now expended in the God-like work of thought. What, then, can be more interesting than to trace the history of the growth of this wonderful machine?—the greatest among the many great creations of one of God’s most beneficent gifts to man—the power of invention.

While following the records and traditions which relate to the steam-engine, I propose to call attention to the fact that its history illustrates the very important truth: Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really either an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not a creation, but a growth—as truly so as is that of the trees in the forest. Hence, the same invention is frequently brought out in several countries, and by several individuals, simultaneously. Frequently an important invention is made before the world is ready to receive it, and the unhappy inventor is taught, by his failure, that it is as unfortunate to be in advance of his age as to be behind it. Inventions only become successful when they are not only needed, but when mankind is so far advanced in intelligence as to appreciate and to express the necessity for them, and to at once make use of them.

More than half a century ago, an able New England writer, in a communication to an English engineering periodical, described the new machinery which was built at Newport, R. I., by John Babcock and Robert L. Thurston, for one of the first steamboats that ever ran between that city and New York. He prefaced his description with a frequently-quoted remark to the effect that, as Minerva sprang, mature in mind, in full stature of body, and completely armed, from the head of Jupiter, so the steam-engine came forth, perfect at its birth, from the brain of James Watt. But we shall see, as we examine the records of its history, that, although James Watt was an inventor, and probably the greatest of the inventors of the steam-engine, he was still but one of the many men who have aided in perfecting it, and who have now made us so familiar with it, and its tremendous power and its facile adaptations, that we have almost ceased to admire it, or to wonder at the workings of the still more admirable intelligence that has so far perfected it.

Twenty-one centuries ago, the political power of Greece was broken, although Grecian civilization had risen to its zenith. Rome, ruder than her polished neighbor, was growing continually stronger, and was rapidly gaining territory by absorbing weaker states. Egypt, older in civilization than either Greece or Rome, fell but two centuries later before the assault of the younger states, and became a Roman province. Her principal city was at this time Alexandria, founded by the great soldier whose name it bears, when in the full tide of his prosperity. It had now become a great and prosperous city, the centre of the commerce of the world, the home of students and of learned men, and its population was the wealthiest and most civilized of the then known world.

It is among the relics of that ancient Egyptian civilization that we find the first records in the early history of the steam-engine. In Alexandria, the home of Euclid, the great geometrician, and possibly contemporary with that talented engineer and mathematician, Archimedes, a learned writer, called Hero, produced a manuscript which he entitled “Spiritalia seu Pneumatica.”

It is quite uncertain whether Hero was the inventor of any number of the contrivances described in his work. It is most probable that the apparatus described are principally devices which had either been long known, or which were invented by Ctesibius, an inventor who was famous for the number and ingenuity of the hydraulic and pneumatic machines that he devised. Hero states, in his Introduction, his intention to describe existing machines and earlier inventions, and to add his own. Nothing in the text, however, indicates to whom the several machines are to be ascribed.

The first part of Hero’s work is devoted to applications of the syphon. The 11th proposition is the first application of heat to produce motion of fluids.

An altar and its pedestal are hollow and air-tight. A liquid is poured into the pedestal, and a pipe inserted, of which the lower end passes beneath the surface of the liquid, and the upper extremity leads through a figure standing at the altar, and terminates in a vessel inverted above this altar. When a fire is made on the altar, the heat produced expands the confined air, and the liquid is driven up the tube, issuing from the vessel in the hand of the figure standing by the altar, which thus seems to be offering a libation. This toy embodies the essential principle of all modern heat-engines—the change of energy from the form known as heat-energy into mechanical energy, or work. It is not at all improbable that this prototype of the modern wonder-working machine may have been known centuries before the time of Hero.

Many forms of hydraulic apparatus, including the hand fire-engine, which is familiar to us, and is still used in many of our smaller cities, are described, the greater number of which are probably attributable to Ctesibius. They demand no description here.

A hot-air engine, however, which is the subject of his 37th proposition, is of real interest.

Fig. 1.—Opening Temple-Doors by Steam, b. c. 200.

