"Steam engine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and here and there the yawning cavern swallows the ill-fated inhabitants that dwell upon its surface; the lightning's stroke blasts in a moment, and cuts the threads of life without any warning; and the steam engine destroy their thousands in a year; and the winds and the waves conspire to people the dark caves of ocean with the dead. These, and a thousand other avenues, lead to death, bearing terror in their course, and heralding their approach by ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... this have made on Lenin? Could he not have felt: "Perhaps Napoleon's logic was good at that time but now with electricity, the steam engine and modern industrialism it will be possible to do without the efficiency of capitalism and hence with its inequalities and egoism? If so then we can recreate the equality dreamt of by Babeuf, Robespierre, Saint Just and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... drain, empty; disperse &c 73. cast away, fool away, muddle away, throw away, fling away, fritter away; burn the candle at both ends, waste; squander &c 818. waste its sweetness on the desert air [Gray]; cast one's bread upon the waters, cast pearls before swine; employ a steam engine to crack a nut, waste powder and shot, break a butterfly on a wheel; labor in vain &c (useless) 645; cut blocks with a razor, pour water into a sieve. leak &c (run out) 295; run to waste; ebb; melt away, run dry, dry ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... . . . Byron is a steam engine producing a rebellious energy; a lord who was dissatisfied in England and dissatisfied in Venice with Suiciolla, for although he had a warm climate and money he was bored. He is a rebel-individualist, a strong, passionate monster; a lord who is always seething with ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... improvement in the separation of cotton-fibre from its seed, known as the "cotton-gin"—which with the almost simultaneous inventions of Hargreaves, and Arkwright's cotton-spinning machines, and Watt's application of his steam engine, etc., to them, marvelously increased both the cotton supply and demand and completely revolutionized the cotton industry—contributed to rapidly and thickly populate the whole region with white Slave-holders and black Slaves, and to greatly enrich ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... discussion."[151] An attorney recently from the East witnessed this familiarity with dismay. "The judge of our circuit," he wrote, "is S.A. Douglas, a youth of 28.... He is a Vermonter, a man of considerable talent, and, in the way of despatching business, is a perfect 'steam engine in breeches.' ... He is the most democratic judge I ever knew.... I have often thought we should cut a queer figure if one of our Suffolk ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... briskly. "Puh! Longer! Much longer!" He smiled with satisfaction. "I estimate that the Nipe race first invented the steam engine not less than ten million years ago." He kept smiling into the dead silence ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would still be inefficient. The philosophy of the thing might be understood, but the practice would be as far off as ever. In life, as in art, and as in mechanics, the only profitable teaching is the teaching by example. Your mathematician, or your man of science, may discourse excellently on the steam engine, yet he cannot make one; he cannot make a bolt or a screw. The master workman in the engine-room does not teach his apprentice the theory of expansion, or of atmospheric pressure; he guides his hand upon the turncock, he practises his eye upon ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Victoria the 'industrial revolution,' the vast development of manufacturing made possible in the latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction of coal and the steam engine, had rendered England the richest nation in the world, and the movement continued with steadily accelerating momentum throughout the period. Hand in hand with it went the increase of population from less than ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Charles the Second. In consideration of these services he was created a baronet of Sulhamstead Banister, Berks, after the Restoration. He was an ingenious mechanic, supposed by some persons to have invented the Steam Engine, and lived to an advanced age.] In the afternoon a council of war, only to acquaint them that the Harp must be taken out of all their flags, it being very offensive to the King. Late at night we writ letters to the King of the news of our coming, and Mr. Edward Pickering carried them. [Sir ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... mankind.—By a judicious application of the scissors of discrimination, the soap of good nature, the brush of reform, and the razor of decision, he expects to bring about results which, like powers of the Steam Engine are, as yet, only dreamed of. The grace of the Athenian beau and the dignity of the Roman senator shall be so intermingled in the grand contour of all who submit to his touch, that the toute ensemble cannot fail to kindle love ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... will pick up strength like a steam engine now. Here, let me prop you against this tree. That's better. Now drink a drop of this tea; it's like nectar after that filthy water we have been drinking. Now you will feel better. Now you must try and eat a little of this chicken and ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... production of power from crude oil at a cost of one-eighth of a penny to a farthing per horse-power, far beyond the economy of any other form of engine and five times cheaper than the ordinary steam engine. Its only rival was water-power—and water-power ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... suitable heat engines to produce the motions we require. It is probably to this circumstance that we must attribute the slowness of the human race to take advantage of the energy of combustion. The history of the steam engine hardly dates back 200 years, a very small fraction of the centuries during which man has existed, even since ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... the Iroquois, by them called the Long House, because it had reached from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and in their day had been well roofed with foliage. Here the travelers got their first view of a steam engine. The latter stood puffing and smoking near the