3-028-312 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Modern Mechanical Hercules: How We Harness Steam - That which "makes the wheels go round": a large engine in an Indian jute-factory, 1909. 'NOT the least impressive feature or a visit to a cotton-mill is the engine house, where is generated the power which gives life and motion to every machine, spindle, and loom in the factory. Especially impressive is the great fly-wheel, which, through its series of fifty or more revolving ropes, transmits the power of the steam-engine itself to different parts of the mill. Such a fly-wheel may be twenty-eight feet in diameter, and weighing some sixty tons, revolving fifty-five times a minute under the impetus of the engine's 2000 horse-power. It is this fly-wheel which, to use a colloquialism, "makes the wheels go round" of every machine in the factory. [This] engine, built by the firm of John and Edward Wood, of Victoria Foundry, Bolton,] is a Corliss compound of 2000-i.h.p, with cylinders of 32 and 62 inches...The fly-wheel is...grooved for 46 ropes...Every engine made by the firm carries Messrs. Wood's guarantee. The number of hands employed is about 500'. From "Illustrated London News", 1909.