Hero sketches and describes a method of opening temple-doors by the action of fire on an altar, which is an ingenious device, and contains all the elements of the machine of the Marquis of Worcester, which is generally considered the first real steam-engine, with the single and vital defect that the expanding fluid is air instead of steam. The sketch, from Greenwood’s translation, exhibits the device very plainly. Beneath the temple-doors, in the space A B C D, is placed a spherical vessel, H, containing water. A pipe, F G, connects the upper part of this sphere with the hollow and air-tight shell of the altar above, D E. Another pipe, K L M, leads from the bottom of the vessel, H, over, in syphon-shape, to the bottom of a suspended bucket, N X. The suspending cord is carried over a pulley and led around two vertical barrels, O P, turning on pivots at their feet, and carrying the doors above. Ropes led over a pulley, R, sustain a counterbalance, W.

On building a fire on the altar, the heated air within expands, passes through the pipe, F G, and drives the water contained in the vessel, H, through the syphon, K L M, into the bucket, N X. The weight of the bucket, which then descends, turns the barrels, O P, raises the counterbalance, and opens the doors of the temple. On extinguishing the fire, the air is condensed, the water returns through the syphon from the bucket to the sphere, the counterbalance falls, and the doors are closed.

Another contrivance is next described, in which the bucket is replaced by an air-tight bag, which, expanding as the heated air enters it, contracts vertically and actuates the mechanism, which in other respects is similar to that just described.

In these devices the spherical vessel is a perfect anticipation of the vessels used many centuries later by several so-called inventors of the steam-engine.

Proposition 45 describes the familiar experiment of a ball supported aloft by a jet of fluid. In this example steam is generated in a close cauldron, and issues from a pipe inserted in the top, the ball dancing on the issuing jet.

Fig. 2.—Steam Fountain, b. c. 200.

No. 47 is a device subsequently reproduced—perhaps reinvented by the second Marquis of Worcester.

A strong, close vessel, A B C D, forms a pedestal, on which are mounted a spherical vessel, E F, and a basin. A pipe, H K, is led from the bottom of the larger vessel into the upper part of the sphere, and another pipe from the lower part of the latter, in the form of a syphon, over to the basin, M. A drain-pipe, N O, leads from the basin to the reservoir, A D. The whole contrivance is called “A fountain which is made to flow by the action of the sun’s rays.”

It is operated thus: The vessel, E F, being filled nearly to the top with water, or other liquid, and exposed to the action of the sun’s rays, the air above the water expands, and drives the liquid over, through the syphon, G, into the basin, M, and it will fall into the pedestal, A B C D.

Hero goes on to state that, on the removal of the sun’s rays, the air in the sphere will contract, and that the water will be returned to the sphere from the pedestal. This can, evidently, only occur when the pipe G is closed previous to the commencement of this cooling. No such cock is mentioned, and it is not unlikely that the device only existed on paper.

Fig. 3.—Hero’s Engine, b. c. 200.

Several steam-boilers are described, usually simple pipes or cylindrical vessels, and the steam generated in them by the heat of the fire on the altar forms a steam-blast. This blast is either directed into the fire, or it “makes a blackbird sing,” blows a horn for a triton, or does other equally useless work. In one device, No. 70, the steam issues from a reaction-wheel revolving in the horizontal plane, and causes dancing images to circle about the altar. A more mechanical and more generally-known form of this device is that which is frequently described as the “First Steam Engine.” The sketch from Stuart is similar in general form, but more elaborate in detail, than that copied by Greenwood, which is here also reproduced, as representing more accurately the simple form which the mechanism of the “Æolipile,” or Ball of Æolus, assumed in those early times.

The cauldron, A B, contains water, and is covered by the steam-tight cover, C D. A globe is supported above the cauldron by a pair of tubes, terminating, the one, C M, in a pivot, L, and the other, E F, opening directly into the sphere at G. Short, bent pipes, H and K, issue from points diametrically opposite each other, and are open at their extremities.

A fire being made beneath the cauldron, steam is formed and finds exit through the pipe, E F G, into the globe, and thence rushes out of the pipes, H K, turning the globe on its axis, G L, by the unbalanced pressure thus produced.

The more elaborate sketch which forms the frontispiece represents a machine of similar character. Its design and ornamentation illustrate well the characteristics of ancient art, and the Greek idea of the steam-engine.

