File:The conquest of nature (1911) (14579892187).jpg

Identifier: conquestofnature00will (find matches)
Title: The conquest of nature
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Williams, Henry Smith, 1863- Williams, Edward Huntington, 1868-1944, joint author
Subjects: Industrial arts Machinery
Publisher: New York and London, The Goodhue company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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hehad attempted to utilize made available until long aftera form of steam engine utilizing another principle forthe transmission of power had been perfected. DENIS PAPIN INVENTS THE PISTON ENGINE The principle in question was that of causing expand-ing steam to press against a piston working tightly in acylinder, a principle, in short, with which everyone isfamiliar nowadays through its utiHzation in the ordin-ary steam engine. The idea of making use of such apiston appears to have originated with a Frenchman,Denis Papin, a scientific worker, who, being banishedfrom his own country, was established as professor ofmathematics at the University of Marburg. He con-ceived the important idea of transmitting power bymeans of a piston as early as 1688, and about two yearslater added the idea of producing a vacuum in a cylinder,by cooling the cylinder,—the latter idea being, as wehave just seen, the one which Savery put into effect. It will be noted that Papins invention antedated that (88)
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CAPTIVE MOLECULES of Savery; to the Frenchman, therefore, must be giventhe credit of hitting upon two important principleswhich made feasible the modem steam engine. Papinconstructed a model consisting of a small cylinder inwhich a solid piston worked. In the cylinder beneaththe piston was placed a small quantity of water, which,when the cylinder was heated, was turned into steam,the elastic force of which raised the piston. The cylinderwas then cooled by removing the fire, when the steamcondensed, thus creating a vacuum in the cyHnder, intowhich the piston was forced by the pressure of theatmosphere. Such an apparatus seems crude enough, yet it in-corporates the essential principles, and required but theuse of ingenuity in elaborating details of the mechanism,to make a really efficient steam engine. It would appear,however, that Papin was chiefly interested in the theo-retical, rather than in the really practical side of thequestion, and there is no evidence of his having pro-duced a

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