Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ... home in the South Kensington Museum There it stands in its integrity, a monument of anxiety rewarded and difficulties overcome. It has found a resting-place worthy of its great origin, and will doubtless prove an object of even greater interest to the generations which succeed us than it does to ourselves. All honour to those who have preserved it to the nation.--Once a-Week." BECENT DISCOVERY OF MORE ORIGIKAL DOCUMENTS, ESTABLISHING THE CLAIM OF THE LATE WILLIAM SYMINGTON. "There have been many claimants to the honour of the invention of steam navigation j but that the late William Symington was the first person who applied the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of vessels, we think there can now be no reasonable doubt. Blasco de Garay in 1543, the Marquis of Worcester in 1663, and Jonathan Halls in 1737, may all have thought of applying steam to navigation, but their ideas led to nothing. In 1786, however, Mr Symington, then residing at Wanlockhead, Dumfriesshire, conceived the bold idea that the steam-engine might be rendered available for the propulsion of land carriages, as also that vessels might be propelled by the same power. He and his brother George were at that time joint-engineers to the Warlockhead Mining Company, and Mr John Taylor was manager of the mines, to whom they were much indebted for the facilities afforded them in having the idea Eoon embodied in a working model, which an old man, named John Black, still living there, remembers having seen. It was constructed on four wheels, moved in any direction by the power of a small steam-engine (patented by Mr Symington), and designed so as to carry 16 cwt, besides coals, water, &c." In the Edinburgh Evening Courant of July 12, 1786, it is described as being "one of...