I found Mr. Eckfeldt so opposed to horizontal 

 steam engines that he would not listen to their being 

 adopted; he had not had any experience with metallic 

 ring spring packing, and he believed that with the 

 ordinary hemp packing a horizontal cylinder would 

 soon wear oval and the piston head could not be 

 kept tight. 



The interview with Dr. Patterson and Mr. Eckfeldt 

 was a long one, and it was after night when I got 

 home at our works to consult with my brother; 

 taking with me such written specifications as Mr. 

 Eckfeldt had prepared — so meager and no time to 

 refer to the machinery in use that I did not see a 

 possibility of making estimates safe to bid on. The 

 getting up of plans and patterns for the long-stroke 

 vertical engine was out of the question. Having still 

 on hand the old rolling-mill machinery on which very 

 trifling changes had been made for the new mint, a 

 scale beam estimate would give a tolerable safe basis 

 to bid on for that portion. We might secure the 

 castings for the melting departments, for we had all 

 the patterns for the improved furnaces that Mr. 

 Peale was constructing in Philadelphia and expected 

 to introduce into the New Orleans Mint, beyond 

 which I did not think it possible we could secure any 

 of the proposed work. [24] 



But on that Saturday evening while my brother was 

 getting the weights of the old housings, rolls and their 

 connections, I started on sketches to show Mr. 

 Eckfeldt the extreme simplicity of a horizontal steam 

 cylinder, mounted on a cast iron box bed or shears, 

 instead of on wooden sills, as was the custom at that 

 time. These sketches resolved themselves into two 

 rude colored drawings — an elevation and "round 

 plan. The elevation I have recently found among a 

 lot of odds and ends that have knocked about with 

 me for more than half a century; the finding of this 

 has recalled to memory much of what I am now 

 writing. I worked on these drawings most of the 

 night and probably a good way into Sunday. 



I kept my appointment at the mint about noon on 

 Monday, taking with me these hastily made drawings; 

 also drawings of the ring metallic packing for piston 

 head as used in our first locomotive, and also a 

 movable model of an arrangement that at that time 

 we were making to regulate by governor the point 

 of cut off. It was a very simple device gotten up 

 by a Mr. Childes, at that time our foreman in [the] 

 finishing shop. It was a simple D slide-valve, but 

 instead of opening and closing the steam ports by 



Figure 38. — Coin milling machine, designed 

 by Franklin Peale, for raising and serrating 

 the rim of a coin. F'rom Journal of The Franklin 

 Institute (November 1836), vol. 22. 



its ends it had ports through it. the top of the valve 

 being faced, on which lay a loose plate or valve with 

 two upright stops between which a conical wedge 

 turned so as to regulate the play of this plate and 

 allow the valve proper to slide under it. To insure 

 the top valve traveling with the main valve until 

 stopped, a constant steam pressure on it was secured 

 by a small opening into the escape section of the 

 D valve." 



69 When a study is made of governor controlled rut-off 

 valve gear schemes leading up to that of George Corliss, in 

 1849, this gear can take its place amongst the large group of 

 designs perhaps more ingenious than useful. 



73 



