MEMBER OF THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE AND OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF Illustrated by 205 Engravings chiefly of Indicator-Cards. PHILADELPHIA: HENRY CAREY BAIRD & CO., INDUSTRIAL PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS, AND IMPORTERS, LONDON: E. & F. N. SPON, 125 STRAND. PREFACE. THE author has endeavored, in the following pages, to explain how, economically, to make use of steam in an engine, and has also discussed the most important principles regarding the theory and action of the steam engine, with a fair degree of technicality; and yet so as to be intelligible to the ordinary student. He has made an attempt to state the principles laid down by theoretical writers:-Clausius, Tyndall, Rankine, Clark, Maxwell, Colburn, Northcott, Graham, Nystrom, and others, in such a form as to be useful to practical engineers, and to test, by these principles, the modes of working which have been found, in practice, most advantageous. The early chapters refer especially to the history of the steam engine, and to the theory of the action of steam in the cylinder of a steam engine, and the succeeding ones to the application of the theory in practice. Having felt personally the want of more practical information on the subject than is contained in existing works, it has been the aim of the writer to supply such want, and to enable those who have not the opportunity of making experiments to gain a more intimate knowledge of THE INDICATOR. And it is hoped that the directions here given for the practical application of this instrument will at the same time give the volume a considerable degree of interest to those engineers who are conversant with its ordinary working, but lack a knowledge of the principles involved. He gladly acknowledges the assistance afforded by the practical treatises of Main and Brown, Stillman, Porter, Salter, Graham, and others, the Engineering periodicals, and above all, by the late John W. Nystrom, who kindly furnished him with a copy of his new tables on the properties of Water and Steam, and also with considerable matter bearing on the Indicator. He is also under obligations to Messrs. Egbert P. Watson & |