MKCHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. '2 ( 3 



pianos, by which the highest notes may be simultaneously combined with 

 the lowest ; and, lastly, to M. Tiget, for an economical process of baking 

 bricks. 



THE GREAT EASTERN, OR LEVIATHAN, STEAMSHIP. 



The following paper, descriptive of the Great Eastern Steamship, was read 

 before the British association by Mr. J. Scott Russell, her constructor : 



With respect to her size, it is generally supposed, said Mr. Russell, that, 

 as a practical ship-builder, he was an advocate for big ships. The con- 

 trary, however, was the fact. There were cases in which big ships were 

 good, and there were certain cases in which big ships were ruinous to their 

 owners. In every case, the smallest ship that would supply the convenience 

 of trade was the right ship to build. He came there as an advocate of little 

 ships, and it was the peculiarity of the Great Eastern that she was the 

 smallest ship capable of doing the work she was intended to do ; and he 

 believed that if she answered the purpose for which she was designed, she 

 would continue to be the smallest ship possible for her voyage. It was 

 found by experience that no steamship could be worked profitably which 

 was of less size than a ton to a mile of the voyage she was to perform, car- 

 rying her own coal. Thus, a ship intended to ply between England and 

 America, would not pay permanently unless she were of twenty-five hundred 

 or three thousand tons burden. In like manner, if a vessel were intended to 

 go from this country to Australia or India, without coaling en route, but 

 taking her coals with her, she would require to be thirteen thousand tons 

 burden ; and, turning to the case before them, it would be found that the 

 big ship was a little short of the proper size. Her voyage to Australia and 

 back would be twenty-five thousand miles; her tonnage, therefore, should 

 be twenty-five thousand tons, whereas its actual amount was twenty-two 

 thousand tons. The idea of making a ship large enough to carry her own 

 coals for a voyage to Australia and back again, was the idea of a man 

 famous for large ideas Mr. Brunei. He suggested the matter to him (Mr. 

 Russell) as a practical ship-builder, and the result was the monster vessel 

 which he was about to describe. He had peculiar pleasure in laying a de- 

 scription of the lines of the ship before the present meeting, because the ship 

 as a naval structure, as far as her lines Avere concerned, was a child of that 

 section of the British Association. It was twentv-two vears since they had 



V V */ 



the pleasure of meeting together in Dublin. On that occasion he laid 

 before the mechanical section a form of construction which had since 

 become well known as the wave line. The section received the idea so well 

 that it appointed a committee to examine into the matter with the intention, 

 if they found the Avave principle to be the true principle, to proclaim it to the 

 world. The committee pursued its investigations, publishing the results in 

 the account of their transactions, and from that time to the present he had 

 continued to make large and small vessels on the wave principle, and the 

 diffusion of this knowledge through the Transactions of the British Associa- 

 tion had led to its almost universal adoption. Wherever they found a steam- 

 vessel with a high reputation for speed, economy of fuel, arid good qualities 



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