Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1874 — Mechanical Progress of the Century Now Closing. [ARTICLE]

Mechanical Progress of the Century Now Closing.

The great advance in machinery and especially our own active part of it is very recent. Persons yet alive remember the first crossing of the Atlantic by a steamboat, the Savannah. Those yet in prime of life recollect the opening of the first railway to passenger traffic. Horatio Allen drove the first locomotive which was imported. Thus the century under consideration, from a mechanical point of view, is most readily segregated from its predecessors. It is not saying too much to assert that at its commencement the coal of England was scarcely valued except for household uses. As to the coal of America, its extent and its utility were not even suspected. Machinery as yet was not. The steamengine of Newcomen was pumping in some few mines in England. This engine condensed its steam in the cylinder beneath the-piston, cooling the cylinder at each stroke, and using the condensation of the steam as a means of producing a partial vacuum in order to obtain the value of the atmospheric pressure above the piston. The duty or valuable effect of the Newcomen engine in 1769 was 5,500,000 pounds of water raised one foot high by one bushel of Welsh coal. Watt’s inventions were made, between the years 1769 and 1784, and before the year 1800 the duty of the Cornish engine was quadrupled; by 1840 it was again quadrupled. Watt added to the steamengine the separate condenser and the airpump. By the former he avoided the cooling of the cylinder before each eflective stroke of the piston; by the latter he made the vacuum more perfect. He subsequently made the additions of the parallel motion , of the steam-jacket to the cylinder, and of the cylinder cover , and made the steam act positively against the piston, instead of merely using it to produce a vacuum. Afterward he made the engine double acting, that is, used pressure of steam on the sides of the piston alternately; then he increased the strengtn of the parts, the rapidity of the stroke, and the pressure of the steam. Coal, the black slave, had been chained below from time immemorial, and Watt contrived a way of setting him to work. Up to this period there had been scarcely any progress; after it hosts of inventions crowd upon the scene and clamor for notice. The Watt period inaugurates the century whose progress in the mechanic arts is under consideration. The utilization of coal in the production of steam for driving machinery is the turning-point in the history of mechanical evolution and development, and made possible improvements in various other directions. The multiplication, in the course of years, by fifty-fold of the working power of England caused such an enormous increase of material that privy councils, armies and fleets vied with each other in explorations by sea and land. The Northwest Passage, which has a literature and a history of its own —a history exultant and yet sad—only meant a short road to India around one end of that terribly long continent which barred Europe from sailing westward to Asia. There is no more truthful accessible test of the comparative ingenuity of periods in a given country than the number of patents granted therein. Our national patent system has been in operation only since 1790, but that of England is much older. The following table gives the number of patents granted in decades for the two centuries. Previous to 1790 patents were granted by individual States, as to Fulton, Fitch, Rumsey, Evans, and others: Decade \Decade United -ending England, ending England. — States. ipso agjati.--... 297 .... lti(XJ.... 55 1790 512 1700 101 1800... 075 3U6 1710: 20U810 9:56 1,086 172.) 45! 1820 1,125 1,748 173!) 94|1830 1,533 2.980 1740 48,1840. 2,710 5,488 17,50. .ill*. 85!l8i0 4,066 • 5.942 ■ 9911800 25,201 28,140 1770 , 221 j 1870 35,079 79.012

The factory system is tne growth of the century now closing. When Richard Arkwright was traveling over the hills of Lancashire buying the tresses of the country lasses to make wigs, and Hargreaves was working at the rudimentary carding-machine, the artisans of the country worked each in his little shop. The wool-stapler dealt out his lots of wool to the carders and spinners, who tookit-home and returned the agreedupon quality and weight of yam; to another set of workmen the yarn was apportioned for weaving; other tradesmen finished the work. The same practice prevailed with the hardware-makers and iron-mongers ; the nailers of Wolverhampton, the artificers of Birmingham, the cutlers of Sheffield, tbe"’carpeUweavers of Axminster —each received at his house a, .quota of material such as he or his family could make-up in'afew\days, and returned the finished work to his employer. It is easy to imagine how this may have been managed, for it is only within a comparatively few y ears that tbe boot and shoe business has been -aggregated into factories and performed bymachinery.

In th 6 factory the labor-saving machines which have superseded the laborious aand operations are employed in great numbers with comparatively few attendants. The steam-engine, fed by coal and water, or the water-wheel, provides the power required, and the duty of the attendant is to supply 1 the constantly recurring need for fresh materials, to mend breaks, or repair faults. Instead of being; a mere fashioner of a piece a time, the workman becomes a supervisor of nearly automatic machinery, whose appetite for material he is required to anticipate and satisfy, and whose Occasional eccentricities it is his duty to correct. Ihe development of the cotton manufacture furnishes the best and perhaps earliest example of the factory system. Arkwright appears to have worked at his cotttrn machinery for several years, and in company with several partners, who successively furnished means and then tired of the project, before he Greeted the mill at Nottingham, which was worked by horse-power. This mill was erected in 1770; another one was established in 1771, in which the ma-

chinery was driven by a water-wheel. Bo new waa the idea of employing other than hand or foot labor that his spinningmachine was long known as the “ waterframe,” and the product as the “ watertwist.” His other improvements were patentedin 1775, and thus the century starts with Mr. Arkwright fresh upon the track, leading in a race the* success of which has changed the aspect of onr commercial and social systems. — Harper's Magazine-for December.