Our Legal Heritage Part 116

Joseph-Louis LaGrange from France developed differential equations.

Natural history museums were established. A group split off from the Royal Society to show collections of curiosities.

In 1754, a self-educated mechanic founded the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It had sections on agriculture, manufactures, mechanics, chemistry, liberal arts, and trade and colonies. It sponsored contests at which prizes were given, such as that in 1761 for the best invention of a machine that would spin six threads of wool, flax, cotton, or silk at one time with only one person attending it.

Machines still mostly relied on human, animal, and water power.

Abraham Darby was a Quaker and millwright who made large cooking pots of iron, which cost less than bronze. Around 1709, he experimented with various substances to take the place of wood charcoal in iron smelting.

Coal was a remote possibility. In forging or working metals coal had more or less the same qualities as wood charcoal, but this was not the case in smelting ores, especially iron ore. Coal contained sulphur compounds which caused the iron ore to deteriorate. So he controlled the burning of coal to burn out these impurities, which produced c.o.ke. His son took over after his death and improved the methods of c.o.king, strengthened the bellows, and added ore limestone and other reagents to the mixture. By 1756, his large blast furnace using both pit coal and wood charcoal was very productive. He made iron goods of such quality as those imported.

In 1767, Richard Reynolds replaced the wooden rails connecting a blast furnace to mines with cast iron rails. He had apprenticed as a grocer and then became a partner in a large ironworks of Darby with a man whose daughter he married. After Darby died and before Darby's sons became of age, Reynolds was in charge of the ironworks. He cast cylinders of the early steam engines.

In 1749 John Roebuck, a physician and son of a prosperous manufacturer of Sheffield goods, found a cheaper way to manufacture sulphuric acid.

He did this by using leaden chambers instead of gla.s.s globes to collect the vapor from burning nitre and sulphur over water. This reduced the cost of sulfuric acid to one-fourth of its previous cost, so that sulfuric acid came to be used to bleach linen instead of sour milk. He also made cast iron into malleable iron by smelting iron using c.o.ke from pit-coal instead of charcoal. But flooding in his mines and further ventures resulted in his ruin and bankruptcy.

Thomas Newcomen, a Baptist ironmonger, blacksmith, and locksmith, supplied iron tools to mine workers. He was aware of the problem of flooding of mines and the awkward system of pumps which were used one above the other and were powered by teams of horses. He made a very valuable contribution to power generation by inventing the atmospheric pressure steam engine with piston around 1712. He did this by connecting theory with experiment, through the use of scientific knowledge, especially the Royal Society's investigation into atmospheric pressure.

First cold water was poured on a cylinder in which a piston could move up and down. This caused steam inside the cylinder to cool and condense into water. The vacuum created inside the cylinder under the piston caused atmospheric pressure on top of the piston to push the piston down. The piston was attached by a rod to the end of a beam which end then swung down from a point on a vertical stand to which it was attached. When the beam swung, its other end, which was attached to a rod connected to a pump, rose, thus working the pump. Then steam from water heated in a boiler under and communicating with the cylinder was allowed into the cylinder under the piston. This overcame the atmospheric pressure on the piston from above and allowed the piston to rise by a counterweight on the rod over and connecting to the pump. Boys opened and closed the steam valve, which let steam into the cylinder from below, and the water valve, which let cold water pour on the cylinder from above. Then the boys were replaced by the valves being connected to the swinging beam which caused them to open and close at perfectly regular intervals. A story gives the credit for this improvement to an inventive valve boy who wanted to play with his friends. In 1712, the mining industry used this steam engine to pump water out of mine-shafts which had flooded. These engines were also used to supply water to reservoirs? locks at ca.n.a.ls, and drinking water facilities in towns. One such engine developed power equivalent to fifty horses working at one sixth the cost. It was the first automatic machine since the clock.

Then James Watt invented the steam engine which used steam as a force acting on the piston. Watt made his living making scientific instruments for Glasgow University. Around 1764, he was fixing one of Newcomen's engines belonging to the university, when he saw its inefficiencies, such as the loss of heat when the cylinder was cooled. He saved this heat energy by having the steam condensed in another vessel distinct but connected to the cylinder. This condenser was kept constantly cool by cold water. So the condensed steam was pumped back into the boiler and it circulated continuously, thus obviating the need for constant resupply of water. In order to avoid the necessity of using water to keep the piston air-tight, and also to prevent the air from cooling the cylinder during the descent of the piston, he used the expansion of the steam to push the piston instead of atmospheric pressure. Then, in order to expand the use of the steam engine beyond that of a pump, he converted the oscillating motion of the beam into rotary motion. He formed a partners.h.i.+p with John Roebuck, who had a two-thirds interest.

But when Roebuck needed money, he sold his interest to Matthew Boulton.

Boulton wanted better power that that of his watermill for his workshops that made metal b.u.t.tons, watch chains, s...o...b..ckles of engraved steel, ornamental bronzes, vases, chandeliers, tripods, silver and plated wares, and imitation gold and tortoisesh.e.l.l work. In dry weather, about eight horses were needed to aid in driving the machinery. A steam pump could pump water from the bottom of the watermill to the top to be used again. He had built up this factory of five buildings and six hundred workers, with 9,000 pounds derived from his marriage to an heiress. By 1774, the partners.h.i.+p had built a model steam engine with rotary power whose design could be sold. The price of the engine was set as the amount of money saved on fuel costs in the first three years of its operation. This machine was a relatively economical user of energy, capable of performing almost any kind of work.

