Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/103



John Farey, Esq. 10 August, 1831. has been very striking in the case of the invention of means of ascertaining the Longitude at sea. Another way would be, instead of money, to give exclusive privileges for a term to any persons who should first succeed in establishing Steam Coaches on specified roads, under specified conditions of performance; or a Society offering a premium, as was done in the case of Steam Navigation to India, would have a good effect; as was also shown in the case of the locomotive Steam Carriages on the railway between Liverpool and Manchester. There a most inadequate premium (only 500l.) brought the invention forward more than ten following years of desultory and unencouraged attempts would have done.

You think those means would produce a great effect?—have no doubt of it; an important result may often be within a moderate sum of attainment, and yet a prudent man will not set about it. It will be certain to cost 1,000l. and a year's hard labour of an engineer, whose time is worth 3001, more, to make a new Steam Carriage in a proper manner, and bring it to bear as a business, supposing that its performance turns out as near to previous calculation, according to the experimental Coaches now in existence as can be expected, and that no radical alterations require to be afterwards made in it. After succeeding in the attempt, be must expect to make copies of it on the same terms as other makers, who would examine one of the first Coaches he sends out, and copy it with very little trouble. The operation of competent mechanicians in making first machines of new invention, and bringing them to perfection in all their details, are necessarily more expensive than those of first inventors, who execute their experimental machines in a slovenly manner with cheap workmanship only as experiments; but when those experiments have been gone through, an extreme soundness and accuracy of workmanship is the only chance of attaining success in the machines which are sent out for real business. For went of experience to direct the mechanician as to the right form, dimensions and weight of each piece of his machine, it often happens that after having made