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DISCUSSION.

Colonel C. M. WATSON, C.B., said that as he had returned from St. Louis within the last few days, he was able to tell the meeting, from personal observation, something about the progress that had been made with the exhibition. The photographs which had been shown on the screen were interesting, but he could honestly tell them that the buildings themselves were far better than the photographs. The general effect of the exhibition would be one of the most remarkable that had ever been produced. It seemed positively wicked that the buildings should Eave to be pulled down after the closure of the exhibition, for though they were built only of wood and plaster, they looked as if they were meant to last for a long time. The administrative department of the exhibition was worked on a thoroughly business-like plan. Everyone, from President Francis downwards, seemed to be imbued with the idea of contributing to the success of the great undertaking. There was no red tape, everyone knew what he had to do, and went and did it. They were all aiming to make the greatest show that the world had ever seen. There was, of course, considerable rivalry between the different States, and St. Louis wanted to beat Chicago, and to go, not only one better, but a hundred times better than Chicago went in 1893. In most of the departments the space that had been applied for had been more than double that which the chiefs of the different departments were able to supply. In one sense he was glad that the space required for the exhibits of Great Britain, was greater than the amount that could be obtained. He thought that the Fine Art department which had been organised by a committee, of which Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., was the chairman, would give a really good representation of British art. The committee had nearly decided upon the selection of the pictures. In education he believed that the British show would be as good as that in any portion of the exhibition, if not better. In the liberal arts, Great Britain could have put in many more things if space could have been obtained. Dr. Redwood and Mr. Sutherland thought themselves badly used because they could not get more room from the display of the exhibits in chemical industry. British manufactures also could have filled more space, although British exhibitors had many things against them, such as the distance to which their goods would have to be sent, and the high import tariffs. Great Britain would also be well represented in the transport section, the machinery section, and the electrical section. We should have no need to be ashamed of our exhibits.

The Hon. HENRY CLAY-EVANS (United States Consul-General) said that he had been greatly pleased with the entertainment presented to the meeting. He hoped that everyone present would have the pleasure and advantage of visiting the St. Louis Exposition next year. He believed that it would be the greatest that the world had ever seen. They

would have an opportunity of comparing the products of the different countries of the world, side by side, within one inclosure. He spent a few weeks at Chicago during the exhibition and he then saw enough to last him for a lifetime. But the representative of Great Britain had just told them that the St. Louis Exhibition was to be a hundred times better than that of Chicago.

Dr. BOVERTON REDWOOD said that he might perhaps be pardoned for saying that he had a feeling almost akin to regret that the very valuable details which had just been placed before them with regard to the forthcoming exhibition, had not been available for the use of some of the committees who had been working for the success of the greatest sections of the exhibition. The organising of exhibits of the chemical and pharmaceutical arts of this country had not been an easy task, and he questioned whether competent persons, would have been found to undertake it, had the exact nature of it been known beforehand. If exceptional facilities had not been granted by the Royal Commission, probably no good result would have been achieved. The subcommittee had been stimulated throughout by a strong feeling that the St. Louis Exhibition would afford an opportunity of giving proof of the estimation in which British manufactures were commonly held abroad, and especially on the continent of Europe. It had been felt that to some extent the character of British chemical exhibits at recent exhibitions justified the somewhat contemptuous attitude of mind which had been entertained towards them on the part of foreign competitors. But the sub-committee felt satisfied that the character of those recent exhibits was simply the outcome of British apathy, and not of British industrial decadence. The sub-committee had set themselves to demonstrate that this country afforded exceptional advantages in the conduct and development of chemical industry. He believed that the exhibits would speak for themselves.

Mr. IMRE KIRALFY said that he believed that he was one of the first who saw the plans of the exhibition buildings, and he made some suggestions with regard to them; which had all been accepted. He hoped that the directors of the exhibition would meet with the great success which they so thoroughly deserved.

Mr. JOSEPH PENNELL said that Mr. Parker had not made enough of the point that in the two great exhibitions held in America there was an idea which was, he believed, the outcome of a great conference among artists, architects, builders, and Mr. Kiralfy. The idea was a definite one, and the idea which was carried out at Chicago was that of making the whole exhibition a beautiful picture, and this was carried out successfully. Any spectator standing with his back to the United States building

at the Chicago exhibition, and looking across the great lake at the statue of the Republic gilded by the sunset, saw a picture such as Claude had never imagined, even in his most gorgeous conceptions. He (Mr. Pennell) never realised what a rotten thing photography was for representing such a picture until he saw the photographs which had just been shown on the screen. Those pictures could give no idea of the reality. The feature in one of the photographs which looked like a little filagree was the great source of all the water in the exhibition grounds, backed up by a great pine wood. The various buildings for the electrical department, the educational department, the liberal arts department, and the others were grouped so that they went down like a series of steps one below another. The walk downwards was an easy one, and at the bottom there were arrangements for taking people upwards to the higher part. The St. Louis Exhibition would, he believed, form the finest pictorial composition ever made in this world.