village of Utica, to the horror and amazement of the team and the great excitement of those in the wagon. The boy clung to his father ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... heart pumps so much more blood up inside your body," explained Daddy Blake. "Our blood is just the same to our bodies as coal is to a steam engine. The more coal the fireman puts under the boiler (that is if it all burn well, and there is a good draft) the hotter the fire is, and the more ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... already indicated, the energy of the body is supplied through the food and the oxygen. These contain energy in the potential form, which becomes kinetic (active) through their uniting with each other in the body. Somewhat as the power of the steam engine is derived from the combustion of fuel in the furnaces, the energy of the body is supplied through the oxidations at the cells. How the food and oxygen come to possess energy is seen by a study of the general methods by which energy ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... ahead there appeared a strange object, coming straight toward them. It sounded something like a steam engine. "Chug, chug, chug, chug," ...
— Prince and Rover of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... velocity making up for the absence of defensive weapons; for it has been shown that all varieties in which an unbalanced deficiency occurred could not long continue their existence. The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident; and in like manner no unbalanced deficiency in the animal kingdom can ever reach any conspicuous magnitude, because it would make itself felt at the very first step, by rendering existence difficult and extinction almost ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... clothing consumed by the labourer, the buildings in which he works, the implements with which his labour is assisted, are all of a perishable value. There is, however, a vast difference in the time for which all these different capitals will endure. A steam engine will last longer than a ship, a ship than the clothing of the labourer, and the clothing of the labourer than the food which he consumes." (Principles of Political Economy, 1817, p. 22.) The last sentence ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... stout iron plate perforated with numerous small holes, and is supported by iron bars which connect the ends of the roll, having intervals between them of about one inch. Each roll is covered by an endless band of hair cloth, stretched over and kept in place by rollers. The rolls are operated by a steam engine of 12 horse power. The fresh peat is thrown into a hopper, and passing between the rolls, loses a considerable share of its water, issuing as a broad continuous sheet, which is divided into blocks by an arrangement presently to be described. The cloth, covering ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... himself in the moon, and to the moon appropriately he goes. Mediaevalism can hardly be called anything but a rather enfeebling dream. If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication. You would be drawn by the steam engine to lecture against steam; you would send eloquent invectives against printing to the press, and you would be subsisting meanwhile on the interest of investments which the Middle Ages would have condemned as usury. If you were like some ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... on the 29th of May, 1767. At the age of twenty, he was admitted to the School of Bridges and Roads, where he soon distinguished himself by his ingenious and investigating turn of mind. His first labors were in connection with the steam engine, then in its infancy, and on April 18, 1792, the young engineer obtained a national award of $400 to continue the experiments that he had begun on the improvement ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... proposed. On the first attempt to frame a resolution; to crowd a complete thought, clearly and concisely, into three lines; they felt as helpless and hopeless as if they had been suddenly asked to construct a steam engine. And the humiliating fact may as well now be recorded that before taking the initiative step, those ladies resigned themselves to a faithful perusal of various masculine productions. The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were examined, but all alike seemed too tame and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... started on the subject of her wrongs, and hurried on before Elsie could stop her, with all the energy of a belated steam engine. Elizabeth had walked into the other room, and Victoria took that opportunity to pour out her sorrows with the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... hand, quire mano de obra, labour manta, blanket manteca (S. America, mantequilla), butter manteca de puerco, lard mantener, to maintain, to hold up mantenerse, to maintain oneself, to be maintained manzana, apple manana, to-morrow, the morning maquina a vapor, steam engine maquinaria, machinery mar alborotada, heavy sea maravillar, to surprise maravillarse, to wonder marca, mark, brand marcharse, to go away margarina, margarine marido, husband mariscos, shell fish ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... otherwise, in exact proportion to the artist's wisdom and dynamic mentality, and is useless in the hands of the idiotic or weak-minded. A Magic Wand requires brains and vigorous mental force to make it effective, just as the steam engine requires an apparatus for generating the steam, that moves it. With a determined will, and a mental conception of one's inward power, any man or woman can, by means of this sensitive Wand, defy all the legionaries of Hell, and quickly disperse every ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... following year he constructed seven hundred feet of the stone pier on the east side of the Cuyahoga river mouth. The first thing done in the latter work was the driving of spiles. Mr. Johnson became dissatisfied with the old system of driving spiles by horse-power, and purchased a steam engine for four hundred dollars. Making a large wooden wheel he rigged it after the style of the present spile-drivers, and in the course of two or three weeks, had the satisfaction of seeing the spiles driven with greatly increased speed ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Burleigh, hold on a minute," Trench, the right guard, called, as Vic was striding up the steep south slope of the limestone ridge. "Say, wind a