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Read books online » Fiction » Steve and the Steam Engine by Sara Ware Bassett (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📖

Book online «Steve and the Steam Engine by Sara Ware Bassett (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📖». Author Sara Ware Bassett



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girls are not expected to know who invented all the machines in the world, are they, Dad?"

Mr. Tolman waited a moment, then said soothingly:

"No, dear. Girls are not usually so much interested in scientific subjects as boys are—although why they should not be I never could quite understand. Nevertheless, I think it might be as well for even a girl to know to whom we are indebted for such a significant invention as the steam engine.

"It was James Watt," Stephen asserted triumphantly.

"It certainly was," his father agreed. "And since your brother has his information at his tongue's end, suppose we get him to tell us more about this remarkable person."

Stephen flushed.

"I'm afraid," began he lamely, "that I don't know much more. You see, I studied about him quite a long time ago and I don't remember the details. I should have to look it up. I do recall the name, though—"

His father looked amused.

"I don't know which of you children is the more blameworthy," remarked he in a bantering tone. "Doris, who never heard of Watt; or Stephen, who has forgotten all about him."

Both the boy and the girl chuckled good-humoredly.

"At least I knew his name, Dad—give me credit for that," piped Steve.

"That was something, certainly," Mrs. Tolman declared, joining in the laugh.

"Well, since neither of us can furnish the story, I don't see but that you will have to do it, Dad," Doris said mischievously.

"It would be a terrible humiliation if I should discover that I could not do it, wouldn't it?" replied Mr. Tolman with a smile. "In point of fact, there actually is not a great deal more that it is essential for one to know. It was by perfecting the engines of the Newcomen type and adding to them first one and then another valuable device that Watt finally built up the forerunner of our present-day engine. The progression was a gradual one. Now he would better one part, then some other. He surrounded the cylinder, for example, with a jacket, or chamber, which contained steam at the same pressure as that within the boiler, thereby keeping it as hot as the steam that entered it—a very important improvement over the old idea; then he worked out a plan by which the steam could be admitted at each end of the cylinder instead of at one end, as was the case with former engines. The latter innovation resulted in the push and pull of the piston rod. So it went."

"How did Watt come to know so much about engines?" asked Stephen.

"Oh, Watt was an engineer by trade—or rather he was a maker of mathematical instruments for the University of Glasgow, where he came into touch with a Newcomen engine. He also made surveys of rivers, harbors, and canals. So you see it was quite a consistent thing that a man with such a bent of mind should take up the pastime of experimenting with a toy like the steam engine in his leisure hours."

"Did he go so far as to patent it, Henry?" Mrs. Tolman questioned.

"Yes, he did. Many of our scientists either had not the wit to do this, alas, or else they were too impractical to appreciate the value of their ideas. In consequence the glory and financial benefit of what they did was often filched from them. But Watt was a Scotchman and canny enough to realize to some extent what his invention was worth. He therefore obtained a patent on it which was good for twenty-five years; and when, in 1800, this right expired he retired from business with both fame and fortune."

"It is nice to hear of one inventor who got something out of his toil," Mrs. Tolman observed.

"Indeed it is. Think of the many men who have slaved day and night, forfeited health, friends, and money to give to the world an idea, and never lived to receive either gratitude or financial reward, dying unknown or entirely forgotten. There is something tragic about the injustice of it. But Watt, I am glad to say, lived long enough to witness the service he had done mankind and enjoy an honored place among the great of the world."

"Is the kind of engine Watt invented now in use?" Doris inquired.

"Yes, that is a double-acting or reciprocating engine of a more perfect type," her father returned. "Mechanics and engineers went on improving Watt's engine just as he had improved those that had preceded it. It is interesting, too, to notice that after thousands of years scientists have again worked around to the steam turbine described so long ago in the Alexandrian records. This engine, although it does away with many of the moving parts introduced by Newcomen, preserves the essential principles of that early engine combined with Watt's later improvements. To-day we have a number of different kinds of engines, their variety differing with the purpose to which they are applied. Their cost, weight, and the space they require have been reduced and their power increased, and in addition we have made it possible to run them not only by means of coal or wood but by gasoline, oil, or electricity. We have small, light-weight engines for navigation use; mighty engines to propel our great warships and ocean liners; stationary engines for mills and power plants; to say nothing of the wonderful locomotive engines that can draw the heaviest trains over the highest of mountains. The principle of all these engines is, however, the same and for the brain behind them we must thank James Watt."

"Was it Watt who invented the locomotive, too?" ventured Doris. Her father shook his head.

"The perfecting of the locomotive, my dear, is, as Kipling says, another story."

"Tell it to us."

"Not now, daughter," protested Mr. Tolman. "I am far too hungry; and more than that I am eager to enjoy this beautiful country and forget railroads and locomotives."

"Did you say you were hungry, Henry?" asked Mrs. Tolman.

"I am—starved!" her husband said apologetically. "Isn't it absurd to be hungry so early in the day?"

"It is nearly noon, Dad!" said Steve, glancing down at the clock in the front of the car.

"Noon! Why, I thought it was still the middle of the morning."