The CHAIRMAN said that when he saw the series of very interesting pictures that were thrown upon the screen, the one thought which struck him was the extraordinary debt that America owed to the old world. The inspiration of the whole of the buildings was either French or, to a modified and less extent, English, and the ultimate aspiration of them all was Greek. There was no indication whatever of the Gothic taste, and if American literature, and the general scope of the American genius were examined, this would not be surprising. The genius of the art of Greece was, so to speak, the creation of a master-mind, carried out to a great extent, by people working mechanically under him. Gothic art, on the contrary, was entirely the creation of individual workmen. He noticed in American art a distinct tendency towards the Greek taste. It was a very interesting thing to Europeans to observe the extraordinary way in which all the American ideas in the field of architecture had been taken from the old world. This showed how small, after all, was the inventive power of man. The cathedrals and classical buildings of this country, and of the other countries of Europe were, after all, adaptations of the art of Greece, a small country which, at the time it produced its art, had hardly emerged from barbarism. The thought of the little that modern European nations had been able to add to what had been handed down to them from their ancestors made one feel small. One thing which caused a great deal of trouble in America was the tariff question. Who was going to buy electrical machinery in England if he had to pay 60 per cent. of the value as an import duty upon taking the articles into the United States. No doubt the rest of the civilized world must deplore the fact of the tariffs imposed by the United States. He believed that those tariffs would prove ultimately, disastrous for America. It would be better if agri

culture, rather than the industrial arts, was first developed as the basis of trade, and for that reason he regarded a prohibitive tariff as most deplorable. Canada was proceeding on slower lines than the United States in that respect by first developing its agriculture, and would find the advantage of that course. He should be glad if the Americans could see their way to abate their import tariff a little in favour of goods coming to the St. Louis Exhibition, and if the railway companies and hotel keepers would make a substantial reduction in favour of persons residing in Europe visiting the exhibition. It was desirable that as many members of the committees as possible should go over to St. Louis to observe what was to be seen at the exhibition. He did not think that England and the other countries of Europe had ever given a better example of their thorough goodwill to the United States than they had given by the amount of money which they had expended in promoting the coming exhibition, for it must be remembered that tariffs nearly killed European trade, and that England, France, and Germany were likely to gain but very little from the holding of the exhibition.

Mr. G. F. PARKER, in reply, said that he had purposely abstained from saying anything on the point to which Mr. Pennell had alluded, because he knew that Mr. Pennell was coming to the meeting, and would have an opportunity of speaking on it. As to tariffs, the subject was beyond his comprehension, and was certainly beyond his power of discussion. With regard to the cost of reaching St. Louis from different parts, he believed that the railway companies were competing with one another to give the lowest rates from the seashore to that city; and the people of St. Louis had taken in hand the work of preventing extortion being practised upon the visitors. He believed that there would be some assurance that visitors would be fairly treated and not robbed, either on the ocean or on the railways, and that they would get the worth of their money whatever they saw fit to spend.

Miscellaneous.

THE NEWCOMEN ENGINE.*

A great deal has been written on the steam-engine generally, but the author has not met with any connected record of the invention and construction of the first steam-engine the atmospheric engine of Newcomen. Unfortunately, it does not appear that very detailed information is available. There are not

Abstract of a paper read before the Institution of Mechanical Engin ers, by Mr. Henry Davey (from Nature).

many examples of the engine now in existence, and when they are consigned to the scrap heap, the receptacle of great efforts of the past, all will perhaps be forgotten.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, philosophers and mathematicians searched for a new method of obtaining motive power. Mining was an important industry requiring in most cases a new power, that the mines might be worked to greater depths. Water-power, where available, was often insufficient, and manual and animal power was altogether too small and too expensive for working any but shallow mines. Deep mining was, and is, only possible with pumping machinery. Water-wheels were used for working pumps. The construction of the common pump was known. Papin had proposed to transmit power by means of pistons moving in cylinders acted on by the atmosphere, a vacuum having been formed under the pistons by the explosion of gunpowder, and he even hinted that it might be done by steam.

