178 AN ELECTRICALLY PROPELLED 



was fully developed about twenty-five years after the Clermont came out. Our 

 concern, during the past sixty years, has probably built more beam engines 

 than any other concern in the United States, and possibly, I might say, almost more 

 than all the other concerns together; and we have built not only the simple beam 

 engines, but also a number of compound beam engines, the largest compound beam 

 engine being that in the Fall River Line 'steamer Puritan, having a low-pressure 

 cyUnder no inches in diameter by a stroke of 14 feet of piston. The celebrated 

 steamers. City of Erie and the City of Buffalo, have also compound beam engines. 

 So that in criticizing some of the statements that Mr. Donnelly has made, and 

 desiring to do it in a conservative way, I feel that so much has been said about the 

 old-time beam engine by those who only have a superficial knowledge of its worth 

 for particular services, that once in a while we have to get back at them. 



Mr. Donnelly has made reference to the weight per horse-power. His figures 

 are anywhere from 25 to 35 per cent out. He has spoken of the economy of the beam 

 engine in comparison with his electrically propelled excursion steamer, and there I 

 know he is fully 20 per cent out, conservatively, so that his paper to my mind loses 

 a lot of its value, except as to the progressive thought that is contained therein. 



He starts off in his paper by making a comparison with the old Grand Republic, 

 one of the very oldest boats in the harbor. He states himself that he does not know 

 when the engine was built, that it was built many, many years ago, before it was 

 installed in the Grand Republic, and has been in the Grand Republic since 1878. 

 It seems to me that is a good record, for it is still going along, and I might say only 

 yesterday the owners of the boat asked us to make some repairs on this old engine 

 preparing for next season's work. But he takes a type of an old beam engine, with 

 a piston speed working, as he said, about 400 feet per minute. He pays absolutely 

 no attention to the modern short-service excursion boat, fitted with a walking beam 

 engine, where the piston speed in some cases is over 600 feet per minute, and, as 

 you know, taking the same sized cylinder, you can obtain very much more power 

 by increasing the pressure and piston speed. Here is an engine, for instance, with 

 a 72-inch-diameter cyHnder and a 12-foot stroke of piston, making sixteen revolutions 

 per minute. We have vessels on the Hudson River with approximately the same 

 sized cyUnders running from 28 to 29 or 30 revolutions per minute, as in the case of 

 the latest Hudson River day excursion steamer Robert Fulton, and also in the case 

 of the steamer Albany of the Hudson River Day Line. So that to compare a modem 

 beam engine, with a 7 2 -inch cylinder, as he has expressed it here, with the Grand 

 Republic, is absurd, that is, from the point of view of the builder of beam engines. 

 He also does not state the advance which has been made in the paddle-wheels. 

 He takes that old boat, with the old-style, less efficient water wheel of the fixed 

 bucket type, and makes his comparison. This engine that he speaks of has wheels 

 38 feet in diameter. We would not think of putting in wheels like that to-day, 

 and have not for years. For that size of engine, if we wanted to run at double the 

 speed, and which we can do very easily and economically and safely, we would put 

 in wheels with the feathering type of buckets fully 8 to 1 1 feet smaller in diameter, 



