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Steam engine   Listen
noun
Steam engine  n.  An engine moved by steam. Note: In its most common forms its essential parts are a piston, a cylinder, and a valve gear. The piston works in the cylinder, to which steam is admitted by the action of the valve gear, and communicates motion to the machinery to be actuated. Steam engines are thus classified: 1. According to the way the steam is used or applied, as condensing, noncondensing, compound, double-acting, single-acting, triple-expansion, etc. 2. According to the motion of the piston, as reciprocating, rotary, etc. 3. According to the motion imparted by the engine, as rotative and nonrotative. 4. According to the arrangement of the engine, as stationary, portable, and semiportable engines, horizontal and vertical engines, beam engine, oscillating engine, direct-acting and back-acting engines, etc. 5. According to their uses, as portable, marine, locomotive, pumping, blowing, winding, and stationary engines, the latter term referring to factory engines, etc., and not technically to pumping or blowing engines. Locomotive and portable engines are usually high-pressure, noncondensing, rotative, and direct-acting. Marine engines are high or low pressure, rotative, and generally condensing, double-acting, and compound. Paddle engines are generally beam, side-lever, oscillating, or direct-acting. Screw engines are generally direct-acting, back-acting, or oscillating. Stationary engines belong to various classes, but are generally rotative. A horizontal or inclined stationary steam engine is called a left-hand or a right-hand engine when the crank shaft and driving pulley are on the left-hand side, or the right-hand side, respectively, of the engine, to a person looking at them from the cylinder, and is said to run forward or backward when the crank traverses the upward half, or lower half, respectively, of its path, while the piston rod makes its stroke outward from the cylinder. A marine engine, or the engine of a locomotive, is said to run forward when its motion is such as would propel the vessel or the locomotive forward. Steam engines are further classified as double-cylinder, disk, semicylinder, trunk engines, etc. Machines, such as cranes, hammers, etc., of which the steam engine forms a part, are called steam cranes, steam hammers, etc.
Back-acting steam engine, or Back-action steam engine, a steam engine in which the motion is transmitted backward from the crosshead to a crank which is between the crosshead and the cylinder, or beyond the cylinder.
Portable steam engine, a steam engine combined with, and attached to, a boiler which is mounted on wheels so as to admit of easy transportation; used for driving machinery in the field, as thrashing machines, draining pumps, etc.
Semiportable steam engine, a steam engine combined with, and attached to, a steam boiler, but not mounted on wheels.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Steam engine" Quotes from Famous Books



... not think of our farm as at all like some great farm he may happen to know in England; for there was nothing done by machinery on the place. There may be great pleasure in watching machine-operations, but surely none to equal the pleasure we had. If there had been a steam engine to plough my father's fields, how could we have ridden home on its back in the evening? To ride the horses home from the plough was a triumph. Had there been a thrashing-machine, could its pleasures have been comparable to that of lying in the straw and watching the grain dance from the sheaves ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... pass, from the prisons, to Mr. Norris's great steam engine, and especially locomotive engine works, which Michel Chevalier had told me to be sure to go and see; and most interesting, truly, they were. Great improvements in the construction of locomotives originated in these works. Mr. Norris had also had a very original and ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... "is a manifestation of the human mind's activity. What constitutes the difference between a bird and a steam engine? This, in part: the engine is made by human hands from without; the bird makes itself, that is, its body, from within. So it is with the human body. But the ignorant human mind—ignorant per se—falls a slave to its own creation, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... wasn't going nigh dem Yankees till he seed 'em fust, and the schooner held on her course. What the boys saw was a bright light shining through the darkness a short distance off the starboard bow, and what they heard a moment later was the puffing of a small but exceedingly active steam engine. The light presently disappeared but the puffing continued, increasing in force and frequency as the approaching launch gathered headway, and ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... which was not powerful enough, was replaced by a 14-horse power "semi-portable" steam engine, by Ransomes & Co., of Ipswich—an engine of sufficient power to drive double the required number of lights. The dynamo machine is a No. 7 Brush. There are sixteen lamps in all—eight on each side of the court. The machine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... whose interests he betrayed, by secretly communicating with Charles the Second. In consideration of these services he was created a baronet of Sulhamstead Banister, Berks, after the Restoration. He was an ingenious mechanic, supposed by some persons to have invented the Steam Engine, and lived to an advanced age.] In the afternoon a council of war, only to acquaint them that the Harp must be taken out of all their flags, it being very offensive to the King. Late at night we writ ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... thin material, like a large hood with a cape, is useful to draw over the bonnet and neck, to keep off dust, sun, and sparks from a steam engine. Green veils are very apt to stain ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... a fat policeman on the corner, and waved my hand reassuringly at him merely to show that I was not fleeing from Justice. Talk about fast running! I actually surprised myself. I caught up with the car just as it was turning that curve on High Street, and floundered into it, puffing like a steam engine. I made one dash past the conductor, reached the seat where my cherished umbrella still reposed and captured it. The conductor must have thought me hopelessly demented, for