This “Æolipile” consisted of a globe, X, suspended between trunnions, O S, through one of which steam enters from the boiler, P, below. The hollow, bent arms, W and Z, cause the vapor to issue in such directions that the reaction produces a rotary movement of the globe, just as the rotation of reaction water-wheels is produced by the outflowing water.

It is quite uncertain whether this machine was ever more than a toy, although it has been supposed by some authorities that it was actually used by the Greek priests for the purpose of producing motion of apparatus in their temples.

It seems sufficiently remarkable that, while the power of steam had been, during all the many centuries that man has existed upon the globe, so universally displayed in so many of the phenomena of natural change, that mankind lived almost up to the Christian era without making it useful in giving motion even to a toy; but it excites still greater surprise that, from the time of Hero, we meet with no good evidence of its application to practical purposes for many hundreds of years.

Here and there in the pages of history, and in special treatises, we find a hint that the knowledge of the force of steam was not lost; but it is not at all to the credit of biographers and of historians, that they have devoted so little time to the task of seeking and recording information relating to the progress of this and other important inventions and improvements in the mechanic arts.

Malmesbury states that, in the year a. d. 1125, there existed at Rheims, in the church of that town, a clock designed or constructed by Gerbert, a professor in the schools there, and an organ blown by air escaping from a vessel in which it was compressed “by heated water.”

Hieronymus Cardan, a wonderful mathematical genius, a most eccentric philosopher, and a distinguished physician, about the middle of the sixteenth century called attention, in his writings, to the power of steam, and to the facility with which a vacuum can be obtained by its condensation. This Cardan was the author of “Cardan’s Formula,” or rule for the solution of cubic equations, and was the inventor of the “smoke-jack.” He has been called a “philosopher, juggler, and madman.” He was certainly a learned mathematician, a skillful physician, and a good mechanic.

Many traces are found, in the history of the sixteenth century, of the existence of some knowledge of the properties of steam, and some anticipation of the advantages to follow its application. Matthesius, a. d. 1571, in one of his sermons describes a contrivance which may be termed a steam-engine, and enlarges on the “tremendous results which may follow the volcanic action of a small quantity of confined vapor;” and another writer applied the steam æolipile of Hero to turn the spit, and thus rivaled and excelled Cardan, who was introducing his “smoke-jack.”

As Stuart says, the inventor enumerated its excellent qualities with great minuteness. He claimed that it would “eat nothing, and giving, withal, an assurance to those partaking of the feast, whose suspicious natures nurse queasy appetites, that the haunch has not been pawed by the turnspit in the absence of the housewife’s eye, for the pleasure of licking his unclean fingers.”

Jacob Besson, a Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Orleans, and who was in his time distinguished as a mechanician, and for his ingenuity in contriving illustrative models for use in his lecture-room, left evidence, which Beroaldus collected and published in 1578,that he had found the spirit of his time sufficiently enlightened to encourage him to pay great attention to applied mechanics and to mechanism. There was at this time a marked awakening of the more intelligent men of the age to the value of practical mechanics. A scientific tract, published at Orleans in 1569, and probably written by Besson, describes very intelligently the generation of steam by the communication of heat to water, and its peculiar properties.

The French were now becoming more interested in mechanics and the allied sciences, and philosophers and literati, of native birth and imported by the court from other countries, were learning more of the nature and importance of such studies as have a bearing upon the work of the engineer and of the mechanic.

Agostino Ramelli, an Italian of good family, a student and an artist when at leisure, a soldier and an engineer in busier times, was born and educated at Rome, but subsequently was induced to make his home in Paris. He published a book in 1588, in which he described many machines, adapted to various purposes, with a skill that was only equaled by the accuracy and general excellence of his delineations. This work was produced while its author was residing at the French capital, supported by a pension which had been awarded him by Henry III. as a reward for long and faithful services.

The books of Besson and of Ramelli are the first treatises of importance on general machinery, and were, for many years, at once the sources from which later writers drew the principal portion of their information in relation to machinery, and wholesome stimulants to the study of mechanism. These works contain descriptions of many machines subsequently reinvented and claimed as new by other mechanics.

