Description of the First Steam-Engine. 39 



When considered as a description or index of the disco- 

 veries and inventions of one individual, it is certainly one of 

 the most extraordinary scientific productions which has yet 

 issued from the press in any age or nation. 



The 68th article in this book is that on which rests his 

 claim to the honour of having invented the steam-engine. It 

 is in these words ; 



" An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water 

 by fire; not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must 

 be, as the philosopher calleth it, intra sphoeram activitatis, 

 which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no bounder 

 if the vessels be strong enough ; for I have taken a piece of 

 a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filling' it 

 three quarters full of water, stopping and screwing up the 

 broken end, as also the touch-hole ; and making a constant 

 fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst, and made a 

 great crack ; so that having a way to make my vessels, so 

 that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the 

 one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a 

 constant fountain stream forty foot high. One vessel of wa- 

 ter rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water ; and a man 

 that tends the work is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel 

 of water being consumed, another begins to force and re-fill 

 with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and 

 kept constant, which the self same person may likewise abun- 

 dantly perform in the interim, between the necessity of turn- 

 ing the said cocks." 



Not having met with any design or drawing of a steam-en- 

 gine to which the above appears applicable, but in place of 

 that, having seen it doubted by some, and denied by others, 

 that any engine can be constructed exactly upon these prin- 

 ciples, the following description and sketch are submitted to 

 the consideration of the readers of the Edinburgh Journal of 

 Science. 



In Plate II. Fig. 3. A represents a boiler placed in a com- 

 mon air furnace ; abed, and efg h, two water vessels ; ik I 

 the steam pipes, and A: the steam cock ; x xx x the force pipe ; 

 RS a cistern, which may be supposed to be placed at the height 

 of forty feet above the engine, to receive the water from the 

 force pipe ; and v v valves placed within the force pipe to 



