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A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine

by Robert Henry Thurston

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Portraits

NO.PAGE
1.Edward Somerset, the Second Marquis of Worcester 20
2.Thomas Savery 31
3.Denys Papin 46
4.James Watt 80
5.Matthew Boulton 94
6.Oliver Evans 154
7.Richard Trevithick 174
8.Colonel John Stevens178
9.George Stephenson 183
10.Robert Fulton 251
11.Robert L. Stevens 270
12.John Elder 393
13.Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford 434
14.James Prescott Joule 439
15.Prof. W. J. M. Rankine 443

[“A Machine, receiving at distant times and from many hands new combinations and improvements, and becoming at last of signal benefit to mankind, may be compared to a rivulet swelled in its course by tributary streams, until it rolls along a majestic river, enriching, in its progress, provinces and kingdoms.

“In retracing the current, too, from where it mingles with the ocean, the pretensions of even ample subsidiary streams are merged in our admiration of the master-flood, glorying, as it were, in its expansion. But as we continue to ascend, those waters which, nearer the sea, would have been disregarded as unimportant, begin to rival in magnitude and share our attention with the parent stream; until, at length, on our approaching the fountains of the river, it appears trickling from the rock, or oozing from among the flowers of the valley.

“So, also, in developing the rise of a machine, a coarse instrument or a toy may be recognized as the germ of that production of mechanical genius, whose power and usefulness have stimulated our curiosity to mark its changes and to trace its origin. The same feelings of reverential gratitude which attached holiness to the spot whence mighty rivers sprang, also clothed with divinity, and raised altars in honor of, inventors of the saw, the plough, the potter’s wheel, and the loom.”—Stuart.]

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