NOTES:
1. The importance and diversified applications of the steam
engine were most ably enforced in the speeches made at a public
meeting held (June 1824) for the purpose of proposing the
erection of a monument to the memory of James Watt; these were
subsequently printed.
2. Some observations on the subject, by Dr Fitton, occur in the
appendix to Captain King's Survey of the Coast of Australia, vol.
ii, p. 397. London, 1826.
Chapter 8
Registering Operations
65. One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is
from the check which it affords against the inattention, the
idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents. Few occupations are
more wearisome than counting a series of repetitions of the same
fact; the number of paces we walk affords a tolerably good
measure of distance passed over, but the value of this is much
enhanced by possessing an instrument, the pedometer, which will
count for us the number of steps we have made. A piece of
mechanism of this kind is sometimes applied to count the number
of turns made by the wheel of a carriage, and thus to indicate
the distance travelled: an instrument, similar in its object,
but differing in its construction, has been used for counting the
number of strokes made by a steam-engine, and the number of coins
struck in a press.
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