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Men of Invention and Industry-Part9_Samuel Smiles(1812-1904)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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extraordinarily rapid--though the voyage of about 3000 miles,

from Liverpool to New York, can now be made in only about two



days' more time.

In nearly all seagoing vessels, the Paddle has now almost



entirely given place to the Screw. It was long before this

invention was perfected and brought into general use. It was not



the production of one man, but of several generations of

mechanical inventors. A perfected invention does not burst forth



from the brain like a poetic thought or a fine resolve. It has

to be initiated, laboured over, and pursued in the face of



disappointments, difficulties, and discouragements.

Sometimes the idea is born in one generation, followed out in the



next, and perhaps perfected in the third. In an age of progress,

one invention merely paves the way for another. What was the



wonder of yesterday, becomes the common and unnoticed thing of

to-day.



The first idea of the screw was thrown out by James Watt more

than a century ago. Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham, had proposed



to move canal boats by means of the steam-engine; and Dr. Small,

his friend, was in communication with James Watt, then residing



at Glasgow, on the subject. In a letter from Watt to Small,

dated the 30th September, 1770, the former, after speaking of the



condenser, and saying that it cannot be dispensed with, proceeds:

"Have you ever considered a spiral oar for that purpose



[propulsion of canal boats], or are you for two wheels?" Watt

added a pen-and-ink drawing of his spiral oar, greatly resembling



the form of screw afterwards patented. Nothing, however, was

actually done, and the idea slept.



It was revived again in 1785, by Joseph Bramah, a wonderful

projector and inventor.[5] He took out a patent, which included



a rotatory steam-engine, and a mode of propelling vessels by

means either of a paddle-wheel or a "screw propeller." This



propeller was "similar to the fly of a smoke-jack"; but there is

no account of Bramah having practically tried this method of



propulsion.

Austria, also, claims the honour of the invention of the screw



steamer. At Trieste and Vienna are statues erected to Joseph

Ressel, on whose behalf his countrymen lay claim to the



invention; and patents for some sort of a screw date back as far

as 1794.



Patents were also taken out in England and America--by W.

Lyttleton in 1794; by E. Shorter in 1799; by J. C. Stevens, of



New Jersey, in 1804; by Henry James in 1811--but nothing

practical was accomplished. Richard Trevethick, the anticipator



of many things, also took out a patent in 1815, and in it he

describes the screw propeller with considerable minuteness.



Millington, Whytock, Perkins, Marestier, and Brown followed, with

no better results.



The late Dr. Birkbeck, in a letter addressed to the 'Mechanics'

Register,' in the year 1824, claimed that John Swan, of 82,



Mansfield Street, Kingsland Road, London, was the practical

inventor of the screw propeller. John Swan was a native of



Coldingham, Berwickshire. He had removed to London, and entered

the employment of Messrs. Gordon, of Deptford. Swan fitted up a



boat with his propeller, and tried it on a sheet of water in the

grounds of Charles Gordon, Esq., of Dulwich Hill. "The velocity



and steadiness of the motion," said Dr. Birkbeck in his letter,

"so far exceeded that of the same model when impelled by



paddle-wheels driven by the same spring, that I could not doubt

its superiority; and the stillness of the water was such as to



give the vessel the appearance of being moved by some magical

power."



Then comes another claimant--Mr. Robert Wilson, then of Dunbar

(not far from Coldingham), but afterwards of the Bridgewater



Foundry, Patricroft. In his pamphlet, published a few years ago,

he states that he had long considered the subject, and in 1827 he



made a small model, fitted with "revolving skulls," which he

tried on a sheet of water in the presence of the Hon. Capt.



Anthony Maitland, son of the Earl of Lauderdale. The experiment

was successful--so successful, that when the "stern paddles" were



in 1828 used at Leith in a boat twenty-five feet long, with two

men to work the machinery, the boat was propelled at an average



speed of about ten miles an hour; and the Society of Arts

afterwards, in October, 1882, awarded Mr. Wilson their silver



medal for the "description, drawing, and models of stern paddles

for propelling steamboats, invented by him." The subject was, in






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