fellow, will you! You infernal, never-wear-out, human steam engine. I'm on to some things you ought to know. Even a lazy old scout like I am gets a crack at ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... life to select my own subjects, and write without care for remuneration. This is what I call the true (and, perhaps, alas! the rare) independence of him who devotes himself to letters. Norreys, having seen my boyish plan for the improvement of certain machinery in the steam engine, insisted on my giving much time to mechanics. The study that once pleased me so greatly now seemed dull; but I went into it with good heart; and the result is, that I have improved so far on my ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... account, of itself in times past; and would again if called to show its sterling qualities. And with this in the hands of Thad Brewster, who was a perfectly fearless chap, according to his churns, who did not know that his boy heart could hammer in his breast like a runaway steam engine, why, they surely ought to be able to ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... together, however, at last, and then follows the excitement of the trial. There is nothing more striking in the history of the construction of a steam engine than this, that there can be no partial or private tests of the work by the workmen in the course of its progress—but every thing remains in suspense until all is complete, and the ship and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... improved method of fire fighting in Southern cities—before the steam engine, the hook and ladder and water tower companies supplanted the old hand pump and bucket companies, the Negro was the chief fire fighter, and there was nothing that tended more to make fire fighting a pleasant pastime than those old volunteer organizations. For many years ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... policeman on the corner, and waved my hand reassuringly at him merely to show that I was not fleeing from Justice. Talk about fast running! I actually surprised myself. I caught up with the car just as it was turning that curve on High Street, and floundered into it, puffing like a steam engine. I made one dash past the conductor, reached the seat where my cherished umbrella still reposed and captured it. The conductor must have thought me hopelessly demented, for I dashed out as the car stopped at the next corner without having paid a cent of carfare or offered ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... so light that they develop two horse power for every pound of their weight; while, to keep the frames thin, the necessary power is obtained by terrific speed of the moving parts, as though a steam engine, to avoid great pressure in its cylinders, had a long stroke and ran at great piston speed, which, however, is no disadvantage to the rotary motion of the electric motor, there being no reciprocating cranks, etc., that must be started and stopped ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... STRAP.—A simple and convenient form of structure, intended to furnish a reciprocating motion where a crank is not available. An illustration of its use is shown on certain types of steam engine to ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... fisheries productive in the highest degree; its banking a model of efficiency and public usefulness; its roads equal to the best roads in England or in Europe. The people are active and energetic, alike in education, in trade, in manufactures, in construction, in invention. Watt's invention of the steam engine, and Symington's invention of the steam-boat, proved a source of wealth and power, not only to their own country, but to the world at large; while Telford, by his roads, bound England and Scotland, before separated, firmly into one, and rendered the union a source ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... which was not powerful enough, was replaced by a 14-horse power "semi-portable" steam engine, by Ransomes & Co., of Ipswich—an engine of sufficient power to drive double the required number of lights. The dynamo machine is a No. 7 Brush. There are sixteen lamps in all—eight on each side of the court. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... painful shyness stealing over her and wished that David were by her side. She looked across the room at him. His face had recovered its usual calmness, though he looked pale. He was talking on his favorite theme with old Mr. Heath: the newly invented steam engine and its possibilities. He had forgotten everything else for the time, and his face lighted with animation as he tried to answer ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... is done, has to feed his horses through the winter. If he said to his horses: 'Quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you; but work exists abundantly over the world: you are ignorant (or must I read you Political Economy pictures) that the steam engine always in the long-run creates additional work? Railways are forming in one quarter of this earth, canals in another, much cartage is wanted; somewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, doubt it not, ye will find cartage, and good go with you!' They with protrusive upper lip ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... walked out o' the room as though she was steppin' on the necks of the airy-stockracy. She went to the office, an' after a couple o' minutes I follered her, expectin' to cheer her up a bit; but she wasn't mournin' none; she was workin' like a steam engine, with her face cold an' white except for a little patch o' red in each cheek; an' when she raised her eyes to mine I knew 'at the ol' man had gone a ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... second Marquess, was the author of the celebrated "Century of Inventions," in which the first hint of the steam engine appeared, which he calls "By divine providence, and heavenly inspiration, a stupendous water commanding engine, boundless for height or quantity;" and so delighted was he at the discovery of what he terms "The most stupendous work in the whole world," that he returned thanks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... thrifty aunt was shocked to find her nephew engaged in so profitless an occupation, and soundly scolded him for what she called his trifling. The good lady little dreamed that James Watt was even then unconsciously studying the germ of the science by which he "transformed the steam engine from a mere toy into the most wonderful