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Page 3
The Reina Regente will be manned by 50 officers and a crew of 350 men,
all of whom will have their quarters on the main deck. Among her
fittings and equipment there are three steam lifeboats and eight other
boats, five of Sir William Thomson's patent compasses, and a complete
electric light installation, the latter including two powerful search
lights, which are placed on the bridge. All parts of the vessel are in
communication by means of speaking tubes. In order to enable the
vessel to turn speedily, she is fitted with the sternway rudder of
Messrs. Thomson & Biles. This contrivance is a combination of a
partially balanced rudder with a rudder formed as a continuation of
the after lines of a ship. The partial balance tends to reduce the
strains on the steering gear, and thereby enables the rudder area to
be increased without unduly straining the gear.
When fitted out for actual service, this novel war cruiser will have a
most formidable armament, consisting of four 24 centimeter Hontorio
guns (each of 21 tons), six 12 centimeter guns (also of the Hontorio
type), six 6 pounder Nordenfelt guns, fourteen small guns, and five
torpedo tubes--one at the stern, two amidships, and two at the bow of
the ship.
It is worthy of note that this war cruiser was constructed in fifteen
months, or three months under the stipulated contract time; in fact,
the official trial of the vessel took place exactly eighteen months
from the signing of the contract. Not only is this the fastest war
cruiser afloat, but her owners also possess in the El Destructor what
is probably the simplest torpedo catcher afloat, a vessel which has
attained a speed of 22� knots, or over 26 miles, per hour.
--_Engineering._
* * * * *
OLIVER EVANS AND THE STEAM ENGINE.
A correspondent of the New York _Times_, deeming that far too much
credit has been given to foreigners for the practical development of
the steam engine, contributes the following interesting _resume_:
Of all the inventions of ancient or modern times none have more
importantly and beneficently influenced the affairs of mankind than
the double acting high pressure steam engine, the locomotive, the
steam railway system, and the steamboat, all of which inventions are
of American origin. The first three are directly and the last
indirectly associated with a patent that was granted by the State of
Maryland, in 1787, being the very year of the framing of the
Constitution of the United States. In view of the momentous nature of
the services which these four inventions have rendered to the material
and national interests of the people of the United States, it is to be
hoped that neither they nor their origin will be forgotten in the
coming celebration of the centennial of the framing of the
Constitution.
The high pressure steam engine in its stationary form is almost
ubiquitous in America. In all great iron and steel works, in all
factories, in all plants for lighting cities with electricity, in
brief, wherever in the United States great power in compact form is
wanted, there will be found the high pressure steam engine furnishing
all the power that is required, and more, too, if more is demanded,
because it appears to be equal to every human requisition. But go
beyond America. Go to Great Britain, and the American steam
engine--although it is not termed American in Great Britain--will be
found fast superseding the English engine--in other words, James
Watt's condensing engine. It is the same the world over. On all the
earth there is not a steam locomotive that could turn a wheel but for
the fact that, in common with every locomotive from the earliest
introduction of that invention, it is simply the American steam engine
put on wheels, and it was first put on wheels by its American
inventor, Oliver Evans, being the same Oliver Evans to whom the State
of Maryland granted the before mentioned patent of 1787.
He is the same Oliver Evans whom Elijah Galloway, the British writer
on the steam engine, compared with James Watt as to the authorship of
the locomotive, or rather "steam carriage," as the locomotive was in
those days termed. After showing the unfitness of Mr. Watt's low
pressure steam engine for locomotive purposes, Mr. Galloway, more than
fifty years ago, wrote: "We have made these remarks in this place in
order to set at rest the title of Mr. Watt to the invention of steam
carriages. And, taking for our rule that the party who first attempted
them in practice by mechanical arrangements of his own is entitled to
the reputation of being their inventor, Mr. Oliver Evans, of America,
appears to us to be the person to whom that honor is due." He is the
same Oliver Evans whom the _Mechanics' Magazine_, of London, the
leading journal of its kind at that period, had in mind when, in its
number of September, 1830, it published the official report of the
competitive trial between the steam carriages Rocket, San Pariel,
Novelty, and others on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
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