THE GROWTH OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. 



447 



cipated 800 years ago by Roger Bacon, that learned Franciscan monk 

 who, in an age of ignorance and intellectual torpor, wrote: 



" I will now mention some wonderful works of art and Nature, in which 

 there is nothing of magic and which magic could not perform. 



" Instruments may be made by which the largest ships, with only 'one man 

 guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity than if they were full of 

 sailors," etc. 



For many years before even the first promising effort had been 

 made, the minds of the more intelligent had been prepared to appre- 

 ciate the invention when it should finally be brought forward, and 

 were ready for even greater wonders than have yet been accom- 

 plished. 



75. The earliest attempt to propel a vessel by steam is claimed, 

 by Spanish authorities, as it has been stated, to have been made by 

 Blasco de Garay in the harbor of Barcelona, Spain, in 1543. 



The account seems somewhat apocryphal, and the experiment, if 

 made, certainly led to no useful results. 



76. In an anonymous English pamphlet, published in 1651, 1 which 

 is supposed, by Stuart, to have been written by the Marquis of 

 Worcester, an indefinite reference to what may probably have been 

 the steam-engine is made, and it is there stated to be capable of suc- 

 cessful application to propelling boats. 



77. In 1690 Papin proposed to use his piston-engine to drive 

 paddle-wheels to propel vessels; and in 1707 he applied the steam- 

 engine, which he had proposed as a pumping-engine, to driving a 

 model boat on the Fulda, at Cassel. 



In this trial he probably used the arrangement of which a sketch 



Fig. 44. Papin's Mabink Engine, 1707. 



is here shown. His pumping-engine forced up water to turn a water- 

 wheel, which, in turn, was made to drive the paddles, as in Fig. 44. 



1 "Inventions of Engines of Motion, recently brought to Perfection," London, 1651. 

 A number of such treatises, vaguely hinting at new motors for propulsion of vessels, ap- 

 Deared during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 