instrument which human industry has ever had at ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... distant as to be beyond the remembrance of many still living, a clear-headed North-countryman, on the banks of the Tyne, was working out, in spite of all opposition, the great problem of adapting the steam engine to railway locomotion. Buoyed up by an almost prophetic confidence in his ultimate triumph over all obstacles, he continued to labor to complete an invention which promised the grandest benefits to mankind. What was thought ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... abolish writing to prevent forgery. We need to keep forever in mind that guilt is personal; if there is to be punishment let it fall on the evil-doer, let us not condemn the instrument. We need power. Is the steam engine too strong? Is electricity too swift? Can any prosperity be too great? Can any instrument of commerce or industry ever be too powerful to serve the public needs? What then of the anti-trust laws? They ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... of the steam engine, was one of the most industrious of men; and the story of his life proves, what all experience confirms, that it is not the man of the greatest natural vigor and capacity who achieves the highest results, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... James Watt. The Inventor of the Modern Steam Engine. With Selections from his Private Correspondence. By James P. Muirhead. Portrait ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Man's finest steam engine turns one-eighth of the energy supplied into work; nature's engine, muscle, turns one-third into work. The body contains 9 gallons of water, enough carbon to make 9,000 lead pencils, phosphorus for 8,000 boxes of matches, iron ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... dressed closely to the head, and a few curls allowed to hang on the shoulders. The length of the cross is three feet; color, light blue. On small pedestals, between the pulpit and the female figures, place models of the steam engine, steamboat, printing press, and telegraph. The tableau of Paganism must be first produced, after which the machinery should slowly revolve, bringing into the view the tableau of Christianity. The curtain ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... like the various bits of machinery which go to make up a steam engine. In performing their work they produce heat and motion. The fuel which supplies this force is taken into the body as food, prepared for use in the intestinal tract, and from there carried by the blood to be ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... rubber, that of packing for the steam engine and connecting machinery appears to have been the most important, as it has been an essential condition of the development and extended use of steam ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... machinery requires an occasional relaxation, as much as the steam engine does the application of oil to its divers springs; and, after a bona fide slumber, we rise with a freshness equal to that of flowers in the best regulated flower-pots. But dozing must not be confounded with legitimate sleep, though frequently tending ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... and diversified applications of the steam engine were most ably enforced in the speeches made at a public meeting held (June 1824) for the purpose of proposing the erection of a monument to the memory of James Watt; ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... System. The domestic period was in turn crowded out of existence by the factory system. A factory is a place where goods are produced by power for commercial use. The factory system first came into prominence after the invention of the steam engine. No record has been found showing its existence ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... ever known.] The chain which bound provincial China to the metropolitan government was therefore in the last analysis finance and nothing but finance; and if the system broke down in 1911 it was because financial reform—to discount the new forces of which the steam engine was the symbol—had been attempted, like military reform, both too late and in the wrong way, and instead of strengthening, had vastly weakened the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... as has just been stated, food may be considered as anything that the human engine can make over into tissue or use in living and working, not all foods are equally desirable any more than all materials are equally good in the construction of a steam engine and in the production of its working power. Those food substances which are the most wholesome and healthful are the ones to be chosen, but proper choice cannot be made unless the buyer knows of what the particular ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... untried experiment which I propose to make. I send you herewith, a medal of Franklin executed by us here, entirely by this process. The original was a medallion likeness of Franklin in burnt (p. 278) clay. All the rest was a purely mechanical operation, (the work being, in fact, done by a steam engine), except a little retouching, and the impression of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... of the sailing ship and the lumbering wagon dragging slowly over all but impassable roads, for one country to derive any considerable profit from another, it had, practically, to administer it politically. But the compound steam engine, the railway, the telegraph, have profoundly modified the elements of the whole problem. In the modern world political dominion is playing a more and more effaced role as a factor in commerce; the non-political ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... operate under conditions analogous to those under which the same parts of a steam engine do. The air pump sucks and forces nothing but cold air, and nothing but cold air passes through the distributing slide valve. The pump and valve are therefore rendered very durable. The piston and cylinder, at the points where friction exists, are at a temperature of 60 or 80 degrees. These ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... amusement was watching the coveys of flying-fish which rose every now and then from the ocean, and darted through the air, their bright scales glittering in the sun. Occasionally a whale spouted forth a jet of vapour and spray with a loud noise like that emitted by the safety valve of a steam engine; while albicores, bonitos; and dolphins, with various other fish, could be seen here and there, sporting and tumbling, as they came to the surface, sending a circle of wavelets extending far and wide around. