Au^. 26, 1875 



NATURE 



341 



new faculty, but it at cnce set his other faculties on an eminence, 

 from which the extent of his future operations became almost 

 unlimited. 



Water-mills, wind-mills, and horse-machines were in most 

 cases superseded. Deep mines, before only accessible by adits 

 and water levels, could at once be reached with ease and eco- 

 nomy. Lakes and fens which, but for the steam-engine, would 

 have been left untouched, were drained and cultivated. 



The slow and laborious toil of hands and fingers, bone and 

 sinew, was turned to other employments, where, aided by in- 

 genious mechanical contrivances, the produce of one pair of 

 hands was multiplied a thousand-fold, and their cunning ex- 

 tended until results marvellous, if you consider them, were 

 attained. Since the time of Watt the steam-engine has exerted 

 a power, made conquests, and increased and multiplied the 

 material interests of this globe to an extent which it is 

 scarcely possible to realise. 



But while Watt has gained a world-wide, well-earned fame, 

 the names of those men who have provided the machines to 

 utilise the energies of the steam-engine are too often forgotten. 

 Of their inventions the majority of mankind know little. They 

 worked silently at home, in the mill, or in the factory, observed 

 by few. Indeed, in most cases these silent workers had no 

 wish to expose their work to public gaze. Were it not so, the 

 factory and the mill are not places where people go to take the 

 air. How long in the silent night the inventors of these machines 

 sat and pondered ; how often they had to cast aside some long- 

 sought mechanical movement and seek another and a better 

 arrangement of parts, none but themselves could ever know. 

 They were unseen workers, who succeeded by rare genius, long 

 patience, and indomitable perseverance. 



More ingenuity and creative mechanical genius is perhaps dis- 

 played in machines used for the manufacture of textile fabrics 

 than by those used in any other industry. It was not until late 

 in historical times that the manufacture of such fabrics became 

 established on a large scale in Europe. Although in China man 

 was clothed in silk long ago, and although Confucius, in a work 

 written 2,300 years ago, orders with the greatest minuteness 

 the niles to be observed in the production and manufacture of 

 silk, yet it was worth nearly its weight in gold in Europe in the 

 time of Aurelian, whose empress had to forego the luxury of a 

 silk gown on account of its cost ? ^ Through Constantinople and 

 Italy the manufacture passed slowly westwards, and was not 

 established in France until the sixteenth century, and arrived at 

 a still later period in this country. It is related that James V. 

 had to borrow a pair of silk hose from the Earl of Mar, in order 

 that he might not, as he expressed it, appear as a scrub before 

 strangers. 



So cotton, of which the manufacture in India dates from be- 

 fore historical times, had scarcely by the Christian era reached 

 Persia and Egypt. Spain in the tenth and Italy in the four- 

 teenth century manufactured it, but Manchester, which is now 

 the great metropolis of the trade, not until the latter half of the 

 seventeenth century. 



Linen was worn by the old Egyptians, and some of their linen 

 mummy cloths surpass in fineness any linen fabrics made in later 

 days.* The Babylonians wore linen also and wool, and obtained 

 a widespread fame for skill in workmanship and beauty in 

 design. 



In this country wool once formed the staple for clothing. Silk 

 was the first rival, but its costliness placed it beyond the reach 

 of the many. To introduce a new material or improved machine 

 into this or other countries a century or more ago was no light 

 undertaking. Inventors, and would-be benefactors alike, ran 

 the risk of loss of life. Loud was the outcry made in the early 

 part of the eighteenth century against the introduction of Indian 

 cottons and Dutch calicoes. 



Until 1738, in which year the improvements in spinning 

 machinery were begun, each thread of worsted or cotton wool 

 had been spun between the fingers in this and all other countries. 

 Wyatt, in 1 738, invented spinning by rollers instead of fingers, 

 and his invention was further improved by Arkwright. In 1770 

 Hargreaves patented the spinning jenny, and Crompton the mule 

 in 177s, a machine which combined the advantages of the frames 

 of both Hargreaves and Ark^vright. In less than a century after 

 the first invention by Wyatt, double mules were working in Man- 

 chester with over 2,000 spindles. Improvements in machines for 

 weaving were begun at an earlier date. In 1579 a ribbon loom 

 is said to have been inyented at Dantzic, by which from four to 



' Manufacture of silk brought from China to Constantinople A.D, 522, 

 Wilkinsoa's " Ancient Egyptians ; "^Pliny, bk, xix, c. if. 



six pieces could be woven at one time, but the machine was 

 destroyed and the inventor lost his life.^ In 1800 Jacquard's 

 most ingenious invention was brought into use, which, by a 

 simple mechanical operation, determines the movements of 

 the threads which form the pattern in weaving. But the 

 greatest discovery in the ait of weaving was wrought by 

 Cartwright's discovery of the power loom, which led eventually 

 to the substitution cf steam for manual labour, and enabled a 

 boy whh a steam loom to do fifteen times the work of a man with 

 a hand loom. 



