The Portable Engine, Its Construction and Management: A Practical Manual for Owners and Uses of Steam Engines Generally (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Portable Engine, Its Construction and Management: A Practical Manual for Owners and Uses of Steam Engines Generally

This engine, it seems, was furnished with a blast pipe, but whether or not this was made use of to cause an artificial draught does not appear. At any rate it is described as puffing so loudly that it could be heard for miles. In the account of another of Trevithick's engines about the same period, however, it is explicitly stated that the steam puffed up the chimney.

These were not, it will be understood, actually movable engines upon wheels, but they were un doubtedly a considerable advance in the direction of portability upon the engines of Watt, Hornblower, and others, which were in most cases dependent upon the masonry and walls of the engine-house for the connection between the beam and the cylinder.

Trevithick's engines above referred to were, more over, direct-acting so that we have at this early date (about 1803) the essentials of a portable engine - high pressure, direct action, and forced draught.

The boiler appears to have been of cast iron, cylindrical, with a single wrought-iron tube passing through it, and to have been quite independent of brickwork foundations and setting, and the engine was attached to the boiler. The pressure would seem to have been about 30 lbs. Above the atmosphere.

The next step in the history of the portable engine is represented by a machine designed by Messrs. Tux ford of Boston in 1839, the year of the establishment of the Royal Agricultural Society.

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