860 Transactions of the American Institute. 



pressure, greater expansion in more than one cylinder, steam jacket- 

 ing, superheating, a careful use of non-conducting protectors against 

 waste, and the adoption of higher piston speeds. 



In the boiler: more complete combustion without excess of air 

 passing through the furnace, and more thorough absorption of heat 

 from the furnace gases. 



The latter, I am inclined to suppose, will be ultimately effected by 

 the use of a mechanically produced draught, in place of the far more 

 wasteful method of obtaining it by the expenditure of heat in the 

 chimney. 



In construction we may anticipate the use of better materials, and 

 more careful workmanship, especially in the boiler, and much improve- 

 ment in forms and proportions of details. 



In management there is a wide field for improvement, which 

 improvement we may feel assured will rapidly take place, as it has 

 now become well understood that great care, skill and intelligence 

 are important essentials to the economical management of the steam- 

 engine, and that they repay, liberally, all of the expense in time and 

 money that are requisite to secure them. 



In attempting improvements in the directions that I have indi- 

 cated, it would be the height of folly to assume that we have reached 

 a limit in any one of them, or even that we have approached a limit. 



If further progress seems checked by inadequate returns for efforts 

 made, in any case, to advance beyond present practice, it becomes the 

 duty of the engineer to detect the cause of such hindrance, and, hav- 

 ing found it, to remove it. 



A few years ago, the movement toward the expansive working of 

 high steam was checked by experiments, seeming to prove positive 

 disadvantage to follow advance beyond a certain point. 



A careful revisal of results, however, showed that this was true 

 only with engines built, as was then common, in utter disregard of 

 all the principles involved in such a use of steam, and of the precau- 

 tions necessary to be taken to insure the gain which science taught 

 us should follow. The hindrances are mechanical, and it is for the 

 engineer to remove them. 



We have seen that the most important problem offered the engineer 

 for solution is a double one, and that it requires the aid of both the 

 scientist and the mechanist in its solution. But it is sufficiently evi- 

 dent that, before the engineer can determine what form of machine 

 will best yield to him the control of these forces of nature, he must 

 have sufficient knowledge of science to be able to understand what 



