31 



ever known before the time of Wattf 'would have been 

 produced, and yet nothing whatever would have been 

 added to the former inventions ; they would only have 

 been combined together. The result of the whole is, 

 that one of the greatest theoretical steps was made by 

 Papin, who was, during a long period, little commemo- 

 rated ; and that Savery and Newcomen, who have been 

 by many called the inventors, were the first of all the 

 ingenious and useful persons whose successive improve- 

 ments we have now recorded, to apply the steam-engine 

 to practical purposes. France has thus produced the 

 man who, next to Watt, must be regarded as the author 

 of the steam-engine ; of all Watt's predecessors, Papin 

 stands incontestably at the head ; but it is almost cer- 

 tain that he never actually constructed an engine. 

 Though the engine of Savery was of considerable use 

 in pumping to a small height, and indeed has not 

 entirely gone out of use even in our own times, and 

 though INewcomen's was still more extensively useful 

 from being applicable to mines, not only had no 

 means ever been found of using the steam power for 

 any other purpose than drawing up water, but even in 

 that operation it was exceedingly imperfect and very 

 expensive, insomuch that a water power was often 

 preferred to it, and even a horse power in many cases 

 afforded equal advantages. The great consumption of 

 fuel which it required was its cardinal defect; the 

 other imperfection was its loss of all direct benefit from 

 the expansive force of the steam itself. That element 

 was only used in creating a vacuum, and an air-pump 

 might have done as much had it been worked by water 

 or by horses. It was, in the strictest sense of the 

 word, an air and not a steam engine. 



When Mr. Watt was directed to repair the working 

 model for the Professor at Glasgow, he of course exa- 

 mined it attentively. He was at that time, 1763, in 

 his twenty-eighth year, having been born in 1736 at 

 Greenock, where his father was a magistrate, and he 



