12 SMEATON LEARNS THE TRADE OF PART VI. 



Society were dated. The very same year in which 

 he began business, when he was only twenty-six, he 

 read a communication before the Royal Society, de- 

 scriptive of his own and Dr. Go win Knight's improve- 

 ments in the mariner's compass. In the year following 

 (1751) we find him engaged in a boat on the Ser- 

 pentine river, performing experiments with a machine 

 of his invention, for the purpose of measuring the 

 way of a ship at sea. With the same object he made 

 a voyage down the Thames, in a small sailing vessel, to 

 several leagues beyond the Nore ; and he afterwards 

 made a short cruise in the Fortune sloop of war, testing 

 his instruments by the way. 



His attention as yet seems to have been confined 

 chiefly to the improvement of mathematical instruments 

 used for purposes of navigation or astronomical observa- 

 tion. In the year 1752, however, he enlarged the range 

 of his experiments ; for we find him, in April, reading 

 a paper before the Royal Society, descriptive of some 

 improvements which he had contrived in the air-pump. 

 On the llth of June following, he read a second paper, 

 descriptive of an improvement which he had made in 

 ship-tackle by a construction of pulleys, by means of 

 which one man might easily raise a ton weight ; and on 

 the 9th of November following, he read a third paper, 

 descriptive of M. De Moura's experiments on Savary's 

 steam-engine. In the course of the same year he was 

 busily occupied in performing a series of experiments, 

 on which his admirable paper, read before the same 

 Society, was founded for which he received their Gold 

 Medal in 1759 entitled ' An Experimental Inquiry con- 

 cerning the Natural Powers of Water and Wind to turn 

 Mills and other Machines depending on a Circular 

 Motion.' This paper was very carefully elaborated, and 

 is justly regarded as the most masterly report that has 

 ever been published on the subject. 



To accomplish all this, and at the same time to carry 



