Mine Foreman Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov

and

His Steam Engine

By a lecturer of the Tomsk Technological Institute of Emperor Nicholas II,

M. I. Yuzhakov

Tomsk

Steam Typo-Lithography of P. I. Makushin, Blagoveshchenskaya Street, own building.

1906.

Model of the steam engine of Iv. Iv. Polzunov,
preserved in the Barnaul Mining Museum.
(Rear view).

Model of the steam engine of Iv. Iv. Polzunov,
kept in the Barnaul Mining Museum.
(Side view).

Instead of a Preface

In the summer of 1901, I was sent by the Council of the Tomsk Technological Institute to the city of Barnaul to make drawings from a model of Polzunov’s machine, and also to collect in the local archives information relating to the history of the construction of this machine.

According to the information gathered on site, it turned out that the original file on Polzunov is not to be found in the archives of the Main Administration of the Altai District.

The documents appended herewith¹ came to me in extracts from this file made by the former accountant of the Main Administration, P. O. Chupin, together with his manuscript about Polzunov, which I also used in my work, making certain corrections and additions. These extracts, together with his father’s papers, were kindly placed at my disposal by Nikolai Stepanovich Gulyaev, son of the late investigator of Altai, S. I. Gulyaev.

Among the literary sources concerning either the person of Polzunov or his machine, the following should be mentioned:

1) Brandt. An Essay on the History of the Steam Engine and the Use of Steam Engines in Russia. St. Petersburg, 1892.

2) Conrad Matschoss. Geschichte der Dampfmaschine. Berlin, 1901.

3) Tonkov. “On the History of Steam Engines in Russia.” Mining Journal, 1902.

4) Voeikov. “Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov, Inventor of the First Steam Engine in Europe in 1764–1766.” Russkaya Starina, 1883 and 1884.

5) Nebolsin. Notes on the Road from Petersburg to Barnaul. St. Petersburg, 1850.

6) Kirpichev. “Machine Building in Russia.” Vestnik Promyshlennosti, 1884.

7) Golubev. Altai. Tomsk, 1890.

8) Laxmann, Sibirische Briefe. Göttingen and Gotha. 1769.

9) A Brief Historical Sketch of the Altai District (1747–1897). St. Petersburg, 1897.

10) Mining Journal, 1829, No. 6. Article: “On the Official Life of Lieutenant General Andrei Ivanovich Poroshin, Former Head of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Works.”

11) Mining Journal for 1827, book VII.

12) Lermontov, “Shikhmeister I. I. Polzunov and the Machine Built by Him in 1763 in the City of Barnaul.” Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society. 1884.

13) Mining Dictionary. Article “Steam Engine.” 1842.

14) Nikolai. Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov. Russian Antiquity, 1884.

15) Siberian Herald, 1820.

16) Pallas. Journey through Various Places of the Russian Empire. St. Petersburg, 1786, and others.

In conclusion, I consider it a pleasant duty to express my profound gratitude to the initiator of my assignment, the Director of the Tomsk Technological Institute, E. L. Zubashev; to the Council of the Institute, which provided me with material assistance for the trip to Barnaul; to the chief head of the Altai Mining District, A. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, who allowed me to make drawings from the model of Polzunov’s machine and gave me access to the archives and library; and to the archivist of the Main Administration of the Altai Mining District, Nik. St. Gulyaev, for supplying me with the materials in his possession.

CHAPTER 1.

“There is no invention which the human mind could glorify so much as the invention of a machine acting by fire.”

Schlatter. Detailed Instruction in the Mining Business. 1760.

The great engine of industry—the modern steam engine—owes its appearance and subsequent improvements to the labors of representatives of many nations.

In this entire history of the development of the steam engine, a significant share of participation should belong also to us Russians, in the person of the Siberian mechanic Polzunov.

More than 150 years ago, at the Barnaul works of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk district, the shift-master Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov designed a steam engine of a type new for that time, applying it to the operation of blowing bellows.

A detailed description¹ of this engine, with drawings appended, was submitted by Polzunov on April 25, 1763, to the head of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk mining district, Major General Poroshin.

In the letter attached to the description of the engine, Polzunov points to an important deficiency in the mining and metallurgical business: the impossibility of building works near both mines and fuel material, since there was also required a third factor determining the advantage of factory operations—water motive power—which is rarely present together with the first two. “When they have a sufficient abundance of ores,” Polzunov writes in his letter, “then, in the vicinity, forests and places suitable for works, from which it would seem one thing is naturally related to the other for profit, are not always so obtained from nature, and for the most part one is separated from the other”; therefore, thanks to this, Polzunov continues further, “expenses arise, not counting the burden on the people and the irretrievable cost incurred in building a dam with its apparatus”: which “all those who are called sons of the fatherland must avoid.”

Wishing thus to reduce the expenses incurred in delivering ore and timber to suitable places, Polzunov proposed the design of a machine that could operate by means of “air and vapors produced by boiling water in a boiler.”

Polzunov intended at first to carry out his design on a small scale, only as an experiment requiring no more blast than for a single smelting furnace, and in accordance with this to calculate the dimensions of the machine.

Further, Polzunov asked that if there should be any mistakes or omissions, they should not be “regarded as a reproach” to him, “for the operation of fire machines,” Polzunov then writes, “must be confirmed and theoretically proved more by observations and experiments than by mechanical weights, and by geometrical figures and arguments; and in this there are more occasions for new inventions, because theory, especially in matters of air and fire, is often much weaker than practice, since the power of knowledge about air has not yet advanced far and is moreover still covered by great darkness.” The design submitted with this letter consisted of a detailed description of the machine, drawings, and a calculation; the latter impresses us by its scientific character and completeness. In it the author, taking the pressure of the atmosphere as 15¾ pounds per 1 square inch, calculates that “the weight of the atmosphere” on the “piston” ^1) will amount to 25 poods 2¼ pounds; he also takes into account “friction,” for which “more than seven poods should not be required.” In further calculations it appears that a force of 76 poods will act directly on the bellows, “with which even three furnaces with bellows can be maintained.” Polzunov considers such a reserve necessary in view of the fact that “it is not known how much air there will be under the piston in the cylinders, for it offers no little resistance to the piston pressing down upon it from above and takes away a considerable part of the piston’s force.” The author considers this loss “unreliable to determine by theory without experiments,” all the more so because “the expansion and elasticity of the air that will be under the piston will not have a definite degree.”

In the theoretical discussions on the “principal members of the machine,” Polzunov tries to explain, according to the views of his time, the essence of heat, concerning which “physicists are not yet in agreement, or at least word of their agreement has not reached us”; some “seek in it the principle of matter moving very rapidly, a certain quantity of which is hidden scattered throughout bodies and by motion

^1) Piston.

“is excited in them,” while others regard the origin of heat as “from friction and the rotatory motion of the insensible particles composing bodies.” In conclusion, Polzunov, leaving it to “seek where the truth lies therein” to those “whose duty it is,” expresses in the following words a clear view of the dependence between heat and mechanical work: “and for us it is enough that the members taken into the machine, by the excitation of heat, should carry the required load and, with usefulness and desired success, have it.” Such reflections by Polzunov on water, air, and heat, his clear view of harmful resistances, and the theoretically considered calculation of a machine intended not for pumping water, which was the purpose for which the machines of that time were built, but for driving air-blowing bellows, and consequently a machine of an entirely new type—all this convinces us that Polzunov knew physics and mechanics perfectly, and that his invention was not a matter of chance, but was based on strictly scientific data.

Let us now consider the description of this machine.

Polzunov’s machine (see drawing 1) consisted of a boiler, two cylinders, mechanisms for distributing steam and water, a transmission mechanism, and various pipes and tanks providing the machine and the boiler with water supply.

The boiler of the machine (F) was made of forged or “beaten” copper and had the form of a truncated cone connected at its base with a spherical segment—a form in no way different from that of boilers made at that time. The dimensions of the boiler were: MN = 5 feet, MO = 1/2 ft., height—4 feet, and diameter of the bottom—3 1/2 feet; the capacity of such a boiler was about 18 cubic ft. of water and about 34 cubic ft. of steam.

At the boiler there were: a safety valve (p), a manhole (16), test cocks (l and I) with tubes (17), one of which was immersed in the boiler 3 inches deeper than the other, a feed pipe (18), reaching almost to the bottom of the boiler; the height of this pipe was determined by such calculation that the weight of the column of water contained in it would balance the steam pressure in the boiler; a “steam” pipe (19), serving to release steam when the machine was stopped; a “water-admission” pipe (23), serving to fill the boiler with water before starting the machine, and a pipe (21) serving to discharge water from the boiler after the machine was stopped.

By means of the pipes T, h, and g the boiler was connected with the cylinders of the machine, made of cast copper. The height of each of the cylinders was 9 feet, with a diameter of 9 inches; the thickness of the cylinder walls was 1/2 inch.

The lower ends of the cylinders were closed with copper covers C and C, through which small tubes (10 and 11) were passed. The upper ends of the tubes (10) rose above the bottom of each of the cylinders by 3–4 inches, so that the water collecting in the cylinders could not flood the steam-conducting tubes g and h, to which the tubes (10) were connected by flanges E. The tubes (11), likewise by means of flanges, were connected with the tubes (13 and 12), which had special names: the “blind knee” (12) and the “overflow knee” (13), whose purpose will be explained below.

In the lower part of each of the cylinders, three inches above the bottom, two tubes, or “prams” (7), were placed; of these, the “prams” (C) were fitted with copper cups, closed by lead weights, and served to release the air entering the cylinders with the cold water.

The two other “prams” (7) were connected at one end by flanges to the tube (8), while at their other ends they had small openings f, which served for admitting cold water into the machine’s cylinders.

To the upper part of each of the cylinders were attached the so-called “barrels” (2), which served “to hold standing water above the embolds.” The pistons, or “embolds,” of the cylinders were made of copper and had the form of a disk with a ring screwed on from above, pressing down a collar made of leather and sheathed with canvas, so that it would fit tightly against the walls of the cylinder. The piston rods were connected by the chain (30), thrown over the pulley H.

The distribution of steam and water was carried out by means of two-way cocks 50 and D, placed at the junctions of the pipes T, g, h and 8, 8.

Since this distributing mechanism of Polzunov is closely connected with the other parts of the machine, its description will be considerably simpler and clearer from an examination of the operation of the machine itself.

At the time when the piston of one of the cylinders, rising, reached its upper position, water was admitted through the opening f of the tube (7) into the space under the piston filled with steam, spurting in like a fountain. The steam condensed, and the piston, under atmospheric pressure, descended. In the other cylinder the same thing occurred, but in the reverse order, i.e., while steam was admitted into one of the cylinders, into the other cylinder—already filled with steam—water was admitted, and vice versa. Thus, during the operation of the machine, steam and water were admitted alternately into one of the cylinders.

The water that collected in the cylinders was driven by steam through the tubes (11 and 13) into the “warm” cistern (14). Water was supplied to the cylinders from the “upper water basin” (28) through the tubes (29), and by means of the two-way valve Д was distributed through the tubes (8 and 7) alternately into one or the other cylinder.

The two-way valves (Д) and (50) were mounted on one common rod (51), on which was placed a toothed wheel (49), meshing with another toothed wheel (47) mounted on a horizontal axle.

The wheel (47) received its motion from the so-called “throw-over beams” (41) and (42), by means of the fork (45). This fork was freely mounted on the axle of the wheel (47), so that when the fork rotated the wheel (47) remained at rest.

The “throw-over” beams (41 and 42) were made of wood; to their ends was fastened a chain thrown over the pulley H₁, which was placed on the same axle as the pulley H. In the proper places on these beams there were fastened, likewise of wood, “palms” (43). These “palms” could be moved along the length of each of the beams, which determined their setting.

During the operation of the machine, the “throw-over” beams rose alternately together with the pistons. In their motion the beams, by means of the “palms,” threw the fork (45) from one side to the other. In this throwing-over, the fork (45) fell upon the pins t and u located on the spokes of the wheel (47), and by the action of the weight (46) situated on it set in motion the wheel (47), and, consequently, also the wheel (49), the rod (51), the valves Д and 50, whereby the steam and water distribution in the machine was ensured.

Before starting the machine, the reserve wooden box (6) was first filled with water; from it, through the pipe (23) with the valve (k), the boiler of the machine was filled with water. Then, by means of the hand pump (24), water from the reserve box (6) was pumped into the “pump” box (26) and through the pipe (27) entered the “upper water basin” (28); from there the water, through the tubes (29 and 3), first filled the space above the piston of cylinder A, then through the tube (4) the cylinder B, and the tubes (15 and 15). Through the tubes (15), by opening the valves (k and k), the tubes (12) and (13) were filled through the small cups L. Consequently, the purpose of the “blind elbow” (12), as we see, consisted in making it possible, before starting the machine, to fill the tubes (13 and 13) with water.

The supply of water to the machine during its operation was ensured by pumps P and P placed in the “well” (36), which delivered water through

through the pipe (32) into the “wooden” box (38), whence the water, along the trough (39), entered the “upper water basin” (28). Motion was transmitted to the pump frames (37) by means of chains (35, 33) and a transmission shaft (34) from the shaft on which pulley H was located. Excess water from the “upper water basin” was discharged through the pipe (40) into the spare box (6). From there the excess water was discharged through the pipe (20) into the “lower box” (22), then through the pipe (53) into the “warm cistern” (14), whence it again entered, through the pipe (55), the well (36).

Finally, motion was imparted to the blast bellows by pulley H by means of chains (30) and transmission pulley I.