I dashed out as the car stopped at the next corner without having paid ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... Tom's devil wagon. That's a good deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized—leaving the homes of the people, and herding into the great factories. I've seen steam revolutionize the daily habits of men, and distort their thoughts; one man can't run a steam engine; it takes more than one man to own one. So have I seen capital rise in the world until it is greater than kings, greater than courts, greater than governments—greater than God himself as matters stand, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... the Steam Engine,' there has been no such bit of delicious mechanical gossip as this little book of Mr. Bernan.... For six months or more every year, we must depend much more on the resources of science and the practical arts for our health and comfort, than on ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various

... the improved method of fire fighting in Southern cities—before the steam engine, the hook and ladder and water tower companies supplanted the old hand pump and bucket companies, the Negro was the chief fire fighter, and there was nothing that tended more to make fire fighting a pleasant pastime than those old volunteer ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... This horizontal steam engine, recently constructed by Mr. E.D. Farcot for actuating a Cance dynamo-electric machine, consists of a cast iron bed frame, A, upon which are mounted all the parts. The two jacketed, cylinders, B and C, of different diameters, each contains a simple-acting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... merchants, 143.—The working men consume more animal food than the same rank of people in any other nation, 144.—England considered as excelling all other nations for manufacturers sic, 200.—The effects of the inventions of the steam engine and spinning machines, 203.—Scarcely any thing sold to the American states, except our own manufactures, 204.—Southern nations cannot rival northerly ones, 210.—Manufactures, and agriculture, more conducive to wealth than commerce, are not ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... brought him here. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had refused his money. At least he had ridded himself of that. He tried to stretch himself. He was stiff and sore all over. His head was throbbing like a steam engine, and he sank back upon the seat in the throes of a cold, ghastly sickness. He remembered then that he had not touched food for hours. He remembered too that he had not a ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... of rubber, that of packing for the steam engine and connecting machinery appears to have been the most important, as it has been an essential condition of the development and extended use of steam as a ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company

... the thrill of dawn and knew that the day of great mechanical inventions was at hand. He had read the meaning of the puffing of the young steam engine of James Watt and he had heard of a marvelous series of British inventions for spinning and weaving. He saw that his own countrymen were astir, trying to substitute the power of steam for the strength of muscles and the fitful wind. John Fitch on the Delaware and James Rumsey on the Potomac ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... person connected with Dartmouth of late years is Newcomen, the inventor of the steam engine. He carried on business in the town as an ironmonger. All honour is due to his memory, although others perfected ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... used in central European mines changed in the century after him far more than has been recognized.[20] This thesis may further cast some light on other technological questions. The connection between the urgency of the problem of mine drainage in England, and the invention of the steam engine, has often been suggested.[21] Perhaps the "backwardness" of Germany in steam-engine experimentation, and later in the introduction of the Newcomen engine, was to some extent due to the adequacy of existing machinery to meet the problem of mine flooding, for it ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf

... it with some of those professionals though, and before we'd hit our speed at all they had several yards lead over us. But we were feeling pretty strong at that. I was steering the bike, and I could feel Barney pushing along like a steam engine. But at first it was all we could do to hold our own, no matter how hard we pedaled. Pretty soon I began to feel mighty tired I can tell you, and I guess Barney must have, too, because we began dropping behind. But we kept on pushing like mad, and pretty ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... precisely the same idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the road. A horseless carriage was a common idea. People had been talking about carriages without horses for many years back—in fact, ever since the steam engine was invented—but the idea of the carriage at first did not seem so practical to me as the idea of an engine to do the harder farm work, and of all the work on the farm ploughing was the hardest. Our ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... another. To-morrow, not religion, not politics, but chemistry, not priests nor politicians, but chemists, would change all that—and change it by the only methods that compel. An abstract idea of liberty or justice can be rejected, evaded, nullified. But a telephone, a steam engine, a mode of prolonging life—those realizations of ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... DIRECT-ACTING ENGINE. A steam engine in which the connecting rod is led at once from the head of the piston to the crank, thus communicating the rotatory motion ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam engine has ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... away, muddle away, throw away, fling away, fritter away; burn the candle at both ends, waste; squander &c 818. waste its sweetness on the desert air [Gray]; cast one's bread upon the waters, cast pearls before swine; employ a steam engine to crack a nut, waste powder and shot, break a butterfly on a wheel; labor in vain &c (useless) 645; cut blocks with a razor, pour water into a sieve. leak &c (run out) 295; run to waste; ebb; melt away, run dry, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... sees