Aug. 29, 1872J 



NA TURE 



367 



gaseous parts of the coal which are driven oB. This heat fre- 

 quently amounts to 30 per cent, of the whole of that which is in 

 the coal. We come next to the smelting of iron. Take the 

 preliminary process of calcining the ore. In those cases where 

 the ore is "black band," the ore so common in Scotland, the 

 calcining is done by the combustion of the carbonaceous matter 

 mixed with the ore. Far more than the quantity of fuel requisite 

 for the calcination is associated with this ore, but the whole of 

 it is burnt olT, and no effort whatever is made to utilise the sur- 

 plus heat. Then with regard to the blast furnaces for smelting 

 iron. Mere, still almost universally in Scotland, that large seat 

 of the iron manuf;xcture, and to a considerable extent in En<;l.\nd, 

 the waste gases are suffered to issue from the furnace top, iUumi- 

 nating the country for miles round, and bearing testimony to 

 the indifference of the owner of the furnaces to a waste of our 

 store of fuel. Upwards of sixty' years ago — viz., in iSii — the 

 utilisation of these gases was suggested in France, but not much 

 was done for thirty years. About 1840, however, their use be- 

 came not infrequent in tliat country, and French manufacturers and 

 chemists taught us that the gas thus recklessly wasted might be 

 collected and utilised, and made to replace the fuel expended in 

 heating the hot blast stoves and in raising steam for the blowing 

 engines. But, for the cause which lias been and will be alluded 

 to, the adoption of this plan was very slow indeed in England. 

 It has now been in use, however, for many years in our best con- 

 ducted works, but as a proof of the slowness of its introduction, 

 the furnaces of Scotland, as I have already said, are even to this 

 day almost universally worked upon the wickedly wasteful piin- 

 ciple of allowing these gases to bum idly away. Take again the 

 melting of steel in crucibles where the heat issues from the fur- 

 nace, of necessity hotter than the heat of the melted st-. el (lor 

 were it not so it «-ould cool it), and of this issuing heat, as a rule, 

 no use whatever is made. Take again the heating furnace and 

 puddling furnace of our iron works, very commonly from tliese 

 heat at a greater temperature than that of welding iron escapes 

 up the chimneys, disregarded as though it had cost nothing for 

 its generation. 



Next let us consider how we are dealing with coal when we 

 use it for obtaining motive power in our steam engines. Steam 

 engines may be divided into the four great heads of marine, loco- 

 motive, portable, and fixed. Including within the term steam 

 engine the boiler as well as the engine, the waste may arise in a 

 steam engine in two ways, in either one of them, or in both com- 

 bined. It may arise from an imperfect utilisation of fuel in 

 the production of steam — that is, a waste due to the boiler 

 and to the firing ; or it may arise in an improper use by 

 the engine of the steam provided for it by the boiler. There can 

 be no question that the boiler waste is, as a rule, very large 

 indeed. I am perfectly certain there is hardly any subject more 

 worthy the attention of the engineer than the replacing the stoker 

 by some mechanical arrangement which shall afford absolute uni- 

 formity of firing, and therefore absolute uniformity of the con- 

 ditions of the fire, and this is a subject not only worthy of atten- 

 tion on account of the saving of coal, but also on the ground of 

 putting an end to a most laborious, exhausting, and, it is to be 

 feared, unhealthy occupation, viz., that of the steamboat lire- 

 man, more particularly when he is working in a hot climate. 

 If perfect combustion were obtained in the fire, I do not think 

 there would be much difficulty in properly utilising by the boiler 

 the heat evolved. 