In his description Polzunov sometimes uses the same expressions and names of machine parts as are found in Schlaetter’s description; comparison of the drawings, in turn, confirms the identity of the forms given to some of these parts, which is especially noticeable in the outlines of the steam boiler, the cylinders, and other elements of both machines. Such a resemblance indicates that, although Polzunov made use of Schlaetter’s description, by adding a second cylinder, ingenious steam distribution, and other changes he gave his machine a type wholly different from the former one.

The principal differences between Polzunov’s machine and the Newcomen machine known at that time, as described by Schlaetter in his Detailed Instruction in Mining¹, apart from dimensions, were as follows:

1. Instead of the beam, which constituted an indispensable part of the Newcomen machine, Polzunov provided in his project two pulleys with an endless chain passed over them.

2. Instead of one steam cylinder, Polzunov arranged two in his machine, with counter-moving pistons, thereby creating a doubled machine of continuous action.

3. The boiler in Polzunov’s machine was fed by a special feed pipe (18). Whereas in the Newcomen machine described by Schlaetter the boiler was fed from the bottom of the cylinders².

and 4. The ingenious design of the steam- and water-distribution mechanism has nothing in common with the lever devices of the Newcomen engine.

Poroshin forwarded the design submitted by Polzunov to the chancery of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk Mining Administration, which, in its resolution concerning the design, stated among other things that “this machine is not newly invented, but has long been known in Europe and actually used with considerable benefit in various arts, factories, and crafts; moreover, it is described quite properly and clearly in the book on ore mining, composed by the actual state councillor and president of the Berg-Collegium Schlatter, printed in the Russian language in St. Petersburg in 1760, and in the copper engravings appended to it, for use with mining water-pumping machines; acknowledging, however, that in Russia this machine is not yet in use anywhere,” the chancery resolved to permit the construction of the proposed machine and even to request the Cabinet of Her Majesty to reward Polzunov with the rank of mechanician and with money—not for the invention of a new machine, but only “for zeal in mining mechanics and for a perfect eagerness to seek out substantial benefit.”

Having thus permitted Polzunov to build the machine he had designed, the chancery of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk Mining Administration, not having at its disposal “skilled craftsmen engaged in such subtle work—copper and other craft masters,” nevertheless doubted¹ the ultimate success, and therefore decided to bind Polzunov by a signed obligation² that he should not only direct the unskilled workers, but also himself “take upon himself the labor inseparable from that.”

On June 18, 1763, the chancery sent Polzunov’s design to Petersburg³, to the Cabinet of Her Majesty, and requested that, “for the encouragement henceforth both of the aforementioned Polzunov and of other people inclined toward curiosity and labors and not disdaining hard work,” Polzunov be rewarded with the rank of mechanician and with money “in excess of his ordinary annual salary, in the amount of up to two hundred rubles.”

The person then administering the Cabinet of Her Majesty—A. V. Olsufiev—reported the request of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk chancery to Empress Catherine II, who herself took an interest in the project.

¹ See appendix 3.
² See appendix 4.
³ See appendices 5 and 6.

the Siberian mechanic and instructed that it be examined by the actual State Councillor and president of the Berg-Collegium, Ivan Schlatter, the author of the Detailed Instruction in the Mining Business.

Mentioning that such a machine as Polzunov proposed had been invented at the beginning of that century in England and described first by Belidor, then by him himself “in a mining book published in the Russian language,” Schlatter,¹ in his opinion submitted to the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Chancellery, acknowledged that Polzunov “had been able to remake that machine with such praiseworthy ingenuity as to invent it, that this conception of his should be honored as a new invention, and that its essential peculiarity is that it is two-cylinder,” in accordance with which the inventor had also had to devise the remaining parts of the machine. In all this, Polzunov, according to Schlatter’s conclusion, “had an excellent success.” In such an opinion one hears, of course, the voice of an expert on steam engines; but in assessing Polzunov’s machine, which he had not studied sufficiently, Schlatter fell into error. In his opinion, Polzunov proposed “to build for each smelting furnace such an ingenious machine, composed of many parts, to set the bellows in motion”; yet neither from Polzunov’s letter to Poroshin nor from the design is it apparent that any such proposal came from Polzunov. It apparently arose in the imagination of the critic himself, who nevertheless based on it the conclusion that he “recognizes the projected machine as incapable of being built for the operation of the bellows.” Pointing out further that, with a complex construction, the machine would be subject to frequent damage and stoppages, and together with it the smelting furnace would also have to stop, Schlatter observed that such a machine consumes 2 sazhens of firewood per day = 128 cubic fathoms, “which would amount to almost as much as the coal needed for smelting the ore, whereby the smelted metal might become very expensive.” It would be better, in Schlatter’s considerations, to build two ordinary single-cylinder machines—one as a reserve and the other in operation—and to use the latter not directly for operating the bellows, but for raising water into a special basin; then the water could be let down onto water wheels, which would set the air-blowing bellows in motion.

According to the opinion of the foremost representative of mechanical knowledge of that time, it thus turned out that it was more advantageous first to expend the force of the engine on operating pumps and on the useless resistances of water wheels, and only the remainder to direct toward the work

¹ See appendix No. 7.

of the actuating mechanism; on the other hand, for some reason he thought that if the machine described in his book consumed 2 sazhens of firewood per day, then the machine designed by Polzunov would have to consume the same amount. Obviously, in such technical conclusions Schlatter was seriously mistaken, just as he was not right in his view of the complexity of the machine he had examined, which, with a belt transmission of work and with gear engagements introduced into the steam and water-distributing apparatus, evidently should have had a smoother motion and been less subject to breakdowns than the balance-beam arrangement and the percussive parts of the machine described by Schlatter himself.

Schlatter concludes his reasoning about Polzunov’s project as follows: “I report the foregoing not in refutation of the fire machine cleverly devised by the Schichtmeister Polzunov, but only so that it may be properly understood how that machine ought to be used; and so that, since he, Polzunov, as well as others who are endowed with similar natural gifts in mechanics, have been encouraged and approved toward the greatest attainment of useful methods, it is fitting, in my judgment, to assign him the rank of Bergmechanicus of captain’s rank, with a sufficient salary, and to order that such a machine as he has designed be built and put into operation, so that in practice he may confirm his theory.”

Catherine II, relying on such a report, generously rewarded Polzunov—she promoted him to mechanic with the rank and salary of an engineer captain-lieutenant, ordered that he be paid a monetary reward of 400 rubles, and, in conclusion, requested that he be sent to Petersburg, in order to acquire at the Academy of Sciences still “greater skill in mechanical art.”¹

Incidentally, the Empress’s orders were carried out by the Mining Chancellery in a very peculiar way, since in the end it did not release Polzunov to the Academy of Sciences and did not immediately issue him the monetary reward. In January 1764 the Chancellery demanded of Polzunov that he build his machine “with the utmost diligence and every possible observation of accuracy”; furthermore, that he submit to it “a statement” of how much of what would be needed for the machine; and, finally, that he select from among schoolboys or from officers’ and servicemen’s children “pupils,” whom he was not only to employ in the construction, but also “to teach theoretically the first mechanical principles and rules.” At the same time the Chancellery decided to ask Ca—

...the question was raised of canceling Polzunov’s dispatch to Petersburg,¹ for which permission was later received.² As for Polzunov himself, at first he was concerned, apparently, not so much by the demands of the Chancellery and his own rewards as by Schlatter’s comments.

The result was that Polzunov departed from his proposals and drew up a design for a machine of another construction, resembling the former one only in its main features. As a reminder of Polzunov’s originally designed machine, there remains a nonworking model located in the Barnaul factory museum. There is information³ that a working model of the same machine was sent to Petersburg together with Polzunov’s pupils, Levzin and Chernitsyn.

What caused Polzunov to depart from the original design is unknown. Perhaps it was doubt about the sufficiency of the mechanical means; perhaps uncertainty in himself; and perhaps also pressure from the Chancellery, owing to Schlatter’s remark—for who does not know that a word, even whispered at the top of the staircase of the official world, sometimes rolls down to its very foot like a thunderclap.

What the departures from the design consisted in will be explained further on; but for now it is necessary for us to become acquainted with the person of Polzunov.

¹ See Appendix Nos. 9 and 10.
² See Appendix No. 14.
³ See Appendix No. 31.

CHAPTER II.

Biographical Information.

Polzunov was the son of a soldier¹ of the Ekaterinburg mining company, a native of the city of Ekaterinburg, where his father had been taken into service under Emperor Peter I (in 1723) “from among the peasant children” of the town of Epanchin, by recruitment.

“In the year 7108 (1600), halfway between Verkhoturye and Tyumen, the town of Turinsk was built on the very spot where the Tatar murza Epanzya had his dwelling,” says the historian Fisher,² “for which reason the common people call it Epanchin.” Hence it follows that the mechanic’s ancestors lived in Tobolsk Province, although he himself was born, according to the existing administrative division, in Perm Province. The year of birth of Polzunov the son, who, like his father, was named Ivan, has not been precisely established. In the files of the former Siberian Ober-Bergamt, preserved in the Ekaterinburg mining archive, there is only an indication that on September 1, 1738, he was admitted to the Ekaterinburg arithmetic school, from which, on April 19, 1742, at the age of twelve, he entered the mining-factory service³.

It follows, therefore, that the year of birth of the mechanic Polzunov should be taken as either 1730 or one of the years adjacent to it.

Polzunov had no diplomas or certificates, apart from the certificate of the arithmetic school, and perhaps also of the word school that preceded it. Both of these schools were established by the well-known organizer of mining in the Urals, Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev, initially at the Uktus plant, whence, by his successor in administration, Genin, they were transferred in 1723, together with the Siberian Ober-Bergamt, to the city of Ekaterinburg. By the Statute

For them the instruction given by Genin to the Yekaterinburg factory commissar served as a guide; from it one can see, among other things, that the verbal school was intended only for instruction in reading, writing, “the fear of God,” “honest living,” and “conduct,” and that, moreover, without completing its course or receiving appropriate home preparation, one could not enter the arithmetic school. This latter consisted of departments: arithmetic proper, geometry, and later, it seems, the trigonometric department that was opened; it served for instruction in arithmetic, geometry, and “other mining affairs,” to which were added logarithmic calculations, plane trigonometry, drafting, drawing, mechanical rules. “When,” the instruction says, “those adults are studying geometry, they are immediately to be assigned to work, to whatever tasks they are willing to undertake and for which there is room, and they are to be given up to 60 kopecks a month for their work. And they are to be at that work after dinner, and before dinner to attend school until they complete their studies.” From this one may apparently conclude that if Polzunov entered service at the age of twelve as a “mechanical apprentice,” as stated in the report from the affairs of the Siberian Oberbergamt, then this service could scarcely have been the privileged work spoken of here, since after the theoretical instruction, according to the instruction, there followed a practical period during which the pupils were to “not only look on, but also, as far as possible, apply their hands, so as to become clearly acquainted with the art of the craft, in what it consists, and to reason from what it may be better or worse—which the master craftsmen must reveal to them.” “And the teachers,” it says further, “should show the pupils how to draw the drawings pertaining to that, to measure the old ones and copy them, and again, where necessary, to add and subtract.” In general, at the end of the course the teaching bore a scientific-practical character and conferred no other rights except “assurance” that those who had completed the school would not be sent into the army, the navy, or other compulsory services.

With such an “assurance,” of course, Polzunov also came out, entered the mechanical apprentices, and upon completing his studies received a salary of 12 rubles a year. On this salary Polzunov served at the Yekaterinburg factories for about 5 years. During this time Brigadier Beer,¹ who had been appointed by personal decree of May 1, 1747, as chief over the Altai factories, which had only just then been taken into the jurisdiction of Her Majesty’s Cabinet, passed through Yekaterinburg,

¹ A Brief Historical Sketch of the Altai District. St. Petersburg, 1897.

He had the authority to take from the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Works to Yekaterinburg and assign to service at the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Works, among others, the future successor to him, A. I. Poroshin, and with him many other Uralians, among whom was Polzunov. Polzunov began his Siberian service at the Barnaul Works.

His official duties here corresponded neither to the mechanical skill he had acquired in Yekaterinburg nor to the personal inclinations of the pupil of the Tatishchev school, for at first he was appointed only a Giten-Treiber, with an annual salary of 24 rubles. Almost three years later Polzunov was renamed from Giten-Treiber to junior Schichtmeister of the 2nd class, and his pay, on the recommendation of Assessor Christiani, was raised to 36 rubles a year, but on condition that Christiani instruct Polzunov, “experienced in assaying, smelting, and Abtreiber matters, in his art, which he himself knows, sufficiently, so that henceforth, in mining, smelting, and assaying matters, he might be worthy of promotion to the rank of chief officer; and now to send him, Polzunov, to the Kolyvan Works for instruction in mining and smelting work and to the Zmeinogorsk Mine to Bergmeister Eisfeld.” Polzunov was informed at the same time that “if he masters the aforementioned sciences,” he would be given the senior junior-Schichtmeister salary. Thus, from April 11, 1750, Polzunov’s service became dependent on the office of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk mines and on their commander Eisfeld, although, according to the meaning of the decree, he was to study under Christiani, who lived in Barnaul.

