There was with Watt and his contemporaries apparently a fondness for
cost and complications. Most likely the finished Watt engine was a
handsome and stately machine, imposing in its deliberate movements.
There is apparently nothing simpler than the placing of the head of the
piston-rod between two guide-pieces to keep it in line and give it
bearing. Yet we have only to turn back a few years and see the elaborate
and beautiful geometrical diagram contrived by Watt to produce the same
simple effect, and known as a "parallel motion." It kept its place until
the walking-beam was cast away, and the American horizontal engine came
into almost universal use.

The object of this chapter so far has been to present an idea of
beginnings; of the evolution of the universal and indispensable machine
of civilization. The steam-engine has given a new impetus to industry,
and in a sense an added meaning to life. It has made possible most that
was ever dreamed of material greatness. It has altered the destiny of
this nation, and other nations, made greatness out of crude beginnings,
wealth out of poverty, prosperity upon thousands of square miles of
uninhabitable wilderness. It was the chiefest instrumentality in the
widening of civilization, the bringing together of alien peoples, the
dissemination of ideas. Electricity may carry the idea; steam carries
the man with the idea. The crude misconceptions of old times existed
naturally before its time, and have largely vanished since it came.
Marco Polo and Mandeville and their kind are no longer possibilities.
Applied to transportation, locomotion alone, its effects have been
revolutionary. Applied to common life in its minute ramifications these
effects could not have been believed or foretold, and are incredible.
The thought might be followed indefinitely, and it is almost impossible
to compare the world as we know it with the world of our immediate