I have now laid before you some of the points in which the 

 boilers and engines of the present day aie below the standard to 

 which engineering science has already reached, and in which, 

 therefore, there is known ojiportunity for immediate improve- 

 ment. There is a perpetual bugbear in the way of improvements, 

 and that bugbear is the so-called " practical man," and he was 

 in my mind when, in previous parts of this address, I have 

 hinted 'at the existence ot an obstacle to the adoption of im- 

 provement. I do not wish the section for one moment to sup- 

 pose that I, brought up as an apprentice in a workshop, and 

 who all my life have practised my profession, intend to say one 

 word against the practical man. On the contrary, he is the 

 man, of all others, that I admire, and by whom I would wish 

 persons to be guided ; because the truly practical man is one 

 who knows the reason of that which he practises, who can 

 give an account of the faith that is in him, and who, while he 

 possesses the readiness of mind and the dexterity of action which 

 arise from the long-continued and daily intercourse with the sub- 

 ject of his jjrofession, possesses also that necessary amount of 

 theoretical and scientific knowledge which justifies him in pur- 



suing any process he adopts, which in many cases enables him to 

 devise new processes, or which, at all events, if he be not of an 

 inventive quality of mind, will enable him to appreciate and 

 value the new processes devised by others. This is the truly 

 practical man, about whom I have nothing to say except that 

 which is most laudatory. But the piactical man, as commonly 

 understood, means the man who knows the practice of his trade, 

 and knows nothing else concerning it ; the man whose wisdom 

 consists in; standing by seeing, but not investigating, the new 

 discoveries which are taking place around him, in decrying 

 those discoveries, in applying to those who invent improvements, 

 even the very greatest, tlie epithet of "schemer.s," and then 

 when he finds that beyond all dispute some new matter is good 

 and has come into general practice, taking to it grumblingly, but 

 still taking to it, because if he did not he could not compete 

 with his co-manufacturers. The aim and object of such a man, 

 intleed, is to ensure that he should never make a mistake by 

 embarking his capital or his time in that which has not been 

 pro\ed by men of large hearts and large intelligence. It is such 

 a practical man as this who delays all improvement. For years 

 he delayed the development in England of the utilisation of the 

 waste gases of blast furnaces, and he has done it so successfully 

 that, as I have already had occision to remark, this utilisation is 

 by no means universal in this kingdom. It was such men as 

 these who kept back surface condensation for twenty years. It 

 is such a man as this who, when semaphores were invented, 

 would have said, " Don't suggest such a mode to me of trans- 

 mitting messages ; I am a practical man, sir, and I believe that 

 the way to transmit a message is to write it on paper, deliver it 

 to a messenger, and put him on horseback." In the next genera- 

 tion his successor would be a believer in semaphores, and when 

 the electrical telegraphist came to him and said, " Do you know 

 that I can transmit movement by an invisible electrical power, 

 through a wire however long, and it seems to me that if one were 

 to make a code out of this movement, I could speak to you at 

 Portsmouth at one end of the wire, while I was in London at 

 the other, " what wjuld have been the answer of this practical 

 man ? " Sir, I don't believe in transmitting messages by an in- 

 visilile agency ; I am a practical man, and I believe in sema- 

 phoies, which I can see working." In like manner, wlien the 

 Siemens' regenerative gas furnace was introduced, what said the 

 practical man : "Turn your coals into gas, and burn the gas, 

 and then talk of regeneration. I don't know what you mean by 

 regeneration, except in a spiritual sense. 1 am a practical man, 

 and if I want heat out of coals I put coals on to a fire and burn 

 them," and for fifteen years the practical man has been the bar 

 to this most enormous improvement in metallurgical operations. 

 The practical man is beginning slowly to yield with respect to 

 these furnaces, because he finds, as I have already said, that men 

 of greater intelligence have now in sufficiently large numbers 

 adopted the invention to make it a formidable compeution with 

 the persons who stolidly refuse to be improved. The same practi- 

 cal mail for years stood in the way of the development of 

 Bessemer steel ; now he has been compelled to become a convert. 

 It may be said that employers and the heads of manufactories are, 

 as a rule, in these days, educated gentlemen, and that, therefore, 

 it is wrong to impute to them tiie narrow mindedness of the prac- 

 tical man. I agree that in numerous instances this would be 

 wrong ; but the fact is that in many cases, I think I may say in 

 most cases, the head of the establishment, the moneyed man, the 

 man who by his commercial ability (that most necessary element 

 in all establishments) keeps the concern going by finding lucra- 

 tive orders, is not intimately acquainted with the practice of the 

 business carried on by his firm. He relies upon some manager 

 or foreman wdio too commonly is not the real but the so-called 

 practical man. It is to such men as those who simply practise 

 that which they have seen, without knowing why they practise 

 it, that the title of practical man has most improperly I een attri- 

 buted, and it is on the ail vice of such men that the true heads of 

 the firm too commonly regulate their conduct as to tiie manage- 

 ment of their business, and as to the necessary changes to be 

 made in the way of improvement. As I have said, the practical 

 man derides those who biing forward new inventions and calls 

 them schemers. No doubt whatever they do scheme, and well 

 it is for the country that there are men who do so. It also may 

 be true that the majority of schemes prove abortive ; but it must 

 be recollected that the whole progress of art and manufacture 

 has depended, and will depend, upon successful discoveries, 

 which in their inception were and will be schemes, just as much 

 as \\ere those discoveries that have been and will be unfruitful 