Meanwhile, the following change took place in the main administration of the works: their first chief, Beer, died (May 21, 1751), and the assessors of the chancery then present—Christiani and Ulich—entered into administration in his stead;¹ Poroshin, however, was then in Petersburg, whence he returned only when the shortcomings of the local works administration had become all too clearly evident: little silver was being smelted, the stipends were scanty, and the position of the minor employees was utterly miserable. Along with others, Polzunov, too, was of course in want; and so, on November 12, 1751, he submitted to the works chancery a petition for the payment of the promised senior junior-Schichtmeister salary. The reply to this petition was received exactly a year later, and in the meantime Polzunov, while in want, continued to practice himself both in the “knowledge” of the prescribed mining and—

…in the smelting sciences, as well as in carrying out non-scientific assignments from his superiors, which, apparently, did not require his uninterrupted presence either at the Kolyvan works or at the Zmeevsky mine. Thus, from archival records it is evident that at the beginning of 1752 he was, on some business, at the Biysk fortress, whence on February 7 he went to Barnaul; between April 4 and May 29 he was also in Barnaul; on September 18 he requested from the commissar administration supplies for the repair of the furnaces of the Barnaul works; in the month of November, again in Barnaul, he received notice that, by a decision of the chancery of the 12th, he had at last been granted the 12-ruble increase for which he had petitioned a year earlier. Thus, Polzunov spent the whole of 1752 in Barnaul, although he was still listed with the Kolyvan office.

In 1753, on December 18, Colonel Poroshin was confirmed as head of the works; even after this appointment he remained in Petersburg at the Cabinet.

Thus, this change of superiors had no effect either on the works in general or on Polzunov’s position in particular; he continued to carry out assignments foreign to him. Finally, by a resolution of Christiani and Ulich, Polzunov was removed and attached to the Barnaul commissar administration, which was, in essence, a department of the same Mining Chancery, but with the difference in duties that it was charged not with administrative, judicial-police, and technical matters, as the chancery was, but only with economic ones: the management of the work crew, stores of supplies, and monetary accounts. Thus Polzunov again found himself in an institution alien to technical work, and the only gain from the transfer was that in 1756 he received one more 12-ruble increase to his salary.

“It is sufficiently known,” the decision concerning this increase says, “that Polzunov is skilled in his work and, in the sciences, as regards geometry and trigonometry, and, moreover, knows part of mechanics,” and “has repeatedly been employed in the supervision of factory works and other specially assigned matters,” and “no disorders or drunkenness have been observed (in him).”

At the time when the chancery wrote the aforesaid resolution, Polzunov was at the Kabanovskaya landing, where he was receiving ore from free carters, calculating their transport fees, and equipping rafting caravans for the Barnaul works¹.

In 1759, on March 14, a new resolution was made to raise Polzunov’s salary from 60 to 72 rubles, but this proved already untimely, since soon there came an ukase from the Cabinet, dated March 31, by which Polzunov was awarded, together with two other unter-shikhmeisters (Golovin and Denisov), the rank of shikhmeister and, consequently, received the right to the class ober-officer salary¹.

“Those promoted from Russian people to staff and ober-officer ranks of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk Mining Administration are, in such ranks, held in contempt by those serving in army and garrison regiments as staff and ober-officers, so that they do not wish to recognize them as officers,” it is said in one Cabinet report to the Empress²; but such an attitude of the defenders of the Siberian frontiers toward mining ober-officers hardly embittered Polzunov, whom the ober-officer rank nevertheless placed in a more honorable position than that in which he had previously been.

Moreover, this “contempt” on the part of army and garrison men was soon replaced by envy toward the mining men, since on October 27, 1761, the chief Poroshin arrived at the works and brought, among other powers, the right to announce to whom it concerned that on February 28 of that year “the staff and ober-officers of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk Mining Administration were Most Graciously granted ranks, salaries, and actual respect equal to those of artillery and engineering officers,” that is,

200 or 100 sazhen; and since, according to the flotilla established by us of 18 vessels, over the aforesaid distance the rear [vessel] extends from 5 to 7 versts from the front one, then at such a great distance, when the iron shovel is struck from work or for work, it is quite inaudible to the rear one, especially in windy weather; moreover, when one of the aforesaid vessels, because of low water, runs aground or on a shoal, so that the men on duty on that vessel are unable to get it off by their own strength, then all the first vessels come to a safe place by the shore, and then the men travel from vessel to vessel in smaller boats, and from all the vessels they gather for the work not without delay.”

To eliminate this inconvenience, Polzunov asked the office to send two drums, of which “one should be on the foremost vessel, for beating from work and to work, and the rear one for this purpose: that when, among those sailing behind, some vessel runs aground or on a shoal, then on this rear vessel there should be a roll.” Whether the drums were sent is not evident, but in any case the office was satisfied with his service at the landing stage and, though it did not trouble itself much with the appropriate application of his abilities, did not forget to encourage him by such resolutions as the one made on November 5, 1758, by which Polzunov was transferred from the commissariat administration, in case of various assignments, into the staff of the office itself.

in substance, placed above those of the army and garrison. As regards Polzunov himself, his material and official position generally improved with the arrival of the chief; for, besides replacing his former maintenance with a more secure engineering salary appropriate to the rank, in 1762 he received an appointment to take charge “of the forestry administration, management, and orderly conduct of the charcoal business,” which must have meant the post of forester, although Pallas, or his translator, calls Polzunov a land surveyor.¹)

To cross the Rubicon separating the “lower” factory rank from the “higher” one, Polzunov thus had to travel a difficult road; every step along this road had to be taken by labor, and every need of his family had to be paid for with involuntary labor. He had still lived under comparatively indulgent superiors, yet materially he had nevertheless been in want; and without outside help—judging by his salary and the supplemental payments that were issued at no more than 12 rubles at a time—he could scarcely have acquired a house. He began petitioning about this house soon after his arrival, in 1752, from the Biisk fortress, as is evident from the petition he submitted on April 4 of that same year for the allotment of a plot on Irkutsk Street in Barnaul and for permission to float, for the construction of the house, up to 120 pine logs down the Barnaulka River. Polzunov lived in Barnaul with his mother, Darya Abramovna. She undoubtedly helped her son in setting up his household, but she also became the involuntary cause of one major unpleasant episode in his life, which brought Polzunov into contact even with the “court of that time in its proper form.” The clerk Martyn Vtorov, the mother complained, had asked her, upon her son’s return from Biisk, to come prepare food on January 12 “for a banquet” and to spend time in company with guests; she agreed and did what was required, but during the “banquet” Vtorov began calling her dishonorable, abusing her, striking her, and drove her from the apartment. This was reported to Polzunov on the very day of his arrival, i.e., February 7, 1752, and the next day he sent someone to summon Vtorov in turn to his apartment, “and then he, Polzunov,” Vtorov later complained to the court, “in his apartment, I know not for what reason and having suffered no offense from me, struck me in the face, on the right cheek, so that blood came from my teeth.” But Polzunov was not satisfied with this and, apparently on his mother’s advice, on February 19, 1752, submitted a complaint

¹) Peter Simon Pallas. Journey through Various Places of the Russian State. St. Petersburg, 1786.

to court. Vtorov on the very same day filed a complaint against Polzunov. The taking of “reverses,” the appointment of face-to-face confrontations—in short, “the case proceeded according to form”—but for the petitioners it had no consequences, for by a petition mutually signed on May 29, 1752, they terminated the matter, which is of interest to us only because it contains certain hints as to the mechanic’s everyday relations. Concerning Polzunov’s wife the archive has preserved almost no information; likewise it is silent about the time of Polzunov’s marriage. It explains only that his wife’s name was Pelageya Ivanovna and that in her day she was among the “educated,” i.e., literate, which at that time was a great rarity among women.

There is also mention of Polzunov’s children in one of the Cabinet decrees¹, but this decree, judging by the character of its wording and the circumstances under which it was written, does not exclude the possibility of a simple slip of the tongue on this point, all the more likely because in no other documents² are Polzunov’s children mentioned.

Finally, among those close in relation to Polzunov’s family we must include the day-laborer assigned to him by the chancery at the end of September 1759 for domestic service: this was the craftsman Semyon Bukhartsev.

People of thought and science, who do not share the way of life, views, and tastes of the milieu³ in which they live, ordinarily do not have friends. It is possible that he had a few, judging by his character; and Polzunov, who devoted his off-duty time to pursuits incomprehensible to anyone, must have counted among these few Laxmann, a former Lutheran preacher in Altai and a learned investigator

¹ See Appendix No. 30.
² See Appendix No. 22.
³ Characteristic information about Siberian society is reported by Chaplain I. V. Shcheglov. A Chronological List of the Most Important Events in the History of Siberia, 1032–1882. Irkutsk, 1880. From it we learn, for example, that in the most advanced city of Siberia at that time, Tobolsk, one of the most educated men in Siberia then, the Tobolsk metropolitan, did not believe in the motion of the earth around the sun, and all the efforts of Chappe, who at that time (1771) was making observations in Tobolsk of Venus’s transit across the disk of the sun, to convince him of this remained futile. The same ignorance distinguished the rest of the city’s inhabitants. All the Tobolsk townspeople, the common folk, and along with them a military general, looked upon Chappe with his astronomical instruments as upon a sorcerer, thinking that his arrival in Siberia was the cause of the great flooding of the Irtysh, and that the river would return to its banks only after his departure.

Pallas, traveling along the Siberian line, also noted the extreme ignorance of the officers and generals there, explaining it by the fact that “the god of war is the enemy of the muses.”

Siberia, who calls Polzunov in one of his Siberian letters¹ “a friend and a man who does honor to his fatherland,” and of his comrade from the Tatishchev school, who lived in Altai at the beginning of the 1760s, Kozma Dmitrievich Frolov, likewise, like Polzunov, a self-taught mechanic, though he had moved from the Urals already in 1762 and lived not in Barnaul, but at the Zmeinogorsk mine.

Concerning this Frolov, in a brief biography of him placed in one of the booklets of the Mining Journal² there is a note (p. 173) that “in moments of pensiveness, he would talk to himself and, becoming absorbed in his favorite subject, mechanics, would often stop in the street, or in some other open place, and draw plans with his cane on the ground, or make calculations. This, and the fancifulness of his machines, gave the common people occasion for various interpretations founded on superstition.”

Such a characterization partly recalls the traditions and stories that circulated about Polzunov as well; one of them, recorded in 1858 by an old resident of Barnaul, the merchant Fedchenko, says: “the late merchant Danilo Ivanovich Zuev told me that twenty years ago there lived next door to him an old man, the retired master craftsman Kharlov, who had been in service for 50 years, and in retirement already for 30 years. He often told Zuev about Polzunov as about a wizard, saying that Polzunov performed many miracles, even diverted clouds away from the town and made machines.”³ According to Fedchenko, Kharlov in his youth worked at “Polzunov’s ashpit,” as he called the site of construction of Polzunov’s machine, and therefore his testimony is close to that of an eyewitness. Polzunov did indeed occupy himself with physics and even, according to Laxmann’s testimony, given in his letter from Barnaul of November 17, 1764, to Professor Beckmann,⁴ personally made meteorological instruments.

The story of how the gaps in that education were filled—an education which, by his own admission, gave Polzunov neither knowledge of higher mathematics⁵ nor understanding of foreign languages—hardly differed from the history of the self-development of other gifted autodidacts, tortured by curiosity, both of old and of modern times, although in

there was an enormous difference in the means of satisfying these needs and others. Foreign scientific publications and manuals were scarcely accessible to them, and Russian ones—neither original nor translated—did not exist at all until the second half of the eighteenth century. Such was the position of Polzunov as well, along with the others, although he still moved in places tolerably well supplied, for their time, with educational resources: in Ekaterinburg, where Tatishchev, a connoisseur, lover, and collector of books, lived, and in the town of Barnaul, which also had a small collection of books at the school. In this latter, as is evident from one inventory of the last century, there were kept “for the reading of the gentlemen staff officers and chief officers” several dozen books of spiritual and moral content; there were historical books; there were two arithmetics of some sort, among which may perhaps have been the one we found in the library, which taught that arithmetic, or “algorithm,” is such a science that without it “neither any philosopher nor any doctor can exist, and whoever knows this wisdom may be held by the Sovereign in great honor and salary”; finally, there were, in the German language chiefly, several books of a mathematical and scientific-technical character, among them even “Belidor’s work, a course in mathematics,” 1739, and “Leopold’s mechanics with drawings in 8 volumes,” by which, evidently, one should understand Leupold’s Theatrum Machinarum. As for technical books of the second half of the eighteenth century, i.e. the period when they began to appear in Russian, among them the catalogue lists, among other things, Schlatter’s “A Detailed Instruction in the Mining Business,” that is, the book in which Newcomen’s engine is described.

Guided by this book, after Schlatter’s remarks, Polzunov in five weeks drew up a new design and submitted a report with a list of the necessary people and supplies, calculated no longer for the former machine, as the chancery had required, but for the one newly conceived by him.^1 From the submission of this report, all the correspondence of the chancery with Polzunov and of the Cabinet with the chancery concerned this altered or so-called “machine of large body,” which makes it necessary to trace its history separately, all the more because Polzunov’s subsequent life is closely connected with it.

^1 See Appendices 11 and 12.

CHAPTER III.

The office ordered that the preparation and assembly of the parts of the new machine be carried out in the building of the then inactive glass factory, which stood on the bank of the works pond; then, from among the mechanical apprentices, Polzunov was permitted to take those whom he himself had chosen: Dmitry Levzin, Fyodor Ovchinnikov, Pyotr Vyatchenin, and Ivan Chernitsyn. Supplies and workers were also ordered to be issued, but “since this request, beyond the previous project and the chancellery’s determination, entails no small expense, then to him, Polzunov, for carrying out the arrangement and work of that machine, as is known, he gives assurance that it should be capable of continuous and uninterrupted operation not for one, but for six or more smelting furnaces”¹. Evidently, by this “known assurance” Polzunov wished to prove that there was no need at all “to build, for each smelting furnace, such an ingenious machine, consisting of many parts, for putting the bellows into action,” and that one machine was sufficient for several furnaces.

