The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. XXII.] TUBULAE BOILERS. 261
Various modifications of this boiler were afterwards adopted.
The ingenious Trevethick, in his patent of 1815, seems also to
have entertained the idea of employing a boiler constructed of
" small perpendicular tubes,'' with the object of increasing the
heating surface. These tubes were to be closed at the bottom,
opening into the common reservoir, from whence they were to
receive their water, and into which the steam of all the tubes
was to be united. It does not, however, appear that any locomotive
was ever constructed according to this patent. Mr. W.
H. James, a son of the first surveyor of the Liverpool and Man-
chester Railway, patented a new form of boiler in 1825, the
object of which was to increase the heating surface by means of
a series of annular tubes placed side by side, and bolted together,
so as to form by their union a long cylindrical boiler, in the
centre of which, at one end, the fireplace was situated. A
model of this tubular boiler was shown by Mr. James to both
Mr. Losh and Mr. Stephenson, about 1827. Losh expressed
the opinion that, if such a boiler could be put to Stephenson's
engine, there would be no limits to its power ; and Mr. James
spoke of a speed of from twenty to thirty miles an hour, at which
Mr. Stephenson shook his head, remembering, as no doubt he
did, his severe cross-examination and denunciation by counsel
before the House of Commons, for venturing to say that twelve
miles an hour might be achieved by the locomotive on railways ;
and he said that was a rate of speed they did not now dare to
talk about. Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney, the persevering inventor
of steam-carriages for travelling on common roads, also applied
the tubular principle extensively in his boiler, the steam being
generated within the tubes. Messrs. Summers and Ogle in-
vented a boiler for their turnpike-road steam-carriage, consisting
of a series of tubes placed vertically over the furnace, through
which the heated air passed before reaching the chimney. The
application of the same principle to the railway locomotive, it
has been stated by a French author,* was first effected by M.
Seguin, the engineer of the Lyons and St. Etienne Eailway.
He claimed to have patented a boiler, in 1828, in which he
placed a series of horizontal tubes immersed in the water,
* Lobet, Des Chemins de Fer de France, 1845.