Leonardo da Vinci, well known as a mathematician, engineer, poet, and painter, of the sixteenth century, describes, it is said, a steam-gun, which he calls the “Architonnerre,” and ascribes to Archimedes. It was a machine composed of copper, and seems to have had considerable power. It threw a ball weighing a talent. The steam was generated by permitting water in a closed vessel to fall on surfaces heated by a charcoal fire, and by its sudden expansion to eject the ball.

In the year 1825, the superintendent of the royal Spanish archives at Simancas furnished an account which, it was said, had been there discovered of an attempt, made in 1543 by Blasco de Garay, a Spanish navy-officer under Charles V., to move a ship by paddle-wheels, driven, as was inferred from the account, by a steam-engine.

It is impossible to say to how much credit the story is entitled, but, if true, it was the first attempt, so far as is now known, to make steam useful in developing power for practical purposes. Nothing is known of the form of the engine employed, it only having been stated that a “vessel of boiling water” formed a part of the apparatus.

The account is, however, in other respects so circumstantial, that it has been credited by many; but it is regarded as apocryphal by the majority of writers upon the subject. It was published in 1826 by M. de Navarrete, in Zach’s “Astronomical Correspondence,” in the form of a letter from Thomas Gonzales, Director of the Royal Archives at Simancas, Spain.

In 1601, Giovanni Battista della Porta, in a work called “Spiritali,” described an apparatus by which the pressure of steam might be made to raise a column of water. It included the application of the condensation of steam to the production of a vacuum into which the water would flow.

Fig. 4.—Porta’s Apparatus, a. d. 1601.

Porta is described as a mathematician, chemist, and physicist, a gentleman of fortune, and an enthusiastic student of science. His home in Naples was a rendezvous for students, artists, and men of science distinguished in every branch. He invented the magic lantern and the camera obscura, and described it in his commentary on the “Pneumatica.” In his work, he described this machine for raising water, as shown in Fig. 4, which differs from one shown by Hero in the use of steam pressure, instead of the pressure of heated air, for expelling the liquid.

The retort, or boiler, is fitted to a tank from which the bent pipe leads into the external air. A fire being kindled under the retort, the steam generated rises to the upper part of the tank, and its pressure on the surface of the water drives it out through the pipe, and it is then led to any desired height. This was called by Porta an improved “Hero’s Fountain,” and was named his “Steam Fountain.” He described with perfect accuracy the action of condensation in producing a vacuum, and sketched an apparatus in which the vacuum thus secured was filled by water forced in by the pressure of the external atmosphere. His contrivances were not apparently ever applied to any practically useful purpose. We have not yet passed out of the age of speculation, and are just approaching the period of application. Porta is, nevertheless, entitled to credit as having[14] proposed an essential change in this succession, which begins with Hero, and which did not end with Watt.

The use of steam in Hero’s fountain was as necessary a step as, although less striking than, any of the subsequent modifications of the machine. In Porta’s contrivance, too, we should note particularly the separation of the boiler from the “forcing vessel”—a plan often claimed as original with later inventors, and as constituting a fair ground for special distinction.

The rude engraving (Fig. 4) above is copied from the book of Porta, and shows plainly the boiler mounted above a furnace, from the door of which the flame is seen issuing, and above is the tank containing water. The opening in the top is closed by the plug, as shown, and the steam issuing from the boiler into the tank near the top, the water is driven out through the pipe at the left, leading up from the bottom of the tank.

Florence Rivault, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Henry IV., and a teacher of Louis XIII., is stated by M. Arago, the French philosopher, to have discovered, as early as 1605, that water confined in a bomb-shell and there heated would explode the shell, however thick its walls might be made. The fact was published in Rivault’s treatise on artillery in 1608. He says: “The water is converted into air, and its vaporization is followed by violent explosion.”

In 1615, Salomon de Caus, who had been an engineer and architect under Louis XIII. of France, and later in the employ of the English Prince of Wales, published a work at Frankfort, entitled “Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, avec diverses machines tant utile que plaisante,” in which he illustrated his proposition, “Water will, by the aid of fire, mount higher than its source,” by describing a machine designed to raise water by the expanding power of steam.

