[Rarebooks] fs: Scarce 1831 Philadelphia Water Power Report

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

REPORT ON WATER POWER. Report of the Committee of the Franklin Institute of 
Pennsylvania, appointed May, 1829, to ascertain by experiment the value of 
Water as a Moving Power.

[Philadelphia: 1831].

Well, obviously water power did have value as a means of motive power, as a 
century's worth of textile and other mills will amply attest... The 14 
members of the Committee spent about a year and a half designing and 
constructing the apparatus to hold the trials, and running the trials, 
after which this detailed report, chock full of useful tables, was issued. 
As the author notes:

"The importance of accurate knowledge in relation to the effect of water as 
a moving power and the defective state of information upon that subject, 
induced the Franklin Institute, in the spring of 1829, to determine that a 
series of experiments should be made, under its direction, upon a force of 
water applied by wheels; the experiments to be in detail, and upon a scale 
calculated to give confidence in the practical nature of the results... 
There is perhaps no subject connected with the extensive branch of 
mechanics, for which theory has done so little, as for that which consider 
the effect of water upon wheels; the different theories advanced are at 
variances with each other, and with practice, so that the candid theorist 
confesses that the circumstances, attending the action, are of so 
complicated a nature as to baffle his powers of investigation. Experiment, 
then, can alone guide to results worthy of confidence".

The Franklin Institute was founded in 1824 to encourage the propagation of 
scientific and technical knowledge in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin. The 
Institute sponsored a series of industrial exhibitions from 1824 to 1838 
and awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals for technological innovations.

Softcover. 5.5"x8.75", 136 pages, plus 8 engraved plates, three of them 
folding. Bound in new paper covers; text with some spotting and soil, some 
plates with some foxing, etc. OCLC locates one copy. [05606] $750.00

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