been in use ever since. Although the perfect practicability of this method of boat propulsion was fully demonstrated by a trial on the tugboat Charlotte Dundas, in March, 1802, the plan for steam power on canals and lakes was not carried further. The Forth and Clyde Company, and the Duke of Bridgewater, who were backing Symington, gave up the project and he could get help from no other sources. His inventions and experiments are generally regarded as marking the beginning of steam navigation. It is interesting to note that among those who were guests on the Charlotte Dundas, on the occasion of this trial trip, was Robert Fulton, who wrote a treatise on steam navigation in 1793, tried a small steamboat on the river Seine, in France, in 1803, and in 1807 launched his famous steamship, the Clermont, on the Hudson River.

Symington, disappointed and discouraged, gave up his work and went to London. The rest of his life was for the most part thrown away, and he became one of the waifs and strays of London. In 1825 he received a grant of one hundred pounds from the privy purse, and later on fifty pounds more, in recognition of his services for steam navigation. He died in obscurity and although he was unquestionably the pioneer in his country of the successful application of steam to navigation on inland waters his name is only a bare memory.

Nathan Read

Born in Warren, Mass., July 2, 1759. Died near Belfast, Me., January 20, 1849.

Graduated from Harvard College in 1781, Read was a tutor at Harvard for four years. In 1788 he began experimenting to discover some way of utilizing the steam engine for propelling boats and carriages. His efforts were mainly directed toward devising lighter, more compact machinery than then generally in use. His greatest invention at that time was a substitute for the large working-beam. This was a cross-head beam which ran in guides and had a connecting-rod with which motion was communicated. The new cylinder that he invented to attach to this working-frame was double-acting. In order to make the boiler more portable he invented a multi-tubular form, and this he patented, together with the cylinder, chain-wheel, and other appliances.

The boiler was cylindrical and was placed upright or horizontal, and the furnace was carried within it. A double cylinder formed a water-jacket, connected with a water and steam chamber above, and a water-chamber below. Numerous small straight tubes connected these two chambers. Read also invented another boiler in which the fire went through small spiral tubes, very much as it does in the present-day locomotives, and this was a smoke-consuming engine. For the purpose of acquiring motion he first used paddle-wheels, but afterward adopted a chain-wheel of his own invention.

NATHAN READ

Read planned a steam-car to be run with his tubular boiler, and it is said that this vehicle, when laden with fifty tons weight, could make five miles per hour. The model which was completed in 1790 had four wheels, the front pair being pivoted at the center and controlled by a horizontal sheave and rope. The sheave was located back near the boiler, and in guiding the machine it was operated by a hand-wheel placed above the platform, within easy reach of the engineer. A square boiler with Read’s multi-tubular system, overhung at the rear of the carriage. Two driving-wheels were forward of the boiler, and in front of these were two horizontal cylinders on each side of the engine. On the inside of each wheel were ratched teeth that fitted into corresponding teeth on horizontal racks above and below the hub. The piston, moving back and forth from the cylinder, engaged these teeth and caused a revolution of the wheel. There were two steam valves and two exhaust valves to each cylinder, the exhaust being into the atmosphere. Although this was the first conception of propulsion by steam on land in America, Read went no further in creating this model, inasmuch as he received no encouragement from financial sources.

In 1796, Read established at Salem, Mass., the Salem Iron Foundry, where he manufactured anchors, chain cables, and other machinery. In January, 1798, he invented a machine to cut and head nails at one operation. He also invented a method of equalizing the action of windmills by accumulating the force of the wind through winding up a weight; and a plan for harnessing the force of the tides by means of reservoirs which, by being alternately filled up and emptied, created a constant stream of water. Among his other inventions were a pumping engine and a threshing machine.

Richard Trevithick

Born in Illogan, in the west of Cornwall, England, April 13, 1771. Died in Dartford, Kent, April 22, 1833.

Richard Trevithick had meager educational advantages. His father was manager of the Dolcoath and other mines, and shortly after the birth of his son moved to Penponds, near Camborne, where the boy was sent to school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, which were the limits of his attainments. Early in life he showed the dawning of remarkable inventive genius, was quick at figures and clever in drawing. He developed into a young man of notable physique, being six feet two inches high, and having the frame and the strength of an athlete. He was one of the most powerful wrestlers in the west country, and it is related of him that he could easily lift a thousand-weight mandril.

At the age of eighteen young Trevithick began to assist his father as mine manager, and at once proceeded to put his inventive faculty to practical test. His initial success, in 1795, was an improvement upon an engine at the Wheal Treasury mine, which accomplished a great saving in fuel and in power, and won for him his first royalty. Before his father died, in 1797, he had attained to the position of engineer at the Ding Dong mine, near Penzance, and had already set up at the Herland mine the engine built by William Bull, with improvements of his own. His earliest invention of importance was in 1797, when he made an improved plunger pump, which, in the following year, he developed into a double-acting water-pressure engine. One of these engines, set up in 1804, at the Alport mine, in Derbyshire, was run until 1850.