a kabouter nowadays, for in the new world, when the woods are nearly all cut down, the world made by the steam engine, and telegraph, and wireless message, the automobile, aeroplane and submarine, cycle and under-sea boat, the little folks in the mines and forests are forgotten. The chemists, miners, engineers and learned men possess the secrets which were once those of the fairies only. Yet the artists and architects, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... delivery end of the machine. The briquettes have a cross-section similar to an ellipse with the ends slightly cut off; they are about 1 in. thick and average about 1 lb. in weight (Fig. 2, Plate XX). The press is operated by a direct connection with a steam engine of 150 h.p., the base of which is continuous with that of the press. The exhaust steam from the engine is ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... guard and licked their lips sadly. When the Griffin saw the last of the twelve hundred dozen mice disappearing down the road with never a cat after them, he was in a tremendous temper and flew away to the house of the Wicked Witch, only stopping to pick up a steam engine which he dropped through her roof, and then went home to bed. Next day he remembered a friend of his called the Grumpy Giant, who lived six doors away, that is, about a thousand miles, so he flew to ask his advice. When ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... rid of Dale first. If I read the signs, you've got in that chap a creature of limitless self indulgence. He's crazy to learn, and I've no doubt that already he is studying like a steam engine; but when he wants to do other things he'll do 'em with the same zeal. I gather from the Colonel that he doesn't give a rap for anybody or anything just so he gets to a book. Self control? He doesn't know any more about it than water coming down ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... said the iron, travelling proudly over the shirt-collar, for it thought it was a steam engine and ought to be ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... quite innocent of the herculean labors they proposed. On the first attempt to frame a resolution; to crowd a complete thought, clearly and concisely, into three lines; they felt as helpless and hopeless as if they had been suddenly asked to construct a steam engine. And the humiliating fact may as well now be recorded that before taking the initiative step, those ladies resigned themselves to a faithful perusal of various masculine productions. The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... You've been and taken it for that there model steam engine of yours. Why didn't you come and ask if you might ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery

... given to the Severn and Wye Tramroad Company to construct a branch to the colliery at the Ivy Moore Head, as well as to Messrs. Protheroe to erect a steam engine at "Catch Can." The area of the encroachments in the Forest in 1813, and which had at that time been taken in more than twenty years, amounted to 1,610 acres 2 roods 18 poles, divided into 2,239 patches, on which were 785 houses, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... Department of Education. Grand prize Traveling libraries Blanks Statistics Syracuse University, Syracuse. Gold medal College of Fine Arts Drawings, architectural and free hand College of Applied Science Metal work Wood work Model of steam engine Home-made laboratory apparatus University of the State of New York. Grand prize Bulletins Reports Decimal classification Traveling library for the blind Photographs Large pictures Statistical ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... halves, sopped in gravy, and taken one, two! Corn cakes went into great jaws like coal into a steam engine. Knives in the right hand cut and scooped gravy up. Great, muscular, grimy, but wholesome fellows they were, feeding like ancient Norse, and capable of working like demons. They were deep in the process; half-hidden by steam from the potatoes and stew, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... got up like a queen an' walked out o' the room as though she was steppin' on the necks of the airy-stockracy. She went to the office, an' after a couple o' minutes I follered her, expectin' to cheer her up a bit; but she wasn't mournin' none; she was workin' like a steam engine, with her face cold an' white except for a little patch o' red in each cheek; an' when she raised her eyes to mine I knew 'at the ol' man had ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... furnished by a 10 H.P. steam engine, which serves at the same time for actuating the machine tools employed in construction or repairs. The shaft is situated at the head of the ways, and sets in motion four double-gear windlasses of the type shown in Fig. 2. The ratio of the wheels is as 9 to 1. The speed at which the ships ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... the variations in electro-motive force developed during the rotations of the armature of a dynamo or other generator of E. M. F. The term as used in the electrical sense is thus applied, although the indicator diagram of a steam engine may be termed its characteristic curve, and so in many other cases. As the amperes taken from a series generator are increased in number, the E. M. F. rises, it may be very rapidly up to a certain point, and thereafter more slowly. To construct the curve coordinates, q. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... prosperity should be limited or abolished. That is as sound as it would be to abolish writing to prevent forgery. We need to keep forever in mind that guilt is personal; if there is to be punishment let it fall on the evil-doer, let us not condemn the instrument. We need power. Is the steam engine too strong? Is electricity too swift? Can any prosperity be too great? Can any instrument of commerce or industry ever be too powerful to serve the public needs? What then of the anti-trust laws? They are sound in theory. Their assemblances ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... one back, my lad. Two strings to one's bow arn't enough. Say, Master Lee, you're a clever sort of chap, and make all kinds of 'ventions; can't you set me going with a steam engine thing as 'll make my stones run, when ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... pot and the industrial kettle were calling each other black, when they had both been blackened in the same kitchen. And he would have been substantially right; for the great industrial disciple of the kettle, James Watt (who learnt from it the lesson of the steam engine), was typical of the age in this, that he found the old Trade Guilds too fallen, unfashionable and out of touch with the times to help his discovery, so that he had recourse to the rich minority which had warred on and weakened those Guilds since the Reformation. There ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... wholly avoided. The boat's head should always be turned in the direction from which the wind comes. But a person who does not understand the management of a boat should no more attempt to handle one than an unskilful person should attempt to run a steam engine. ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, and two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... down in Adolphe's lap, and Adolphe cannot help smiling. This smile, extracted as if by a steam engine, Caroline has been on the watch for, in order to make a ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... the mountain to the 3,000 foot level. It is tapped at the points where are situated the several sets of hydraulic pumps. The water from the pressure pipe enters one part of the pump, where it moves a piston-back and forth, just as the piston of a steam engine is moved by steam. This water engine moves a pump which not only raises to the surface the water which has been used as driving power, but also a vast quantity of water from the shaft, all of which is forced up to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... requires an occasional relaxation, as much as the steam engine does the application of oil to its divers springs; and, after a bon fide slumber, we rise with a freshness equal to that of flowers in the best regulated flower-pots. But dozing must not be confounded with legitimate sleep, though frequently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... within recent years been made in the mechanical appliances intended to replace horses on our public tram lines. The steam engine now in use in some of our towns had its drawbacks as as well as its good qualities, as also had the endless rope haulage, and in the case of the latter system, anxiety must be felt when the ropes showed signs of wear. The electrically driven trams appeared to work well. He had not, however, seen ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... woman if to-day should be removed from Christian civilization the school, the steam engine, the smokestack and the printing press, and leave but the Scriptures, the steeple and the parson. Would Elizabeth Cady Stantons, Mary A. Livermores and Frances E. Willards be the products ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... impression could this have made on Lenin? Could he not have felt: "Perhaps Napoleon's logic was good at that time but now with electricity, the steam engine and modern industrialism it will be possible to do without the efficiency of capitalism and hence with its inequalities and egoism? If so then we can recreate the equality dreamt of by Babeuf, Robespierre, Saint Just and the other ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... labor is done, has to feed his horses through the winter. If he said to his horses: 'Quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you; but work exists abundantly over the world: you are ignorant (or must I read you Political Economy pictures) that the steam engine always in the long-run creates additional work? Railways are forming in one quarter of this earth, canals in another, much cartage is wanted; somewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, doubt it not, ye will find ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... Brachay on the 29th of May, 1767. At the age of twenty, he was admitted to the School of Bridges and Roads, where he soon distinguished himself by his ingenious and investigating turn of mind. His first labors were in connection with the steam engine, then in its infancy, and on April 18, 1792, the young engineer obtained a national award of $400 to continue the experiments that he had begun on the improvement of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... he accordingly got some dry grass, and having kindled a fire, stuffed it into the hole he had cut. A raging fire soon kindled in the tree, where the draft was great, and dense columns of smoke issued from the end of each branch as thick as that from the chimney of a steam engine. The shell of the tree was so thin that I thought it would soon be burnt through, and that the tree would fall; but the black had no such fears, and, ascending to the highest branch, he watched anxiously for the poor little wretch he had thus ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... had passed away—after railroads had been built—after the steam engine had become a motive power for a large part of machinery, the characteristics originally stamped by natural causes continued the diversity of pursuit. Is it fortunate or otherwise? I say it is fortunate. Your interest ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... the two editors to outdo each other have been titanic. When Simpson put in a steam engine, Ayers mortgaged his plant and got one of the new gasoline engines just then being introduced into an unhappy world. He never used it much unless he had lots of time in which to start it, but it was ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... necessities, he could not select, make, and use, with certainty, any tool, from the club with which he defends himself against his enemies or cracks the shells of fruit, up to the finest instruments of optics and chemistry, and even to the telegraph and steam engine. The conformity to law, with which the forces of nature act, far from being an impediment to his appointing and reaching his ends is much more the indispensable means by which he is enabled in general to reach them. Now, if we thus find, in the only action striving towards an end which ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... impression that whatever saves labor usually requires an increase of capital in the industry where the economy is secured, and this impression is justified by the experience of the century following the invention of the steam engine and the early textile machinery. Hand spinning and weaving require small amounts of fixed capital, while the mills in which spinning and weaving are done by steam or water power require a great deal. Fortunately in any long period this capital comes as abundantly as ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... Then the good work of the trusted locomotive becomes apparent, and before we are well out of the yards quite a good speed is being obtained. The fireman is busy ringing the bell, and the engineer, from time to time, adds to the warning noise by one of those indescribable toots made only by a steam engine. