46 iVIr Russell on the Fallacies of the 



Although the name of Watt has been included in this list of 

 inventors of substitutes for the crank, it should be observed, 

 that he was only driven to the invention of such a substitute 

 by the circumstance of a patent having been previously obtain- 

 ed for the crank in its simple form, and that he abandoned his 

 beautiful, but more complex, mechanism on the instant that 

 the elementary crank was released from the fetters of monopoly. 

 It is also due to his memory to say, that the sun and planet 

 wheel he substituted for the crank, is a disguised crank, and 

 possesses all the valuable properties, excepting simplicity and 

 smallness of friction, which give to the crank its present emi- 

 nence as a source of rotatory effect. Although, therefore, he 

 was an inventor of rotatory mechanism, he is by no means to 

 be regarded as a victim to the fallacies of which other substi- 

 tutes have been the offspring. 



In exposing the nature of the fallacies of the two last classes of 

 inventions, we shall avail ourselves of the accounts of their mis- 

 conceptions on the subject of the common reciprocating crank 

 engine, which formed the ground of the preference given by 

 the inventors of these improvements to their own mechanism, 

 as these conceptions have been given by the inventors them- 

 selves, and those who have adopted their view of the subject. 

 Fortunately for us they have been particularly full in explain- 

 ing: their views. 



Thomas Masterman of Ratcliffe, patentee of a rotatory en- 

 gine says, in recommendation of his engine — 



" The importance of an effective and economical rotatory 

 steam-engine will not be controverted, when it is recollected 

 that the steam-engine on the reciprocating principle absorbs 

 about half the power of the steam.'''' 



" William Aldersey of Homerton, in the county of Middlesex, 

 gentleman," in his patent substitute for the crank, observes that — 



" The object of this invention is to equalize the motion, and 

 principally to save ^he force which is unnecessarily thrown away 

 in steam-engines, and all other machines in which a recipro- 

 cating or backward and forward motion is converted into a cir- 

 cular one ; and the simple manner in which it is here effected, 

 will, it is presumed, be found a great desideratum by all who 

 have occasion to use such machines, since a saving of power is 