In the archival collection of old drawings of the Altai Mining Administration there are two drawings of Polzunov’s machine, which was built in Barnaul, in a modified form, with reduced copies appended at the end. One of them, the work of D. Levzin, Polzunov’s chief associate and favorite pupil; the binding drawing, the numerous paste-overs, and its respectable worn condition compel one to see in this original the very construction drawing by which the builders were guided during assembly of the machine. The other, apparently, is later work from the last century. No description of the machine has been found, but this circumstance does not remove the possibility of comparing the devices designed by Polzunov and of seeing that the chief deviations of the newly conceived project from the first proposals consisted in the following: (See drawing II).

1) Instead of the large transmission pulleys, which in the former project had been placed at the top of the machine, Polzunov now preferred to use two beam-levers (50) equipped with wooden arcs,

similar both to one another and to the beam shown in the drawing of the machine described by Schlatter. One pair of the end arcs of these beams is connected by means of chains with the piston rods (22), another, opposite pair with the bellows (29); the middle pair of arcs moves up and down the pump frames (52), while the other middle pair raises and lowers the ore-crushing beams (23).

2) The axis of the main shaft in the machine of the “large casing” is parallel to the plane passing through the axes of the cylinders; in the first design, however, the axis of the working shaft was perpendicular to this plane.

3) Among the appurtenances of the steam boiler in the newly designed machine, attention is drawn to the water-supply tube (10), with a cup (33) and a self-acting valve, which existed neither in the former design nor in the drawing of the machine described by Schlatter. The metallic floating ball (34), according to the idea expressed in the drawing, must rise and fall together with the rise and fall of the water level in the steam boiler; moreover, it must not move away from the feed tube (10), and for this purpose it is held near it by rings or collars sliding along it. From below, a rod with a little chain is attached to this ball; the lowered end of the chain is connected with a bent little lever, contrived at the tube (10), near its mouth, and rotating on an axis, which, when turned upward and downward, can open and close the valve (35) placed in the mouth of the tube (10). When the level of the water in the boiler is sufficiently high and, consequently, the ball floating on its surface is raised, then the little chain must be taut and must raise the arm of the bent lever to which it is attached; as a result, the other arm of this lever will press the valve against the mouth of the tube (10) and stop the entry of water through it into the boiler. Conversely, when the ball descends together with the water level, then the tautness of the little chain will slacken, the valve will no longer be pressed by the free arm of the lever, and the column of water filling the tube (10) will, by its pressure, open this valve, so that water will enter the boiler until its level reaches the height at which the valve again closes the tube.

4) In the arrangement of the water supply, a certain difference is observed only in the placement of the water cisterns and pipes, and also in the pump drives and in the form of the pumps themselves; but its essence remained exactly the same.

5) The mechanism admitting water and steam into the cylinders is composed in the new machine of the distributing device proper and of

transmitting motion to it from the rocker of the intermediate drive. In the steam distributor the principal role belongs, first, to the toothed horizontal wheel (68), to the lower end of the axis of which (70) is attached the steam shutter (39), which turns together with it now to one side, now to the other; and, secondly, to the copper vertical wheel (69) meshed with this wheel, which controls the turns of the cock that alternately admits water into one cylinder and the other. The transmission drive, in its turn, consists of: wooden beams (23), suspended from the rockers (50), with longitudinal eyes and transverse bolts in the latter (60); of a shaft with levers (61) and (62) and a weight (63) made into it; of an incomplete toothed wheel (66), freely fitted on the said shaft, with pins on the rim (64) and (65); and, finally, of a toothed rack (67), meshing with the teeth of wheel (66). The action of the drive is clear: when beam (23) is raised, bolt (60) leads lever (61) and turns with it both the shaft and the hammer (63), which, falling to the right of the plumb line mentally drawn through the center of the shaft, strikes with its handle against pin (65) and in this way turns wheel (66); the same thing occurs when this beam (23) is lowered, when bolt (60) leads lever (62) downward and, consequently, turns the shaft in the opposite direction. In any case the idea of the mechanism is to impart a rectilinear reciprocating motion to rack (67) and to transform this latter into the circular reciprocating motion of wheel (68); but on the drawing the method of this transformation, unfortunately, is not clear, since without the plan it is not visible how the bent end of rack (67) acts upon the above-mentioned wheel (68); although one can only guess that it must have received motion now from one rack, now from another, parallel to it, which is not shown on the drawing but which must be assumed on the other side of wheel (68).

The distributing mechanism with its drive, the boiler water supply, the turning of the cylinders, and the replacement of transmission pulleys by rockers gave the new machine an external appearance different from the former one.

The identity of the dimensions of the essential parts of the new machine with the corresponding parts of the machine described in the “Detailed Instruction to Mining” compels one to suppose that in the second project Polzunov, no longer free to dispose of his mechanical gift as he wished, tried to smooth out the sharper differences between his machine and that recommended by Schlatter, and in general was under the weight of the latter’s remarks, if not under the open pressure of the Chancellery.

To Polzunov’s credit, however, it must be said that he nevertheless managed to remain original, since the design of his machine did not, after all, become a repetition of Newcomen’s.

From April 1764 to April 1765 Polzunov worked silently on the construction of the “large-body” machine that had been authorized for him, since there are no reports from him for this period in the documents, just as there are no appeals to him from the Chancellery, which became alarmed only upon receiving the Cabinet decree, in which it was stated, apparently, that the Empress herself wished to know: “whether [the machine] has been completed, and if not, then when it will be made, and how, in actual practice, its operation will be.”¹ In response to an inquiry on this matter from the Chancellery, Polzunov replied² that the machine must consist “of an exceedingly great number of parts requiring subtle workmanship,” while he was working on it with two selected master workmen and ordinary peasants, who assisted only in lifting heavy objects; only one part had been made—apart from the boiler with its apparatus, which had been prepared even before the design was changed—no fewer than 110 parts, but it was still necessary to construct a building and assemble in it the prepared parts, of which six would weigh no less than from 20 to 170 poods, and the others from 1 to 10 poods; finally, time would be required even after completion of the entire structure for trials, “because such machines, unlike water wheels, are not simply and obviously brought into proper action by the moderate weight of water falling upon them, but are set in motion by an invisibly subtle spirit, and soon reveal their former powers.”³ For these reasons Polzunov refused to specify precisely the date for completion of the construction, but supposed that around the month of October the machine would be ready. The Chancellery, submitting to the Cabinet this “unconstrained,” as it put it, explanation by Polzunov, added on its own behalf that the slowness in construction arose from the fact that “the designer and director of that work, although he possesses commendable curiosity, impatient eagerness, sincere zeal, and sufficient theoretical understanding,”⁴ nevertheless had in practice never seen a single member of that machine; in everything he “gropes his way by curiosity, calculations, and explanations,” and, in the absence of skilled artisans, time is lost “not so much in remaking things as, owing to ignorance and the danger of causing excessive expenditures, in reflections, consultations, reasonings, and various easy

and unprofitable experiments”; nevertheless, despite all this, that chancery could not urge the mechanic to finish the machine as quickly as possible, “lest, by doing so, it bring into despair and confusion a man applying all the powers of his mind and spiritual gifts.”¹ It was kept silent in this report that the model machine of the first design had turned into a cumbersome structure, quite beyond the physical strength of Polzunov and his few assistants; but by the end of the year they finally acknowledged the necessity of revealing the secret of the construction. What seems to have prompted this was chiefly the circumstance that neither around October nor in November could Polzunov bring the machine to completion. There followed a new inquiry addressed to Polzunov about the progress of the construction, this time already with a demand for drawings, and a new report from him dated the 16th of the same December,² in which it was explained that the house for housing the machine had been completed by the end of October; the machine had been assembled, and even a trial had been made of putting it into operation, during which, in place of the weight of the air-blowing bellows, logs had been suspended from the beams; there still remained to make wooden bellows, which, however, could be finished only by May of the coming year; to order another boiler, instead of the first one that had been made, which was small and not durable; and to build 6–8 furnaces for experimental smelting of ores. Considering this report, the chancery, despite its former demand, found that there was no need to build many furnaces—3 would suffice, especially since the Barnaul Works, having an abundance of water, had no need of a machine; while it was needed for smelting the ores remaining after sorting at the Zmeinogorsk mine, firstly, and secondly, near the Shulbinsky pine forest, in the Aleisky district—for processing poor ores, not worth transporting, mined at the Semenovsky and Novolazursky mines.³

As for the steam boiler, which Polzunov had requested, an order for it was written to the Ekaterinburg chancery of the Main Factory Administration, asking it to ascertain whether there were craftsmen there who could cast the boiler, or whether the Demidovs or Turchaninovs would undertake to make it at their factories. The Ekaterinburg chancery reported that at the state factories there were no such craftsmen, and from private factory owners, it seems, no official replies at all were received.⁴

The completion of the machine, by force of circumstances, was thus postponed until the spring of 1766; meanwhile, Polzunov, who, according to the explanation of the Barnaul physician Kizing, “had for many years had a painful attack of spitting blood from the throat,” did not live to see that spring. By spring, worn out by his unbearable work, combined with constant mental strain, he had become so weak that on April 18 he began to bleed, and on the 21st day of that same month he lay on his deathbed and dictated to his pupil Chernitsyn his final petition to the Chancellery ^1); in it he asked that there be issued to him—or, “if I, by the will of God, should die of the illness now upon me, then to my remaining wife, for her sustenance and for the commemoration of my soul—the reward of 400 rubles most graciously granted, which I have not been honored to receive, although in building the machine I have brought upon myself no small burden and exhaustion of health.” The pupils Levzin and Chernitsyn, according to this pre-mortem statement of Polzunov, understood the composition of the machine and, if anything in it should be damaged, could repair it; he asked that they be “examined,” while “I,” Polzunov wrote further, “because of illness, am now to be dismissed from all this machine-related production.”

There was, apparently, someone—if not within the Chancellery itself, then generally in the administration of that time—who envied Polzunov’s laurels, although in the face of a dying man’s plea even this envious voice seems to have fallen silent, because the reward was ordered to be issued; but now it went, in fact, only for the commemoration of his soul and for the sustenance of his wife, since on May 16, 1766, at six o’clock in the afternoon, he, according to the report of physician Kizing, died by the will of God ^2).

Neither from the Cabinet nor from the Empress, who had personally taken an interest in Polzunov’s work, could his death be concealed; the Chancellery understood this well, of course, and on the very day it received Kizing’s report it informed the Cabinet of the loss of the builder, which afterward notified it that Her Imperial Majesty herself had been pleased to hear, “with particular regret,” of “his unexpected and untimely death,” and at the same time had not forgotten the mechanic’s orphaned family, which subsequently received assistance. More than once the Cabinet, in its decrees, expressed regret about Polzunov and, demanding from the Chancellery an explanation of the reasons for the delay in the reward granted to him, even expressed, with regard to the Chancellery officials present, the thought that his premature death might have been “averted for a long time,

^1) See appendices 22, 23.
^2) See appendix 25.

when, in due time, by a reward commensurate with the justice and magnanimity of the Most Gracious Sovereign, and moreover with his talents and labors, he should be encouraged and approved without delay and without difficulties”¹). The Chancellery justified itself, assuring that it had delayed the issuance precisely so that he might afterward receive “that reward still more joyfully,” but all these justifications, regrets, and reproaches could no longer revive the laborer who had taken upon his shoulders such a burden as, in his position, even a healthy man would scarcely have borne with impunity.

The machine, before the death of its builder, with the exception of a few minor defects in the air-blowing bellows, was almost ready, since, according to the statement of Polzunov’s pupils, entered in the Chancellery on May 4, consequently while he was still alive, it remained only to strengthen the chest, screw to it the copper bellows pipes, and “drill, at discretion, holes, in order to determine how much, through the action of that machine, of the established bellows force, or air, there will be”²).

The same pupils reported on May 22 that “all of it has been done,” and since two days earlier a resolution had been made that the machine be completed under the chief supervision of Chancellery member Bergmeister Kuznetsov, Levzin, and Chernitsyn, and, upon completion, “its power in action be inspected by the mining officer present (here),” therefore, in order to prepare for this inspection, the said pupils were ordered on the very next day “to light a fire under the boiler, boil the water, and set the machine in motion”³).

On Monday, May 23, Poroshin arrived for the start-up of the machine; in his presence, in the first hour after noon, they began to pump water from the lower cistern into the upper basin, and in the third hour of the day “the water in the boiler boiled and the vapors began to rise,” and “the machine began to operate,” “whereupon the bellows had their intended motion; from the chest attached to the bellows pipes, into all twelve pipes, the air goes sufficiently, and it was observed that this air would be enough for 10, or even all 12, furnaces.”

