Since the days of Watt, the improvement of the steam engine and the work of inventors has been confined to matters of detail.  All the fundamental principles were developed by Watt and his predecessors and contemporaries and it only was left to his successors to find the best ways of carrying them into effect.  But these matters of detail have been found to involve opportunities to make enormous strides in the direction of securing improved efficiency of the machine.  The further application of the principle which led Watt to his greatest inventions; of the principle, keep the cylinder as hot as the steam which enters it, of that which he enunciated relative to the advantage of expanding steam, and of that affecting the regulation of the machine; have reduced the costs of steam and of fuel to a small fraction of their earlier magnitude.  One ton of engine to-day does the work of eight or ten in the time of Watt:  one pound of fuel or of steam gives to-day ten times the power then obtained from it.  A steamship now crosses the Atlantic in one-eighth the time required by the famous “liner” of the “Black Ball Line.”  The wastes of the engine have been brought down from above eighty per cent. to eight; and a half-ounce of fuel on board ship will now transport a ton of cargo over a mile of ocean.

FREDERICK E. SICKELS gave us the first practicable form of expansion gear in 1841; GEORGE H. CORLISS gave a new type of engine of marvelous perfection and economy in 1849; Noble T. Green, Wm. Wright and many less well known but no less meritorious inventors have since done their part in the transformation of the old engine of Watt into the modern wonder of concentrated and economical power, and marvel of accurate and beautiful design and workmanship.  The “trip cut-off,” with reduced clearances, increased boiler pressure, higher rates of expansion, accelerated speeds of engine, better construction in all respects, as well as improved design, have enabled us to avail ourselves to the utmost of the principles of Watt, and our mills, our railways, our steamers and our fields, even, have gained almost as extraordinarily by these advances, since the days of the great inventor, as through his immediate labors.

With the introduction of the new form of older energy, electricity, with the reduction of the lightning into thraldom, has now come a new impulse affecting all the industries.  Through its mysterious, its still unknown action, steam now reaches out far from its own place, driving the electric car along miles of rail; giving light throughout all the country about it, turning night into day, and repressing crime while encouraging legitimate labor, reaching into distant chambers and every little workshop, to offer its powerful aid in all the distributed work of cities.  Without the steam engine there would be little work available for electricity, but the appearance of this, the latest and most useful handmaid of steam, has given the engine