APPENDIX. ROBERT STEPHENSON'S NARRATIVE. 501 



the steam to exhaust itself in a reservoir it would pass quietly 

 into the chimney without that noise." In fact, Mr. Wood was 

 still in favour of the arrangement adopted in the Wylam engine, 

 by which the steam-blast had been got rid of altogether. 



The claim made on behalf of Timothy Hack worth is, that he 

 invented the steam-blast for the " Sanspareil " locomotive in the 

 year 1829 that is, fourteen years after George Stephenson had 

 been making regular use of the invention in every engine con- 

 structed by him. Timothy Hackworth had been employed in 

 Stephenson's locomotive workshops at Newcastle, and was ap- 

 pointed by George Stephenson the foreman of the locomotive 

 department of the Stockton and Darlington Eailway. He was, 

 therefore, quite familiar with all George Stephenson's arrange- 

 ments, including his blast-pipe. That he sharpened it there is 

 no doubt, and we believe that this is claimed as the gist of his 

 " invention ;" but even of this he is deprived by Mr. Goldsworthy 

 Gurney, who affirms that it was he who " furnished Mr. Hack- 

 worth with the steam-jet, to fix on the eduction-pipe of his 

 engine, the * Sanspareil/ " * Mr. Gurney claims to have made 

 the invention in the year 1820, about six years after the date 

 at which George Stephenson regularly employed it for the 

 express purpose of producing a draught in his Killingworth 

 engines. Mr, Gurney says he first used it to obtain a more 

 intense heat in the decomposing furnaces, when engaged as 

 lecturer at the Surrey Institution ; that he next applied it to 

 steam-boats in 1824 ; and subsequently to steam-carriages run 

 upon common roads. We are ready to believe all this, and yet 

 it does not in the slightest degree invalidate George Stephenson's 

 claim to priority in the invention as above explained. 



The following narrative relative to the blast-pipe of the 

 " Eocket " and the sharpening of the blast in that engine and 

 the " Sanspareil " (about which a controversy was raised in 

 ' The Engineer ' journal) was written by Robert Stephenson, 

 and communicated to the author in January, 1858 : 



ROBERT STEPHENSON'S NARRATIVE. 



" CERTAINLY not many weeks had elapsed after the first tra- 

 velling engine was placed on the Killingworth waggon-way in 



1 P. 8 of Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney's * Account of the Invention of the Steam- 

 jet, or Blast.' London, 1859. 