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... and commerce, have united nation to nation, and the press has given one mind and simultaneous thoughts to the whole community. Power there is in plenty for the emancipation of the whole race; since the steam engine and machinery may be to the working-classes what they have hitherto been to those classes above them. All that is wanted is to know how to use these forces for the general good. The powers of production are inexhaustible; we have but to organize them, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... beehive. 2. The body, a steam engine. 3. Two generals about whom you have read. 4. Girls, boys. 5. Two of your studies. 6. Graded school work, high school work. 7. Animal life, plant life. 8. Two ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... deserve their gratitude, The King, His ministers, and many of the nobles And commoners of the realm Raised this monument to JAMES WATT, Who, directing the force of an original genius, Early exercised in philosophic research, To the improvement of the Steam Engine, Enlarged the resources of his country, Increased the power of man, And rose to eminent place Among the most illustrious followers of science, And the real benefactors of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... presupposes the existence of learning. There is no branch of manufactures without its appropriate machine; and every machine is the product of mind, enlarged and disciplined by some sort of culture. The steam engine, the spinning-jenny, the loom, the cotton-gin, are notable instances of the advantages derived by manufacturing industry from the prevalence of learning. It was stated by Chief Justice Marshall, about thirty years ago, that Whitney's cotton-gin had saved five hundred millions of ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... of these sheets a length sufficient to make a gun barrel is cut off by a pair of steam-moved shears, of which the lower jaw is stationary and the upper weighs a ton, of which plenty of examples may be seen in every steam engine factory. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... cross on his wee back. Ye see the whistling ones in the water put on'y their beaks oot an' is hard to see. Then they sinks to the bottom when ye come near. But you tak this'n home and treat him well and ye'll see him blow out his throat as big as himsel' an' whistle like a steam engine." ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... part steam engine and part devil!" Thornton muttered with vast approval shining in his eyes. "And all horse! A man could ride you right through hell, Little Horse, and come out the other side and never ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... to take all this in our ship!" said Arcot, looking at the great collection. "Look—there's an old winged airplane! And a steam engine—and that's an electric motor! And that thing looks like some kind of ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... his home in this city Dec. 6, 1867, at the age of 67. A long and eminently useful although unobtrusive life entitles his memory to respect. He commenced his career as a mechanic in the steam engine establishment of James P. Allaire, soon after the application of steam for the propulsion of boats and long before its application to ships for the purposes of commerce or war. For fifty-two years, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... ahead there appeared a strange object, coming straight toward them. It sounded something like a steam engine. "Chug, ...
— Prince and Rover of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton

... cotton, into cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the world. Such protection was needed, because while England prohibited the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of India in the mode of mining coal—of a steam engine to pump water or raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one—of a worker in iron who might smelt the ore—of a spinning-jenny or power-loom, or of an artisan who could give instruction in the use of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... and wished for Daredevil, whose antics he had frequently controlled with great success at Devilshoof; and Benson could not help looking a little mortified, for Charlie was not very well off for tail, and had recollections of his harness days, which made him drop his head at times and pull like a steam engine; besides which, Harry—partly, perhaps, from motives of economy, partly, as he said, because he thought it snobbish to ride in handsome toggery—always mounted in the oldest clothes he had, and with a well-used bridle and saddle. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... way. However, our time at Rio is pleasantly spent in the main, and on the first day of June, we set sail once more for Paranagua and Antonina of pleasant recollections; partly laden with flour, kerosene, pitch, tar, rosin and wine, three pianos, I remember, and one steam engine and boiler, all as ballast; "freight free," so the bill of lading read, and further, that the ship should "not be responsible for leakage, breakage, or rust." This clause was well for the ship, as one of those wild pampeiros overtook her, on the voyage, throwing her violently on her beam-ends, ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... System. The domestic period was in turn crowded out of existence by the factory system. A factory is a place where goods are produced by power for commercial use. The factory system first came into prominence after the invention of the steam engine. No record has been found showing its existence prior ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... buildin' wuz seemin'ly all wrought of white marble, with statutes, and colonnades, and towers, and everything else for its comfort, and inside wuz every machine that wuz ever made or thought on, from a sassage-cutter and apple-parer to a steam engine in ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... exceptions, proved