18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



communication to an English engineering periodical, described the 

 new machinery which was built at Newport, Rhode Island, 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 descrip- 

 tion 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 its tremendous power and its facile adaptation to labor, 

 that we have almost ceased to admire it, or to w T onder at this product 

 of the workings of the more admirable intelligence that has so far 

 perfected it. 



5. 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 be- 

 came a Roman province. Her principal city was at this time Alex- 

 andria, founded by the great soldier whose name it bears when in the 

 full tide of his prosperity. It had now become a great and prosper- 

 ous city, the centre of the commerce of the world, the home of stu- 

 dents and of learned men, and its population was the wealthiest and 

 most civilized of the then known world. 



It is among the relics of this ancient Egyptian civilization that we 

 find the first record of the early history of the steam-engine. 



6. In Alexandria, the home of Euclid, the great geometrician, and 

 possibly contemporary with that talented engineer and mathematician 

 Archimedes, a learned writer, Hero, produced a manuscript which he 

 entitled " Spiritalia seu Pneumatica." 



The work is still extant, and has been several times republished. 

 In it are described a number of interesting though primitive forms 

 of water and heat engines, and, among the latter, that shown in Fig. 

 2, 1 an apparatus moved by the force of steam. 



This earliest of steam-engines consisted of a globe, a, suspended 

 between trunnions, G i, through one of which steam enters through 

 pipes, C M, F E, from the boiler, D, below. 



The hollow bent arms, II and II, cause the vapor to issue in such a 

 direction that the reaction produces a rotary movement of the globe, 

 just as the rotation of reaction water-wheels is produced by outflow- 

 ing water. 



1 Vide Woodcraft's " Translation of Hero." 



