XVIII. On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery

Abstract

In the construction of an engine, on which I have now been for some time occupied, for the purpose of calculating tables and impressing the results on plates of copper, I experienced great delay and inconvenience from the difficulty of ascertaining from the drawings the state of motion or rest of any individual part at any given instant of time: and if it became necessary to enquire into the state of several parts at the same moment the labour was much encreased. In the description of machinery, by means of drawings, it is only possible to represent an engine in one particular state of its action. If indeed it is very simple in its operations, a succession of drawings may be made of it in each state of its progress which will represent its whole course; but this rarely happens, and is attended with the inconvenience and expence of numerous drawings. The difficulty of retaining in the mind all the cotemporaneous and successive movements of a complicated machine, and the still greater difficulty of properly timing movements which had already been provided for, induced me to seek for some method by which I might at a glance of the eye select any particular part, and find at any given time its state of motion or rest, its relation to the motions of any other part of the machine, and if necessary trace back the sources of its movement through all its successive stages to the original moving power. I soon felt that the forms of ordinary language were far too diffuse to admit of any expectation of removing the difficulty, and being convinced from experience of the vast power which analysis derives from the great condensation of meaning in the language it employs, I was not long in deciding that the most favourable path to pursue was to have recourse to the language of signs. It then became necessary to contrive a notation which ought if possible to be at once simple and expressive, easily understood at the commencement, and capable of being readily retained in the memory from the proper adaptation of the signs to the circumstances they were intended to represent. The first thing to be done was obviously to make an accurate enumeration of all the moving parts, and to appropriate a name to each; the multitude of different contrivances in various machinery, precluded all idea of substituting signs for these parts. They were therefore written down in succession, only observing to preserve such an order that those which jointly concur for accomplishing the effect of any separate part of the machine might be found situated near to each other: thus in a clock, those parts which belong to the striking part ought to be placed together, whilst those by which the repeating part operates ought, although kept distinct, yet to be as a whole, adjacent to the former part.