(42.)

The duty of working the engine requiring no great amount of labour, or skill, was usually entrusted to boys, called, cock boys. It happened that one of the most important improvements which has ever been made in the working of steam engines was due to the ingenuity of one of these boys. It is said that a lad, named Humphrey Potter, was employed to work the cocks of an atmospheric engine, and being tempted to escape from the monotonous drudgery to which his duty confined him, his ingenuity was sharpened so as to prompt him to devise some means by which he might indulge his disposition to play without exposing himself to the consequences of suspending the performance of the engine. On observing the alternate ascending and descending motion of the beam above him, and considering it in reference to the labour of his own hands, in alternately raising and lowering the levers which governed the cocks, he perceived a relation which served as a clue to a simple contrivance, by which the steam engine, for the first time, became an automaton. When the beam arrived at the top of its play, it was necessary to open the steam valve by raising a lever, and to close the injection valve by raising another. This he saw could be accomplished by attaching strings of proper length to these levers, and tying them to some part of the beam. These levers required to be moved in the opposite direction when the beam attained the lowest point of its play. This he saw could be accomplished by strings, either connected with the outer arm of the beam, or conducted over rods or pulleys. In short, he contrived means of so connecting the levers which governed the two cocks by strings with the beam, that the beam opened and closed these cocks with the most perfect regularity and certainty as it moved upwards and downwards.

Besides rendering the machine independent of manual [Pg072] superintendence, this process conferred upon it much greater regularity of performance than any manual superintendence could ensure.

This contrivance of Potter was very soon improved by the substitution of a bar, called a plug frame, which was suspended from the arm of the beam, and which carried upon it pins, by which the arms of the levers governing the cocks were struck as the plug-frame ascended and descended, so as to be opened and closed at the proper times.

The engine thus improved required no other attendance except to feed the boiler occasionally by the cock T, and to attend the furnace.