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... thousand pounds to any one who could guess what it was; and though Bendigo Jones's pocket was helped considerably by his percentage of the gate money, his pride suffered considerably when the answers were made public. They ranged from, "Model of the first steam engine when out of control," to "An explosion of a ship at sea," both of which happy efforts gained a bag of nuts. The answer adjudged most nearly correct was sent in by a Fulham butcher, who banked on "Angry gentleman quarrelling ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... England and America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. These epoch-making inventions were the spinning jenny of Hargreaves, the spinning machine of Arkwright and the mule of Crompton, in combination with the steam engine, which turned, says John Richard Green, "Lancastershire into a hive of industry." And last, though not least in its direct and indirect effects on slavery, was the cotton gin of Eli Whitney, which formed the ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... loud, and who blames it. And you could see everything in the line of engines from the little half horse-power gas engine, about half the mair's strength, about cow power, mebby, and from this up to a steam turbin of eight thousand horse-power, a rotary steam engine. And in the Belgian exhibit wuz a gas engine of three thousand horse-power, a common sized horse can be driv through its cylinders, it takes about thirty tons of coal a day to run it. And there wuz a big French steam engine turnin' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... the escape valve of a steam engine, the mighty creature fell turning and twisting into the sea below, my arrow buried completely in its carcass. I turned toward the girl. She was looking past me. It was evident that she had seen the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fire-engines, which they offered to the London Fire Brigade for hire or purchase, and in the following year (1860) the Fire Brigade took one on hire for one year. This experiment proved so successful, that in 1861 the committee purchased, from Shand and Mason, the fourth steam engine of their construction. This, with one of the two made in 1859, were the only land steam engines that were at work at the Great Tooley ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... water in a steam boiler.—This lever, near its bearing, is connected to a short valve-rod, which governs the valves in a small valve-chamber, whereby the steam is occasionally admitted to operate a small steam engine, placed directly over the boiler; and this engine puts in motion a pump, by which the water in the boiler is replenished. This engine, it will be understood, is never put in operation except when the water in the boiler becomes too low: ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... feet high above the floor and 5 feet 6 inches wide at the floor line. Each blower is direct-connected to a two crank 7-1/2 x 13 x 6-1/2-inch upright, automatic, compound, steam engine of the self-enclosed type, and is to provide a sufficient amount of air to burn 10,000 pounds of combustible per hour with 2 inches of water pressure in the ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... in 1876, a prime mover is the central figure in the building. There it was the immense Corliss steam engine. Here it is a Diesel, started by President Wilson by wireless on the opening day, and generating all the direct current used in the palace. Another commanding exhibit is a 20,000 horsepower hydro-electric generator, significant of the modern use of water-power. The United States Government ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... remember somewhat vaguely, that precisely the same idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the road. A horseless carriage was a common idea. People had been talking about carriages without horses for many years back—in fact, ever since the steam engine was invented—but the idea of the carriage at first did not seem so practical to me as the idea of an engine to do the harder farm work, and of all the work on the farm ploughing was the hardest. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... imagination, with Wordsworth—far from it; for [his] is naturally exquisite, and highly cultivated by constant exercise. But I can see as many castles in the clouds as any man, as many genii in the curling smoke of a steam engine, as perfect a Persepolis in the embers of a sea-coal fire. My life has been spent in such day-dreams. But I cry no roast-meat. There are times a man should remember what Rousseau used to say: Tais-toi, Jean-Jacques, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the machine. The briquettes have a cross-section similar to an ellipse with the ends slightly cut off; they are about 1 in. thick and average about 1 lb. in weight (Fig. 2, Plate XX). The press is operated by a direct connection with a steam engine of 150 h.p., the base of which is continuous with that of the press. The exhaust steam from the engine is used to heat ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... the iron, travelling proudly over the shirt-collar, for it thought it was a steam engine and ought to be at the station ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear cold logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mower, the reaper, the thresher, the binder, the sulky plow, an infinite variety of mechanical contrivances to make the labor of the farmer easier, or rather to dispense with a multitude of laborers, and substitute in their places the horse, the mule and the steam engine. In other words, to convert the business of farming from an agricultural pursuit, where the labor of men and women was the chief factor of production, to a mechanical pursuit, in which the chief element of cost and power were machines, the invention ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... priest-ridden, have been brought across the ocean into republican America. They have been placed in this seemingly unpropitious Salt Lake country. There they have founded a city; they have erected factories and mills. The steam engine, the plow, and the sewing machine have aided them; and now, in place of a company of barbarous peasants, ignorant and benighted, and steeped in poverty, you find them transformed