Fig. 5.—De Caus’s Apparatus, a. d. 1605.

In the sketch here given (Fig. 5), and which is copied from the original in “Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes,” etc., A is the copper ball containing water; B, the cock at the extremity of the pipe, taking water from the bottom, C, of the vessel; D, the cock through which the vessel is filled. The sketch was probably made by De Caus’s own hand.

The machine of De Caus, like that of Porta, thus consisted of a metal vessel partly filled with water, and in which a pipe was fitted, leading nearly to the bottom, and open at the top. Fire being applied, the steam formed by its elastic force drove the water out through the vertical pipe, raising it to a height limited only by either the desire of the builder or the strength of the vessel.

Fig. 6.—Branca’s Steam-Engine, a. d. 1629.

In 1629, Giovanni Branca, of the Italian town of Loretto, described, in a work published at Rome, a number of ingenious mechanical contrivances, among which was a steam-engine (Fig. 6), in which the steam, issuing from a boiler, impinged upon the vanes of a horizontal wheel. This it was proposed to apply to many useful purposes.

At this time experiments were in progress in England which soon resulted in the useful application of steam-power to raising water.

A patent, dated January 21, 1630, was granted to David Ramseye[14] by Charles I., which covered a number of distinct inventions. These were: “1. To multiply and make saltpeter in any open field, in fower acres of ground, sufficient to serve all our dominions. 2. To raise water from low pitts by fire. 3. To make any sort of mills to goe on standing waters by continual motion, without help of wind, water, or horse. 4. To make all sortes of tapistrie without any weaving-loom, or waie ever yet in use in this kingdome. 5. To make boats, shippes, and barges to goe against strong wind and tide. 6. To make the earth more fertile than usual. 7. To raise water from low places and mynes, and coal pitts, by a new waie never yet in use. 8. To make hard iron soft, and likewise copper to be tuffe and soft, which is not in use in this kingdome. 9. To make yellow waxe white verie speedilie.”

This seems to have been the first authentic reference to the use of steam in the arts which has been found in English literature. The patentee held his grant fourteen years, on condition of paying an annual fee of £3 6s. 8d. to the Crown.

The second claim is distinct as an application of steam, the language being that which was then, and for a century and a half subsequently, always employed in speaking of its use. The steam-engine, in all its forms, was at that time known as the “fire-engine.” It would seem not at all improbable that the third, fifth, and seventh claims are also applications of steam-power.

Thomas Grant, in 1632, and Edward Ford, in 1640, also patented schemes, which have not been described in detail, for moving ships against wind and tide by some new and great force.

Dr. John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, an eccentric but learned and acute scholar, described, in 1648, Cardan’s smoke-jack, the earlier æolipiles, and the power of the confined steam, and suggested, in a humorous discourse, what he thought to be perfectly feasible—the construction of a flying-machine. He says: “Might not a ‘high pressure’ be applied with advantage to move wings as large as those of the ‘ruck’s’ or the ‘chariot’? The engineer might probably find a corner that would do for a coal-station near some of the ‘castles’” (castles in the air). The reverend wit proposed the application of the smoke-jack to the chiming of bells, the reeling of yarn, and to rocking the cradle.

Bishop Wilkins writes, in 1648 (“Mathematical Magic”), of æolipiles as familiar and useful pieces of apparatus, and describes them as consisting “of some such material as may endure the fire, having a small hole at which they are filled with water, and out of which (when the vessels are heated) the air doth issue forth with a strong and lasting violence.” “They are,” the bishop adds, “frequently used for the exciting and contracting of heat in the melting of glasses or metals. They may also be contrived to be serviceable for sundry other pleasant uses, as for the moving of sails in a chimney-corner, the motion of which sails may be applied to the turning of a spit, or the like.”

Kircher gives an engraving (“Mundus Subterraneus”) showing the last-named application of the æolipile; and Erckern (“Aula Subterranea,” 1672) gives a picture illustrating their application to the production of a blast in smelting ores. They seem to have been frequently used, and in all parts of Europe, during the seventeenth century, for blowing fires in houses, as well as in the practical work of the various trades, and for improving the draft of chimneys. The latter application is revived very frequently by the modern inventor.

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