On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures/Chapter 29

by Charles Babbage

CHAP. XXIX.

ON THE DURATION OF MACHINERY.

(340.) The time during which a machine will continue to perform its work effectually, will depend chiefly upon the perfection with which it was originally constructed,—upon the care taken to keep it in proper repair, particularly to correct every shake or looseness in the axes,—and upon the smallness of the mass and of the velocity of its moving parts. Every thing approaching to a blow, all sudden change of direction, is injurious. Engines for producing power, such as wind-mills, water-mills, and steam-engines, usually last a long time.^[1]

(341.) Many of the improvements which have taken place in steam-engines, have arisen from an improved construction of the boiler or the fire-place. The following table of the work done by steam-engines in Cornwall, whilst it proves the importance of constantly measuring the effects of machinery, shows also the gradual advance which has been made in the art of constructing and managing those engines.

A Table of the duty performed by Steam Engines in Cornwall, shewing the average of the whole for each year, and also the average duty of the best Engine in each Monthly Report.

Years.	Approximate number of Engines reported.	Average duty of the whole.	Average duty of the best Engines.
1813	24	19,456,000	26,400,000
1814	29	20,534,232	32,000,000
1815	35	20,526,160	28,700,000
1816	32	22,907,110	32,400,000
1817	31	26,502,259	41,600,000
1818	32	25,433,783	39,300,000
1819	37	26,252,620	40,000,000
1820	37	28,736,398	41,300,000
1821	39	28,223,382	42,800,000
1822	45	28,887,216	42,500,000
1823	45	28,156,162	42,122,000
1824	45	28,326,140	43,500,000
1825	50	32,000,741	45,400,000
1826	48	30,486,630	45,200,000
1827	47	32,100,000	59,700,000
1828	54	37,100,000	76,763,000
1829	52	41,220,000	76,234,307
1830	55	43,350,000	75,885,519
1831	55[2]	44,700,000	74,911,365
1832	60	44,400,000	79,294,114
1833	58	46,000,000	83,306,092

(342.) The advantage arising from registering the duty done by steam-engines in Cornwall has been so great that the proprietors of one of the largest mines, on which there are several engines, find it good economy to employ a man to measure the duty they perform every day. This daily report is fixed up at a particular hour, and the engine-men are always in waiting, anxious to know the state of their engines. As the general reports are made monthly, if accident should cause a partial stoppage in the flue of any of the boilers, it might without this daily check continue two or three weeks before it could be discovered by a falling off of the duty of the engine. In several of the mines a certain amount of duty is assigned to each engine; and if it does more, the proprietors give a premium to the engineers according to its amount. This is called million-money, and is a great stimulus to economy in working the engine.

(343.) Machinery for producing any commodity in great demand, seldom actually wears out; new improvements, by which the same operations can be executed either more quickly or better, generally superseding it long before that period arrives: indeed, to make such an improved machine profitable, it is usually reckoned that in five years it ought to have paid itself, and in ten to be superseded by a better.

"A cotton manufacturer," says one of the witnesses before a Committee of the House of Commons, "who left Manchester seven years ago, would be driven out of the market by the men who are now living in it, provided his knowledge had not kept pace with those who have been, during that time, constantly profiting by the progressive improvements that have taken place in that period."

(344.) The effect of improvements in machinery, seems incidentally to increase production, through a cause which may be thus explained. A manufacturer making the usual profit upon his capital, invested in looms or other machines in perfect condition, the market price of making each of which is a hundred pounds, invents some improvement. But this is of such a nature, that it cannot be adapted to his present engines. He finds upon calculation, that at the rate at which he can dispose of his manufactured produce, each new engine would repay the cost of its making, together with the ordinary profit of capital, in three years: he also concludes from his experience of the trade, that the improvement he is about to make, will not be generally adopted by other manufacturers before that time. On these considerations, it is clearly his interest to sell his present engines, even at half-price, and construct new ones on the improved principle. But the purchaser who gives only fifty pounds for the old engines, has not so large a fixed capital invested in his factory, as the person from whom he purchased them; and as he produces the same quantity of the manufactured article, his profits will be larger. Hence, the price of the commodity will fall, not only in consequence of the cheaper production by the new machines, but also by the more profitable working of the old, thus purchased at a reduced price. This change, however, can be only transient; for a time will arrive when the old machinery, although in good repair, must become worthless. The improvement which took place not long ago in frames for making patent-net was so great, that a machine, in good repair, which had cost 1200l., sold a few years after for 60l. During the great speculations in that trade, the improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility.