into energetic, intelligent citizens, surrounded with ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... out Cameron, as Tim bore down upon them, still in the lead and going like a small steam engine. "You're all right ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the little; the law that spheres a tear spheres a globe. That Nature is seen in leasts is an old Latin maxim. The soap bubble explains the rainbow. Steam from the boiling kettle gave Watt the key to the steam engine; but a tumbler of water throws no light on the sea, though its sweating may help ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... mother of invention. Struggle, sacrifice and burning midnight oil have produced the cotton gin, the sewing machine, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric motor, the telephone, the incandescent lamp and the other great inventions of civilization. Some religious enthusiasts think only of the "lilies of the fields" and forget the parable of ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... success at Devilshoof; and Benson could not help looking a little mortified, for Charlie was not very well off for tail, and had recollections of his harness days, which made him drop his head at times and pull like a steam engine; besides which, Harry—partly, perhaps, from motives of economy, partly, as he said, because he thought it snobbish to ride in handsome toggery—always mounted in the oldest clothes he had, and with a well-used bridle ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... died at his home in this city Dec. 6, 1867, at the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the purposes of commerce or war. For fifty-two years, with the exception ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... obstacles. All honor to the men who do not fear obstacles, but push them aside and press on. Stephenson was explaining his idea that a locomotive steam engine could run along a track and draw cars after it. "But suppose a cow gets on the track," some one objected. "So much the worse," said ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... and 1830 there had come a remarkable series of inventions which revolutionized the methods of making cloth. This series included the invention of the fly shuttle, the carding machine, the steam engine, and the power loom. The world began to look about for a cheaper and larger supply of fiber for weaving. It was found in the cotton plant, and the southern United States was especially adapted to its culture. The invention of the cotton ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... catastrophes that weigh most heavily on a woman in the provinces is that abrupt termination of her passion which is so often seen in England. In the country, a life under minute observation as keen as an Indian's compels a woman either to keep on the rails or to start aside like a steam engine wrecked by an obstacle. The strategies of love, the coquetting which form half the composition of a Parisian woman, are utterly ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... never had half a chance to develop the finer qualities of his nature—and he knew it. He was a tremendous worker and as an aggressive editor, an ambitious politician and an ardent reformer, driven like a steam engine, he could give little heed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but he was sensitive as a girl to rebuffs bringing to mind what might have been. Among friends with whom he felt at home ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... migrating barbarians, now by organized armies, now by the woolly flocks and guardian dogs of the nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of the itinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers, now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. Nowhere does history repeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountain gates. In the Pass of Roncesvalles, notching the western Pyrenees between Pamplona in Spain and St. Etienne in France, fell the army of Charlemagne surprised and beset ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the same mistake as men who, trying to set a steam engine in motion, should turn its wheels round with their hands, not suspecting that the underlying cause of its movement was the expansion of the steam, and not the motion of the wheels. By turning the wheels by hand and by levers they ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... to be done if I have to work like a steam engine!" she exclaimed to Grace, thrusting in and drawing out her needle with a rapidity that ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest, but Tamoszius has no mercy. The sweat starts out on his forehead, and he bends over like a cyclist on the last lap of a race. His body shakes and throbs like a runaway steam engine, and the ear cannot follow the flying showers of notes—there is a pale blue mist where you look to see his bowing arm. With a most wonderful rush he comes to the end of the tune, and flings up his hands and staggers ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, without toil; without grounding, without advance, without finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it; and this, forsooth, is the wonder of the age. What the steam engine does with matter, the printing press is to do with the mind; it is to act mechanically, and the population is to be passively, almost unconsciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes. Whether it be the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was," came the answer. "I saw you just in time. 'Tisn't often that an auto has to come to the help of a steam engine, but it happened this time," ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... electric energy. I gaze in at the windows as I pass and notice that it contains machines of the latest invention and highest attained perfection, which take up little space. Not one steam engine, with its more or less complicated mechanism and need of fuel, is to be seen in the place. As I had surmised, piles of extraordinary power supply the current to the lamps in the cavern, as well as to the dynamos of the tug. No doubt the current is also utilized for ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... use, we pushed along, afraid of our own shadows, looking for a lurking foe behind every bush, and when some startled bird suddenly broke from its cover, the heart of one at least stood still for a moment and then throbbed away like a steam engine. If a man was seen, however distant, we dropped to cover and watched him out of sight before we dared move. For the first mile our progress was very slow—now wading through water, now sinking in the mud, floundering about as best ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? Where are they?