Lives of the Engineers: The steam-engine. Boulton and WattJ. Murray, 1874 - Civil engineers |
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adventurers anxiety Birmingham boiler Boulton and Watt Boulton MSS Chacewater CHAP character Clyde coal coin coinage condensation continued contrived copper Cornish Cornwall crank cylinder difficulty employed erected executed experiments father firm Fothergill Glasgow Greenock hand Handsworth heat honour Hornblowers improvements industry ingenious interest invention inventor James Watt Josiah Wedgwood Kinneil labour letter London Lunar Society machine machinery manufacture Matthew Matthew Boulton means mechanical ment mind mines motion Murdock never Newcomen engine occupied orders partner patent piston Poldice Priestley proceeded profits proposed pump pumping-engines purpose Redruth river Clyde Robison Roebuck Savery says scheme sent shortly Small Smeaton Soho Soho manufactory Soho Mint spirits steam steam-engine success things tion took town turned Watt to Boulton Watt wrote Watt's Wedgwood Wheal Busy Wheal Virgin William Murdock workmen wrote to Boulton young
Popular passages
Page i - Bid harbours open, public ways extend, Bid temples worthier of the God ascend, Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main ; Back to his bounds their subject sea command, And roll obedient rivers through the land : These honours, peace to happy BRITAIN brings, These are imperial works, and worthy kings.
Page 93 - I think I shall not long to have anything to do with the House of Commons again : I never saw so many wrong-headed people on all sides gathered together.
Page 80 - I must get quit of the condensed steam and injection water, if I used a jet as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. First the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an offlet could be got at the depth of 35 or 36 feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump; the second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air. ... I had not walked further than the Golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.
Page 163 - Smeaton was the great luminary, had settled it that neither the tools nor the workmen existed -that could manufacture so complex a machine with sufficient precision...
Page 40 - A CENTURY OF THE NAMES AND SCANTLINGS OF SUCH INVENTIONS, as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected which (my former notes being lost) I have, at the instance of a powerful Friend, endeavoured now in the year 1655 to set these down in such a way as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them in practice.
Page 376 - I shall never forget Mr. Boulton's expression to me, " I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have —POWER." He had about seven hundred people at work. I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be a father to his tribe.
Page 101 - You cannot conceive," he wrote to Small, " how mortified I am with this disappointment. It is a damned thing for a man to have his all hanging by a single string. If I had wherewithal to pay the loss, I don't think I should so much fear a failure : but I cannot bear the thought of other people becoming losers by my schemes ; and- I have the happy disposition of always painting the worst.
Page 362 - He was a striking and beautiful person ; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale ; his hair carefully powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected into a long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles, and either a slim green silk umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black.
Page 48 - ... fire, he called for a bason of water to wash his hands ; and perceiving that the little wine left in the flask had filled up the flask with steam, he took the flask by the neck and plunged the mouth of it under the surface of the water in the bason, and the water of the bason was immediately driven up into the flask by the pressure of the air.
Page 40 - A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions, as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected which (my former notes being lost) I have, at the instance of a powerful Friend, endeavoured now in the year 1655 to set these down in such a way as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them in practice.