All About Engines

54 All About Engines flywheel, gave a regular motion throughout each revolution, the engine was still imperfect for driving machinery. It continued to take the same amount of steam and to exert the same power. Whether one or all the machines were at work, and as the ° load ” in many factories is extremely variable, steam was wasted unnecessarily. Moreover, when the number of machines at work decreased or in- creased, the speed of the engine increased or decreased. So, in order to control the speed of the engine, Watt invented the governor not very unlike that shown in Fig. 8. The first double-acting engine, containing all Watt’s improvements, was erected for the Albion Flour Mills in 1785. It was applied to a cotton mill about the same time, and thenceforth was used for any and every purpose for which power was required. By its demand for coal it stimulated the mining industry, by its demand for iron it stimulated the manufacture of that metal, and in return it pumped water, hauled trucks, blew air into the blast furnace, drove the rolling mill, and enabled miner and ironworker to produce more and more of those materials which were essential to industrial progress. Without the steam engines the inventions of textile machinery would have been far less effective than they were, and the extraordinary development of cotton spin- ning and weaving which took place towards the close of the eighteenth century could never have occurred. Before Watt’s time there were no steam engines—