(345.) The durability of watches, when well made, is very remarkable. One was produced, in "going order," before a committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the watch trade, which was made in the year 1660; and there are many of ancient date, in the possession of the Clock-maker's Company, which are still actually kept going. The number of watches manufactured for home consumption was, in the year 1798, about 50,000 annually. If this supply was for Great Britain only, it was consumed by about ten and a half millions of persons.

(346.) Machines are, in some trades, let out to hire, and a certain sum is paid for their use, in the manner of rent. This is the case amongst the frame-work knitters: and Mr. Henson, in speaking of the rate of payment for the use of their frames, states, that the proprietor receives such a rent that, besides paying the full interest for his capital, he clears the value of his frame in nine years. When the rapidity with which improvements succeed each other is considered, this rent does not appear exorbitant. Some of these frames have been worked for thirteen years with little or no repair. But circumstances occasionally arise which throw them out of employment, either temporarily or permanently. Some years since, an article was introduced called "cut-up work," by which the price of stocking frames was greatly deteriorated. From the evidence of Mr. J. Rawson, it appears that, in consequence of this change in the nature of the work, each frame could do the work of two, and many stocking frames were thrown out of employment, and their value reduced full three-fourths.^[3]

This information is of great importance, if the numbers here given are nearly correct, and if no other causes intervened to diminish the price of frames; for it shews the numerical connexion between the increased production of those machines and their diminished value.

(347.) The great importance of simplifying all transactions between masters and workmen, and of dispassionately discussing with the latter the influence of any proposed regulations connected with their trade, is well exemplified by a mistake into which both parties unintentionally fell, and which was productive of very great misery in the lace trade. Its history is so well told by William Allen, a frame-work knitter, who was a party to it, that an extract from his evidence, as given before the Frame-work Knitters' Committee of 1812, will best explain it.

"I beg to say a few words respecting the frame-rent; the rent paid for lace-frames, until the year 1805, was 1s. 6d. a frame per week; there then was not any very great inducement for persons to buy frames and let them out by the hire, who did not belong to the trade; at that time an attempt was made, by one or two houses, to reduce the prices paid to the workmen, in consequence of a dispute between these two houses and another great house: some little difference being paid in the price among the respective houses, I was one chosen by the workmen to try if we could not remedy the impending evil: we consulted the respective parties, and found them inflexible; these two houses that were about to reduce the prices, said that they would either immediately reduce the price of making net, or they would increase the frame-rent: the difference to the workmen was considerable, between the one and the other; they would suffer less, in the immediate operation of the thing, by having the rent advanced, than the price of making net reduced. They chose at that time, as they thought, the lesser evil, but it has turned out to be otherwise; for, immediately as the rent was raised upon the per-centage laid out in frames, it induced almost every person, who had got a little money, to lay it out in the purchase of frames; these frames were placed in the hands of men who could get work for them at the warehouses; they were generally constrained to pay an enormous rent, and then they were compelled, most likely, to buy of the persons that let them the frames, their butcher's-meat, their grocery, or their clothing: the encumbrance of these frames became entailed upon them: if any deadness took place in the work they must take it at a very reduced price, for fear of the consequences that would fall upon them from the person who bought the frame: thus the evil has been daily increasing, till, in conjunction with the other evils crept into the trade, they have almost crushed it to atoms."

(348.) The evil of not assigning fairly to each tool, or each article produced, its proportionate value, or even of not having a perfectly distinct, simple, and definite agreement between a master and his workmen, is very considerable. Workmen find it difficult in such cases to know the probable produce of their labour; and both parties are often led to adopt arrangements, which, had they been well examined, would have been rejected as equally at variance in the results with the true interests of both.

