Chap. IX.] Mechanic Arts. 113 



Allied to tlic inventions above enumerated are 

 the improvements in the art o^ IVeavlng which mo- 

 dern times have produced. Among these perhaps 

 none is of more importance than the Flying Shut- 

 tlCj hitely introduced by the machinists of Great 

 Britain. Previous to tlie introduction of this con- 

 trivance, when wide cloth was woven it was neces- 

 sary to employ two or more hands to execute the 

 work. The same task can now be executed by 

 one person, and with much more convenience and 

 expedition than formerly. 



It was before remarked that Steam Engines were 

 scarcely at all known .prior to the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. To the honour of inventing* and perfecting 

 this kind of machinery the artists of Great Bri- 

 tain are entitled. The honour particularly due to 

 ]\Iessrs. Newcomen, Beighton, and Watt, on this 

 subject, has been acknowledged in a former 

 chapter. The force of Steam has been applied, 

 during the period under review, to the turning of 

 mills for almost every purpose; and there is no 

 doubt that the machines moved by this agent 

 are the most powerful ever formed by the art of 

 man *. 



are now twenty- three machines of this kind in operation at the 

 same manufactory, which are able to furnish tico hundred duzc/i 

 pairs of cards, on an average, every week. 



* One of these engines, as improved by Mr Watt, and em- 

 ployed for draining the deep mines of Cornwall, works a pump of 

 eighteen inches diameter, and upwards of 100 latliom, or dOO 

 feet higli, at the rate of ten to twelve strokes, of seven feet long 

 each, in a minute, and with one fifth part of the fuel that a com- 

 mon engine would take to do the same work. The pou'er of tJiis 

 engine may be more easily romprehciided by saying that it can 

 raise a weight equal to SlOOOlbs. eighty feet high, in a zninute. 



Vol. II. I 



