IQg BULLETIN 173, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



velopment. Stephen Wilcox, in 1856, introduced the first boiler 

 with inclined tubes connecting water spaces at the front and rear 

 with steam and water space above. This is a type that has continued 

 to influence the design of boilers to the present day. 



WOODEN STEAM BOILER, 1801-1815 

 Plate 22, Figure 1 



U.S.N.M. no. 310849 ; model ; made in the Museum ; photograph no. 31630. 



The model represents a boiler used at the Center Square pumpmg 

 station of the Philadelphia waterworks between 1801 and 1815. It is 

 essentially a watertight, planked, wooden steam chest containing a 

 cast-iron firebox and flue. Short cast-iron pipes in the nature of water 

 tubes cross the wide, flat flue. 



The model was constructed from the information and drawings 

 contained in the article "History of the Steam Engine in America" 

 in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, vol. 102. The 

 following, which includes a description of the boiler by Benjamin 

 Henry Latrobe in the Transactions of the American Philosophical 

 Society, vol. 6 (1804), is quoted from the above article: 



Wooden boilers have been applied in America to the purpose of distilling for 

 many years. Mr. Anderson, whose improvements in that art are well known 

 appears to have first introduced them in America. But it was found that the 

 mash had a very injurious effect upon the solidity of the wood : for while the 

 outside retained the appearance of soundness, and the inside that of a burnt, 

 but hard surface, the body of the plank was entirely decayed. It was however 

 still to be tried whether simple water and steam would have the same effect: 

 and upon the hint of Chancellor Livingston, our present Ambassador in France, 

 Messrs. Roosevelt, Smallman and Staudinger contrived the wooden boiler, which 

 has been used for all the engines in New York and Philadelphia ; and not without 

 its great, though only temporary advantages. The construction of the wooden 

 boiler, will be best understood, by reference to the plan and section of the new 

 boiler of the engine in Center Square, Philadelphia, which is by far the best 

 of those which have been made. It is in fact only a wooden chest containing 

 the water, in which a furnace is contrived, of which the flues wind several 

 times through the water before they discharge themselves into the chimney. 



The boilers were rectangular chests, made of white pine planks five inches 

 thick ; they were nine feet square inside at the ends, and fourteen feet long in 

 the clear ; braced upon the sides, top, and bottom with oak scantling ten inches 

 square, the whole securely bolted together by one and a quarter inch rods 

 passing through the planks. Inside of this chest was placed an iron fire box 

 twelve feet six inches long, six feet wide, and one foot ten inches deep, with 

 vertical flues, six of fifteen inches diameter and two of twelve inches diameter ; 

 through these the water circulated, the fire acting around them and passing^ 

 up into an oval flue situated just above the fire box, carried from the back 

 of the boiler to near the front, and returned again to the back, where it entered 

 the chimney. This fire box and flues appear to have been at first made entirely 

 of cast-iron ; then a wrought-iron fire box was made, the flues still being of cast- 

 iron ; this not being satisfactory on account of the unequal contraction and 