"No, indeed! While you have been talking we have come many a mile, and the time has slipped past," his wife said. "If all goes well—" The shot from a bursting tire rent the air.

"Which evidently it does not," interrupted Mr. Tolman grimly, bringing the car to a stop. "How aggravating! We were almost into Palmer, where I had planned for us to lunch. Now it may be some little time before we can get anything to eat."

"Motorist's luck! Motorist's luck, my dear!" cried Mrs. Tolman gaily. "An automobilist must resign himself to taking cheerfully what comes."

"That is all very well," grumbled her husband, as he clambered out of the car. "Nevertheless you must admit that this mishap on the heels of the other one is annoying."

Stephen also got out and the two bent to examine the punctured tire.

"I should not mind so much if I were not so hungry," murmured Mr. Tolman. "How are you, Steve? Fainting away?"

The boy laughed.

"Well, I could eat something if I had it," he confessed.

"I wish I hadn't mentioned food," went on Mr. Tolman humorously. "It was an unfortunate suggestion."

"I'm hungry, too," piped Doris.

"There, you see the epidemic you have started, Henry," called Mrs. Tolman accusingly. "Here is Doris vowing she is in the last throes of starvation."

Nobody noticed that in the meanwhile the mother had reached down and lifted into her lap the small suitcase hidden in the bottom of the car. She opened the cover and began to remove its contents.

At length, when a remark her husband made to her went unheeded, he sensed her preoccupation and came around to the side of the car where she was sitting. Immediately he gave a cry of surprise.

"My word!" he exclaimed. "Steve, come here and see what your mother has."

Stephen looked.

There sat Mrs. Tolman, unpacking with quiet enjoyment sandwiches, eggs, cake, cookies, and olives.

A shout of pleasure rose from the famished travelers.

"So it was not your jewels, after all, Mater!" cried Stephen.

"No, and after the way you have slandered me and my little suitcase, none of you deserve a thing to eat," his mother replied. "However, I am going to be magnanimous if only to shame you. Now climb in and we will have our lunch. You can fix the tire afterward."

The men were only too willing to obey.

As with brightened faces they took their seats in the car, Stephen smiled with affection at his mother.

"Well, Mater, Watt was not the only person who lived to see himself appreciated; and I don't believe people were any more grateful to him for his steam engine than we are to you right now for this luncheon. You are the best mother I ever had."

CHAPTER IV THE STORY OF THE FIRST RAILROAD

The new tire went on with unexpected ease and early afternoon saw the Tolmans once more bowling along the highway toward Northampton. The valley of the Connecticut was decked with harvest products as for an autumnal pageant. Stacks of corn dotted the fields and pyramids of golden pumpkins and scarlet apples made gay the verandas of the old homesteads or brightened the doorways of the great red barns flanking them.

"All that is needed to transform the scene into a giant Hallowe'en festival is to have a witch whisk by on a broomstick, or a ghost bob up from behind a tombstone," declared Mrs. Tolman. "Just think! If we had come by train we would have missed all this beauty."

"I see plainly that you do not appreciate the railroads, my dear," returned her husband mischievously. "This is the second time to-day that you have slandered them. You sound like the early American traveler who asserted that it was ridiculous to build railroads which did very uncomfortably in two days what could be done delightfully by coach in eight or ten."

"Why, I should have thought people who had never heard of motor-cars would have welcomed the quicker transportation the railroads offered," was Mrs. Tolman's reply.

"One would have thought so," answered Mr. Tolman. "Still, when we recall how primitive the first railroads were, the prejudice against them is not to be wondered at."

"How did they differ from those we have now, Dad?" Doris asked.

"In almost every way," answered her father, with a smile. "You see at the time Stephenson invented his steam locomotive nothing was known of this novel method of travel. As I told you, persons were accustomed to make journeys either by coach or canal. Then the steam engine was invented and immediately the notion that this power might be applied to transportation took possession of the minds of people in different parts of England. As a result, first one and then another made a crude locomotive and tried it out without scruple on the public highway, where it not only frightened horses but terrified the passers-by. Many an amusing story is told of the adventures of these amateur locomotives. A machinist named Murdock, who was one of James Watt's assistants, built a sort of grasshopper engine with very long piston rods and with legs at the back to help push it along; with this odd contrivance he ventured out into the road one night just at twilight. Unfortunately, however, his restless toy started off before he was ready to have it, and turning down an unfrequented lane encountered a timid clergyman who was taking a peaceful stroll and frightened the old gentleman almost out of his wits. The poor man had never seen a locomotive before and when the steaming object with its glowing furnace and its host of moving arms and legs came puffing toward him through the dusk he was overwhelmed with terror and screamed loudly for help."

A laugh arose from the listeners.

"And that is but one of the many droll experiences of the first locomotive makers," continued Mr. Tolman. "For example Trevithick, another pioneer in the field, also built a small steam locomotive which he took out on the road for a trial trip. It chanced that during the experimental journey he and his fireman came to a tollgate and puffing up to the keeper with the baby steam engine, they asked what the fee would be for it to pass. Now the gate keeper, like the minister, had had no acquaintance with locomotives, and on seeing the panting red object looming like a specter out of the darkness and hearing a man's voice intermingled with its

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