About 1750, John Wilkinson, the son of a farmer who also oversaw an iron furnace, subst.i.tuted mineral coal for wood charcoal in the smelting and puddling of iron ore. In 1766, he made it possible to transport coal out of mines on rail wagons drawn by horses. As father of the iron industry, he made iron chairs, vats for breweries and distilleries, and iron pipes of all sizes. With his invention of the first precision boring machine, he provided Watt with metal cylinders of perfectly accurate shape, which were necessary for the smooth working of Watt's steam engine. In 1775 he bought a pumping steam engine from Boulton and Watt's company for his ironworks. It pumped three times as fast as Newcomen's engine.

Watt's steam engine came to be used for power-loom weaving and then for all sorts of manufactures. It would put England ahead of every manufacturing country in the world. Millwrights built, installed, and later designed not only steam engines but the machinery that they drove.

These men were essential in setting up the first factories. They were the most imaginative and resourceful craftsmen. They knew how to use a turner's, a carpenter's and a blacksmith's tools and had supervised or done smith work, brick-laying or stone-mason's work in erecting and maintaining windmills with their many gears and bearings. There was a good deal of variety in mills, as well as in the structure and workmans.h.i.+p of them, some being worked by horses, some by wind, and others by water. They had some knowledge of arithmetic and practical mechanics. They could draw out a plan and calculate the speed and power of a wheel. Although technically in a branch of carpentry, the millwrights learned to work with metal as well. Metal was superior to wood not only because of its strength but because wood parts were irregular in motion and wore out rapidly. So iron and bra.s.s parts came to replace wood and leather parts.

In 1728, J. Paine got a patent for rolling iron instead of hammering it. The iron bars, being heated in a long hot arch or cavern pa.s.sed between two large metal rollers, which had certain notches or furrows on their surfaces.

Clockmaker and Quaker Benjamin Huntsman was struck with the difficulty of finding finely tempered steel for the springs of his watches and pendulums of his clocks. He experimented for years to find a h.o.m.ogeneous and flawless metal, and finally, in 1740, invented cast steel, which had high tensile strength and was much harder than ordinary steel. He did this by remelting refined high quality wrought iron bars at very high temperatures in sealed fireclay crucibles, together with small quant.i.ties of charcoal and ground gla.s.s as reagents. This distributed the carbon evenly in the metal, which hammering could not do. He approached the Sheffield cutlers, who finally agreed to try his cast steel for fear of losing their business to some other manufacturers who were approaching Huntsman. Since Huntsman had no patent, he worked at night and employed only men who would keep his secret. His steel was made at night. His factory became prosperous about 1770 and the excellence of his steel manufacture was never equaled. Steel and wrought iron was scarce and expensive.

Around 1748, iron founder Samuel Walker, discovered Huntsman's secret by appearing at Huntsman's factory disguised as a s.h.i.+vering tramp who asked to warm himself by the furnace fire. He feigned sleep while watching the whole process. When he began to make cast steel, his annual output grew from 900 pounds in 1747 to 11,000 pounds in 1760 and he made a fortune.

Silver was plated over copper from 1751. White metal from tin and antimony was used from about 1770.

The bra.s.s industry was beginning to produce bra.s.s from copper and zinc that was as good as foreign bra.s.s. The secret of plate-gla.s.s manufacture came to England in the 1770s.

In 1773, a corporation was set up for the manufacture of plate gla.s.s.

It could raise joint-stock because of the great risk and large expense of the undertaking.

In 1775, chemist William Cookworthy was given a fourteen year patent for the discovery of certain clay and stone in England from which he made England's first true porcelain, i.e. that which could sustain the most extreme degree of fire without melting, and also had grain as smooth and l.u.s.trous, and the transparency and beauty of color, equal in degree to the best Chinese or Dresden porcelain.

The import duties on diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones and jewels was dropped to increase the business of cutting and polis.h.i.+ng them.

The world's first chocolate factory was set up in England in 1728. Milk was added to chocolate.

The Fanmakers were incorporated in 1709.

A linen company to sell cambricks [a fine white linen] and lawns [a thin and fine linen] was incorporated in 1763.

A free market for fish was established in Westminster to supplement the free fish market in London to prevent forestalling and monopolizing of the fish industry and to increase the number of fishermen. Duties for its maintenance were paid by the fishermen. Certain men were given the right to incorporate fisheries of white herring for twenty one years to improve the fisheries and give employment to the poor. They were authorized to sell subscriptions and to build s.h.i.+ps provided the fishery employ 100,000 in such fishery. There were restrictions on taking fish from rivers during their breeding season. Herring fishermen were allowed to land and dry their nets and erect tents and pickle, cure, and reload fish on uncultivated land up to 100 yards beyond the high water mark all any sh.o.r.e, forelands, harbors, and ports, without paying the landholder.

Later, a bounty of 30s. per ton was authorized to be given for vessels that were fitted out and used for white herring fishery.

Anyone wis.h.i.+ng to be admitted to the Levant (Turkey) trading company was to be made free of such on paying 20 pounds, so that this trade might be increased.