GOVERNOR: Controlling the Power of Steam Machines

With a passion for engineering history, John Hannavy has written extensively on railways, steam-powered machines, the history of photography and the Industrial Revolution of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Power without control is unusable power, and long after the invention of the steam engine, finding ways of applying that power to tasks where consistency was of paramount importance was the Holy Grail which many steam engineers sought to find. It was the centrifugal governor which brought precision to the application of steam power, and its story can be traced back to 17th century Holland and Christiaan Huygens' development of both the pendulum clock and system controls for windmills. Governors are still at the heart of sophisticated machinery today, albeit electronic rather than mechanical. As machine speed increased, the governor had to evolve to keep pace with the demands for greater precision. Over 100 British patents were applied for in the 19th century alone for 'improvements' in governor design, many of which could be fitted or retro-fitted to engines from every large manufacturer. This is the first book to deal with the subject, telling the story of the evolution of the original 'spinning-ball' governor from its first appearance to the point where it became a small device entirely enclosed in a housing to keep it clean, and thus hidden from view. Over 200 photographs, engravings, plans and diagrams, one of which is a series of colour photographs of one of the few large mill engines to survive, Wigan's 2500hp Trencher Field Mill Engine and some of the more than 60,000 spindles in operation, all belt-driven from the massive steam engine. Chapters include James Watt Harnessing Steam, Selected Patents 1698-1913, British Governor Makers and Suppliers and Places to See Governors at Work including Showman's Road Locomotive No.3555 the Busy Bee, pumping stations, Twyford Waterworks, the Robey Trust's New Perseverance Ironworks in Tavistock or the shiny red balls of the Armstrong Engines which provided hydraulic power at Ellesmere Port, now the National Waterways Museum. Packed with colour, 160 large pages, 21.6 x 28cm.
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