Thus Polzunov fell short by only six days of living to see this test, which differed from the one he had carried out at the end of 1765, however, only in that it was no longer logs tied to levers that raised the tubs, but bellows burdened with weights. Pla—

¹) See appendices 26, 27, 30, 35, and 37
²) See appendix 24.
³) See appendix 29.

there were still no smelting furnaces, and, it seems, they still considered it premature to begin constructing them, all the more so because, during the trial, a deficiency was found in lifting water from the lower cistern into the upper reservoir, attributed to the fact that the pistons in the pumps moved above the level of the water contained in the cistern. To remedy this defect, they thought of lengthening the water-lifting pipe and lowering the pumps; but since this alteration did not help, they began to look for another cause of the unsuccessful raising of the water, which they first saw in the fact that “the pumps had become clogged with impurity”; and then they settled upon another explanation, namely, that the strokes of the pump pistons, produced by the middle arcs of the rockers, were smaller than the fur strokes dependent on the end arcs. Consequently, in the opinion of those conducting the trials, the pump frames had to be removed from the middle arcs and, by hanging them on the end ones, an arrangement made so that these frames would be raised and lowered twice instead of once; this was done with the aid of some rollers with handles and bars with fingers attached to the furs. Although after such an arrangement the water, “with deliberate success,” rose higher than before, it was still in insufficient quantity, and moreover “the too rapid descent downward from the fingers of the iron pump frames with the pistons caused a strong shaking, so that the whole machine was sensitive to it.” Meanwhile, “for the better and general deliberation,” Obersteiger Frolov was summoned from the Zmeinogorsk mine; instead of the roller with handles and the like, he made, “according to mining custom,” four pumps outside the building occupied by the machine, and, having made them operate from the same machine rockers, finally achieved that the water began to rise into the upper reservoir “even with deliberate excess”¹.

The period of finding a satisfactory method of water supply lasted about six weeks, during which the machine was sometimes stopped for various alterations and repairs, and sometimes started up again. Finally, on July 4, “having secured the water supply, they decided to build a smelting factory near the machine with three furnaces (Krummofen),” and on August 4 ore smelting was already begun; however, like the initial trial of the machine, it proceeded with interruptions, now no longer dependent on the water supply, but chiefly on the passage of water between the walls of the steam cylinders and the edges of the pistons, which was due, in turn, as much to the incorrect “circumference” of the cylinders as to the material used—

...with the cladding adhering to the edges of the émvols. Polzunov prepared émvols with leather cladding covered with canvas, but Poroshin, on the very first day, arriving on May 23, ordered it to be replaced with one made up of corks, which, however, served satisfactorily only until those pores had lost their elasticity; moreover, only 3¼ pounds of cork were found in the local pharmacy, and after using it they were forced to await a shipment of it from Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg, while in the meantime seeking other means of preventing the excessive flow of water under the émvols. The director of the experiments, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, proposed, among other things, to assemble, instead of cork ones, birch-bark plates, each 1¾ inches thick, but it was soon seen that from the heat “the birch bark became very stiff” and “water began to pass through the hollow places in extraordinary quantity”; the “birch-bark method” was then decided to be abandoned, and they began to prepare, instead of the solid iron quadrants that pressed the cork to the émvols, compound ones in the form of hinged chains, so that the damp cork between them could be pressed by screws, and along the circumference of the émvols such standing springs could be fitted that would press the chains to the walls of the cylinders. By this method better results were achieved; at any rate, after September 26, when the long-awaited cork was brought from Yekaterinburg, the operation of the furnaces and the machine was no longer accompanied by prolonged stoppages because of the influx of water under the émvols; but then, on November 10, 1766, “at noon, at 6 o’clock, during very orderly and uninterrupted operation, it turned out that, because of the burning through under the boiler of the brick vaults, a small flow of water from that boiler had occurred, so that the fire under the boiler was extinguished by it.”

In all, for the construction of the large machine, the smelting factory with furnaces, and the smelting and refining of ores, 7455 rubles 51¾ kopecks were expended.¹) By the machine there were smelted: silver—14 poods 38 lb. 17 zol. 42 dol.; gold—14 lb. 22 zol. 75 dol. Altogether to the sum of 18471 rubles 62 kopecks.

Thus, excluding expenses, the machine in the indicated time yielded 11016 rubles 10¼ kopecks of profit.

Whether the chancery conducted any correspondence about replacing the worn-through boiler with a new one is not evident from the archive papers. It is known only that subsequently, because of its unsuitability, the machine was ordered to be dismantled²) and, with the passage of time, its parts apparently were lost. Such was the fate of Polzunov’s creations.

¹) See appendix 32.
²) See appendix 40.

CHAPTER IV.

Let us now consider what was new and independently contributed to us by Polzunov with his machine. Having taken the idea of the machine from Schlatter, Polzunov did indeed “so skillfully remake it” that, producing power constantly and continuously, it fully corresponded to the machines of constant or double action invented later by Watt. To clarify the importance of the conclusion we have made, let us say a few words about the state of steam engines before Polzunov and Watt.

Better known under the name of Newcomen or atmospheric engines, these machines produced power not constantly, but intermittently; that is, work was performed by the machine only when the piston moved downward, while when the piston rose the machine performed no work at all. Owing to this alternation in operation, the use of Newcomen engines was very limited and was confined only to raising water from mines, which required precisely a periodic or intermittent application of force.

The whole task of improving these machines came down to transforming periodic action into constant action, or, in other words, eliminating the intermittency that served as a brake on the application of these machines in factories and plants.

Two men succeeded in solving this task: Polzunov in Russia and Watt in England.

In 1765, Watt, having replaced in the Newcomen engine the pressure of the atmosphere with the pressure of steam, built his first single-acting steam engine, but he did not eliminate the intermittency in operation.

The intermittency was, as we have seen, eliminated by Polzunov in his machine of constant action, thanks to which he was the first to apply his machine to industrial needs.

Thus, taking into account all that has been said above, we arrive at the following conclusion.

1) Polzunov built in Barnaul the world’s first steam engine of constant or continuous action. By this uninter—

he achieved uniformity by being the first to use two cylinders with opposing motion of the pistons.

2) Polzunov, by applying his machine to the motion of blast bellows, constructed the first air-blowing machine in the world, for Newcomen’s machine was applied to the same purpose in Western Europe only in 1765.

3) Polzunov, in connection with two cylinders, created his own special, original steam-and-water distributing device.

4) Polzunov was also the first to devise automatic feeding of the boiler by means of a float.

Subsequently, Watt also eliminated intermittence in operation, giving the world a double-acting machine; but this was in 1786, i.e., twenty years after Polzunov’s death.

Thus Polzunov, like Watt, strove toward the same goal as he did—to eliminate intermittence in the operation of the machine, to apply it to factory purposes, and to attain this several years earlier than he.

We do not at all wish here to compare these two mechanics, who in our opinion are of equal stature, but we cannot refrain from drawing a parallel between the field in which they labored and the obstacles which they had to overcome. Watt lived in England, at that time already a wealthy and industrial England. Nevertheless, in the first years of his labors he encountered many vexations and failures, of which, among other things, he wrote to Dr. Small: “I lacked experience, and, acquiring it, I was offended by numerous deceptions. I would have been crushed by them had I not been sustained by the fate of Dr. Roebuck.” At the beginning of 1775 he even wished to leave his ungrateful fatherland altogether, which he later so greatly enriched. “I am weary of my fatherland,” Watt wrote plainly, and he resolved to accept the offer of Empress Catherine II, who through her envoy invited him to Russia with a salary of 1000 pounds sterling. But Watt had numerous friends: scholars, writers, and manufacturers. They stopped him and supported him...

Polzunov lived in the depths of Siberia, in the mining town of Barnaul, then still much too insignificant. He had no learned and knowledgeable friends, except perhaps the naturalist Laxmann, then only the pastor of Barnaul, no one to strengthen and encourage him in the first years, those difficult, exhausting years when in the artist’s heart a profound thought is born and, with each day, is cast into a new, more finished form.

But if Polzunov could not have had knowledgeable friends in Barnaul, there were superiors for that. Laxmann, in a letter of November 17, 1764,¹ writes: “It is very vexing to me that in Barnaul one cannot obtain the most necessary things. Those who administer the artisans understand only mining reports and accounts; everything else, which is beyond their comprehension, they regard as trifles. Mineralogy, chemistry, mining and factory art are matters alien to them, with which only assayers, ore samplers, smelters, shift foremen, and mechanics ought to concern themselves.” If Laxmann’s words are just, the Barnaul mining-factory officials, occupied with compiling and checking reports and accounts, naturally could not give timely and proper attention to Polzunov’s work. Moreover, we know how difficultly and reluctantly all sorts of innovations are sometimes accepted by our factories in general, even those whose benefit is obvious, and how slowly and awkwardly these innovations are carried out once they have been accepted. What, then, must it have been at the time when there appeared a man who, by his project, was pushing aside the factory ponds, whose water, once dammed, cost nothing; was breaking the water wheels, likewise by no means valuable—and, in place of all this, was proposing some sort of machine that had to be fired, that was itself expensive, and that required no little time to understand its complex construction, while time was already being consumed in large quantities by reports and accounts. Of course, the possibility of arranging factories at the very mines was enticing and also had its advantages, eliminating the expenses of transporting ore; but this invention belonged to a subordinate, and whether it would in fact prove justified was another matter, and so on. Here much could have been said against Polzunov’s project, and he, without doubt—but this is the common lot of talented people—met with no little opposition from those around him in Barnaul. Yet talent overcomes much, and Catherine’s age was not such an age that the success of any useful undertaking could long appear doubtful.

The higher authorities approved Polzunov’s project, and he himself, by the standards of that time, was nevertheless generously rewarded. Besides rank, a one-time payment of 400 rubles was already in itself a considerable reward, especially for a Barnaul resident, because, according to Laxmann, in Barnaul in his time one could keep a carriage and horses for an entire year for 12 rubles in assignats. Such a reward, of course, must have greatly delighted Polzunov, but even a strong—

¹ “Sibirskii Vestnik,” 1820, book 3, p. 15.

joy, they say, harmful to a heart in turmoil. And what labors it cost him to build the machine itself, without knowledgeable assistants, who had first to be trained, without the proper means, which had to be found—his death carried all this away with it.

But if Watt’s sorrows were great in the first years of his labors, subsequent circumstances abundantly repaid him for all his losses. He died at a great age, among his family, rich, happy, content. Glory weighed him down with its laurels; learned societies bowed before him; sovereigns wished to see him... In the rapid development of its manufacturing and factory production, thanks to his machines of continuous action, England erected a monument to him while he was still alive, and his contemporaries, enriched by him, called him the benefactor of mankind....

Such was not the lot of the Russian mechanic, who likewise devised a machine of continuous action and devised it earlier than Watt. Polzunov died in obscurity, as he had lived. His invention brought no benefit to our fatherland, and Laxmann vainly predicted that, in time, thanks to this invention, it would be possible to build factories in the mountains and in the depths of mines¹.

Fate did not allow Polzunov even to see his machine in operation, as though it wished to show that his invention was untimely for Russia. Having failed to wait only three months, he died, and he died a grievous death—from consumption and hemoptysis. Needless to say, a sorrowful lot! Was it the consequence of his weak health and excessive labors in constructing the machine itself, or did fate simply not favor him, and did various griefs and misfortunes exhaust his vital powers?..... Who knows?!..... The damp earth covered everything over, and merciless time smoothed away even that grave mound, upon whose slab, in justice, should have been inscribed: “Russia was a stepmother to him.”

Appendix 1.

Letter of April 25, 1763, from Shichtmeister Polzunov to Chief Poroshin, with the attachment of a design for a fire-acting machine¹.

Most Excellent Sir,

Gracious Sovereign!

Your Excellency sufficiently bears witness to the zeal which, under the guidance of your present corps, the mining society has for increasing the benefit of the Fatherland; so that to the last we desire to subject ourselves to the shelter of your magnanimity, and thereby to show: in what manner, according to the law of economy for mining affairs, state expenditures may be observed, and those expenses which not only here, but throughout our entire state, must by necessary cause be incurred in the mining industry, and without which we cannot manage, we seek to avert and, by our strength and common labor, strive in part to eliminate altogether—something of which everyone acquainted with this industry is aware. What a considerable increase there might be if the places chosen for works along rivers were not for us an obstructing cause, and if henceforth they were made not useless, but, while remaining with them and having the same things required by works in every waterless place, it were possible to reach and correct them by another means; this cannot be left without explaining, nor can one fail to believe it—whence these losses now arise.

For the whole mining industry consists chiefly in this: when there is a sufficient abundance of ores, and nearby also forests and places suitable for works, from which each is seen to be, as it were, related to the other for profit; but from nature we do not always obtain this, and for the most part one must have one thing separated from another, so that places suitable for works rarely occur at the very mines together with forests, in which, by means of fire, metals are brought from earthly admixture into purity. For this reason, usually in the Russian state almost all works are built on rivers, and from this it follows that, because such places are not always found, or, at the very least, because although forests do occur near the mines, yet, owing to a lack of suitable water conveniences for dams, as in Nerchinsk, works are not built; and on the contrary, in the region here, if there are places suitable for works, then there nature deprives us of forests, whereby, chiefly, in transporting ore to them—

¹ This letter was printed in Book XI of Russkaya Starina for the year 1883.

(i) in delivering coal from the forests, according to the laws, the expenses incurred are included in the payment; costs are incurred, not including the people’s burden and the irretrievable losses from building the dam with its apparatus. Taking all this generally into consideration, we, all who are called sons of the Fatherland, must seek other means—how it might be possible to avoid this.

