Still he thought there was a
future for it, and that future would be best advanced by considering the
question on which he had touched. First, the employment of a cheaper
mode of getting the power in the steam engine; and, secondly, a cheaper
and higher secondary battery. In a railway train weight was a formidable
affair, but in a floating vessel it was still more important. He did
not think, however, that a light secondary battery was by any means an
impossibility. Mr. Loftus Perkins had actually produced by improvements
in the boiler and steam engine two great things: first, one indicated
horse power for a pound of fuel per hour, and next he had devised a
steam engine of 100 horse power, of a weight of only 84 lb. per horse
power, instead of 304 lb., which was about the average. Those were two
enormous steps in advance, and under a still more improved patent law he
had no doubt things would be brought forward which would show a still
greater progress. Within the last fifteen days, nearly 2,000 patents
had been taken out, as against 5,000 in the whole of the previous year,
which showed how operative a very small and illusory inducement had been
to encourage invention.
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