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the machine of Ctesibius , speaks of pumps worked by water wheels asthen common, (A. D. 154S.) The hydraulic engines at Augsburgh wereat one time greatly celebrated. They are mentioned, but not described,by Misson and other travelers of the 17th Century. They raised the water130 feet. Blainville, in 1705, speaks of them as among the curiosities ofthe city. He observes—“ The towers which furnish water to this city arealso cunous. They are near the gate called the Red Port, upon a brauchof’ the Leck which runs through the city. Mills which go day and night,by means of this torrent, work a great many pumps, which raise water inlarge leaden pipes to the highest story in these towers. In the middle ofa chamber on each of them, which is very neatly and handsomely ceil-ing’d, is a reseryoir of a hexagonal figure, into which the water is carriedby a large pipe, the extremity of which is made like a dolphm, and throughan urn or vase held by a Statue sitting in the middle of the reservoir.One of these towers sends water to all the public fountains by smallerpipes, and the three others supply with water a thousand houses in thecity ; each of which pays about eight crowns yearly, and receives a hun-dred and twenty pretty large measures of water every hour,” Tray eis,vol. i, 250. Misson’s Travels, 5 ed. vol. i, 137.
Contemporary with the engines at Augsburgh was one at Bremen thatis mentioned by several writers of the 17th Century. It was erected onone of the bridges and moved by a water wheel : it raised water into areservoir at a considerable elevation, whence the liquid was distributedto all parts of the city. An old author when speaking of it, mentions anandroid in Bremen, a species of mechanism for which the Germans wereat one time famous. At the entrance of the arsenal, he observes, “ Standsthe figure of a warrior arm’d cap-a-pe, who, by mechanism under theSteps, as soon as you tread on them, lifts up the bever of his helmet withhis truncheon to salute you.”
There was also a celebrated water-engine at Toledo, the former Capital of Spain . It raised the water of the l'agus to the top of the Alcazar, amagnificent palace erected on the summit of the declivity on which the cityis built; the elevation being “ five hundred cubits from the surface of theriver.” What the particular construction of this machine was we havenot been able to ascertain, nor whether it was originally erected by theMoors who built the palace. It is mentioned by Moreri as a “ wonderfulhydraulic engine which draws up the water from the river Tagus to sogreat a height, that it is thence conveyed in pipes to the whole city butin the middle of the last Century (1751) the author of the Grand Gazetteer,or Topographie Dictionary, remarks (page 1289) that this “ admirableengine” was then “ entirely ruined.”
The introduction of pump engines into the public water-works of Eng-land and France is sufficiently ascertained. This did not take place tililong after they had been employed in Germany ; and both London andParis were indebted to engineers of that country for the first machines toraise water from the Thames and the Seine . Previous to their introduc-tion, cities were commonly supplied from springs by means of pipes. Asearly as A. D. 1236, the Corporation of London commenced to lay a sixinch leaden pipe from some springs at Tyburn, a village at that time somemiles distant from the city. This is supposed to have been the first, at-tempt to eonvey water to that city through pipes, and fifty years elapsedbefore the whole was completed. These pipes were formed of sheet leadand the seams were soldered : part of them was accidentally discoveredin 1745 while making some excavations, and another portion in 1765. (Lon-don Mag. for 1765, p. 377.) In 1439 the abbot of Westminster, in whom