CATALOG OF THE MECHANICAL COLLECTIONS 

 OF THE DIVISION OF ENGINEERING, UNITED 

 STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



By Frank A. Taylor 



INTRODUCTION 



Throughout history the changing pattern of society has been 

 determined to a large degree by the progress made in exploiting the 

 natural energy resources of the world and the manner in which the 

 fruits of this energy have been distributed. When the only harness- 

 able energy source was the muscular effort of men, the sole pools of 

 power were in groups of men, and the leaders who sought to build 

 wealth, culture, and government beyond the immediate primitive 

 needs of the individual had to command the obedience of slaves. 

 Wlien engines and machines were developed to convert the potential 

 energy of beasts, wind, water, and fuels into useful work, the individ- 

 ual was able to produce more with their help than his immediate 

 needs required ; to pay his part of the costs of government, research, 

 and art; and with his surplus to purchase freedom from incessant 

 work or struggle. More recently the effort of the individual has 

 become such a small part of the total energy applied to production 

 that the questions of how little effort a man should expend and how 

 much he should receive in return for his work have produced an 

 unrest that today is changing nations and threatening the very 

 society that power has so largely built. 



A few bare relics of the progress of power devices in a museum 

 cannot display their effects upon people or answer the sociological 

 questions their use has produced. They do, however, indicate the 

 slow and systematic work of scientists, engineers, and mechanics to 

 produce the most for the least expenditure of human effort and also 

 suggest that solutions for the question of the proper distribution of 

 returns have been found in the past, often by virtue of further de- 

 velopments within the very field. They should suggest, too, that 

 improvement and advance in engineering methods and devices are 

 the natural and inevitable course and that an increasingly higher 

 standard of living is both the permanent result and the solution of 

 increasing producing power, in spite of temporary difficulties of 

 adjustment. 



