The steam engine familiarly explained and illustrated; with an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain maxims for railway speculators. By the Rev. Dionysius Lardner ... With additions and notes by James Renwick ...

216 THE STEAM ENGINE.
boiler should be lighter and smaller. The accomplishment
of this has been attempted by various contrivances for so
distributing the water, as to expose a considerable quantity
of surface in contact with it to the action of the fire; spreading it in thin layers on flat plates; inserting it between plates
of iron placed at a small distance asunder, the fire being admitted between the intermediate plates; dividing it into
small tubes, round which the fire has play; introducing it
between the surfaces of cylinders placed one within another,
the fire being admitted between the alternate cylinders,have all been resorted to by different projecters.
(105.) First and most prominent in the history of the application of steam to the propelling of carriages on turnpike
roads, stands the name of Mr. GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY, a
medical gentleman and scientific chymist, of Cornwall. In
1822, Mr. Guerney succeeded Dr. Thompson as lecturer on
chymistry at the Surrey Institution; and, in consequence of
the results of some experiments on heat, his attention was
directed to the project of working steam carriages on common roads; and since 1825 he has devoted his exertions in
perfecting a steam engine capable of attaining the end he had
in view. Numerous other projectors, as might have been
expected, have followed in his wale. Whether they, or
any of them, by better fortune, greater public support, or
more powerful genius, may outstrip him in the career on
which he has ventured, it would not, perhaps, at present, be
easy to predict. But whatever be the event, to Mr. Gurney is due, and will be paid, the honour of first proving the
practicability of the project; and in the history of the adaptation of the locomotive engine to common roads, his name
will stand before all others in point of time, and the success
of his attempts will be recorded as the origin and cause of
the success of others in the same race.
The incredulity, opposition, and even ridicule, with which
the prqject of Mr Gurney was met, are very remarkable.
His views were from the first opposed by engineers, without