—Preserving ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... also being tried out, but up to date they have not shown themselves as possessing superior advantages over the steam engines. The two objections to them are the same as to the steam engine: first, their great weight, which compresses in a dangerous degree the topsoil and, secondly, the frequent breakages, which make the operation ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... through the medium of a small steam engine and sixteen hydrants, so posted and supplied with hose as to reach every square foot of the 170 acres. The water used for this purpose is mostly, if not entirely, supplied from the draining pipes, even in ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... honour; so they kept guard and licked their lips sadly. When the Griffin saw the last of the twelve hundred dozen mice disappearing down the road with never a cat after them, he was in a tremendous temper and flew away to the house of the Wicked Witch, only stopping to pick up a steam engine which he dropped through her roof, and then went home to bed. Next day he remembered a friend of his called the Grumpy Giant, who lived six doors away, that is, about a thousand miles, so he flew to ask his advice. When the Giant heard his story, he said in the gruffest ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... sits down in Adolphe's lap, and Adolphe cannot help smiling. This smile, extracted as if by a steam engine, Caroline has been on the watch for, in order to make a weapon ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Barometer, Thermometer, Watches, Clocks, Telescope, Microscope, Gunpowder, Steam Engine, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... distinct metals,—such, for example, as cast-iron, and cast and bar steel; the various qualities of iron enabling it to be used for purposes so opposite as a steel pen and a railroad, the needle of a mariner's compass and an Armstrong gun, a surgeon's lancet and a steam engine, the mainspring of a watch and an iron ship, a pair of scissors and a Nasmyth hammer, a lady's earrings and ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... electro-motor is only an engine for driving machinery, just like a steam engine, except that it is worked by electricity instead of steam. Electric engines are so imperfect now that steam ones come cheaper. The man who finds out how to make the electric engine do what the steam engine now does, and do it cheaper, will make his fortune if he has his wits about ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... loaded cars, running down to the river by their own weight, furnished the power to draw the empty cars to the summit again by cable. When George Stephenson took up the problem of perfecting a "traveling steam engine" he had the advantage of knowing what had been accomplished by other experimenters. For fifty years inventors had been turning out steam engines of considerable promise in the model stage, but of ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... indeed. Then the good work of the trusted locomotive becomes apparent, and before we are well out of the yards quite a good speed is being obtained. The fireman is busy ringing the bell, and the engineer, from time to time, adds to the warning noise by one of those indescribable toots made only by a steam engine. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the artist, "you can no more judge of my work than a toasting-fork can judge of a steam engine. The woman who cooks your dinner understands more than you do. She knows better than to think it costs no more time and trouble to cook an omelette than boil an egg. A picture a month, and the same price ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... fully grasped the importance and the powers of induction; and it laid the foundations of both mechanics and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... contacts. When the contact, a, rises out of the water, the current is interrupted. The electro, d, then frees its armature, f, and the latter is pulled back by a spring—a motion that sets in action a small steam engine that closes the moderator valve. When the contact, a, is again immersed, the electro, e, attracts its armature, and thus brings the moderator valve back to its normal position. It is clear that the contact, a, must be insulated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... the Doll: "I shall run away!" And he galloped out to the street With the curly-headed Doll Baby on his back; And hard at his heels went the Jumping Jack! And the little boy—he never knew, Though the little Steam Engine blew and blew! ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... Beelzebub.—Watt's first steam engine was so christened. It was brought from Scotland, put up at Soho, and used for experimenting upon. It was replaced by "Old Bess," the first engine constructed upon the expansive principle. This latter engine ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... anything on me," said Bob. "That Mr. Waterman is some 'moose.' He tears along like a steam engine and never seems to ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... were cast entirely of iron with a flange at one side to keep the wheel steadily in place, that the modern roadbed in all its fundamental principles made its appearance. This, be it observed, was only two years after Watt had patented his first steam engine, and it was nearly fifty years before Stephenson built his first locomotive. The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. Just as vessels had existed ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... first steamer that ever put out to sea, for the Yankee Phoenix made the little coasting trip from Hoboken to Philadelphia in 1809. She was not the first steamer in Canadian salt water, for the St John crossed the Bay of Fundy in 1826. And she was not the first vessel with a steam engine that crossed an ocean, for the Yankee Savannah crossed from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819. The {137} Phoenix and St John call for no explanation. The Savannah does, especially in view of ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... has invented a substantial steam wagon for common roads. There is no reason why such wagons should not come into use. When first proposed in England they were put down by jealousy and opposition, but I have always contended that the steam engine should have superseded the horse fifty ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... tired of holloaing, "Stop a bit," he said, "I shall find a quicker way;" with that he threw himself directly into the sea, and cut through the waves towards them as if his arms had been driven by a steam engine. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Apollo appearing among them could not but be monstrous. The smoking factory, sordid and hideous, is beautiful to him who sees that it accomplishes a necessary function in the great scheme of life. Beauty is adaptation. Whatever is truly useful is in so far truly beautiful. The steam engine and the battleship are beautiful just as truly as Titian's Madonna, glorified and sweeping upward into the presence of God the Father. Only what is vital and serviceable, and whatever ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... this was kept up, with a steam engine idea of rapidity of motion. Many were the fumbles. A good deal of laughter came from the sides ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... of drier has its own motor, a little steam engine, attached to the frame of the machine. See Fig 24. This of course demands fixed bearings. The engine is very small. One size used is 3"x4". When a higher velocity of basket is required, we have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... for you may not know it any" more'n I knowed it until George explained it to me, that there's three different kinds of electricity. There's the kind you make with a steam engine, and the kind you make with acid, and the kind you make with friction. Well, sir, would you believe—or, let me say first, have you ever rubbed a black cat on the back in a dark room and seen the sparks ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... few minutes the tree was ready for its fall. It slowly swayed, and then with a rush bore the yelling man downward. He landed, as had been planned, in a great bank of snow, from which he was speedily rescued, spluttering and puffing like a steam engine. But he had been taught a lesson, the effect of which was not ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... by elevating his country to a higher position than it ever knew before,—etc., etc. The policy and government of the vast possessions of Great Britain were then duly discussed, and Rumanika acknowledged that the pen was superior to that of the sword, and the electric telegraph and steam engine the most wonderful powers he had ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Europeans present; but the platform was densely crowded with Japanese, sitting on their heels, and patiently waiting to see the extraordinary sight of their hitherto invisible spiritual Emperor brought to them by a steam engine on an iron road. The men had all had their heads fresh shaven, and their funny little pigtails rearranged for the occasion. The women's hair was elaborately and stiffly done up with light tortoiseshell combs and a large pin, and decorated with artificial flowers. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... could travel only a short distance in a day. He must go either by a vehicle drawn by horses or oxen, or afoot; and when he would cross the sea he must go in a sailboat that made little progress. In 1831 the first locomotive steam engine was invented. Such wonderful progress has been made in this regard that now one can travel through almost any part of the earth at a rapid rate upon a railway train. Later came the electric engines and electric motor cars and gas engines; and now there is a tremendous amount ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... by Coleridge about the steam engine which Trevithick exhibited at work on a temporary railroad in London. Trevithick and his partner Captain Vivian, prior to this exhibition were riding on the carriage on the turnpike road near to Plymouth. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Christmas presents standing in a line; Robert took the bicycle, then there were nine. Nine Christmas presents ranged in order straight; Bob took the steam engine, then there were eight. Eight Christmas presents—and one came from Devon; Robbie took the jackknife, then there were seven. Seven Christmas presents direct from St. Nick's; Bobby took the candy box, then there were six. Six Christmas ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... swaying Sanctuary lamp during Benediction, Galileo discovered the laws of the pendulum. Such a trifle as the fall of an apple suggested the laws of gravitation to Newton; and the first idea of the steam engine came to Watt while he was watching the lid rising from the boiling kettle. During a royal banquet the argument to crush the Manicheans grew on the great mind of St. Thomas, and the king made his secretary write it down on the spot. Had not these men ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... staring the amateur mechanic in the face when he contemplates making a small steam engine is the matter of boring the cylinder. To bore an iron cylinder on a foot lathe is difficult even when the lathe is provided with automatic feed gear, and it is almost impossible with the ordinary light lathe possessed by most amateurs. To bore ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... bait, and attract a vast quantity of small fish to its vicinity. The number of hands employed in this threshing-mill is very considerable, and the whole establishment, comprising the fires and boilers and machinery of a powerful steam engine, are all under negro superintendence and direction. After this survey, I occupied myself with my infant plantation of evergreens round the dyke, in the midst of which interesting pursuit I was interrupted by a visit from Mr. B——, a neighbouring planter, who came to transact some ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... recent experiments in the application of steam and in the construction of our war steamers, made under the superintendence of distinguished officers of the Navy. In addition to other manifest improvements in the construction of the steam engine and application of the motive power which has rendered them more appropriate to the uses of ships of war, one of those officers has brought into use a power which makes the steamship most formidable either for attack or defense. I can not too strongly recommend ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various |