to be the best. In the second place, some adequate power must be found to propel the machinery, which is ordinarily too heavy to be run by hand or foot power. This necessary motive power was discovered in steam. The steam engine was devised by James Watt, an English inventor of great ingenuity. He invented a cylinder containing a piston, which could be forced back and forth by the introduction of steam. His progress was much retarded by the inability of the mechanics of his time to make an accurate ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... by man, and priest-ridden, have been brought across the ocean into republican America. They have been placed in this seemingly unpropitious Salt Lake country. There they have founded a city; they have erected factories and mills. The steam engine, the plow, and the sewing machine have aided them; and now, in place of a company of barbarous peasants, ignorant and benighted, and steeped in poverty, you find them transformed into energetic, intelligent citizens, surrounded with ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... the provinces is that abrupt termination of her passion which is so often seen in England. In the country, a life under minute observation as keen as an Indian's compels a woman either to keep on the rails or to start aside like a steam engine wrecked by an obstacle. The strategies of love, the coquetting which form half the composition of a Parisian woman, are ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... eh? Looks as if it would hold a steam engine now. That's bully," exclaimed Mr. Dickle. "Now, if you fellows can tell me of a building equipped with electricity that I can rent for a studio for a couple of days, you will have done me another great favor. We are going to make some historical ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... whole volumes will be devoted to the effect of a particular campaign or military alliance in influencing the destinies of a people like the French or the German. But in those histories you will find no word as to the effect of such trifles as the invention of the steam engine, the coming of the railroad, the introduction of the telegraph and cheap newspapers and literature on the destiny of those people; volumes as to the influence which Britain may have had upon the history of France ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... straight arm and he always ran with high knee-action. When you tackled him it felt just as if you were tackling a man with a dozen legs, all of which were going up and down like the piston rod on a steam engine. ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... of others," drawled Tom, smiling. "Good ones. For instance, heat or cold has nothing to do with the even running of an electric locomotive. It can bore right through a snowbank—a thing a steam engine can't do. It runs at an even speed. Really, grade should have nothing to do with its speed. There is a fault somewhere in the construction of the Jandel machine or the H. & P. A. would have little trouble with those ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... enormous reservoirs for water, huge cylinders of zinc strongly made, and in the rear was the drying room, an apartment with a very high ceiling and surrounded by blinds through which the air passed. On the right of the reservoirs a steam engine let off regular puffs of white smoke. Gervaise, habituated apparently to puddles, did not lift her skirts but threaded her way through the part of eau de Javelle which encumbered the doorway. She ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... distant as to be beyond the remembrance of many still living, a clear-headed North-countryman, on the banks of the Tyne, was working out, in spite of all opposition, the great problem of adapting the steam engine to railway locomotion. Buoyed up by an almost prophetic confidence in his ultimate triumph over all obstacles, he continued to labor to complete an invention which promised the grandest benefits to mankind. What was thought of Stephenson ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... the notion of putting them beside the fireplace," said Jack. "When they are both running, it would be like hitching a pair of horses before an ox-team or a steam engine attachment to an overshot water-wheel. It means business. Uncle Harry ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... years the steam engine will be as old a notion, and as queer an invention, as the press Ben. Franklin worked is now. In fifty years, copper-plate, steel-plate, lithography, and other fine engravings, will be multiplied for a mere song, in a beautiful manner, by the now infantile art of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... every now and then from the ocean, and darted through the air, their bright scales glittering in the sun. Occasionally a whale spouted forth a jet of vapour and spray with a loud noise like that emitted by the safety valve of a steam engine; while albicores, bonitos; and dolphins, with various other fish, could be seen here and there, sporting and tumbling, as they came to the surface, sending a circle of wavelets extending far and wide around. Sea birds also flew through the blue ether, their wings appearing ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... hand, liking and fitness may be discovered by experience. I know a man who, from childhood, took pleasure in construction and invention. At the age of nine he made a real steam engine which "could go" with steam, and which was small enough to be carried in his pocket. He was encouraged to follow the providential indication, went through all the drudgery of workshops, and is ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... the same mistake as men who, trying to set a steam engine in motion, should turn its wheels round with their hands, not suspecting that the underlying cause of its movement was the expansion of the steam, and not the motion of the wheels. By turning the wheels by hand and by levers they ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... shrubbery which nature has reared around the headpieces of mankind.