Colliery UK , anonymous, oil on canvas (1825),
Liverpool, Walker Art Society.
"The introductrion steam engines and their application to different slices of the industry, have caused a revolution so important in factories and in the arts, we believe that doing something nice for our readers presenting a clear and simple phenomena resulting This wonderful invention. We do not know in France that reputation, and they are just among us, as the mines of Mexico and Peru, which everyone talks about and few people have seen. When knowledge becomes more widespread, their benefits will be enjoyed mine and we may be asked in amazement, why France has only three or four hundred of these machines, while in England there are thousands. Offer first a brief description of the main unit.
He is having a large cylinder that receives a high piston the same diameter as the pressure pump. Steam is supplied by a large boiler, where it enters the cylinder through an opening that can be closed at will. The force of the steam (1) raises the piston which is fitted a long lever, which serves to move a pump, a crank, any mechanism. Reached a certain height, the piston opens the top of the cylinder, a valve that lets a small amount of cold water vapor is condensed at the moment, the vacuum occurs in the cylinder, and loaded piston to atmospheric pressure, goes down to be resubmitted to the action of steam. He rises and goes down well continuously with a force proportional to the quantity and tension of the steam is applied. A machine with a cylinder 30 inches in diameter and the piston hit seventeen rounds per minute, equivalent to the strength of 40 horses working day and night (2), and 11.000 pounds of coal consumed in twenty-four hours.
is now understood without difficulty the various applications of this powerful instrument: the lever adapted to the piston can move all kinds of mechanisms, from the simplest to the most complicated. The illustrious Watt, which England is grateful to erect a statue, is the first who given to the steam engine, the flexibility to derive such great service. It can look like in the real inventor. Before him, some more modern and old had seen the practical results of the blood steam, but it belongs to Watt all the honor of having applied mechanics and having armed the hand of man. We do not know what to admire most of the engineering or the patience of this useful citizen, when we study carefully the history of steam engines, I would gladly do my readers judge for themselves if the nature of this article forbade the purely technical details. Suffice it to say that when I speak, the power of the unit of Watt equivalent in England alone, the strength of 500,000 horsepower, or as Dr. Ure, five million men.
This prodigious machine, received today at a very high degree of accuracy, flexibility and accuracy, raising ships of the line used to build anchors, spinning cotton and silk embroidery muslin and shape all metals. Through it, the genius of man operates in the bowels of the earth his new conquests he braves the sea winds, and calm even the most formidable; it goes up the rivers faster, and it makes life countries the most disgraced of nature. Whole towns owe their existence mowing Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Preston, Glasgow are there to attest. America gets surprised with what this transport of the ancient world: the Mississippi, Ohio, Chesapeake, and even the Orinoco, have been published on their shores.
I hear sometimes that the industry and stifle the mechanics of poetry and have nothing seductive charm attached to great things. Is it not a beautiful sight to see a steamship, excited by fire, and like a living being, when advances majestically on the crest of waves, and that brave, leaning on her swift wings, their impotent fury! have we not expressions to create, to paint the tanks moving in obedience to that chariot and drags them to guide them, tracing their path a trail of smoke! And what does it take to get these wonders? a little water, a cylinder, and a few levers! When we reflect that with these limited resources, we managed to increase production in an almost unlimited distances that brought the most significant, and prepared to humanity entire future softer, happier lives, is there nothing in all this that can make the heart beat of a poet!
Seen in a more severe, the results of the discovery of Watt confirm this fine aphorism of Bacon: knowledge is power . Indeed, the steam seems intended to balance the influence of big warships: it will escape their heavy laborers, and make their escape in case of defeat, extremely difficult. She has stolen their thunder, as Franklin grabbed the fire from heaven, and we can also say of Watt, he wrested the scepter from tyrants, since it will have made the open seas. His all-powerful device already offers the industry of all nations communications quick and easy, we need only follow with the eye of the magnificent cruise ships that cross between London and Calais, Le Havre and Southampton, Brighton and Dieppe for judge the future by the present. Soon on these wonderful boats, the Swiss will visit England and the Hanseatic cities: they will say the port of Basel as they say the port of Bristol and one in Hamburg; we sail on the Rhine, as we walk by steamboat on lakes of the Alps, Scotland and America.
Let us make haste; share with our neighbors to the legacy of Watt. The discoveries of genius are the heritage of mankind as a whole: the great French family have more rights than any other, she has produced many men of genius. That the steam engines do not run only on the Seine, from Paris to St. Cloud to entertain our idle capital, they enliven our factories, our mines so rich and so poorly managed and that our workers do know them, and reason about their construction, as they do every day in England and Scotland, and we shall soon see the less populous districts of France, covering a happy inhabitants. Sologne, Les Landes, Auvergne, departments that lack of rivers to their factories, where their roads to markets, reborn in the industry, and we will draw some advantage from the immortal discovery, through which the English, for the only help of machines currently operating in their country have proven that they could move the pyramids of Egypt in less than five hours! "
Adolphe Blanqui," On the influence of steam on the public prosperity, "The Producer newspaper industry, Science and Fine Arts , Volume I, Paris, 1825.
____________________ (1) We know that this force is due to the vapor tension that seeks to occupy a space ten -seven hundred times greater than that of water from which it emanates.
(2) That is to say, 120 horses working eight hours a day.
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