CATALOG OF THE MECHANICAL COLLECTIONS 33 



in 1776 and compared the engine there with the New York engine. 

 He wrote: ". . . it [the Hornblower engine] was constructed upon 

 the same principles and much in the same form as that of New 

 York . . ." (Nelson, Josiah Hornhloioer^ p. 22) . 



Shortly after the war and before 1790 a single-acting atmospheric 

 engine was built by Joseph Brown at the Hope Furnace in Scituate, 

 R. I., to drain the ore pits at Cranston, R. I. David Wilkmson saw 

 Elijah Ormsbee working on (repairing) the engine at Cranston about 

 1790. "This engine was made with the main cylinder open at the 

 top as the news of the cap on the cylinder by Boulton and Watt had 

 not yet come to this country when the engine was built" (letter from 

 David Wilkinson, Transactions Rhode Island Society for the En- 

 couragement of Domestic Industry, 1861, p. 104). 



In 1785 Gen. Thomas Johnson and his brother at their Catoctin 

 Iron Furnace in Frederick County, Md., made parts of the engine 

 that James Rumsey used in his steamboat trials on the Potomac 

 River. 



It is probable that John Nancarrow had constructed steam engines 

 at Philadelphia before 1786. At that time he was the proprietor of 

 an iron furnace there, and was one of the two men to whom John 

 Fitch, the steamship inventor, was referred for advice. In 1770 

 Nancarrow was one of the two principal builders of atmospheric 

 steam engines in England (Smeaton) and in 1799 was the author of a 

 memoir on his improvements to the Savery type of engine in Trans- 

 actions American Philosophical Society, vol. 4, 1799 (Bishop, vol. 1, 

 p. 577). 



In 1786-87 John Fitch, with Henry Voight, a Dutch watclimaker 

 of Philadelphia, constructed two models of steam engines and a 

 full-size engine of the Boulton and Watt type with a 12-inch cylin- 

 der. Later, in 1790, Fitch, William Thornton, and John Hall to- 

 gether constructed an efficient engine that was used to propel a 

 packet boat (Bishop, vol. 1, p. 577). 



As early as 1788 Nathan Read, graduate of Harvard College and 

 resident of Salem, Mass., became interested in the propulsion of 

 boats by steam and directed his attention to the design of lighter and 

 more efficient machinery. On August 26, 1791, he received a United 

 States patent for a vertical multitubular boiler, one of the first four 

 United States patents, all of which were issued on the same day. 

 Read's boiler is the earliest multitubular boiler of record (Read, 

 David, Nathan Read and the Steam Engine, 1870) . 



In 1794, Jacob Mark, Philip Schuyler, and Nicholas J. Roosevelt 

 purchased six acres of land from Josiah Hornblower, then a sub- 

 stantial citizen of New Jersey, and put up a foundry, machine shop, 

 and smelter for the use of the New Jersey Copper Mine Associa- 

 tion, which they as directors had organized to resume mining at the 