This has prompted me, out of my sole gratitude, in honor of Your Excellency’s name, to take courage and strive with all zeal, so that by means of mechanics operated by fire I may avert this deficiency in these industries, and, by constructing a fire engine, cut off the water conduit and in such cases destroy its need altogether; and, instead of a dam, establish it on the movable foundation of the works in such a way that it (the machine) would be in a condition to bear all the burdens imposed upon it, such as are ordinarily required at works for blowing the fire, and, according to our will, correct what is necessary, on the condition that the deeds adorned by Your Excellency’s grace toward my zeal, as well as those changes which in the matter itself will prove to be beyond the mind, should not be accounted a reproach to me; for the action of fire engines must be confirmed and proved theoretically more by observations and experiments than by mechanical weights and geometrical figures, whereby there is greater occasion to have new inventions, since theory, especially in matters of air and fire, is often much weaker than practice, because the power of knowledge of air has not yet gone far in understanding and is, moreover, still covered with a great darkness.

But God can repay us for all labors, and everything from Him can be acquired by labors; a clear example of this we see in the enlightenment of the sciences in Russia by the Academy, which also for a long time could have been hidden from it. Therefore it is not fitting for us to be wholly despairing, and to leave such an undertaking (as the construction of a machine), desired by the light, without an effort; on the contrary, it is for the benefit of society. Thus I earnestly desire that Your Excellency may deign, in the beginnings of this important affair under your leadership in our days, to take the first step toward it, so that this glory, if strength permits, may be attained by the Fatherland, and so that it may be introduced into common use for the whole people’s benefit, because of the necessity of greater knowledge about the employment of things not very familiar, after the example of other countries, and thereby, lightening the labor of the generations coming after us, increase the glory and gratitude of Your name; so that I must direct all possible labors and strength toward this: in what manner to bend fire to serve machines? And although it is true that initiators of new and useful works do not always immediately meet with success, nevertheless the intelligent world does not regard such men as insolent, but as courageous and magnanimous, seeing that otherwise they devote all their zeal to this—by what means it might be overcome with proper caution. And thus, proceeding to this, first, to avoid further expenses, for the instruction of as many craftsmen as possible and for the consideration of the parts of the machine, its motion and its power, jointly

in proportion; for this reason, when it becomes necessary to demand anything and to correct and wipe it, then it should be made (for the time being) small—such, for example, as for one silver-smelting furnace—but with the whole apparatus, such as must also be made at the large works; and as to the manner in which it is to be arranged, and how the members and component parts for producing motion are to be connected, and how they are to act, for this a profile with a description is submitted, according to which the whole machine is to be made of metal. As for what pertains to the skill of the craftsmen who will be needed for this, first, for casting copper in large and small pieces and also for drilling, turning, and polishing, there should be a master who knows his craft properly; secondly, boiler-making and copper-soldering; and, finally, locksmithing and turning work, for various patterns—which, though in these ranks they may not be entirely proficient, nevertheless no essential things for the construction of the machine will be required from their hands.

I most devotedly beg Your Excellency to accept this my offering as a sign of my sincere zeal, and together with it to consider me worthy of Your Excellency’s high favor for the continuation of further diligence in my labors.

Most Excellent Sir,
Gracious Sovereign,

Your Excellency’s most humble and most devoted servant,
Shikhmeister Ivan Polzunov.

Appendix 2.

Description of the Fire-Acting Machine, Submitted by Polzunov with His Letter of April 25, 1763*.

“On the Members of the Machine.”

As the principal members in the machine one should accordingly count air, water, and steam, which must maintain the machine in uninterrupted action; and for the proper union of them I must set forth, first of all, concerning the quality and force of each (member) separately, as much as is now known about this.

1st. On air. It is known from mechanics that air, by the same law as all liquid bodies, is subject to the force of gravity, as barometers attest, so that the air column of the atmosphere by which we are clothed presses upon the earth with a weight equal, as it were, to that which water raised to 34 feet, i.e. 408 inches, or mercury spread over the surface of the earth to 30 inches, could press. Those matters which, though different in their qualities, nevertheless, with the proper quantities of height in

* Printed in book XII of Russian Antiquity for the year 1883.

the weights are equal, whence, by calculation according to their heights, in weight water stands to air in such proportion as one to \(888 \tfrac{1}{2}\), and mercury to water as 14 to one; and, according to actual experiments, a cubic foot of the water here weighs 1 pood \(27 \tfrac{3}{8}\) pounds, and air about seven and a quarter zolotniks. And thus, calculating from the height of 408 inches of water column, equal in weight to the atmosphere, there will fall upon one square inch the weight of air that will lie in the machine, per spool, \(15 \tfrac{3}{4}\) pounds, and what is upon its entire surface is shown in § 12.

Moreover, beyond this, air also has an expansive force, which appears in it when, being heated and having taken heat into itself in a considerable amount, according to its degree it rarefies and expands, whereby its elasticity increases greatly; for, taking into itself a greater quantity, it is strengthened so as to tear closed strong vessels and to stretch metallic ones. On the contrary, from a deficiency of heat, losing its tension, it is deprived of force; contracting into itself, it becomes denser than before and, leaving its place, takes up a smaller quantity of matter.

2nd. On water. The properties and forces of it may, at the outset, be adopted from physics, which, by the finest and most exact reasonings, analyzes the composition of bodies according to their kinds and proves the connection of their parts, and then confirms it by evident experiments, so that it leaves no room for any doubt. It determines that in liquid bodies, among which is water, there are many vapors (voids), and proves that where there is no matter of its own, there nature scatters through it air; these vapors, because of their minuteness, apart from experiments, are not visible, and likewise, for the air particles contained in it, as well as for the air itself, it is expanded by heat, and by cold, contracting, becomes smaller, as thermometers made of spirits sufficiently prove by themselves. And when it is enclosed in a closed metal vessel and brought to the degree of boiling water, then, weakened by heat, the air scattered through it is released from the mixture; from this it takes on terrible forces in tensions, so that it soon compels metals to burst and stretch.

3rd. On vapors. As for the property of vapors rising from water, they consist of very small bubbles and, clinging to the heat coming forth with air, are stretched into a thin shell, which carries them upward with itself, because of the void, to the degree of weight equal to air, and holds them there until it does not weigh them down; in like manner a thin metallic vapor from water flows off—of which, in a dark chamber, through a small hole, in a transmitted sunbeam, along the bright path, when water boils beneath it, every one can present proof to himself through a microscope. As for the fall of vapors from above, when the air deprives them of their place and their equilibrium, as by weight must happen, this has been clearly proved by physical experiments. For the vapors issuing from boiled water and scattered beneath a closed vessel through the air are not visible; but when, through the air ...

the pump, the air, being rarefied proportionally, will settle more easily; the vessel becomes covered with mist, and, moving obliquely around it, having lost equilibrium, it will descend downward, so that the upper part of the covered vessel will be clear; but as soon as afterward it becomes equal with the external (air), the mist immediately disappears; and if the air is again diminished, then, just as before, the mist returns, and afterward again vanishes as soon as the external (air) is admitted. At the same time one must also note that boiling water always retains in itself a definite degree of heat, above which it can no longer have any, as thermometers testify.

ON HEAT.

Physicists are not yet in agreement (concerning the essence of heat), or, at least, their agreement on this has not reached us. Some seek in it the beginning of a very rapidly moving matter, which resembles air in many respects, and in the motion of which heat consists; and they regard it as an element, and by experiments confirm that it manifests its force even in an airless place, passing through the pores of bodies—not only liquid ones, such as water penetrated by air and mercury itself, but also solid ones, such as metals, which it stretches; that there is also a certain quantity of it hidden throughout bodies, so that motion is aroused in them as well; and they give rise to such an explanation from the fact that when one piece of wood is rubbed against another, it produces flame, or when iron is forged obliquely by special art, it becomes red-hot; moreover, in different bodies lying in the same air there is not an equal degree of heat, as though given by nature—which is observed, though not so markedly, in thermometers, in which air is enclosed through mercury and proves sensitive. Others, on the contrary, refute this with many lawful arguments flowing from the very art, and do not determine the place it has in nature, where it is appointed to be; they take the origin of heat to be from friction and from the rotary motion of the insensible particles composing the bodies themselves, which, according to the division and agreement of the most notable chemists, consist of primary matters, acting and suffering, or of principal and auxiliary ones, nature*) entrusting these to the presence of three kinds of ethereal matter acting thereby (?) from the course of the sun, and so on. Furthermore, the former assert heat to be matter passing from one body into another: when it, from a warm (body), preserving equilibrium, goes out into a cold one and warms it, the first cools to an equal degree of heat. Others, on the contrary, prove that all precipitations, solutions, and mixtures, not containing heat of equilibrium, become warm even without cooling the things lying near them; and from whichever side it may be, it is unnecessary for that body to await those times when the truth will be revealed, but let it remain—

*) Nature?

for those whose office it is, but for us it is enough that the members adopted in the machine should, by the action of heat, bear the required weight and have useful and desired success. And thus, in order, her components, together, and the motion should be described.

ON THE COMPONENTS *).

1st. To make of copper two cast cylinders—one under the letter A, the other B—each 9 feet long and in every respect similar to one another, in body thickness half an inch; (a) the internal diameter exactly 9 inches. They must be very even, and inside polished smooth as glass. At the ends and (in the) middle of them, around, one each, three in width, half an inch thick, under the sign a, are collars, to which (toward the top) are fastened with screws copper-forged barrels (2), which serve to hold the water standing above the pistons (9); and when either of them, with the water, rises from below the cylinders upward, then, freeing the piston from its weight, the water is collected and placed into the barrel, as represented on cylinder A; and if it goes downward, then the water again, as before, from the barrel, increasing its weight from time to time, will descend after it, as shown in the second cylinder B; wherefore the amount of that water, as also proportionally the weight from it on the piston, remains the same at every rise, from the first motion, if only a little excess water is poured out from above, through the cock в, by the pipe let through (3), from which it again, from the first barrel, having a fall by pipe (4), always flows into the other cylinder, from which afterward likewise, when the second piston is raised, it cannot return to its former place because of the inclination of pipe (4), for the end at the first barrel is higher than the horizon of the barrel of the second cylinder; therefore it will have to descend by pipe (5) into the reserve basin (6).

2° Barrels on the cylinders, serving for the retention of water, of a height of 1 1/2, in diameter 2 1/2 feet, of beaten copper, with a thickness against 1/8 inch.

3° Below, at each cylinder, two holes (7), three inches above the bottom; of these, one in each must be blind c, with copper cups and lead valves, adapted for directing the air d, through which excess air, entering the cylinder with cold water, is released; and the other two (7) are connected with pipes from the water cock (8), and at their ends have very small openings f, through which cold water, alternately, at each rise of the piston (9), passes by cock D through the holes into the cylinder and in the holes f runs as a fountain; together with which, also, the air, in pores naturally contained in it in excess, remains, where it—

*) In this section, as also on the original drawing, the parts of Polzunov’s machine are designated, firstly, by capital letters of the French alphabet; secondly, by ordinary numerals; and thirdly, by such conventional signs, the typographic reproduction of which would be difficult and which therefore have been replaced by letters of the small French alphabet.

from the blow having been crushed into small pieces, the vapors pass through, and the elasticity of the air, by which the piston rises, is subdued, lowered, and made to empty the place for the descent of the piston; then, by its external weight, the piston must descend, while at the very time when, in the first cylinder, by turning key D, water will rush through opening f, the communication pipe g into the cylinder is closed by the regulator, and in the other cylinder the communication h with the steam is opened, whereby the air, expanding, gives it elasticity (where the water, being there, stands closed), and drives the piston upward; and when the piston reaches its present height, then the steam from the fountain will settle, and then again together, by the wheel (47), key D and regulator (50) will turn over and open the communication pipe of the first cylinder and close the fountain in it, whereby, as before, the piston will be driven upward; and in the other, at the very same time and at one stroke, the steam communication will be closed, and the fountain opened and water let under the piston, from which the second piston will descend, and the first must rise. And thus they must have uninterrupted motion.

4° To the lower rim a are fastened with screws, instead of the bottom of the cylinder, together with their pipes, copper circles C, equal in diameter to the cylinders, with rims half an inch thick, which must be cast together with them or soldered to each; they have two pipes each; of these the first, the communication steam pipes from the rising boiler (10), one foot long, and fitted so as to protrude above the circle into the cylinder by three or four inches, and at the ends so that they have bent rims, so that the water standing at the bottom i does not enter the boiler through the rims; the inner diameter is \(1\frac{4}{5}\), or 2 inches; the other pipes are almost of the same length, but their ends level with the bottom (11) and connected at the lower end with the pipes along the rims by screws E with a blind elbow (12), one foot long, at the end of which a copper-forged cup with a lead valve L, suspended on a spring; the opening of the elbow into the cylinder is \(1\frac{1}{5}\) inches in diameter; to it must be attached a curved discharge elbow (13), of equal diameter with it, at the end of which there are likewise lead valves j on a spring, and it must always stand under water in the warm cistern (14), through which the water i, which gathers inside from the fountain f and stands at the bottom of the cylinder, at the time when the piston is driven upward by the elasticity of the air, is sent downward by it, opening valve j, into the cistern (14), while, when the piston goes downward, it remains motionless in elbow (13); the copper cup L with a blind elbow is needed for this: when starting the stopped machine into action at first, then both the blind (12) and the discharge elbows must be filled with water through that pipe (15) and key k, and those pipes (15), fixed in the barrel (2), from the movement of the pistons are always supplied with water and closed by key k.