—By a judicious application of the scissors of discrimination, the soap of good nature, the brush of reform, and the razor of decision, he expects to bring about results which, like powers of the Steam Engine are, as yet, only dreamed of. The grace of the Athenian beau and the dignity of the Roman senator shall be so intermingled in the grand contour of all who submit to his touch, that the toute ensemble cannot fail to kindle love and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... the tiller maiden with scorn in her voice. "He thinks because he happens to have a steam engine he needn't look to see which way the wind ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... All honor to the men who do not fear obstacles, but push them aside and press on. Stephenson was explaining his idea that a locomotive steam engine could run along a track and draw cars after it. "But suppose a cow gets on the track," some one objected. "So much the worse," said ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... Imagine a colossal workshop, immense buildings for the mounting and adjusting of the pieces, a steam engine of fifteen hundred horse-power, ventilators making six hundred revolutions a minute, boilers consuming a hundred tons of coals a day, a chimney stack four hundred and fifty feet high, vast outhouses for the storage of our ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... call to action, were scattered over the ground. The great iron guns were oxidized, as were the gun-carriages; the long-range cannons, painted red, and sunken in the herbage, resembled exhaust pipes of a steam engine. Neglect and the rust of disuse were aging these modern pieces. The traditional, monotonous atmosphere which, according to Febrer, enveloped the island, seemed to weigh upon these instruments of war, old and out-of-date almost ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... born at Dartmouth in 1663, was the first man to employ steam power in Cornish mines, and the real inventor of the steam engine. The first steamboat on the River Dart was named ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... the table all gathered upon deck. There was no wind, but the yacht had a steam engine and used her sails only on occasions when they could be of service. Stars shone brightly in the sky overhead, but their light was not sufficient to give an extended view on land or water, and as all were weary with ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... him come along," the latter said, so Hans entered the boat and took up the oars. "Rows like a steam engine!" Jimmie observed as the boat sped away. "That Dutchman is ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... idea was to have us manufacture and sell register and cylinder gate turbines. His inventive powers were not confined to water wheels, for on Feb. 23, 1886, patents were granted him for automatic steam engine, governor and lubricating device. We also remember in the year 1873 or 1874, when his mind was occupied with his "Standard turbine," he was hindered by some device used now on locomotives of the present construction (what it was we are unable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... electric lighting in the shop, it will be necessary to install a generator and a gas, gasoline, or steam engine, or a waterwheel to drive it. A 10 battery belt driven generator may be used in such a shop, and may also, of course, be used with a separate motor. The generator should, of course, be a direct current machine. The size of the generator will depend upon the average number of batteries ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... you think if the Chancellor of the Exchequer, under such circumstances, endeavoured to levy the same taxation which is now borne by the country? From one end of India to the other, with very trifling exceptions, there is no such thing as a steam engine; but this poor population, without a steam engine, without anything like first-rate tools, are called upon to bear, I will venture to say, the very heaviest taxation under which any people ever suffered with the same means of paying it. Yet the whole of this ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... The fine steam engine of 130-horse power, having two cylinders and a fly wheel of fourteen tons weight, and five boilers was made at the North just before the war, and brought to that city to be used in a flouring mill. This was purchased as being exactly the ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains

... machine often has the idea come to him by an inspiration. The man who discovers a continent has seen it in idea before he sees it in reality. If Shakespeare was an inspired man, so was Newton, so was Columbus, so was Lord Bacon, so was Faust when he discovered printing, Watt when he improved the steam engine, and Daguerre when he found out photographic pictures; for, in all great discoveries and inventions, and in small ones too, the original idea is an inspiration, though it has to be worked ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... you how the Bluebird was driven along through the water by a small engine. It was not a steam engine, such as are found in many boats, but a gasoline one, such as those in ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope

... shutting out the sun; the ground is all hot, soon becoming insupportable. In places a little jet of steam and smoke rises fiercely from a hole in the hills, while in others boiling water rushes out as if forced from a steam engine. The water possesses ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... statues, "Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii" (people read Bulwer, Byron and the Bible then) being in such demand that I knew one block in lower Fifth Avenue that possessed seven blind Nydias, all life-size, in white marble,—a form of decoration about as well adapted to those scanty front parlors as a steam engine or a carriage and pair would have been. I fear Bulwer's heroine is at a discount now, and often wonder as I see those old residences turning into shops, what has become of the seven white elephants and all their brothers and sisters ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... diversified applications of the steam engine were most ably enforced in the speeches made at a public meeting held (June 1824) for the purpose of proposing the erection of a monument to the memory of James Watt; these ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... had no previous acquaintance, yet he had the chain of reasoning, founded upon principles of political economy, perfect in his memory; and his facts, so far as I could judge, were correct; at least, he stated them with great precision. The principles of the steam engine, too, he was very familiar with, having been several months on board of a steamboat, and made himself master of its secrets. He knew every lunar star in both hemispheres, and was a perfect master of his quadrant and sextant. Such was the man, who, at forty, was still a dog before ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... physiology, Sanford E. Chaillei, that life is the result of organization; that digestion is a chemical process; and that animal heat and force result from this process. His favorite illustration was the steam engine. The fuel in the fire-box generated the heat which made the water in the boiler boil, and thus the steam force was produced that moved the boat on the river. But, unfortunately for this illustration ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various

