the indispensable steam engine of Watt had to furnish the motive power. The railroad is only the necessary smooth track upon which the steam engine could perform its miracle. It is significant that steam power upon roads required the abandonment of the usual highway. So we may believe is the automobile to force new roads of its own, or to widen existing highways, rendering those safe under certain rules for speed of twenty miles per hour, or even more, when they were intended only for eight or ten.

The reading lamp of Watt's day was a poor affair, and as he never saw an inefficient instrument without studying its improvement, he produced a new lamp. He wrote Argand of the Argand burner upon the subject and for a long time Watt lamps were made at the Soho works, which gave a light surpassing in steadiness and brilliance anything of the kind that had yet appeared. He gives four plans for lamps, "with the reser"voir below and the stem as tall as you please." He also made an instrument for determining the specific gravity of liquids, and a year after this he "found out a method

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of working tubes of the elastic resin without dissolv"ing it." The importance of such tubes for a thousand purposes in the arts and sciences is now appreciated.

"

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appears to have been made before The Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle by a Mr Thomas, of Denton, in February, 1800. Two years later Richard "Edgeworth, father of the famous novelist, suggested that it should be extended for the carrying of passengers." There is no record of Thomas's suggestion, as far as we know, but only tradition. Even if made, however, it seems to have lain dead. Edgeworth evidently knew nothing of it, and as it was his letter to Watt which seems first to have attracted public attention, the passage is allowed to stand as written.

Watt gave much time to an arithmetical machine which he found exceedingly simple to plan, but he adds, "I have learnt by experience that in mechanics "many things fall out between the cup and the mouth." He describes what it is to accomplish, but it remained for Babbage at a much later date to perfect the machine. A machine for copying sculpture amused him for a time but it was never finished.

If any difficulty of a mechanical nature arose, people naturally turned to Watt for a solution. Thus the Glasgow University failed to get pipes for conveying water across the Clyde to stand, the channel of the river being covered with mud and shifty sand, full of inequalities, and subject to the pressure of a considerable body of water. Application was at last made to the recognised genius. If he could not solve it, who could? This was just one of the things that Watt liked to do. He promptly devised an articulated suction pipe with parts formed on the principle of a lobster's tail. This crustacean tube a thousand feet long solved the matter. Watt stated that his services were induced solely by a desire to be of use in procuring good water to the city of Glasgow, and to promote the prosperity of a company which had risked so much for the public good. These were handsomely acknowledged by the presentation to him of a valuable piece of plate.

As another proof of Watt's habit of thinking of every

thing that could possibly be improved, it may be news to many readers that the consumption of the smoke from steam engines early attracted his attention, and that he patented devices for this. These have been substantially followed in the numerous attempts which have been made from time to time to reduce the huge volumes of smoke that keep so many cities under a cloud. He was successful and his son James writes to him in 1790 from Manchester:

It is astonishing what an impression the smoke-consuming power of the engine has made upon everybody hereabouts. They scarcely trusted to the evidence of their senses. You would be diverted to hear the strange hypotheses which have been stated to account for it.

This is all very well. It is certain that most of the smoke made in manufacturing concerns can be consumed, if manufacturers are compelled by law to erect sufficient heating surface and to include the well-known appliances, including those for careful firing, but no city so far as the writer knows has ever been able to enforce effective laws. There remain the dwellings of the people to deal with, which give forth smoke in large cities in the aggregate far exceeding that made by the manufacturing plants. New York pursues the only plan for ensuring the clearest skies of any large city in the world where coal is generally used, by making the use of bituminous coal unlawful. The enormous growth of present New York (45 per cent. in last decade) is not a little dependent upon the

attraction of clear blue skies and the resulting cleanliness of all things in and about the city compared with others. When, by the progress of invention or new methods of distributing heat, smoke is banished, as it probably will be some day, many rich citizens will remain in their respective western cities instead of flocking to the clear blue-skied metropolis, as they are now so generally doing.

Such were some of Watt's by-products. His recreation, if found at all, was found in change of occupation. We read of no idle days, no pleasure trips, no vacations, only change of work.

Rumors of new inventions of engines far excelling his continued to disturb Watt, and much of his time was given to investigation. He thought of a caloric air engine as possibly one of the new ideas; then of the practicability of producing mechanical power by the absorption and condensation of gas on the one hand and by its disengagement and expansion on the other. His mind seemed to range over the entire field of possibilities.

The Hornblower engine had been heralded as sure to displace the Watt. When it was described, it proved to be as Watt said, "no less than our double-cylinder

engine, worked upon our principle of expansion. It is "fourteen years since I mentioned it to Mr. Smeaton." Watt had explained to Dr. Small his method of working steam expansively as early as May, 1769, and had

adopted it in the Soho engine and also in the Shadwell engine erected in that year.

We have seen before that Watt had to retrace his steps and abandon for a time in later engines what he had before ventured upon.

The application of steam for propelling boats upon the water was, at this time (1788), attracting much attention. Boulton and Watt were urged to undertake experiments. This they declined to entertain, having their facilities fully employed in their own field, but finally Fulton, on August 6, 1803, ordered an engine from them from his own drawings, intended for this purpose, repeating the order in person in 1804. It was shipped to America early in 1805, and in 1807 placed upon the Clermont, which ran upon the Hudson River as a passenger boat, attaining a speed of about five miles an hour. This was the first steamboat that was ever used for passengers, and altho Fulton neither invented the boat nor the engine, nor the combination of the two, still he is entitled to great credit for overcoming innumerable difficulties sufficient to discourage most men. Fulton, who was the son of a Scotsman from Dumfrieshire, visited Syminton's steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas, in Scotland, in 1801, and had seen it successfully towing canal boats upon the Forth and Clyde Canal. This was the first boat ever propelled by steam successfully for commercial purposes. It was subsequently discarded, not because it did not tow the