384 JAMES WATT. 
House of Lords; an English engineer; finally, a French 
doctor, of the Royal Society of London ;* for, we must 
acknowledge it, Papin, almost always exiled, was only a 
correspondent of. our Academy. Now, however, simple 
artisans, mere workmen, will enter the list. All classes 
of society will thus have concurred towards the crea- 
tion of a machine by which the whole world was to 
benefit. 
In 1705, fifteen years after the publication of Papin’s 
first memoir in the Acts of Leipzig, Newcomen and 
Cawley, one of them a hardware man, the other a gla- 
zier at Dartmouth, in Devonshire, constructed (be pleased 
to observe that I did not say projected, for the difference 
is great), constructed a machine intended to effect drain- 
age, and in which there was a separate caldron for gener- 
ating the steam. This machine, as well as Papin’s small 
model, has a vertical metal cylinder, closed at the botiom, - 
open at the top, with a well-adjusted piston, intended to 
travel from end to end, both rising and falling. Both in 
the one apparatus and in the other, when the steam can 
freely reach the base of the cylinder, fill it, and thus 
counterbalance the pressure of the external atmosphere, 
the ascending movement of the piston is effected by a 
* The ingenious Dr. Denis Papin was intimately connected with 
the Royal Society and its illustrious president, Newton, since he held 
the office of curator to that body, on a salary of forty pounds per 
annum. It is to be regretted that the funds of the Society, then, were 
so low that some of Papin’s offered experiments seem to have hung - 
fire, on account of the expenses amounting to fifteen pounds! Newton 
reported favourably on the proposal; and Papin said, “I am fully per- 
suaded that Esquire Savery is so well-minded for the public good that 
he will desire, as much as anybody, that this may be done.” It is a 
singular incident in the history of the wonderful engine, that though 
Papin invented the safety-valve, he did not apply it to his steam-ma~ 
chine.— Translator. 
