Abstract
FOR his presidential address to the Newcomen Society delivered on October 16, Mr. C. F. Dendy Marshall took the subjeet of “The Germs and Development of Some Mechanical Inventions”. His address, he said, followed a well-beaten track, but as many uncritical accounts and inaccurate illustrations have been published regarding the early history of pumps and engines, he thought it would be of interest to consider some of the earliest printed records. Recent research has shown that much less is known of such men as Ctesibius and Heron than our fathers thought they knew; and even in the case of Heron, the earliest manuscripts are posthumous to the extent of more than a thousand years. The first printed edition of his “Spiritalia” was in Latin and was published at Urbino in 1573. In this is described the first known application of heat to produce motion in fluids, a device for opening temple doors by the agency of heat, and the famous aeolipyle. The word ‘aeolipyle’ has been used by writers in three senses, namely, (1) for a vessel shaped like a retort for producing a jet of steam, (2) for Heron's engine and (3) for a wheel impelled by steam as invented by Branca. The word means the doorway of Eolus, that is, that of the cave in which the winds were kept. After touching upon some of the inventions described by Agricola, Porta, de Caus, Branca, D'Acres, von Guericke, Boyle and the Marquis of Worcester, Mr. Dendy Marshall made some interesting remarks on Papin and his invention of the safety valve. To the plug valve, Papin added the lever and moveable weight, but he did not propose it as a safety valve or hint that it might be useful to prevent explosions. From Papin, Mr. Dendy Marshall turned to the work of Savery and Newcomen on the steam engine, and concluded with some remarks on the early history of tramways, railroads and mechanically propelled vehicles.
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Origins of Some Mechanical Inventions. Nature 136, 749–750 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136749c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136749c0