Cuar. IV., § 5.] 
Mr Clements were broken off, the difficulties of the 
affair became insurmountable, and the construction 
of either engine has for some years been in abeyance. 
The opinions of men of science are not unanimous 
as to the great practical importance of calculating 
tables by machinery, but the improvements of me- 
chanical contrivance which the joint skill of Mr 
Babbage and Mr Clements introduced into engi- 
neering workshops are unquestionably of great impor- 
tance to the arts, Though the details of Mr Bab- 
bage’s plans have not been published, there can be 
no doubt that, whether economical or not as sub- 
stitutions of machinery for human labour, they were 
devised with remarkable skill and ingenuity, and even 
on this account merit preservation.+ 
MECHANIOS.—TREVITHICK-—G. STEPHENSON. 
881 
arising from the accumulation of still lower digits 
omitted. The engine not only computes with facility 
and accuracy, but, by means of steel punches impress- 
ing lead, provides for the perpetuation of the num- 
bers in the form of stereotyped plates. The work- 
manship of the whole requires no particular nicety 
of execution, is not liable to derangement, and can by 
scarcely any contingency produce inaccurate results, 
Before closing this section, we may advert to im- 381.) 
provements in the theory of machines by those who Foreign 
have regarded it rather from the geometrical side }y"\;"5 0" 
than from that of routine practice. Our French of ma- 7 
neighbours have been distinguished in this respect. chines. 
Carnot and De Prony, MM. Hachette, Poncelet, and 
Morin, have been or are accomplished mechanists in 
this respect ; and in the French repertories we must 
look for some of the earliest good scientific descrip- 
tions of machinery, even when of English invention. 
In England, besides Mr Babbage, Professor Willis  (282.) 
of Cambridge has shown a peculiar aptitude in this ~— 
department, and has published a very valuable work *" 
on machinery, regarded in a strictly geometrical sense.” 
To Mr Moseley we are likewise indebted for some va- 
luable contributions to the theory of engineering. 
§ 5. TREVITHICK.—GEORGE STEPHENSON.—The Locomotive Steam-Engine.—Rise and Progress 
of Railways—M. de Pambour on Locomotives. 
(380.) Recently (1855) attention has been directed in 
Lae pce London to a simple and effective Difference Engine 
sins, "8 constructed and patented by M. Scheutz, confessedly 
on the principles of Mr Babbage, though without an 
acquaintance with his mechanical contrivances. The 
result is stated to be satisfactory. The engine deals 
with fifteen digits or figures, and with four orders of 
differences. Only eight figures are preserved in the 
result, the others being reserved to prevent errors 
(383.) Of all the inventions which have powerfully af- 
The loco- fected the interests of mankind, none have been more 
a 9 slowly perfected, or can be less certainly traced to a 
railway. single individual as the inventor, than those of the 
Locomotive engine and the Railway. These two great 
and essentially connected portions of the greatest 
mechanical and commercial effort of any age or 
country had their origin in obscurity. Each ap- 
peared several times to be rising into the import- 
ance it deserved, but failing the concurrence of 
the fortunate circumstances which are necessary to 
give permanence to invention, was once more for- 
gotten and was left for re-discovery at a happier 
epoch. 
Rae ui. With regard to Steam-Carriages, passing over still 
cipation earlier speculations, we find that Dr John Robison, 
of steam- at the age of twenty-one, published a design for a 
carriages. steam-carriage in the Universal Magazine for No- 
vember 1757, and that he also directed Mr Waitt’s 
' attention to the steam-engine in the same year, with 
a view to this very application. The cylinder of the 
proposed machine was an inverted one, and Watt ac- 
tually made a rude model on Robison’s suggestion.® 
From this time the steam-carriage seems never to have 
been long lost sight of by mechanical speculators. 
It was included in a patent by one Moore, a linen 
draper, in 1769.‘ In the same year it is stated that 
Cugnot, a native of Lorraine, actually constructed 
a steam-carriage, which, like the nearly contemporary 
but unsuccessful efforts of his countrymen to effect 
steam navigation, fell speedily into oblivion. About 
1773 Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown urged the con- 
struction of steam-carriages, and at a later period ex- 
pressed, in terms of unequivocal anticipation, the 
triumph arising from their connection with railways. 
“ T have always thought,” he wrote in 1813, “that 
steam would become the universal lord, and that we 
should in time scorn post-horses. An iron railroad 
would be a cheaper thing than a road on the com- 
mon construction.’ At Soho the movement of car- 
riages as well as of boats by steam never was or could 
be forgotten. In Watt’s patent of 1784 the steam- Watt and 
carriage forms the seventh article, and in the same ina 
year’ Mr William Murdoch, a member of Boulton 
and Watt's establishment, made a model, acting by 
high-pressure steam, which drove a small waggon 
round the room. Hence it required no prophetic 
power in Darwin, the intimate friend of Watt, to 
1 For historical details connected with Mr Babbage’s engine, see Weld’s History of the Royal Society, vol. ii. An account of 
the principles and action of the Difference Engine may be found in the Edinburgh Review for July 1834; and those of the Ana- 
lytical Engine in Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, vol. iii. 
2 Principles of Mechanism. Camb., 1841. 
* Mechanical Inventions of James Watt, i, 52. 
VOL. I. 
3 Mechanical Inventions of James Watt, ii. 294. 
5 Translation of Arago’s Eloge of Watt, p.120, note. 
51 