For complex ingenuity few machines will compare with those 

 used in the manufacture of lace and bobbin net. Hammond, in 

 1768, attempted to adapt the stocking frame to this manufacture, 

 which had hitherto been conducted by hand. It remained for 

 fohn Heathcoat to complete the adaptation in 1809, and to revo- 

 lutionise this branch of industry, reducing the cost of its pro- 

 duce to one-fortieth of what the cost had been before Heatbcoat's 

 improvements were effected. 



Most of these ingenious machines were in use before Watt's 

 genius gave the world a new motive power in the steam-engine ; 

 and, had the steam-engine never been perfected, they would still 

 have enormously increased the productive power of mankind. 

 Water power was applied to many of them ; in the first silk- 

 thread mill erected at Derby in 1738, 318 million yards of silk 

 thread were spun daily with one water-wheel. 



These are happier times for inventors : keen competition 

 among manufacturers does not let a good invention lie idle now. 

 That which was rejected by old machines as waste is now worked 

 up into useful fabrics by new ones. From all paits of the world 

 new products come — jute from India, flax from New Zealand, 

 and many others which demand new adaptations of old machines 

 or new and untried mechanical arrangements to utilise them. 

 Time would fail me if I were to attempt to enumerate one tithe 

 of these rare combinations of mechanical skill ; and, indeed, no 

 one will ever appreciate the labour and supreme mental efTovt 

 required for their construction who has not himself seen them 

 and their wondrous achievements. 



Steamboats, the electric telegraph, and railways, are more 

 within the cognisance of the world at large, and the progress 

 that has been made in them in little more than one generation is 

 better known and appreciated. 



It is not more than forty years since one of our scientific men, 

 and an able one too, declared at a meeting of this Association 

 that no steamboat would ever cross the Atlantic ; founding his 

 statement on the impracticability, in his view, of a steamboat 

 carrying sufhcient coal, profitably, I presume, for the voyage. 

 Yet, soon after this statement was made, the Sirius steamed from 

 Bristol to New York in seventeen days, '^ and was soon followed 

 by the Great I'Veslern, which made the homeward pasage in 

 thirteen-and-a-half days ; and with these voyages the era of 

 steamboats began. Like most important inventions, that of the 

 steamboat was a long time in assuming a form capable of being 

 profitably utilised ; and even when it had assumed such a form, 

 the objections of commercial and scientific men had still to be 

 overcome. 



Among the many names connected with the early progress in 

 the construction of steamboats, perhaps none is more worthy of 

 remembrance than that of Patrick Miller, who, with the assist- 

 ance of Symington, an engineer, and Taylor, who, was his 

 children's tutor, constructed a small steamboat. Shortly after- 

 wards Lord Dundas, who saw the value of the application of 

 steam for the propulsion of boats, had the first really practical 

 steamboat constructed with a view to using it on the Forth and 

 Clyde Canal. The proprietors, however, objected, and the boat 

 lay idle. Again another attempt to make practical use of thi 

 steamboat failed through the death of the Duke of Bridge water, 

 who, with his characteristic foresight, had seen the value of 

 steam as a motive power for boats, and had determined to intro- 

 duce steamboats on the canal which bears his name. 



The increase in the number of steamboats since the time when 

 the Sirius first crossed the Atlantic has been very great. 

 W^hereas in 1814 the United Kingdom only possessed two steam 

 vessels, of together 456 tons burden, in 1872 there were on the 

 register of the United Kingdom 3,662 steam vessels, of which 

 the registered tonnage amounted to over a million and a half of 

 tons,' or to nearly half the whole steam tonnage of the world, 

 which did not at that time greatly exceed three million tons. 



As the number of steamboats has largely increased, so also 



' Beckman's " History of Inventions," vol. ii. p. 528. 



" First steamer crossed tfie Atlantic by steam alone in 1838. 



3 Board of Trade Return, 15th of July, 1874, Table 8. 



