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 ...

FIRST STEPS IN THE INVENTION. 43
the experiment was thought to be favourable: the inventor
was promoted, and received a pecuniary reward, besides
having all his expenses defrayed.
From the circumstance of the nature of the impelling
power having been concealed by the inventor, it is impossible to say in what this machine consisted, or even whether
steam exerted any agency whatever in it, or, if it did,
whether it might not have been, as was most probably the
case, a reproduction of Hero's contrivance. It is rather
unfavourable to the claims advanced by the advocates of the
Spaniard, that although it is admitted that he was rewarded
and promoted in consequence of the experiment, yet it does
not appear that it was again tried, much less brought into
practical use.
SOLOMON DE CAUS, 1615.
(25.) A work entitled " Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, avec diverses Machines tant utiles que plaisantes,'"
published at Frankfort in 1615, by Solomon de Caus, a
native of France, contains the following theorem:" Water will mount by the help of fire higher tihazn its
level," which is explained and proved in the following
terms:
-" The third method of raising water is by the aid of fi're.
On this principle may be constructed Fig. 2.
various machines: I shall here describe
one. Let a ball of copper marked B
A, well soldered in every part, to
which is attached a tube and stopcock marked D, by which water may
be introduced; and also another tube D
marked B c, which will be soldered
into the top of the ball, and the lower
end c of which shall descend nearly ~
to the bottom of the ball without
touching it. Let the said ball be