president's address. 177 



" At a very early period of Mr. Hornblower's life he con- 

 ceived an Idea of improving the Steam Engine and in 1776 

 (previous to his knowledge of any other kind than those invented 

 by Mr. Newcomen) made a small working Model, the Effect of 

 which he exhibited to a confidential friend. 



" The principle he set out upon, was perfectly new and con- 

 sisted in a secondary application of the Steam to produce a new 

 Action by the intervention of a second Steam vessel. 



" In all other Machines of the kind, it was, and is, usual, 

 after one Operation of the steam on the Piston to condense or 

 destroy it," &c , &c., &c 



Hornblower was not successful in obtaining his act of par- 

 liament, and he was finally crushed by the decision of the Law 

 Courts that his engines were an infringement of Watt's patents. 



But I think it is a matter of great interest to us here to-day 

 to rofer to the numerous letters that passed between Hornblower 

 and his great patron and friend, Mr. Davies Giddy, M.P., when 

 we remember that Mr. Davies Giddy (who on his marriage in 

 1808 changed his name to Davies Gilbert) was the grandfather of 

 our friend of that name who resides at Trelissick and also of John 

 D. Enys of Enys. 



Mr. Davies Gilbert, M.P., was a very distinguished man of 

 science and a fellow of the Royal Society, of which he became 

 president in succession to Sir Humphrey Davy. In connection 

 with the steam engine, Mr. Davies Giddy made in 1792 diagrams 

 of the expansion action of steam exactly in the form such 

 diagrams are constructed in to-day. 



This is not, however, a fitting occasion to discuss the respect- 

 ive merits of Watt and Hornblower, so I must be content with, 

 this brief reference to the very valuable mass of correspondence 

 between Hornblower, Mr. Davies Giddy and others, which still 

 remains in the possession of Mr. John D. Enys. 



There is another great Cornish name I must not omit — Richard 

 Trevithick, senior, who married Miss Anne Teague and was a 

 friend of " Wesle}^" and was manager of Dolcoath and of several 

 other mines. In 1775 he re-erected at Dolcoath (the year before 

 Watt's first Cornish engine), the old Carloose engine which had 

 been made by Newcomen about fifty years previously. At that 

 work Arthur Woolf, the father of Arthur Woolf, the well-known 