It was claimed for Papin that he invented the steam-engine, because in 1685, in one of his letters, he illustrated what was known of the properties of steam by saying that if water was put in the bottom of a cylinder under a piston, and the cylinder be put on a fire, the water would evaporate and raise the piston, and that if, after the piston had been raised, the cylinder were removed from the fire and cooled, the steam would condense and the piston would descend; but this was only an illustration of common knowledge. Sir Samuel Morland had, in 1683, stated* that steam occupied about two thousand times the space of the water from which it was produced, and made some calculations as to the powers to be obtained from different sized cylinders, but suggested no practical mode of operation. An experiment to determine the density of steam was made by John Payne in 1741. Payne concluded, as the result of his experiments, published in the Phil. Trans., vol. xli. p. 821, that one cubic inch of water formed 4,000 cubic inches of steam. Beighton calculated, from an experiment with the Griff engine, the second New comen engine erected, that the specific volume of steam was 2893.

The properties of steam were, probably, no better known to philosophers than to the ordinary observer who had seen the lid of a kettle dance under pressure, or steam issue from the spout. The only practical application of steam was made by Savery, who, in 1696, described his invention in a pamphlet entitled "The Miner's Friend." Savery's engine was a pistonless steam pump-in fact, the pulsometer of to-day without its automatic action. It remained for Newcomen to associate the bits of common knowledge in his mind for inventing the steamengine. He was a blacksmith, probably accustomed to invent methods of construction in the prosecution of his art. At that time mechanics were more self

• See Tredgold's "Steam Engine."

He knew from experience

reliant than they are now. what a lever was, a pump, a piston, a cylinder, a boiler, and he knew that the atmosphere had pressure, and that steam possessed a far greater volume than the water which produced it. It did not require much more than common knowledge and observation to realise that. To produce the steam-engine from such known facts required invention. Philosophers probably knew what might be done, but Newcomen had the advantage of seeing what could be done, and he did it. The engine, when produced, was imperfect, but defects became obvious to the designers and constructors of steam-engines, and the want of perfection at the present day is not from want of theory, but because of practical limitations and want of practical invention.

At this distance of time it is difficult to appreciate the invention required to produce the atmospheric engine from the crude ideas of Papin and others. It appears, from papers in possession of the Royal Society, that Dr. Hooke had demonstrated the impracticability of Papin's scheme, and, in a letter addressed to Newcomen, advised him not to attempt to make a machine on that principle, adding, however, that if Papin could produce a speedy vacuum, his work would be done. A great deal of controversy hangs about this as about all things historical, and little is to be gained by minute research into disputed claims. What we do with certainty know is, that with the common knowledge existing, and the mechanical contrivances available, Newcomen alone succeeded in making a workable engine.

In 1698, Thomas Savery, of London, obtained a patent for raising water by the elasticity of steam.* It is stated in many popular histories that in 1705 Thomas Newcomen, John Cawley, of Dartmouth, and Thomas Savery, of London, secured a patent for "condensing the steam introduced under a piston and producing a reciprocating motion by attaching it to a lever," but no record of such a patent exists in the Patent Office. Stuart gives a list of patents commencing with 1698, and in that list is one said to have been granted in 1705. Dr. Pole, author of "The Cornish Engine," had a search made at the Patent Office and no such record could be found. It is possible that Savery's patent was thought to cover Newcomen's invention (as Savery was associated with Newcomen). This was sixty-four years before Watt invented his separate condenser. Very little is known of Newcomen. It is recorded that he was a blacksmith or ironmonger residing at Dartmouth, in Devonshire, and that he was employed by Savery to do some work in connection with his water-raising

Savery was born at Shilston, near Modbury, in Devonshire, in 1650; died in London 1715.

+ It appears that there is every reason to believe that Newcomen had no patent, and that his invention was supposed to be covered by Savery's patent of 1698, and that the latter was kept in force for thirty-five years, the original patent having been extended for twenty-one years.

engines. In this way he had some experience in the condensation of steam.*

He

Newcomen appears to have conceived the idea of using a piston for giving motion to pumps. He became associated with John Cawley, a glazier of Dartmouth, probably for business reasons. His connection with Savery was doubtless because of Savery's patent for condensing steam for raising water. must, however, have been a good mechanic, because the construction of such an engine at a time when there was no previous experience or data to guide him was a task of no ordinary magnitude. He could not get workmen skilful enough to do his work until, erecting an engine near Dudley in 1712, he secured the assistance of mechanics from Birmingham.

