46 HISTORY OF THE STEAM ENGINE. [SECT. i. 



The steam engines in Great Britain and Ireland, employed in the year 1817 in 

 the manufacture of cotton yarn, amounted to more than 20,000 horses' power ; and 

 such has been the advantages resulting from the application of machinery, that one 

 person can produce more yarn in a given time, than 200 could have produced 

 about sixty years ago. 



In the iron, woollen, and flax manufactures, the beneficial effects from employing 

 the steam engine have been equally important. 



The total extent to which steam power is applied in Great Britain was estimated 

 by Baron Dupin, in 1825, to be equivalent to the power of 320,000 horses in con- 

 stant action ; and up to the present time it has prodigiously increased, indepen- 

 dently of our rapidly extending railways. To this immense command of power our 

 country owes much of its commercial prosperity, besides a vast addition to the 

 comforts and conveniences of life. 



The increased employment of steam has however in no instance been so great 

 as in its application to navigation in Britain. A solitary steam boat navigated the 

 Clyde in 1812 ; in 1825, fifty-one steam boats plyed on that river : and from the 

 first successful trial in 1812, up to 1822, the number of steam vessels in Britain 

 increased to about 140, with a power equivalent to the exertion of 4700 horses, 

 and a tonnage of 16,000 tons. 1 



64. In concluding this historical sketch, it is of some importance to remark, 

 that the whole tends to prove that the steam engine, in the highest state of perfec- 

 tion it has yet attained, is entirely of British origin. The remark extends to the 

 discovery of physical principles, as well as of mechanical combinations. No new 

 principle, no new combination of principles, has yet been derived from a foreign 

 source ; the most perfect of foreign steam engines being professedly copied from 

 British ones, and not unfrequently manufactured by British workmen. 



1 From the establishment of Boulton and Watt alone, since 1814, a power has been sent forth 

 for propelling steam vessels amounting to 9143 horses, and employing a tonnage of 27,406 tons. 

 This, and the streams of power emanating from other factories, for the same exclusive purpose, 

 is immense. It cannot be doubted that steam navigation will be highly productive of benefit to 

 all civilized countries, and will contribute even to the cultivation and advancement of civiliza- 

 tion itself: there is no portion of the habitable globe, however remote, which may not in the 

 course of time derive advantage from the creations of Watt's genius. 



