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canal boats, but because the revolving paddle-wheels caused waves that threatened to wash away the canal banks.

Several engines were sent to New York. The men in charge of one found on shipboard a pattern-maker going to America named John Hewitt. He settled in America January 12th, 1796, and became the father of the late famous and deeply lamented Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, long a member of Congress and afterward mayor of New York, foremost in many improvements in the city, the last being the Subway, just opened, which owes its inception to him. For this service, the Chamber of Commerce presented him with a memorial medal. Mr. Hewitt married a daughter of Peter Cooper, founder of the Cooper Institute, which owes its wonderful development chiefly to him. His children devote themselves and their fortunes to its management. At the time of his death in 1902, he was pronounced “the first private citizen of the Republic." Small engine-shops (of which the ruins still remain), called "Soho" after their prototype, were erected by his father near New York city, on the Greenwood division of the Erie Railroad. The railroad station was called "Soho" by Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, who was then president of the railroad company. Upon Mr. Hewitt's eightieth birthday congratulations poured in from all quarters. One cable from abroad attracted attention as appropriate and deserved: "Ten octaves every note

"truly struck and grandly sung." No man in private life passed away in our day with such general lamentation. The Republic got even more valuable material than engines from the old home in the ship that arrived on January 12, 1796.

We must not permit ourselves to forget that it was not until the Watt engine was applied to steam navigation that the success of the latter became possible. It was only by this that it could be made practicable, so that the steamship is the product of the steam-engine, and it is to Watt we owe the modern twenty-threethousand-ton monster (and larger monsters soon to come), which keeps its course against wind and tide, almost "unshaked of motion," for this can now properly be said. Passengers crossing the Atlantic from port to port now scarcely know anything of irregular motion, and never more than the gentlest of slight heaves, even during the gale that

"Catches the ruffian billows by their tops,
"Curling their monstrous heads."

The ocean, traversed in these ships, is a smooth highway-nothing but a ferry-and a week spent upon it has become perhaps the most enjoyable and the most healthful of holiday excursions, provided the prudent excursionist has left behind positive instructions that wireless telegrams shall not follow.

Second Patent

CHAPTER VII

SECOND PATENT

HE number and activity of rivals attracted to

TH

the steam engine and its possible improvement, some of whom had begun infringements upon the Watt patents, alarmed Messrs. Watt and Boulton so much that they decided Watt should apply for another patent, covering his important improvements since the first. Accordingly, October 25, 1781, the patent (already referred to on p. 91) was secured, "for certain new "methods of producing a continued rotative motion “around an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion "to the wheels of mills or other machines."

This patent was necessary in consequence of the difficulties experienced in working the steam wheels or rotatory engines described in the first patent of 1769, and by Watt's having been so unfairly anticipated, by Wasborough in the crank motion.

No less than five different methods for rotatory motion are described in the patent, the fifth commonly known as the "sun and planet wheels," of which Watt writes to Boulton, January 3, 1782,

I have tried a model of one of my old plans of rotative engines, revived and executed by Mr. Murdoch, which merits being included

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