The Newcomen engine was soon brought into use, for in 1712 Newcomen, through the acquaintance of Mr. Potter, of Bromsgrove, erected an engine, near Dudley Castle, for a Mr. Back, of Wolverhampton. The cylinder of this engine was surrounded with water. The piston was packed and had a water seal. It is reported that by accident a hole in the piston admitted water into the cylinder, and the condensation thereby became so rapid compared with that produced by cooling the cylinder from the outside that the engine worked much quicker. This may or may not be correct, but it is certain that, by accident or design, the first improvement in the engine was condensation by injection in the cylinder. It appears that the second engine was erected at the Griff Colliery, in Warwickshire, in 1715. It had a 22-inch cylinder. At this time the cocks and valves were all worked by hand, but automatic devices were soon introduced. The first appears to be that of actuating the injection-cock by means of a buoy in a pipe connected to the cylinder. Desaguliers thus describes the apparatus :-"They used to work with a buoy in the cylinder enclosed in a pipe, which buoy rose when the steam was strong and opened the injection and made the stroke." It is said that a boy, Humphrey Potter†, added a catch or "scoggan" which the beam opened, and by this means the speed of the engine was increased from 8 or 10 to 15 strokes per minute.

Among the first erectors of the Newcomen engine were the Hornblowers, in Cornwall. Newcomen visited Mr. Potter, of Bromsgrove, aud erected an engine near Dudley Castle in 1712. This is the historical engine in which injection in the cylinder was first used. In the vicinity lived Joseph Hornblower, an engineer who became acquainted with Newcomen's engine, and who was sent for into Cornwall about 1720 to 1725 to erect an atmospheric engine at Wheel Rose Mine, near Truro.

⚫ Newcomen was born at Dartmouth, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and died in London in 1729. It is stated in Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates" that he was in London trying to secure a patent. A sketch of the house in Dartmouth occupied by Newcomen, when he invented the steam-engine, is shown in a pamphlet published in 1869 for Mr. Thomas Lidstone, of Dartmouth.

+ See Stuart's "History of the Steam Engine."

From 1720 to 1740 few engines were erected in Cornwall because of the high duty on sea-borne coal. In 1741, an Act of Parliament was passed for the remission of the duty on coal for fire-engines for draining tin and copper mines in the county of Cornwall. The effect of the passing of this Act was that, by the year 1758, many engines had been brought into use; one engine at Herland had a 70-inch cylinder.

The steam-engine has held its own as a prime mover for two centuries. The gas-engine has now become a more efficient heat-engine, and a powerful competitor, and electricity has become an economical transmitter of power.

Heat, electricity, and mechanical work are mutually convertible. The time may come when heat may be converted into electric current with as little loss as that involved in the conversion of electric current into mechanical work; when that time comes, the heat efficiency of the prime mover will exceed that of the gas-engine in a greater degree than the gas-engine has exceeded that of the steam-engine.

SCOTTISH MINERAL OIL TRADE.

It is a chronic peculiarity of the Scottish mineral oil industry to be prosperous when other trades are dull, and to be unhappy when all other trades are booming. One reason for this is that the main factors in the cost of production by the destructive distillation of oil shale are coal and labour, both of which are apt to be dear in busy commercial times, and vice-versa. But it so happens that at present the Scottish industry is not benefiting particularly by cheap labour, and has, indeed, just come out of a sharp struggle which looked for a time uncommonly like becoming a prolonged labour war. It is true that coal is now comparatively cheap, but the real cause of the prosperity this time is an advance in the prices of its products caused by its own competitors. These competitors are the Standard Oil Company of the United States and the two great producing and exporting oil syndicates of Russia. The Standard Oil Company is probably the wealthiest and most influential industrial organisation in the world, but it cannot control the operations of Nature, as it can the railroad and steamboat companies, and the stream of distribution. It has not been able to prevent a shrinkage in the yield from the Pennsylvania oil wells, which produce not only the best burning oil in America, but which also give forth a crude oil which yields the largest supply of solid paraffin, or "scale," of any of the mineral oils of America. Hence, the Standard Oil Company have had to raise their price for "scale" in the European markets, and latterly to practically retire from the British markets, which they have been accustomed to divide (on their own terms) with the Scotch paraffin oil makers. Therefore, the Scotch companies have been enabled to get a large advance upon last year for their wax, or "scale "—

which is used for candle-making and match-making chiefly and will probably get a still further advance before the oil year expires at March 31st next.

