Lardner’s Mistaken Prediction
Few men have presented as prominent a target for irony as Dr. Dionysius Lardner, in view of his alleged statement, in 1836, that steam navigation for a voyage across the Atlantic was impracticable. What he said, according to the report of his address in the London Times, August 27, 1836, was that by collation of the amount of coal needed per horse-power, the speed obtainable, and the number of hours needed for the distance, no vessel could stow away enough coal to carry her through a voyage of three thousand miles, and that two thousand miles was the longest possible run. Brunel, the chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, pointed out an arithmetical error in the “demonstration” which vitiated the whole of it, and the learned doctor sat down suddenly without acknowledgment of his palpable error.