Steam:
Its Generation and Use

BRIEF HISTORY OF WATER-TUBE BOILERS* Water-tube boilers are not new. From the earliest days of the steam engine, there have been those who recognized their advantages. The first water-tube boiler recorded was made by a contempo- rary of Watt, William Blakey, in 1766. He arranged sev- eral tubes in a furnace, alternately inclined at oppo- site angles, and connected at their contiguous ends by smaller pipes. But the first successful user of such boil- ers was James Rumsay, an American inventor, celebra- ted for his early experiments in steam navigation, and who may be truly classed as the originator of the water-tube boiler, as now known. In 1788 he patented, in England, several forms of boilers, among them, one having a 1 water-sides and top, across izontal water-tubes connecting with the water spaces. Another was a coiled tube within ä cylin- drical fire-box, connecting at its two ends with the annular sur- roundingwaterspace. This was fire-box with flat which were hor- Stephen, 1805. the first of the “ coil boilers.” Another form in the same patent was the vertical tubular boiler, as at present made. The first boiler made of a combi- nation of small tubes, connected at one end to a reservoir, was the in- vention of another American, John Cox Stephens, in 1805. This boiler was actually employed to drive a steamboat on the Hudson River, but like all the “porcupine” boilers of which it was the first, it did not have the elements of a con- tinued success. * See discussion by Geo. H. Babcock, of Sterling’s paper on '* Water-tube and Shell Boilers, in Trans. Am. Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol., VI., p. 601. About the same time, Wolf, the inventor of compound engines, made a boiler of large hori- zontal tubes, laid across the furnace and con- 2>uajo 000 JOOOO Joseph Eve, 1825. nected at the ends to a longitudinal drum above. The first purely sectional water-tube boiler was made by Julius Griffith, in 1821, who used a num- ber of horizontal water-tubes connected to ver- tical side pipes, which were in turn connected to horizontal gathering pipes, and these to a steam drum. The first sectional water-tube boiler, with a well-defined circulation, was made by Joseph Eve, in 1825. His sections were composed of small tubes slightly double curved but practically vertical, fixed in horizon- tal headers, which were in turn con- nected to a steam space above and below formed of larger pipes, and water space connected by outside pipes so as to secure a cir- up through the sections and 23