THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



In other words, he endeavored to utilize the principle of 

 the windmill, the steam taking the place of moving air. 

 The idea is of course perfectly feasible, being indeed 

 virtually that which is employed in the modern steam 

 turbine; but to put the idea into practise requires 

 special detailed arrangements of steam jet and vanes, 

 which it is not strange the early inventor failed to dis- 

 cover. His experiments appear not to have been fol- 

 lowed up by any immediate successor, and nothing 

 practical came of them, nor was the principle which he 

 had attempted to utilize made available until long after 

 a form of steam engine utilizing another principle for 

 the transmission of power had been perfected. 



DENIS PAPIN INVENTS THE PISTON ENGINE 



The principle in question was that of causing expand- 

 ing steam to press against a piston working tightly in a 

 cylinder, a principle, in short, with which everyone is 

 familiar nowadays through its utilization in the ordin- 

 ary steam engine. The idea of making use of such a 

 piston appears to have originated with a Frenchman, 

 Denis Papin, a scientific worker, who, being banished 

 from his own country, was established as professor of 

 mathematics at the University of Marburg. He con- 

 ceived the important idea of transmitting power by 

 means of a piston as early as 1688, and about two years 

 later added the idea of producing a vacuum in a cylinder, 

 by cooling the cylinder, the latter idea being, as we 

 have just seen, the one which Savery put into effect. 



It will be noted that Papin's invention antedated that 



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