Highways and Highway Transportation by George R. Chatburn
1767. Green[7] tells us that the main roads which lasted fairly well
508 words | Chapter 42
through the middle ages had broken down under the increased production
of the eighteenth century. That the new lines of trades lay along
“mere country lanes”; that much of the woolen trade had to be carried
on long trains of pack animals at a large cost; that transportation
“in the case of heavier goods such as coal distribution was almost
impracticable save along the greater rivers.” In fact coal was
ordinarily referred to as “sea coal” because it was brought to most
ports by water routes. The Duke of Bridgewater and a young engineer
of the name of Brindley solved the problem of transportation for the
time being by beginning the great network of canals which later covered
England to the extent of more than 3000 miles. Too great praise cannot
be given to the engineers and constructors of these canals. Brindley
considered canals not as adjuncts of rivers and bays, on the contrary
“rivers were only meant,” he said, “to feed canals.” He carried this
canal by means of an aqueduct over the river to Manchester, thus
bringing the coal to a new thriving manufacturing city. Green further
says (Paragraph 1528)
To English trade the canal opened up the richest of all markets, the
market of England itself. Every part of the country was practically
thrown open to the manufacturer; and the impulse which was given by
this facility of carriage was at once felt in a vast development of
production. But such a development would have been impossible had
not the discovery of this new mode of distribution been accompanied
by the discovery of a new productive force. In the coal which lay
beneath her soil England possessed a store of force which had
hitherto remained almost useless.
Not the least were the new methods of smelting iron with coal instead
of wood, which changed the whole aspect of the iron trade and which
made Great Britain for many years the workshop of the world. Lead,
copper, and tin were also mined and smelted by the use of coal. The
great advance of the “industrial revolution” did not come until Watt’s
improvements upon the steam engines of Newcomen, Cawley, and Savery,
which were themselves improvements over earlier inventions of Papin,
della Porta, and Worcester, made practicable the transfer of energy
stored up in coal to the movement of machinery. He changed the steam
engine from a clumsy, wasteful, inefficient machine into a workable
apparatus little differing from the reciprocating steam engines of the
present. Up until the successful operation of the turbine engine, the
principal advances upon Watt’s engine were mere details, though often
of great importance. For instance the boilers for the generation of
steam were improved; the enlarged application of the principle of
expansion, developing better cut-off mechanisms and governors, to more
economical construction due to better facilities and better knowledge
of materials and their properties; and to the application of the steam
engine in locomotives to propel transportation cars.
Watt’s claims and specifications for patents from 1769 to 1784 cover
such inventions as:
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