5° As for the boiler F, from which the beginning and impulse for the action of the whole machine consists, it must be of forged copper, not thin, so that it has strength against constant fire, and no less against the pressure—

inside it steam, the joints of which must be so enclosed in it that they have no outlet at all into undefined places; for this reason it ought all to be of uniform copper, but because of its size, and still more because of the ignorance of the craftsmen in the art, it can be made of riveted, not merely soldered, tightly fitted copper sheets; and its size in diameter, horizontally, between the letters M and N, is 5 feet; the ledges MO, by which it will hang on the furnace, are half a foot; and from the horizon to the bottom, one and a half; and from the horizon to the vault, where the steam regulator is fitted, two and a half; the diameter of the bottom is three and a half feet; in it the cubic content of water is about eighteen, and of steam thirty-four feet. On the upper vault of it an oval (16), measuring 18 inches in length and 12 inches in width, is to be bordered onto the boiler with a tightly fitted smooth copper ring, through which, for repair and correction in the boiler, a man could pass; this is also to be covered with a copper board, ground to the ring, and fastened with screws; to this board are to be fitted two test tubes (17) with stopcocks: one very thin, and the other lowered into the boiler by three inches, so that one should not quite reach the horizon of the water, while the other, by its end, should descend just as much below the horizon into the water; and at the time when the water is boiling, through them one can know how high it stands in the boiler, because when their stopcocks are opened, from the first, which did not reach the water horizon, steam will go, and from the other, which is lower than it, water will flow; but when the water in the boiler decreases and becomes lower than both tubes, in that case steam will appear from both; on the contrary, when it rises above the former level and touches the ends of both of them, water will flow from both; and therefore one can always maintain a definite measure of water in the boiler. The shortage of water, namely what is spent from the boiler and goes out into the cylinders as steam, is to be supplied by the feed tube (18) from cock m, from which, in small proportion, so much water must be let in continuously as the loss in the boiler requires; the feed tube (18) must be of no small height, so that the weight of the water in it could oppose the elasticity of the steam standing in the boiler. In addition to this, in the vault of the boiler there must be two more tubes: one steam tube (19), and, beside it, on a lead block, valve n; and another, a valve tube with valve p, of which the first is led through the furnace, as the place may permit, and the other, a short one, fitted to the vault; both are to serve for steam: by the first of them, when the machine is standing, steam is expelled and the boiler is cooled; and the other, if during the operation of the machine the steam forces increase beyond measure, and so that the vault should not be torn off, whereby valve p opens by itself. On the bottom of the boiler there is a tube 21 with cock q, by which water is released outside, if it becomes turbid or unnecessary, into the lower basin (22); and when it is necessary to pour it again into the boiler, then it is filled from the reserve basin (6) through tube (23) by cock K.

6th. The reserve wooden basin (6) on the furnace vault must always contain water, and its bottom must be somewhat above the horizon of the water standing in the boiler,

inside it (likewise) it must be shaped so firmly that, for all the time it is to stand, it should have no leakage, and so that it may contain within itself as many cubic feet of water as are required: first, when the copper boiler is empty; second, so that from it the boiler may also be filled—when, by the hand pump (24), through the line, or by the suspended step (25), the water will be raised up to the third story, into the pump box (26), and from there along the trough (27) will flow down into the upper water basin (28), and from it; and then the water likewise, from it through the water pipe (29), flowing downward through all the other branching pipes, fills the places G of the cylinders above the pistons (9), and from there, through the little barrels (2), along the pipes (15), and as far as the cups L, which are at the blind elbow (12), reaches; from which thereafter, through both the blind and the discharge elbow (13), and even to the very lowest cistern (14), it is supplied with that water. And when all these pipes and boxes are filled from it with as much water as will be needed wherever, and thereby the machine is made ready for the start of motion, then in the reserve basin (6), above all, for an unforeseen case, water must be left at least one foot high.

7th. With the motion of the pistons (9) and of wheels H and I, for turning forward and back, the chains (30) are connected with them, which follow them also in the circular motion and thereby must properly effect the desired lifting of the bellows (31); and downward, for expelling the air from them by their nozzles, the bellows themselves, loaded on top with their movable weights, must sink and go one after another, like pistons, in succession; the lifting of them and the forceful driving of the air out of them, under the applied weight, in proportion to the diameters of the wheels and to the height of the piston (9) lifts, as well as both their different limits in these rises, must be arranged by correct mechanics so that they do not burden the machine by the thickness of the wheels and shafts; for, calculating the weight of the bellows by the force of the pistons and balancing it, one must bring their limits into agreement by distances, i.e., by the size of the circumferences of the wheels, where and as required, as will be shown below.

8th. On the shaft, behind wheel H, on chains, are to be arranged, first, spring bars (41 and 42), by which, for the regulator and the water key, the toothed wheel (47) will have a turn; second, on the same shaft, on chains, behind them farther on, if space permits, or, having attached to it by chains (33) in relation to another shaft (34), on the same chains (35) lowered down into the well (36), two iron or wooden frames (37), fixing in them, from bottom to top, small pistons r, which must be in small copper pump pipes P and from the well (36), through the pump pipes (32), bring the water upward into the wooden box (38), and from there, by the trough (39), continually fill the upper water basin (28); from it the excess water goes by the copper pipe (40) into the reserve basin (6) and keeps it always full of water; and from it, likewise, the excess flows by the pipe (20) into the basin of the first story (22), whence it must, along the gutters, enter its former place where it was at first, that is, into the well (36), and then by the pumps rise upward again; and thereby, during continual action, maintain an unbroken circulation.

9th. To change the rotation, in the machine, of the water cock and the steam regulator on the shaft of wheel H, as shown above, there must be set up, on chains, two beams (41 and 42); and along their length grooves should be made, just as in the frames (37), which must rise and fall one after the other; and in the middle of them, in the grooves, wooden movable palms, one in each (43), are to be fastened with screws, and behind these, for attaching them by the groove to the beams, as well as for proportional shifting, when they must be lowered below or raised higher, wooden screws with nuts at the ends, so that the palms could be moved upward and downward along the grooves of the beams, as the proportion of the motion requires, from one place to another.

10th. And when the beams with the palms receive motion from the turns of the shaft and proceed one after the other in succession, then, on a long iron spindle (Figure 2), which is represented in the middle of the circle, at the round point s marked with a semicircle, the fork (45), having at its end a weight (46) resembling a screw upon it, will turn with the palms (43) from one side, toward the horizontal line QR, to the other, and from the other back again to the first, and thereby will complete the so-called forked semicircle QSR; but at the same time the spindle s, on which the fork (45) moves, must stand fixed immovably on the horizon, and to it, behind the fork (45), a toothed wheel (47) is to be fastened, having only a little more than a quarter of a circle of teeth; and if in its two crosspieces, each half a foot long, nails t and u are placed, then, when the shaft turns wheel H, with the embolus (9) going down the cylinder B, to its own side, and the opposite grooved beam (42) with the palm moves upward,—it will raise the semicircular fork (45), moving around the spindle, up to the perpendicular of point S, and will lower it from the palm, which, having gone out beyond the perpendicular, will touch, with its handle, nail t, fastened in the crosspiece of circle (47), and by its own weight, which is at the end between the forks (46), will turn the toothed wheel (47) with the handles toward beam (41), and place nail t on the very horizon QR, at point u; at the same time the fork itself, upon the horizon, having been held, will stop, and it will bring the nail u of the other crosspiece closer to the perpendicular SZ, to point z, and the wheel, until that time, as well as the nail u in the crosspiece, which will come to stand in place z, will remain immobile, until the palm (43) of the forty-first beam, having received the forked handle (45) from the horizon QR, inclines it back upward and from the perpendicular to the other side, toward the forty-second beam. Meanwhile, as the forty-first beam brings the forked handle (45), having taken it, up to the perpendicular, then the forty-second beam with its palm, as before, will become lower than the horizon, and the forked handle t, the nail on crosspiece u, which was at point z, will turn, together with wheel (47), from z to u, and it itself will come to the palm of the forty-second beam, and nail t from the horizon u will be placed in its former position; and then the wheel too, as before, will stop, until the palm (43) of the forty-second beam from below approaches the horizon RQ and the handle (45), and thereby, at each rise of the beam, back and forth, it will turn the wheel with stops, because the forked—

…the toothed handle (45) must make its full semicircle, and the wheels must turn one quarter. The stoppages and turns of this wheel in all the motions of the machine are of the greatest importance, because the toothed wheel is connected with the turn of the steam regulator and of the water cock; and if, for opening the steam in the cylinders, in turning the regulator, the time is lost and it is delayed even one second longer than usual, the emboli will be thrown upward out of them. No less will the machine suffer from the water cock in motion, because these determine the rises and descents in the cylinders by the emboli, the bellows, and the frame beams, as well as by the pump frames, by which water is driven upward into the box (38) of the third story.

11th. To the teeth of this wheel (47) there must be brought (Fig. 2), from the axes of the regulator and the water cock, an iron handle (48), fitted tightly to their axes and having at its end, with pins, part of a circle (49), whose radius from the axis to its periphery is equal to a quarter of the toothed circle; in motion, however, they are connected with one another jointly, i.e., tooth to tooth, with the turn of the toothed wheel; it must be in motion and stop together with it, and thereby admit and shut off the steam rising from the boiler into the cylinder, by the same single turn and at the same time; while by the water cock D (in Fig. 1), through the pipes (8) and frames (7), it will discharge water into the cylinders through the holes f. For when the embolus in cylinder A descends and stands below, then the forty-second beam follows it in that direction, while the embolus of cylinder B follows the forty-first beam. Then it happens that it is raised upward, and the semicircular fork (45) lies horizontally toward the forty-second beam; and when below the horizontal line the toothed wheel (47), with the part of the circle (49), is turned over toward the forty-first beam, and from the perpendicular SZ the teeth of the iron wheel, with the axis of the regulator, turn the handle (48), with the part of the circle (49), by its pins toward the forty-first beam, then the regulator of cylinder B will shut, and in A will open the steam, holding in it the fountain of water; while in B it will admit it, and, leaving the wheel with the regulator without motion, whereby the embolus in A will be driven upward by the steam, and in B, by the weight of the atmosphere, will begin to descend. The shaft of wheel H will turn with it and lower the forty-first beam downward; while the forty-second, and with it on the palm (43) the fork (45), will lead upward and will lower, from the perpendicular SZ, toward the forty-first beam. Then the handle will lower the toothed wheel (47) downward, below the horizontal, from the perpendicular SZ, together with the iron handle (48) and with the part of the circle (49), into the opposite position, toward the forty-second beam, teeth by pins; and it will move the regulator of cylinder A and shut it, and let water into it, while in B it will open the steam and shut off the water, whereby the forty-first beam will go upward as before. And thus the machine will keep itself in motion by itself, without the aid of hands.

On the Calculation of Force

Concerning the force of the embolus from the weight of the atmosphere, it should be known that when its diameter is nine, and the area or surface it occupies in such a circle is square…

…63¾ inches, while air in barometers supports mercury, according to its ordinary weight, at 29.2030 inches; and mercury is 14 times heavier than water. Thus in such a case, taking the smaller measure and multiplying the mercury 29 by 14 times, one obtains 406 inches, which signifies the height of the water that the air must support in place of mercury. A cubic foot has 1,728 inches, and a pood of water weighs twenty-seven pounds; from this it follows that 406 such inches will weigh 15¾ pounds. Therefore, on each square inch of the area of the cylinder circle there must be such weight, and over all 63¾ inches there will lie upon the cylinder the weight of the atmosphere, 25 poods 2¼ pounds, which is indeed the case, but only when there is already no air at all beneath the cylinder. Opposed to this 25-pood force, from the proper air in the cylinders, and moreover when they will have a rise and fall of 6 feet in the cylinders, while the stroke of the bellows is usually only twenty-one inches, there will be on the bellows, against the cylinders, 3½ times less weight; in which case, arranging mechanically according to the diameters of the shafts and wheels, the cylinders must be in equilibrium with the bellows, and at those points where the bellows are suspended on the levers (31), the weight must be three times as great, that is, 87½ poods, to keep it, as is said, in equilibrium and without motion—the dead force. But when part of the weight is diminished and the force produces gravity, which is called the living force or the force of motion, in such a case the weight of eighty-seven poods must first of all be separated from the points (31): for the friction of the whole machine, and also for the weight of the frames, that is in the well at the pump (37), for the intermediate beams (41 and 42), and for the forked handle with the fork which is at the toothed wheel (46), as well as for the shaft and wheel weights—on all of which, if the machine is established in sound construction, more than seven poods and five should not be required, because although they will be very heavy, they are inclined only to frictions, and by the further force of the weight of their body they cannot take anything away from the machine. As for the water rising through the pump pipes (32) from the well (36) into the upper water box (38), then, as much as its weight altogether in the pipes amounts to, consequently from the same weight, from which the frictions with the apparatus must also be excluded: the diameter of these pipes need not be more than three and a half inches; the area will amount to 9½, which, multiplied by the height of the pipes, even if they are raised to five sazhen, that is, to 420 inches, will yield a cubic content in them of about 4,000 inches; and in 1,728 such inches, as shown above, weighs 67 pounds. Therefore in all the pipes the weight of the water will come to about four poods; and with the frictions in all, 11 poods. Subtracting this, at the bellows, from the weight of the points (31), will leave a remainder for the weight of the bellows of 76 poods. Although, indeed, the remaining weight for the bellows seems great, and with it one could maintain three furnaces with bellows, on the other hand, however, how much air will be under the cylinders in the cylinders, as mentioned above, is not visible; for it, opposing from below the cylinders pressing from above, takes away no small and considerable part of the force from the cylinders. And however much is taken away, that must, opposite it, be triply deducted from the points at the bellows (31)…

of gravity, which it is unreliable to determine by theory without experiments; and, moreover, because the expansion of the air and its elasticity, which will be under the emboli, will have no definite degree.

