in case the boiler should burst. The other Commissioners affirmed, that the vessel tacked with the same rapidity as a galley manœuvred in the ordinary way, and went at least a league an hour.

"As soon as the experiment was made, Garay took the whole machine with which he had furnished the vessel, leaving only the wooden part in the arsenal at Barcelona, and keeping all the rest for himself.

"In spite of Ravago's opposition and contradiction, Garay's invention was approved, and if the expedition in which Charles V, was then engaged had not prevented, he would no doubt have encouraged it.

"Nevertheless, the Emperor promoted the inventor one grade, made him a present of 200,000 maravedis, ordered the expense to be paid out of the Treasury, and granted him besides many other favours.

"This is derived from the documents and original registers kept in the Royal Archives of Simuncas, among the commercial papers of Catalonia, and from those of the military and naval departments for the said year, 1543. "THOMAS GONZALEZ.

"Simuncas, August 27, 1825."

According to M. Navarrete, it follows from the note which we have just read that, the invention of steam vessels is Spanish, and has only been revived in our days. From this, also, is deduced another consequence, viz: that Blasco de Garay ought to be regarded as the real inventor of the steam engine.

These pretensions seem to me to be from their nature inadmissible. As a general position the history of the sciences should be derived exclusively from printed papers. Manuscript documents cannot have any value with the public, because, generally, it has no means whatever of verifying the date assigned to them. Extracts from manuscripts are still less admissible. The author of a review does not, sometimes, perfectly understand the work which he attempts to analyse, and he substitutes, even without intending it, popular opinion, or his own, for the ideas of the writer which he abridges. I will concede, however, that neither of these difficulties is applicable to the present case; that the document quoted by M. de Navarrete is actually one of 1543, and that the extract of M. Gonzalez is authentic: but what then? Why in 1543 an attempt was made to propel vessels by a certain mechanical means, nothing more. The machine, it is said, contained a boiler, and therefore it was a steam machine. This reasoning is not at all conclusive. There exists, in fact, in various works, plans of machines, in which fire is seen under a boiler filled with water, steam having no part in the matter; such, for instance, is the machine of Amontons. After all, even if we were to admit that the machine of Garay was set in motion by steam, it would not necessarily follow that the invention was new and that it bore any resemblance to those of our day, because Hiero, as we have already seen, described 1600 years before, the means of producing a rotary motion by the action of steam. I will even add that supposing the experiment of Garay to have taken place, and that his was really a steam machine, every thing would lead us to believe that he employed the eolipile of Hiero. This apparatus, in fact, could not be of very difficult construction, since we may boldly affirm, that the simplest of our modern steam machines would require a nicety of workmanship vastly beyond any thing which could have been obtained in the sixteenth century. Besides, Garay having refused to explain his machine to any one, even to the commissioners nominated by the Emperor, every attempt which may be made after the lapse of three centuries to establish in what it consisted, will evidently lead to no certain result.

To recapitulate: the new document brought to light by M. de Navarrete ought to be set aside, in the first place, because it was not printed in 1543 nor since; secondly, because it does not prove that the impellant of the Barcelona ship was a real steam machine; thirdly, because if a steam machine by Garay ever did exist, it was, according to all appearance, the reacting eolipile already described in the works of Hiero, of Alexandria.

1615, Solomon de Caus.*

Solomon de Caus is the author of a work entitled, The reasons of moving powers, with diverse machines both useful and entertaining.-(Les Raisons des forces mouvantes, avec diverses machines tant utiles que plaisantes, etc. This work appeared at Frankfort in 1615. We there find, among other ingenious things, that many mechanicians have presented in our day as new, a theorem thus conceived, under No. 5. Water by the aid of fire will ascend above its level. Here are the terms in which de Caus justifies this assertion.

D

B

A

"The third means of making water rise is by the aid of fire, by which means various machines may be made. I will give here the demonstration of one of them.

"Let there be a copper ball marked A, well soldered all around, to which there shall be a vent, marked D, by which water may be introduced, and also a tube marked B, C, which shall be soldered at the top of the ball, and the end of which C, shall nearly reach the bottom without touching it; then the said ball must be filled with water through the vent and then be well closed and placed upon the fire; then the heat acting upon the said ball, will cause all the water to rise through the tube B, C." The apparatus, a description of which I have just transcribed, is a true

