54 BULLETIN 127, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Fourth. The quick-moving engine connected directly to the pro- 

 peller shaft. 



Fifth. Twin screws. 



None of these means were applied to steamboats for 30 years there- 

 after, and 3'et all are elements in the success of ocean navigation at 

 the present day. 



Steam-engine building as a trade did not exist in the United 

 States until the year 1800, although it had long been established in 

 England. Farey, in his Treatise on the Steam Engine, London, 1827, 

 writes that in the 62 years intervening between Newcomen's first en- 

 gine, in 1712, and AVatt's first engine, in 1774, the steam engine had 

 been extensively introduced throughout England in the form of 

 pumping engines for draining mines and for raising water to turn 

 overshot wheels, by which cotton mills and a great variety of ifia- 

 chinery were driven, and that as early as 1750 steam-engine build- 

 ing had become a recognized trade in England. 



The exportation from England of all machinery was prohibited by 

 law except upon an order from the King in Council until 1820, 

 when the law was repealed. Three known instances when this order 

 was obtained were for the pumping engine at Chant illy for supply- 

 ing the city of Paris with water, for the pumping engine of the 

 Manhattan Co. for supplying the city of New York in 1799, and for 

 Fulton's engine in 180G. All three engines were made by Watt. 



Toward the close of the eighteenth century Plornblower, a dis- 

 tinguished English engineer, came to this country and erected a 

 pumping engine ^° at the mouth of the shaft of a copper mine near 

 Belleville, on the left side of the Passaic River, N. J., about 8 miles 

 from New York, and established a small machine sliop near by. This 

 Avas then the only machine shop in the country. The second was 

 erected in 1801 by McQueen in Duane Street, New York, near the 

 Manhattan pumping engine. 



The efficiency of the tools for engine building in this country in 

 the year 1800 can be judged by the following extracts from a letter 

 written by P. T. Cope to the city authorities at Philadelphia, in rela- 

 tion to the boring of a cylinder 38^ inches diameter by 6 feet stroke, 

 for the pumping engine that was erected in the square at Broad and 

 Market Streets, now the site of the Municipal Building. This let- 

 ter, dated July 3, 1800, from Belleville, was published in 1876.^^ 

 He writes that the boring of the cylinder was commenced on the 9th 



^^ The cylinder of this, the first steam engine erected- on the Western Continent, is a 

 conspicuous object upon the floor of the National Museum in the Division of Mechanical 

 Technology. 



^ Scientific American Supplement No. 45, Nov. 4, 1876, p. 70C. 



