430 A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



work, returned home the next morning, after a journey of 50 miles, 

 informed his master of its defects, and completed the engine to the 

 entire satisfaction of the proprietors. Mr. Brindley afterwards 

 engaged in the mill-wright business on his own account, and soon 

 acquired the reputation of a most ingenious mechanic. The fame 

 of his inventions and contrivances was in a little while spread far 

 beyond his own neighbourhood ; and in 1752, he was employed to 

 erect a curious water-engine at Clifton in Lancashire, for the pur- 

 pose of draining coal-mines, which had before been performed B,t 

 an enormous expence. The water for the use of this engine was 

 conveyed from the river Irwell by a subterraneous channel, nearly 

 600 yards long, which passed through a rock ; and the wheel was 

 fixed 30 feet below the surface of the ground. In 1755, he con- 

 structed a new silk-mill at Congleton, in Cheshire, according to the 

 plan proposed by the proprietors, after the execution of it by the 

 original undertaker had failed ; and in the completion of it he 

 added many new and useful improvements. He introduced one 

 contrivance for winding the silk upon the bobbins equally, and not 

 in wreaths ; and another for stopping, in an instant, not only the 

 whole of this extensive system, in all its various movements, but 

 any individual part of it at pleasure. He likewise invented ma- 

 chines for cutting the tooth and pinion wheels of the different en- 

 gines, in a manner that produced a great saving of time, labour, 

 and expence. He also introduced into the mills used at the Pot- 

 teries in Staffordshire for grinding flint stones several valuable ad- 

 ditions, which greatly facilitated the operation. In 1756, he con- 

 structed a steam-engine near Newcastle-under-Lyme, upon a new 

 plan, which evinced his genius for invention and contrivance, for 

 which he obtained a patent. The boiler was made with brick and 

 stone, instead of iron plates, and the water was heated by fire-places, 

 so constructed as to save the consumption of fuel. He also intro- 

 duced cylinders of wood instead of iron, and he substituted wood 

 for iron in the chains which worked at the end of the beam. But 

 in this and similar contrivances for the improvement of this useful 

 engine, he was obstructed by interested engineers ; and his atten- 

 tion was diverted from the prosecution of them by the great na- 

 tional object of "Inland Navigation." In planning and executing 

 canals his mechanical genius found ample scope for exercise, and 

 formed a sort of distinguishing aera in the history of our country. 

 However, envy and prejudice, and an attachment to established 

 customs, raised a variety of obstacles to the accomplishment of hit 



