JAMES W. STEELE
Reading edition
CONTENTS
THE STORY OF STEAM.
What Steam is.--Steam in Nature.--The Engine in its earlier forms.--Gradual explosion.--The Hero engine.--The Temple-door machine.--Ideas of the Middle Ages.--Beginnings of the modern engine.--Branca's engine.--Savery's engine.--The Papin engine using cylinder and piston.--Watt's improvements upon the Newcomen idea.--The crank movement.--The first use of steam expansively.--The "Governor."--First engine by an American Inventor.--Its effect upon progress in the United States.--Simplicity and cheapness of the modern engine.--Actual construction of the modern engine.--Valves, piston, etc., with diagrams.
THE AGE OF STEEL.
The various "Ages" in civilization.--Ancient knowledge of the metals.--The invention and use of Bronze.--What Steel is.--The "Lost Arts."--Metallurgy and chemistry.--Oriental Steel.--Modern definition of Steel.--Invention of Cast Steel.--First iron-ore discoveries in America.--First American Iron-works.--Early methods without steam.--First American casting.--Effect of iron industry upon independence.--Water-power.--The trip-hammer.--The steam-hammer of Nasmyth.--Machine-tools and their effects.--First rolling-mill.--Product of the iron industry in 1840-50.--The modern nail, and how it came.--Effect of iron upon architecture.--The "Sky-Scraper."--Gas as fuel in iron manufactures.--The Steel of the present.--The invention of Kelley.--The Bessemer process.--The "Converter."--Present product of Steel.--The Steel-mill.
THE STORY OF ELECTRICITY.
The oldest and the youngest of the sciences.--Origin of the name.--Ancient ideas of Electricity.--Later experiments.--Crude notions and wrong conclusions.--First Electric Machine.--Frictional Electricity.--The Leyden Jar.--Extreme ideas and Fakerism.--Franklin, his new ideas and their reception.--Franklin's Kite.--The Man Franklin.--Experiments after Franklin, leading to our present modern uses.--Galvani and his discovery.--Volta, and the first "Battery."--How a battery acts.--The laws of Electricity, and how they were discovered.--Induction, and its discoverer.--The line at which modern Electricity begins.--Magnetism and Electricity.--The Electro-Magnet.--The Molecular theory.--Faraday, and his Law of Magnetic Force.
MODERN ELECTRICITY.
CHAPTER I. The Four great qualities of Electricity which make its modern uses possible.--The universal wire.--Conductors and non conductors.--Electricity an exception in the ordinary Laws of Nature.--A dual nature: "Positive" and "Negative."--All modern uses come under the law of Induction.--Some of the laws of this induction.--Magnets and Magnetism.--Relationship between the two.--Magnetic "poles."--Practical explanation of the action of induction.--The Induction Coil.--Dynamic and Static Electricity.--The Electric Telegraph.--First attempts.--Morse, and his beginnings.--The first Telegraph Line.--Vail, and the invention of the dot-and-dash alphabet.--The old instruments and the new.--The final simplicity of the telegraph.
CHAPTER II. The Ocean Cable.--Differences between land lines and cables.--The story of the first cable.--Field and his final success.--The Telephone.--Early attempts.--Description of Bell's invention.--The Telautograph.--Early attempts and the idea upon which they were based.--Description of Gray's invention.--How a Telautograph may be made mechanically.
CHAPTER III. The Electric Light.--Causes of heat and light in the conductor of a current.--The first Electric Light.--The Arc Light, and how constructed.--The Incandescent.--The Dynamo.--Date of the invention.--Successive steps.--Faraday the discoverer of its principle.--Pixü's machine.--Pacinatti.--Wilde.--Siemens' and Wheatstone.--The Motor.--How the Dynamo and Motor came to be coupled.--Review of first attempts.--Kidder's battery.--Page's machine.--Electric Railroads.--Electrolysis.--General facts.--Electrical Measurements.--"Death Current."--Instruments of Measurement.--Electricity as an Industry.--Medical Electricity.--Incomplete possibilities.--What the "Storage Battery" is.
CHAPTER IV. Electrical Invention in the United States.--Review of the careers of Franklin, Morse, Field, Edison and others.--Some of the surprising applications of Electricity.--The Range-Finder.--Cooking and heating by Electricity.