The Pennyslvanian mineral oil is practically the only competitor the Scotch companies have in this product. The other mineral oils of America yield only a small proportion of this solid material, and the Russian natural oils do not yield it at all. But the Russian companies are the chief competitors of the Scotch companies in the sale of lamp oil in the British Isles. Once upon a time it was American petroleum that drowned out Scottish paraffin oil. Nowadays it is Russian oil that rules our markets, especially in Ireland and Scotland. And the competition between the two great Russian syndicates to obtain the sole control of these markets has during the last year or two depressed the price of burning oil to a point unremunerative to the Scotch companies, who distil it not from natural oil, but from a mineral substance like slatey coal. The Russian companies are now tired of this profitless competition. Last week the export price at Baku was raised by eight kopecks per pood, and crude naphtha was raised to ten kopecks, on account of the restricted output. During the first nine months of this year the yield was about 20 million poods less than in the corresponding period of last year, and it has been still further reduced by the stoppage of a number of wells which are the subject of litigation. Following upon this the Caucasian Petroleum Export Company have advanced the price of their lamp oil to 6d. per gallon delivered in this country. Selling upon this basis the Scotch companies will obtain fully one halfpenny per gallon more for their paraffin (burning) oil than they did last year. They will not get this advance for the whole season's make, because the contract season begins in August, and no doubt some contracts have been made for winter delivery at the old price. But the companies were not eager sellers, because they were looking for an advance in Russian oil, and also because in September and October they were in the midst of a wages dispute with their shale miners which threatened to suspend the whole industry for an indefinite period. These men who mine the shale on which the whole industry depends, claimed not only an advance in wages (and they were already earning about a shilling a day more than their fellowworkers in the adjacent and more hazardous coal pits), but to be rated hereafter in relation to the fortunes of the oil industry, and not as miners. To this the oil companies could not consent, because there is but one labour market in so far as mining is concerned in Scotland, and to make a new market for shale miners would be, in the long run, as disadvantageous to the men as to the employers. A general strike was only averted by a reference of the claim of the shale miners for an advance to the arbitration of Sheriff Jameson, and the case is still awaiting his decision as we write. Into the merits of the dispute we need not enter just now. Suffice it that a very disastrous strike has been averted at a

time when the fortunes of the Scotch oil companies are more promising than they have been for many years.

The advantage to be gained in paraffin oil from the advance in Russian petroleum is to a large extent prospective. But in another respect Russia competes with Scotland, and that is in certain qualities of heavy oils used for machinery and lubricating purposes. These oils were held down all

last year by the fierce competition of two Russian syndicates, but this year these syndicates have come under a compact not to sell under certain fixed standard rates. On the basis of this arrangement the Scotch companies are, and have been for some time, receiving about 30s. per ton more than last year for their production of this particular class of oils. In other classes of heavy oils the chief competitor of the Scotch companies is the Standard Oil Company of America. But these oils of the Standard Company are extracted mainly from the crude oil of the Pennsylvania wells, and are, consequently, reduced by the shortage of those wells. Hence the Standard Company have had to restrict their sales and raise their prices, so that on their production of equivalent oils, the Scotch companies are obtaining about 40s. per ton more than last year. In naphtha, another important product, an advance of about d. per gallon is being realised. In sulphate of ammonia, of which the Scotch oil companies make a great deal, but of which neither the American nor the Russian companies are producers, an advance was being obtained earlier in the season of first £1 155. and then I per ton over the agerage of last year. The price is now down again to about the average, but the net results of the current year in this item must show a considerable improvement on last year.

On the whole, with the higher prices which are being realised for the principal products, the Scotch oil companies should be able, when the accounts are made up in March and April next, to show an increase of fully £200,oco in the year's earnings. They will doubtless also be able to show some further savings in the costs of manufacture, but not very much need be expected under this heading, because during the past two or three years all the resources of their scientific attainments and technical experience have been taxed to the utmost in order to make ends meet under low markets. But some appreciable saving should be effected in coal and in general material. On the other hand, labour is even now costing as much as last year, and is more likely to be higher than lower as the oil year advances. There are fully four months of the oil year yet to run, and, of course, much may happen in that time, but from present appearances one may count both on larger dividends and on material improvement in the financial and industrial condition of the companies when accounts are next squared. The prospect is, indeed, so good that there is now a project to reconstruct the long derelict and never very prosperous Burntisland Oil

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