(349.) At Birmingham, stamps and dies, and presses for a great variety of articles, are let out: they are generally made by men possessing small capital, and are rented by workmen. Power also is rented at the same place. Steam engines are erected in large buildings containing a variety of rooms, in which each person may hire one, two, or any other amount of horse power, as his occupation may require. If any mode could be discovered of transmitting power, without much loss from friction, to considerable distances, and at the same time of registering the quantity made use of at any particular point, a considerable change would probably take place in many departments of the present system of manufacturing. A few central engines to produce power, might then be erected in our great towns, and each workman, hiring a quantity of power sufficient for his purpose, might have it conveyed into his own house; and thus a transition might in some instances be effected, if it should be found more profitable, back again from the system of great factories to that of domestic manufacture.

(350.) The transmission of water through a series of pipes, might be employed for the distribution of power, but the friction would consume a considerable portion. Another method has been employed in some instances, and is practised at the Mint. It consists in exhausting the air from a large vessel by means of a steam-engine. This vessel is connected by pipes, with a small piston which drives each coining press; and, on opening a valve, the pressure of the external air forces in the piston. This air is then admitted to the general reservoir, and pumped out by the engine. The condensation of air might be employed for the same purpose; but there are some unexplained facts relating to elastic fluids, which require further observations and experiment before they can be used for the conveyance of power to any considerable distance. It has been found, for instance, in attempting to blow a furnace by means of a powerful water-wheel driving air through a cast-iron pipe of above a mile in length, that scarcely any sensible effect was produced at the opposite extremity. In one instance, some accidental obstruction being suspected, a cat put in at one end found its way out without injury at the other, thus proving that the phenomenon did not depend on interruption within the pipe.

(351.) The most portable form in which power can be condensed is, perhaps, by the liquefaction of the gases. It is known that, under considerable pressure, several of these become liquid at ordinary temperatures; carbonic acid, for example, is reduced to a liquid state by a pressure of sixty atmospheres. One of the advantages attending the use of these fluids, would be that the pressure exerted by them would remain constant until the last drop of liquid had assumed the form of gas. If either of the elements of common air should be found to be capable of reduction to a liquid state before it unites into a corrosive fluid with the other ingredient, then we shall possess a ready means of conveying power in any quantity and to any distance. Hydrogen probably will require the strongest compressing force to render it liquid, and may, therefore, possibly be applied where still greater condensation of power is wanted. In all these cases the condensed gases may be looked upon as springs of enormous force, which have been wound up by the exertion of power, and which will deliver the whole of it back again when required. These springs of nature differ in some respects from the steel springs formed by our art; for in the compression of the natural springs a vast quantity of latent heat is forced out, and in their return to the state of gas an equal quantity is absorbed. May not this very property be employed with advantage in their application?

Part of the mechanical difficulty to be overcome in constructing apparatus connected with liquefied gases, will consist in the structure of the valves and packing necessary to retain the fluids under the great pressure to which they must be submitted. The effect of heat on these gases has not yet been sufficiently tried, to lead us to any very precise notions of the additional power which its application to them will supply.

The elasticity of air is sometimes employed as a spring, instead of steel: in one of the large printing-machines in London the momentum of a considerable mass of matter is destroyed by making it condense the air included in a cylinder, by means of a piston against which it impinges.

(352.) The effect of competition in cheapening articles of manufacture sometimes operates in rendering them less durable. When such articles are conveyed to a distance for consumption, if they are broken, it often happens, from the price of labour being higher where they are used than where they were made, that it is more expensive to mend the old article, than to purchase a new. Such is usually the case, in great cities, with some of the commoner locks, with hinges, and with a variety of articles of hardware.

1. The return which ought to be produced by a fixed steam-engine employed as a moving power, is frequently estimated at ten per cent. on its cost.
2. These fifty-five engines consumed, on the average for the year 1831, 81,867 bushels of coals monthly, being 1488 bushels for each engine.
3. Report from the Committee of the House of Commons on the Frame-Work Knitters' Petition, April, 1819.

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