STEAD 



5538 



STEAM ENGINE 



STEAD, sled, WILLIAM THOMAS (1849-1912), 

 an English journalist, born at Embleton. He 

 received a little schooling at Wakefield, but at 

 the age of fourteen began work as a clerk in a 

 store at Newcastle-on-Tyne, reserving his spare 

 time for education. When he was twenty-two 

 years old he became editor of a small paper, 

 The Northern Echo, at Darlington, and was 

 so successful that in 1880 he was offered the 

 position of assistant-editor of the Pail-Mall 

 Gazette in London, and three years later be- 

 came its editor-in-chief. In that paper he be- 

 gan a campaign for laws to protect women and 

 children from outrages, and in 1885 wrote so 

 bitterly of conditions in The Maiden Tribute 

 of Modern Babylon that he was imprisoned in 

 London for three months for libel. However, 

 he had the satisfaction that year of seeing the 

 laws passed for which he had striven. 



In 1890 he founded the English Review of 

 Reviews, in 1891 the American Review of Re- 

 views and in 1894 the Australasian Review of 

 Reviews. He did a work of genuine usefulness 

 for British education when he began, in 1895, 

 the publication of the Masterpiece Library of 

 Penny Poets, Novels and Prose Classics. A 

 visit to the czar of Russia in 1898 made him a 

 zealous advocate of peace and his weekly paper, 

 War Against War, together with numerous 

 pamphlets urging arbitration, did much to di- 

 rect public sentiment toward a demand for 

 universal peace. 



About 1905 he became a convert to spiritual- 

 ism and four years later published a statement 

 that he was receiving daily messages from his 

 dead 'son. Shortly before his death he an- 

 nounced his intention of establishing in New 

 York a spiritualistic station, much like a tele- 

 phone central, where persons could deposit or 

 receive communications connected with the 

 other world. In the pursuance of this plan he 

 sailed for the United States on the first voyage 

 of the Titanic, and met his death with nearly 

 1,500 others when the vessel foundered off the 

 Grand Banks, near Newfoundland, April 15, 

 1912. Among his most important books are 

 The Truth about Russia, A Study of Despair- 

 ing Democracy and The United States of 

 Europe. A book which created an immense 

 amount of discussion was // Christ Came to 

 Chicago; in it he gave a vivid description of 

 criminal tendencies in Chicago. M.T. 



STEAM, steem. If you ask the average per- 

 son whether he has ever seen steam he will 

 answer "Yes." But he will be mistaken, for 

 steam is colorless and invisible. Sometimes in 



watching the cloud that comes from the spout 

 of a teakettle of boiling water you may notice 

 that the vapor which is mistakenly called 

 steam begins an inch or so from the spout. In 

 the seemingly vacant space is the real steam, 

 which is water transformed into gas ; the visible 

 cloud is water changed back into tiny particles 

 of liquid by the cooler temperature of the air. 



Steam may be caused either by evaporation 

 or by boiling, but almost always hot steam is 

 meant when the word is used. When water is 

 heated to the boiling point, 212, bubbles of 

 steam begin to rise through it. Until all the 

 liquid has become gas the temperature will 

 remain at the boiling point. Meanwhile five 

 and one-third times as much heat will have 

 been expended as was necessary to raise the 

 temperature from the freezing to the boiling 

 point. This heat is known as the latent heat of 

 steam, because it will be given off again when 

 the gas is condensed to water. 



Steam occupies more space than the water 

 from which it comes. Just at the moment 

 when boiling ceases, the gas is 1,644 times as 

 great in volume as the former liquid. At this 

 stage it is called saturated steam. If heated 

 further its temperature and volume continue to 

 increase, and it is known as superheated steam. 

 This tendency to expansion makes possible the 

 steam engine. Wet steam supports particles of 

 water still in liquid form; dry steam contains 

 only gas. 



Related Subjects. Further information as to 

 the nature of steam and its ability to do work 

 may be found in the following articles : 

 Boiling Point Steam Hammer 



Evaporation Steam Shovel 



Steam Engine 



STEAM ENGINE. No other period in the 

 world's history has witnessed so many changes 

 as the last 150 years. If Shakespeare had re- 

 visited England after a lapse of a century and 

 a half he would have found everything very 

 much as it was in his own lifetime, except for 

 changes in fashion and politics, lesser differ- 

 ences in architecture, and strange talk about 

 "the colonies." But now, after 300 years, he 

 would seem to be in a new world. He would 

 find huge cities where small towns had been, 

 and in them he would see thousands of men 

 and women busy in factories humming with 

 the whir of steam-driven machines which un- 

 ceasingly devour the cotton and wool, the 

 grain and ore brought from the corners of the 

 earth in steam-propelled ships and steam-drawn 

 trains. At morning and night he could watch 