C

* By a caprice, well worthy of remark, a man whom posterity will regard, perhaps as the first inventor of the steam engine, is only cited in Montucela's history of the mathematics on account of his treatise upon perspective, and then the citation consists of only five words. He has also barely obtained the honour of an article of a few lines in the voluminous biographical dictionaries of our own day. The universal biography gives him birth and a grave in Normandy. It says that he lived in England for some time, where he was attached to the household of the Prince of Wales. In The reasons of moving forces, Solomon de Caus takes himself the title of "Engineer and Architect of his Highness the Elector Palatine." This work was composed, I believe, at Heidelberg; it was printed at Frankfort; these three circumstances have given rise to the idea that de Caus was a German. But let us remark, in the first place, how improbable it is that a German would have written in French in his own country. Add to this, that in his dedication to his most Christian Majesty (Louis XIII) the following formula precedes the signature: de votre Majesté, le tres obéissant SUBJECT; that finally, we read in the license, and this cuts short all doubt: "Our well beloved Solomon de Caus, master engineer, being at present in the service of our dear and well beloved cousin, the Prince Elector Palatine, has caused us to be informed, etc. Wishing to gratify the said de Caus he being our subject, etc." Thus we find that Solomon de Caus was a Frenchman.

**

steam draining machine. But perhaps it might be supposed, if I were to limit myself to the preceding passage, that Solomon de Caus was ignorant of the cause of the ascension of the fluid through the tube B, C. It was, however perfectly known to him, a proof of which may be found in his first theorem, p. 2 and 3, where, in a similar experiment, he says that "the violence of steam (produced by the action of fire) which causes the water to rise, proceeds from the said water, which steam will escape, after the water shall have gone out through the cock, with great violence."

1629. Branca.

Branca is the author of a compilation entitled: Machines of Sig. G. Branca; Rome, 1629. This work contains the description of all the machines with which the author had become acquainted. Among these we remark an eolipile placed on a brazer, and arranged in such a way that the current of steam rushing through a tube should strike the wings or the buckets of a small horizontal wheel and cause it to turn. The wind from the nozzle of an ordinary bellows would evidently have produced the same effect. I have not been able to comprehend the analogy by which persons have perceived in this eolipile the first germ of the steam engines of the present day. At all events, and I shall limit myself to the remark, that the compilation of Branca bears a much later date than the first two editions of the work of Solomon de Caus.

1663. The Marquis of Worcester.*

The Scantling of one hundred inventions, by the Marquis of Worcester, appeared in 1663, in the reign of Charles II. This book is more generally known by the title of the Century of Inventions. The apparatus which English authors regard as the first steam engine (la première machine à feu) is described in these terms, under the head of the 68th invention:

" An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be, as the philosopher calleth it, intrà sphæram activitatis, which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no bounder, if the vessel be strong enough; for I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping and screwing up the broken end as also the touchhole; and making a constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst, and made a great crack: so that having a way to make my vessels so that they are strengthened by the force within themt, and the one to fill after

* Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, whom the English regard as the true inventor of the steam engine, lived in the reign of the last of the Stuarts. Involved in all the intrigue of this epoch, he suffered many vicissitudes. Worcester lost, at first his immense fortune; went into Ireland; was there imprisoned; made his escape and reached France; returned to London by the orders of Charles II, was discovered and imprisoned in the Tower from which he was not released until the restoration. Tradition relates that the ideas concerning the uses in which it would be possible to employ the power of steam, were awakened during his last imprisonment by the sudden raising of the lid of the pot in which his food was cooked. The anecdote, if true, does honour to the inventive genius of the prisoner; but shews, at the same time, his want of erudition; because it must be admitted that he was not acquainted with the work of Solomon de Caus, a second edition of which had appeared in France while Worcester resided there.

† It has appeared to me that force within them cannot mean the means of interior consolidation. If I understand the expression, Worcester, in order to answer an obthe other. I have seen the water run like a constant fountain stream forty foot high; one vessel of water rarefied by fire driven up forty of cold water. And a man that tends the work is but to turn two cocks, that, one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the selfsame person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim, between the necessity of turning the said cocks."

The reader knows now all that the Marquis of Worcester has ever written upon the steam engine. It is the sole title upon which Mr. Partington, of the London Institution, in his new edition (1825) of the Century of Inventions, founds his decision and that of his countrymen, that " Worcester is the first discoverer of a means of applying steam as a mechanical agent; an invention which is alone, he adds, sufficient to immortalize the age in which this man lived." Let us, in our turn, examine this paragraph, so often cited, and see impartially what is to be found there.

I perceive in it, at first, an experiment which shows that water reduced to steam, can, in time, burst the sides of the vessel in which it is confined. This experiment was known in 1605, for Flurence Rivault says expressly that the eolipile bursts with a loud report when the steam is hindered from escaping. He adds even: the effect of the rarefaction of water is enough to dismay the boldest men.-(Elémens d'artillerie, p. 128, Paris, 1605.*)

I perceive, secondly, the idea of raising water by the aid of the elastic force of steam. This idea belongs to Solomon de Caus, who had published it forty eight years before the English author.

