Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/76

66 engine into two parts; using one part as a steam-boiler, and the other as a separate water-vessel.

Savery duplicated those parts of the earlier engine which acted the several parts of pump, steam-cylinder, and condenser, and added the use of the jet of water to effect rapid condensation.

Newcomen and Cawley next introduced the modern type of engine, and separated the pump from the steam-engine proper: in their engine, as in Savery's, we notice the use of surface-condensation first; and, subsequently, that of a jet of water thrown into the midst of the steam to be condensed.

Watt finally effected the crowning improvement of the single cylinder-engine, and completed this movement of differentiation by separating the condenser from the steam-cylinder, thus perfecting the general structure of the engine.

Here this movement ceased, the several important processes of the steam-engine now being conducted each in a separate vessel. The boiler furnished the steam; the cylinder derived from it mechanical power; the vapor was finally condensed in a separate vessel; while the power, which had been obtained from it in the steam-cylinder, was transmitted through still other parts to the pumps, or wherever work was to be done.

Watt also took the initiative in another direction: He continually increased the efficiency of the machine by improving the proportions of its parts and the character of its workmanship; and thus made it possible to render available many of those improvements in detail which are only useful when the parts can be skillfully made.

Watt and his contemporaries also commenced that movement toward higher pressures of steam, used with greater expansion, which has been the most striking feature noticed in the progress of the steam-engine since his time. Newcomen used steam of barely more than atmospheric pressure, and raised 105,000 pounds of water one foot high, with a pound of coal consumed. Smeaton raised the steam-pressure to eight pounds, and increased the duty to 120,000. Watt started with a duty of double that of Newcomen, and raised it 320,000 foot-pounds per pound of coal, with steam at ten pounds. To-day, Cornish engines of the same general plan as those of Watt, but worked with forty to sixty pounds of steam, and expanding three to six times, do a duty that will probably average, with good ordinary engines, 600,000 foot-pounds per pound of coal.

The increase of steam-pressure and expansion which has been seen since Watt's time has been accompanied by a very great improvement in workmanship, a consequence of rapid increase in the perfection and the wide range of adaptation of machine-tools, of higher skill and intelligence in designing engines and boilers, increased piston-speed, greater care in obtaining dry steam, and in keeping it dry until thrown out of the cylinder—either by superheating, or by steam-jacketing, or