... potential or otherwise, in exact proportion to the artist's wisdom and dynamic mentality, and is useless in the hands of the idiotic or weak-minded. A Magic Wand requires brains and vigorous mental force to make it effective, just as the steam engine requires an apparatus for generating the steam, that moves it. With a determined will, and a mental conception of one's inward power, any man or woman can, by means of this sensitive Wand, defy all the legionaries of Hell, and quickly disperse every ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... Brigade for hire or purchase, and in the following year (1860) the Fire Brigade took one on hire for one year. This experiment proved so successful, that in 1861 the committee purchased, from Shand and Mason, the fourth steam engine of their construction. This, with one of the two made in 1859, were the only land steam engines that were at work at the Great Tooley Street Fire ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... his with an expression of gratitude; a warmer feeling for an uncontrolled moment mingled with it. Mr. Carlyle nodded pleasantly, and then set off toward his house at the pace of a steam engine. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... like the various bits of machinery which go to make up a steam engine. In performing their work they produce heat and motion. The fuel which supplies this force is taken into the body as food, prepared for use in the intestinal tract, and from there carried by the blood to be stored up in the muscles and various tissues as latent force. ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... heard of, and the nearest "town" was thirty miles away. He grew wheat among the stumps of his clearing, sold the crop standing to a Cockie who lived ten miles away, and had some surplus sons; or, some seasons, he reaped it by hand, had it thrashed by travelling "steamer" (portable steam engine and machine), and carried the grain, a few bags at a time, into the mill on his ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... The Marine Steam Engine. A Treatise for the use of Engineering Students and Officers of the Royal Navy. By RICHARD SENNETT, Chief Engineer, Royal Navy; First Assistant to Chief Engineer H.M. Dockyard, Devonport; late Instructor in Marine Engineering at the Royal Naval College. With numerous Illustrations ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... Industrial Revolution, and its spread beyond England to Europe, America, and, later, to Asia, were possible only because these bases of capitalism were already laid. To a large extent, thus, the steam engine, the railroad, the steamship, the electric light, and countless other inventions which have helped to revolutionize the world we live in, may be traced directly or indirectly to individual freedom and to the protection of property rights. In so far ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... "would not supply enough air; it would work like a water-pump, sending down the air by jerks, and the receiver would be exhausted between the supplies of air. Two pumps would send down the air puff-puff, like the pumps of a steam engine; but three pumps, constantly in motion, send down, through the hose, a steady and continuous stream of air, enabling the diver to breathe freely ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels

... they were moving. The Captain, from his bridge, carefully superintended every detail of the operation. All signals he insisted on attending to himself personally, transmitting them instantly by his bell to the engineer below. The whole power of the steam engine had been brought to bear on the windlass; the chains could withstand an enormous strain. The wheels had been carefully oiled and tested beforehand; the signalling apparatus had been subjected to the rigidest examination; ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... account for facts of life as we see them. All forms in the world about us are built from chemical substances: solids, liquids and gases, but in so far that they do move, these forms obey a separate and distinct impulse, and when this impelling energy leaves, the form becomes inert. The steam engine rotates under the impetus of an invisible gas called steam. Before steam filled its cylinder, the engine stood still, and when the impelling force is shut off its motion again ceases. The dynamo rotates under the still more subtile influence of an electric current which may also cause the click ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... motion operate under conditions analogous to those under which the same parts of a steam engine do. The air pump sucks and forces nothing but cold air, and nothing but cold air passes through the distributing slide valve. The pump and valve are therefore rendered very durable. The piston and cylinder, at the points where friction exists, are at a temperature of 60 or 80 degrees. These surfaces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... that a man could travel only a short distance in a day. He must go either by a vehicle drawn by horses or oxen, or afoot; and when he would cross the sea he must go in a sailboat that made little progress. In 1831 the first locomotive steam engine was invented. Such wonderful progress has been made in this regard that now one can travel through almost any part of the earth at a rapid rate upon a railway train. Later came the electric engines and electric motor cars and gas engines; and ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford



Words linked to "Steam engine" :   crosshead, steam chest, boiler, steam locomotive, external-combustion engine, steamship, steamer, steam boiler



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