Finally, I find in it the description of an apparatus proper for producing this effect; but which does not recognize that the metallic ball of Solomon de Caus would raise water also to any height, supposing its sides to be strong enough and the heat to be sufficiently intense. Perhaps it will be said that the machine of the Marquis of Worcester is the better of the two. I may grant all this without its being of any consequence since it is not now a question to discover who was the most ingenious in contriving steam en

jection which he foresaw, found it convenient to assure us that his new boilers would never burst, and in fact he would have attained that object, if, as he said, they would become stronger in proportion to the intensity of pressure of the steam outward. This circumstance will give new weight to the opinion of those who think that Worcester never made trial of his machine; but I hasten to remark that all this is unimportant as far as the question of priority under discussion is concerned. AUTHOR.

This hypercriticism loses its force entirely when the true meaning of Worcester's assertion is considered. He does not say that the vessels are strengthened by the force of the steam within them but by "the force," alluding, obviously, to the means employed for strengthening. TRANS.

* I borrow this quotation from one of the curious historical articles so rich in erudition, which M. Montgéry has published upon machines, in which fire is in any manner employed, and I have substituted it for the following passage of Solomon de Caus which I had at first inserted in the text. This passage appeared but ten years later; that is to say in 1615; nearly fifty years, however, before the Century of Inventions: "The violence will be great when the water evaporates in air by means of fire, and when the said air is enclosed; as, for instance, let there be a ball of copper of one or two feet in diameter, and an inch thick, which shall be filled with water through a little hole, which shall be well stopped by a nail, so that the water cannot escape from it; it is certain that if the said ball be placed on a large fire so that it becomes very hot, that it will cause a compression so violent that the ball will burst in pieces with a noise like that of a petard." (Les Raisons des Forces mouvantes, livre première, feuille première.)

gines, but simply who it was that first thought of making use of the elastic force of steam to raise a weight or to produce motion. Moreover, before comparing the plan of the Marquis of Worcester with others, it is necessary to know exactly in what the first consisted. This problem has not yet been solved, for the simple reason that the description of the sixty-eighth invention of the English peer is entirely deficient in perspicuity. Nobody in the present day, would find any difficulty in constructing a draining machine in which water would be raised by the action of steam; but when the question arises, to reproduce that of the Marquis of Worcester, we must limit ourselves to do what the author says, and no more.

In imposing upon himself these two conditions, Mr. Stuart decides that we shall approach, as near as possible, to the description of his countryman, by combining two of Solomon de Caus' machines in such a way as to produce, by their alternate action, a continual efflux. The other solutions which have been given, so far, of the same question, that of Millington, for instance, are evidently inadmissible.

When Messrs Thomas Young, Robison, Partington, Tredgold, Millington, Nicholson, Lardner, etc., brought forward the Marquis of Worcester as the inventor of the steam engine, the work of Solomon de Caus was, no doubt, unknown to them.

Since it is now established, beyond dispute, that the first idea of raising a weight by means of the elastic power of steam belongs to the French author; that if even the machine of his competitor ever existed, it was, according to all appearances, the apparatus described nearly half a century before in the work entitled Raisons des forces mouvantes; it is to be supposed that future historians will not fail to inscribe the modest name of Solomon de Caus, wherever, up to this time, that of the Marquis of Worcester has taken precedence.

1683. Sir Samuel Morland.*

If I were only to speak in this memoir of those persons whose works have contributed either to create or to improve steam machines, the name of Sir Samuel Morland would be omitted altogether; but this name being on the lips of almost every author in England who has treated of the steam engine, I cannot well omit mentioning it myself, if it were only for the purpose of justifying the opinion which I am about to advance. There is in the British Museum a very beautiful manuscript of Sir Samuel's, entitled, The elevation of water by all kinds of machines, reduced to measure, weight, and level; presented to his most Christian Majesty by the Chevalier Morland, gentleman in ordinary of the privy chamber, chief machinist, and master of mechanics of the king of Great Britain. In this manuscript of thirty-eight pages, the article relating to the steam machine only occupies four pages, and is distinguished from the rest by a particular title. Here is the para

* Sir Samuel Morland, as well as Worcester, took an active part in the events of the civil war. Cromwell employed him in many diplomatic missions. His countrymen assure us, that he was, at the same time, secretary to Thurlow and notoriously a spy of the king. At the restoration, Charles II made him a baronet. Morland employed himself in various questions of acoustics, among others, of the best shape to give the speaking trumpet. He died at Hammersmith in the month of January, 1696, after having conceived the odd idea of causing a large collection of works on music which he possessed to be buried six feet deep, in token of repentance for his past life.

† There exists one of Morland's works, printed in Paris in 1685, which has nearly the same title as the manuscript of the British Museum. The chapter relating to the steam engine is wanting. The author only, in enumerating, in his preface, all the