A486 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
2. Because new phases are ever being unfolded to us; 
Because Nature, as a whole, never grows old. 
Natural Science has value. 
1. It develops the analytic and synthetic powers of the mind, and makes inde- 
pendent thinkers ; 
2. It affects us personally, keeping us from superstition and helping us to know 
and preserve our frame; 
3. It affects us socially ; 
It aids the teacher in teaching; 
5. It reaches the soul as well as the intellect, and leads us to God. 
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HISTORY OF THE STEAM ENGINE. 
FROM PRESIDENT R. H. THURSTON’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN 
SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS, NOV. 4, 1880. 
As an illustration of the method in which advancement occurs, and as an 
example of the kind of work which remains for us to do, let us glance, very 
briefly, at the history of that greatest of modern triumphs of mechanism, the 
steam engine. 
Away back, twenty centuries and more, in the dim past, among the first 
faint gleams of historic civilization, we see the germ of the invention which has 
done so much to annihilate space and give man illimitable power over all the 
forces and treasures of nature—a toy in the museum at Alexandria. A toy it 
remained many centuries, until, in the grand awakening of three centuries ago, 
its latent power was discovered, and Papin, and Worcester, and Leibnitz, and 
Huyghens each contributed a thought in the progress which they thus inaugu- 
rated. A hundred and fifty years ago the ‘‘steam giant’ was at work under the 
direction of the intelligent blacksmith and his comrade, the ‘‘ tinker,” doing 
much for the mining industry, but nothing elsewhere, and, hampered by igno- 
rance, and ill-cared for by his masters, wasting a vast deal of now utilized power. 
Then came forward a genius of the brightest intellect, a mechanic, such as 
the world rarely produces—James Watt—and, adopting the truly philosophic 
method, the great master soon taught the mighty servant to do a thousand times 
more for the world, and to labor with wonderfully greater ease and economy. 
Watt first collected his facts. He dissected the model of the Newcomen and 
Calley engine, which had been placed in his hands for repair, ascertained the 
method of its operation, learned what were the advantages of that form of engine, 
discovered the cause and extent of its losses of power and efficiency, and, once 
these were known, his grand intellect promptly devised remedies and improve- 
ments, and the steam engine of to-day is simply the steam engine of James Watt, 
in all its leading features and in all the principal details ot design. Its steam- 
jacketed cylinder is Watt’s; its parallel motion and its guides; its crank motion, 
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