The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

1901.] THE LOCOMOTIVE. 135
and wo reproduce-, in this issue, an article from London Engineering, in which an appar-
ently honest and sincere comparison is made between English technical schools and those
of Germany and the United States. There can be no doubt about the value of a first-
class school of this character, and our recent remarkable successes in the foreign markets
is doubtless due, in some measure at least, to the fact that we have been turning out, for
some years' past, an annual crop of youngsters who are pretty well grounded in the prin-
ciples of science and engineering, and better prepared to take hold of the problems of
life than we were, at the same age. Education will never give brains to a man who was
born without them; but an education that is really worthy of the name will cultivate a
power of independent observation, and a systematic mode of thinking, that must neces-
sarily redound to
which he belongs.
the advantage, not only of the individual, but also of the nation to
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which the writer of the quoted
article refers, is only one of a goodly number of excellent institutions of the same sort,
that are engaged in the work of preparing our young men for greater usefulness, and
thereby incidentally giving our foreign friends increased cause for worriment.
We have received, from the D. Van Nostrand Company, a copy of Mr. Leslie S.
Robertson's excellent book on Water Tube Boilers, and have examined it with much
interest. The book is based on a course of lectures delivered at University College,
London, and has been issued in its present form because there is no standard book on
this subject, that is not beyond the means of the general run of readers who would be
interested in the matter that it contains. It begins with a well-illustrated account of the
history of the water tube boiler, showing how the modern types have been gradually
evolved from earlier ones that could not be used in these clays of high pressures and high
efficiency. The question of circulation is then taken up, and the general conditions that
a water tube boiler must fulfill are considered. The numerous plans that have been
proposed, for realizing, in practice, the conditions that theory shows to be necessary, are
then taken up at considerable length, and the book closes with a chapter on boiler acces-
sories, in which various types of feed-water heaters and purifiers and the like are
discussed. The work is very well done throughout, so far as we have observed, and we
take pleasure in commending it to the attention of those who desire information on the
subject of which it treats. It is finely printed, on good paper, and the illustrations, for
the most part, are excellent. (The D. Van Nostrand Company, 23 Murray St., New
York. Price, $3.00.)
In our issue for August, 1901, we printed extensive extracts from a lecture on
'"Economy in Marine Engineering," delivered at Sibley College, by Mr. W. M. Mc-
Farland. In this article the following paragraph occurs: "The first steam war vessel
of our navy, the Fulton, built in 1837, had for her chief engineer Charles H. Haswell;
. and an extract from her steam log for a portion of January, 1838, shows that the
maximum steam pressure was eleven pounds, the vacuum twenty-four inches, and the
maximum revolutions per minute, eighteen." A correspondent callsour attention to the
fact that this vessel was not the first warship in our navy to be propelled by steam, that
distinction properly belonging to the Bemologos, which was authorized by Congress in
March, 1814, was built at Fulton's engine works, and was completed and successfully
tried in New York harbor in June, 1815. The Bemologos had central paddle wheels,