MEN WHO MOVED THE WORLD ALONG.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 28, 5 April 1907, Page 2

MEN WHO MOVED THE WORLD ALONG.

JAMES WATT, THE STEAM KING. When Queen Victoria was born there was not anywhere in the world any faster means of'land locomotion than that which was afforded by the stage coach. The world went slowly those days! Distance meant a great deal, and a journey of any length was the event of a lifetime, something from which men figured—as the old Greeks did from their Olympiads ! Thanks to the implement maker, James Watt, distance now counts for but little ; is, in fact, practically annihilated, .it making but little difference, so far as time is concerned, whether Iho contemplated journey is 800 miles or ,'{,ooo miles. The steam engine made all things new, revolutionised trade, politics, political economy, and pretty nearly everything else, and made possible, at once, the progress for which mankind had waited for thousands' of years. James Watt, tin; improver, we may almost say the creator, of this wonderful agent of civilisation, was born at Greenock, January 19th, 1780. Engines in which steam were used were known long before Watt's day. The earliest of such engines nvfis that known as Hero's, 130 B.C. The first really useful steam engine was that made by Thomas Savery, about the vear 109 S.

The engines in use in Watt's timemainly as a means of draining mines — were clumsy affairs. Their usefulness was greatly checked by the necessary waste of steam at each condensation, and from the expenditure of heat in again raising the required temperature before a fresh stroke of the piston was possible.

Both these obstacles were at once removed by the invention of Watt.

It was in the spring of 17(55, midst (he political turmoil which characterised the early reign of George 111. that, as he strolled on a Sunday nftornoon across Glasgow (liven, the great invention burst in upon him. "I had gone," he says, "to take a walk oh a fine Sunday afternoon. I entered the Green, and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time and had got as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and that, if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it and might there bo condonsed without cooling the cylinder. I had not walked further than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged clearly in my mind."

And thus it came about that the employment of a separate uondenser, with the entiro discarding of any other force in tho action save that of tho steam itself, changed the whole condition of tho steam engine, and made it at once the most powerful ally of civilisation. When the magnitude of Watt's invention was fairly apparent—its almost boundless capacity for human service—the world held its breath and stood for a time in a state of bewilderment.

There was an interregnum of several years between the invention and its serious application. It was an idea so big and powerful that men seemed to bo afraid of it. But Watt could wait—and it is pleasant to know that ho lived long enough to see the fruits of his genius.

In 1802 William Symmingtcm built tho first steamboat, and sent her whistling and pulling along the Forth and Clyde Canal. Men were not so sea rod of the demon as they had been. They were beginning to see that the monster, if properly handled, was quite docile. In 1819, the first steamship, The Savannah, ploughed her way across tho groat deep in twenty-six days. Tlw> wind might 'blow now from any quarter it pleased—man, by the help of his demon, would keep straight on his course, defying wind and wave.

And hard after tho steamship came the railway— the "Iron Horse" snorting along his iron track, dragging alter him with tireless speed his mighty load. Watt had been dead but two years when, in 1821, the first railway was inaugurated—the "Stockton and Darlington" ; and in 1830, Robert Stephenson sent his locomotive, the "Itocket," thundering over the track 'of the "Liverpool and Manchester ■Railway,"- at the phenomenal speed of twenty-nine, miles an hour. The space-devourer had come. Continents and oceans were no longer to separate the tribes and nations of mankind. The "SevenrLeague Boots" were at last a reality, I once beard a clergyman— a good and well-meaning man—pause in tho midst of his sermon to_ severely scold a locomotive that had just gone puffing by his church, disturbing, no doubt, the thread of his discourseand iih§ serenity, ot his congrego-

won. I wondered at the time if the minister realised the fact that that sooty noisy locomotive was the greatest Evangelist that the world ever saw, ami that it had dono more than any other single human agency •to kill the ancient hate and to bring in the feeling of brotherhood between the peoples of the earth. Isolation is ignorance ; to be a stranger to other people is oftentimes to entertain wrong and hateful opinions of them ; while an intelligent acquaintance inevitably tends toward fraternity and reciprocal good will. This acquaintance steam has made possible—and humanity is rapidly showing the benign results.— "Smith's Weekly."