When the door opened, I was not even asked my business but was invited in with no ceremony at all.
“Is your master at home?” I asked the man at the door, who was as disgraceful looking a servant as ever I had come across, covered in dirt and dressed in the foulest of clothes.
“I have no master,” said this creature in surprise.
“Forgive me. I must be at the wrong house. I am looking for Sir Samuel Morland.”
“I am he,” he replied, so that it was now my turn to look astonished. “Who are you?”
“My name is… ah… Grove,” I said.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Grove.”
“And I yours, sir. I am sent by my father. We own some marshland in Dorset, and have heard reports of your ingenuity in drainage…”
I could not even finish my lie, for Morland grabbed me by the hand and pumped it up and down. “Excellent,” he said, “Excellent indeed. And you wish to see my engines, do you not? Use them to drain your land?”
“Well…”
“If they work, eh? I see your mind perfectly, young man. What if this inventor is a fraud? Best to spy out the land, so to speak, before committing funds. You are tempted, because you know of the ingenuity of the Dutch, and how they have increased the yield of their land an hundredfold, and turned marsh into the richest pasture, but you do not fully believe it. You have heard of the fen drainage, and the use of pumps there, but do not know if they would be appropriate for you. That is the case, is it not? Do not bother to deny it. It is well for you that I am not a suspicious man, and freely show my designs to all who desire to see them. Come,” he said cheerfully, grabbing my arm once more and pulling me to a door, “come this way.”
In some bemusement at this behavior, I was dragged from the small entrance hall into a large room beyond. I guessed it had once been the house of a woolen merchant, and had been used for storing bales. Certainly it was very much larger than the frontage of the house suggested (these merchants always play poor, and hide their wealth from public view) and sweet and fresh from the wide-open doors at the end, which gave in so much light despite the time of year that I was briefly dazzled.
“What do you think? Impressive, eh?” he said, mistaking the hesitation this caused for astonishment. When I could see clearly again, though, I was indeed astonished, for I had never seen such a collection of bric-a-brac in my life. A dozen desks, and each one overflowing with strange instruments and bottles and casks and tools. Bits of wood and metal were stacked up against the walls, and the floors were covered in shavings and pools of greasy liquid and cuttings of leather. Two or three servants, probably those artisans able to make up engines to his designs, were at work at benches, filing metal and planing wood.
“Extraordinary,” I replied, as he clearly wanted me to express some approbation.
“Look,” he said enthusiastically, again removing the obligation to speak. “What do you think of this?”
We were standing in front of a finely carved oak table, which was empty save for an extraordinary little device, scarcely bigger than a man’s hand, of beautifully wrought and engraved brass. On top were eleven small wheels, each one carved with numbers. Below, in the body of the machine, was a long plate which evidently concealed other dials, for small holes cut in the surface revealed yet more numbers.
“Beautiful,” I said. “But what is it?”
He laughed in delight at my ignorance. “It is a calculating machine,” he said proudly, “the finest in the world. Not, alas, unique, as some little Frenchman has one, but” (he lowered his tone to a confidential whisper) “his doesn’t work very well. Not like mine.”
“What do you do with it?”
“You calculate, of course. The principle is the same as Napier’s bones, but far more ingenious. The two sets of wheelwork registers numbers from one to ten thousands, or from halfpennies up, if you wish it for finance. The handle engages this by a series of cogs, so that they turn over in the correct proportion. Clockwise for addition, anti-clockwise for subtraction. My next machine, which is not yet perfected, will be able to calculate square roots and cubes and even perform trigonometry.”
“Very useful,” I said.
“Indeed. Every counting-house in the world will shortly have one, if I can find a way of telling them of it. It will make me a rich man, and experimental science will advance in leaps and bounds when it is no longer confined to adepts in mathematical calculation. I sent one some time ago to Dr. Wallis at Oxford, as he is the best man in that business this country has.”
“You know Dr. Wallis?” I asked. “I am acquainted with him myself.”
“Oh yes, although I have not seen him of late.’’ He paused and smiled inwardly to himself. “You might say we were by way of being in business together once.”
“I will send your salutations, if you so wish.”
“I do not know that he would greatly welcome them. My thanks for the offer, nonetheless. But it is not what you are here for, I know. Come into the garden.”
So we left his arithmetical engines, thank heavens, and I followed him out into the open air, where he paused in front of what seemed to be a large barrel with a tall tube coming out of the top. This he regarded with a sad, wistful look on his face, then shook his head heavily and sighed.
“Is this what you wished to show me?”
“No,’’ he said regretfully. “This I have reluctantly abandoned.”
“Why is that? Does it not work?”
“Far from it. It works too well. It was an attempt to harness the power of gunpowder to the problem of pumping. You see, it is a great problem in mining. The distance below the earth of mines these days—sometimes four hundred feet or more—means that the effort required to extract water, which means raising it by an equivalent distance, is formidable. Do you know the weight of a tube of water four hundred feet high? Of course not. If you did, you would be astounded at the audacity of man in even thinking of the idea.
Now you see, my conception was to get a sealed container above earth filled with air which descended into the water below ground, with another linked tube coming up into the open.”
I nodded, although he had largely lost me already. “In the container, you explode a small measure of gunpowder, which causes a great rise in tension within. This rushes down the one tube, and forces the water up the other. Repeated often enough, you would get a constant flow of water upward.”
“Sounds splendid.”
“It does. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of a way of ensuring explosions of the right quality and consistency. Either the tube bursts, which is dangerous, or you get a single plume of water fifty feet high which then stops. I have a patent on the idea, so I am in no danger of being overtaken by rivals, but unless I figure out the solution a very good idea may well be wasted. I have considered using heated water, because water turned into vapors demands a much larger space—some two thousand times, did you realize that?—and acquires irresistible strength in the process. Now, if some way could be made to force the vapor down the tube, or into some pumping mechanism, then the strength required to lift the water would be there.”
“And the problem?”
“The problem is making the hot vapors go in the direction required, rather than in any other.”
I understood scarce a word, but his animation and enthusiasm were such that I could imagine no way of shutting off the flow of words from his mouth. Besides, my willingness to listen seemed to endear me to him, and thus rendered him more likely to give me the information I required. So I plied him with questions, and affected the gravest of interest in all those matters which normally would have excited nothing hut my contempt.
“So you do not have a pump which works, is that what you are telling me?” I asked eventually.