In addition to this it is recalled that the action of the emboli and their risings and fallings will be made the higher, the colder the water in the fountains is, and especially if it is near the freezing point, and has not yet thawed; and from this it gives much capacity in all motion.

ON THE ASSEMBLY OF THE MACHINE¹

How much copper will be needed for the assembly of the prescribed machine, when all its parts have been made ready, apart from what in casting will go into waste and in the work into filings and turning, and in casting copper is calculated by the thickness of the body, of which one cubic inch in content weighs 15 poods 2 1/4 pounds, while wrought copper—by the areas, of which, taking a sheet 84 inches long and 6 1/2 wide (in it the area amounts to 546 inches), weighs 7 pounds, which makes one pound for every foot; and of what thickness all the pipes must be, and the barrels at the cylinders, on the contrary, twice as much, the boiler, however, must at the very least be three times as thick, that is, one-fifth of an inch. The lead parts I calculate likewise by the thickness of the body, of which one cubic foot weighs 19 poods 14 1/2 pounds; and as to how much of what by length—the schedule is proposed.

No.	Item	Sazhens	Poods	Pounds
1. (29).	Water pipe, with its bend (from the upper basin), one sazhen long	5	—	—
3.	From it, the omitted one, through which water flows to the embolus	1/2	—	—
4.	Inserted between the barrels	1/2	—	—
0.	Standing above the supply one, both together	1/2	—	—
8.	From the water cock, with taps, joined together in both	1	—	—
15.	From the barrels to the cups	4	—	—
5.	” ” into the basin	2 1/2	—	—
32.	” of the well, through which the water rises upward	6	—	—
40.	From the upper basin, through which the excess water flows into the middle basin, which is on the furnace vault (reserve)	5	—	—
24.	At the hand pump	4	—	—
20.	Through which the excess water from the middle reserve basin flows into the lower one	2	—	—
52.	When it is necessary to empty the middle basin completely	2	—	—
23.	From it also to let water into the boiler	1	—	—
19.	Steam pipe from the boiler	1 1/2	—	—
21.	To empty the boiler completely	2	—	—

1. Feed pipe passed into the boiler . . . . . . . . 1 — —
2. Test pipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1/2 — —
3. For the blind knee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/2 — —

4. Filling pipes into the cistern . . . . . . . . . . . 4 — —

7. For letting excess water out of the lower basin, and, when it must be completely emptied, likewise from the cistern; and when it is necessary to empty it completely, then four of these sazhen . . . . . 5 — —

8. From the pump-machine box into the upper basin

9. Into the same, from the hand-pump box
   in both . . . . . 3 — —

Total, by length of pipes . . . . 52 9 4

	Weight
	poods f.

1. For the same pipes, on flanges, of which on each sazhen-length section there are two, in them the weight is half a pound each . . . . . 1 12

2. Into the boiler, whose diameter is 5 feet, in circumference 15 5/7 feet; and when one is multiplied by the other, the surface will be 78 4/7 feet; in them, of square inches, it will produce 11,314; and when the boiler is 1/5 inch thick in the body, in such a case out of five there will be one cubic inch, of which, over the whole surface, to make 2,263, and such feet by weight will amount to 15 poods 2 1/4 pounds, and thus in the whole boiler there should be about twenty poods . . . . 20 —

3. The cylinders are half an inch thick; the area of the edge is 15; multiplied by the length, 9 feet, it will produce 1,620 inches of thickness, approximately the same also in its flanges, whose width is 2 thicknesses; in one piece there will be 38, and in three such 114 inches, and in all in one cylinder and with the flanges 1,734, and in both 3,468) in them, by weight . . . . 30 9

4. Three pump pipes, of which two are in the well, and one at the hand pump, with a diameter of 6, in the body half an inch, the area along the edge 10 3/28, each 35 (inches) long; in one such thickness 354, and in three 1,062 inches, (which) amounts by weight . . . . 9 10

5. The bottom of the cylinder, of a copper circle, diameter 14, thickness 1/2; in it the thickness is 154, and in both 308—amounts by weight . . . . 2 26

6. Communication pipes, diameter 1 1/5, area 2 3/4 . . . . 2

7. In 4 frames, for the connection from the water pipe, and in 4 cups . . . . 1

8. The embolus, thickness 1/2 inch, and for two . . . . 1

9. Keys for locking the pipes, with their sockets and flanges, of good workmanship, eleven, each 4 pounds, and in all . . . . 1 4

10. For the regulator and water key, with their flanges, covers, and other fittings . . . . 1

11. For barrels that are on the emboli . . . . 2

Total copper will be needed . . . . 80 25

1. Lead valves, eight, each of five pounds . . . 1

2. For two rings on the emvoly, to press the leather . . . 1 20

For the above-written manufacture of water pipes from forged copper, of which there are in all, by length, 52 sazhen, 9 poods 4 pounds of copper are indicated; this seems, for the expense, to be no small quantity.

However, if the master’s work is to be assembled entirely and in order, with the requisites, when that copper must first be brought in the furnaces into ingots, and then from it, under the hammer, forged into sheets of the required length, and from these, cutting into strips, bent around even iron cores, then soldered with copper solder; to which, likewise, on each sazhen-long pipe two round cast rims must be soldered on and one to another tightly fastened (which, from ready copper, for one sazhen-long pipe, merely to bend, solder, and attach the rims, two men cannot finish sooner than in two days); and then, in all this work and in the loss of copper, the expense will be irrecoverably much greater than in the entire loss of lead, if such pipes are cast from it. Moreover, copper is more prone to rust and to be eaten through by water, whence likewise alterations and repairs will be required sooner than for lead. Conversely, in lead there is only this one defect: that, for assembling the machine, it will be heavier and, through carelessness, perhaps more liable to being dented than copper; yet in the work the expense for it will be much less than for copper, and in recasting the damaged casting can sooner be corrected; for, in the making of a copper pipe, what expense will be incurred for one sazhen, with that same amount ten such pipes can be cast in ready molds, if the work is fortunate. And although in this also there occur defects, it can be fit for present meltings and without recasting; but if it is turned into copper, then, since almost all of it is gathered in small compositions and scraps, without recasting it will already be fit for nothing. And since lead cast pipes are to be made with a diameter of \(1 \tfrac{1}{5}\), and in the body of the casting the surface of the edge will come to \(2 \tfrac{11}{20}\) inches, which, multiplying by a sazhen, or eighty-four inches, gives a cubic content of 210; and for 52 sazhen it will produce 10,920, from which it will amount to not much less than six and a half cubic feet; and each foot of lead weighs 19 poods 14 pounds with several zolotniks—in that case, for all the lead pipes one hundred twenty-five poods with pounds (125) will be needed. However, it will remain without any loss and entirely available, and fit also for meltings. And in such preparation, when all the necessary pipes have been made from it, in the case of something for copper there will remain only the cylinders with the bottom, including the communication pipe, the machine and hand pipes, three in all; the pump cylinders, where the emvoly will have small motions; and the boiler with its nearby pipes, which are near the heat; and, in addition, likewise the regulator and emvoly, four cups and pipe keys. For all these, as shown above, 70 poods 9 pounds of copper will be required.

Appendix No. 3.

Determination of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk Chancery of April 25, 1763, made upon consideration of the project presented by Polzunov.

In the year 1763, on the 25th day of April, by decree of Her Imperial Majesty, the chancery of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk mining administration, having heard the report concerning the project and description submitted in the name of Major General and local chief commander Poroshin by the Schichtmeister Ivan Polzunov, on conducting an experiment so that the smelting furnaces might operate not by water-driven wheels, but by the fire machine described by him, through the medium of air and steam arising from the boiling of water in a boiler, with cylinders and other mechanical members attached thereto,—ordered: although this machine is not newly invented, but has long been known in Europe and is itself in operation, being used with no small benefit in various arts, factories, and trades, and is also described quite properly and clearly in the book on the ore-mining business composed by the actual state councillor and president of the Berg Collegium Schlatter, printed in the Russian language in St. Petersburg in 1760, and in the copper engravings appended thereto, for use with mining water-lifting machines, nevertheless in Russia it is not yet in use anywhere; and therefore the chancery of the mining administration, for the introduction of it at the local mining and smelting works, accepts his, Schichtmeister Polzunov’s, undertaking and praiseworthy intention as good, and recognizes it as zeal and a perfect desire in mining mechanics to seek considerable benefit; for not only at the local necessary works, but throughout all Russia, that method could enter and take root, and could be incomparably more useful than the present one, because in many places, and especially here, many obstacles and inconveniences arise in the construction of necessary works, namely: in places near mines where there is sufficient water, there is either no timber, or a very great shortage of it; where there is a great abundance of timber, there is either no water nearby, or very little. Such a machine would be especially useful in mining operations and would be very necessary at the Zmeinogorsk mine, and could soon pay for itself and bring great benefit; but with extreme regret the chancery is compelled to doubt whether it can be put into effect here (apart from the tireless zeal of an inquisitive man), because there is no real mechanic here who would know perfectly the construction and composition of the parts of that machine, or could actually build it; and even if there were one, or someone knowing mathematics who wished to undertake it precisely for that purpose, there are no skilled masters experienced in such substantial works, of copper and other crafts; while to make it with simple local craftsmen and rely on them in this matter, without the immediate guidance of the mechanic or mathematician himself, is impossible, and to enter upon such a matter, as requiring great expense, is doubtful to venture. For this reason, it is to be announced to Polzunov: if he truly has a sincere intention and desire to

to have in it, in the casting and polishing of the cylinders and other parts belonging to that machine, over the chosen local craftsmen—coppersmiths, founders, locksmiths, and, as regards wood, carpenters—to take upon himself unremitting labor and complete supervision, so that thereby many alterations and great treasury losses might be avoided; and that, at least as a first attempt, with one or three smelting furnaces, for actual knowledge of its construction and operation, it might be made in a small form and put into use. And if he, Polzunov, should willingly undertake that labor and put the machine into operation, and afterward it should be possible to arrange it not for one smelting furnace alone, but for six or twelve furnaces, and also for mining works, for the pumping out of water, then the Chancellery will willingly enter into this matter; and for this sincere zeal of his it will not only not fail to recommend him for promotion in rank, but will also endeavor to obtain for him, moreover, a reward of a certain sum of money from the Highest Cabinet. Furthermore, it can reassure him that even if, in the very first instance, owing to the novelty of such a machine in practice, and especially owing to the inexperience of the founders and other craftsmen, some mistakes, alterations, and repeated corrections should occur, and even if that small machine, made only as a model for one smelting furnace, should cost up to one thousand rubles, then the Chancellery, counting this among the excessive expenses and losses incurred, will make no recovery from him, Polzunov, and will strive to protect him from all slanders and complaints; while he, in this reassurance of his, for the discovery of a method for the common and state benefit, is to place firm hope in his principal command, and that it may not only be confirmed but also accepted with satisfaction for the good. Of this, if the matter is actually undertaken, then from the design and from all that has been set forth, a detailed report is to be made, through the command, to the Cabinet of HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, wherein it is to be included that even if, in the attempt at such a necessary and useful undertaking, owing to the above-described local shortcomings, the enterprise should be wholly unsuccessful and a loss of up to one thousand rubles should result, then that loss, in view of the profits brought in by the local works, may be counted as very small or as nothing; and if, beyond the aforementioned uncertainty, there should be success and it should come into proper direct operation, then it can be of no small benefit not only at some local works but also at many plants, factories, and manufactories in Russia, and it will be possible to avoid the considerable present expenses, namely the expenditure of a very large sum on rivers for dams and their maintenance against breaches and other substantial dangers, and the precautions belonging thereto. On such well-founded reasoning, for the encouragement henceforth of the aforementioned Polzunov, as well as of others inclined toward curiosity and labor and not shunning menial work, to ask permission to reward him, Polzunov, with the rank of mechanic and, in addition to the ordinary annual salary, with the sum of ten to two hundred rubles.

Appendix No. 4.

Polzunov’s written undertaking, set forth upon the chancellery’s decree, drawn up on April 25, 1763.

“This decree has been read, and I am satisfied with the resolution entered upon it, and therefore, first, for the sake of experiment, I wish to undertake the work of the machine to be operated by fire, with knowledgeable master workmen, on the basis set forth in that decree, and to carry all of it out under my own direction and by my own labor, to which I hereby subscribe.” Signed by schichtmeister Ivan Polzunov.

Having taken this undertaking, the chancellery, on June 3, 1763, issued an additional decree to that drawn up on April 25 of the same year; an idea of its contents is given by the excerpts from the executive papers placed below in appendices 5 and 6—one to the Cabinet and the other to the Commissary Administration.

Appendix No. 5.

Extract from the report of June 18, 1763, of the chancellery to the Cabinet, with the submission of the machine design.

Having repeated verbatim its decree of April 25, 1763, and adding to it that Polzunov “undertakes, by his own labor and direction, the construction and bringing into operation of that machine, driven by fire, for smelting bellows, which he, Polzunov, has been permitted to make,” the chancellery concludes this report thus: “In view of such a well-founded consideration, for the encouragement henceforth both of the aforesaid Polzunov and of others inclined to curiosity and labor and not disdaining black work, would not the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty deign to reward him, Polzunov, with the rank of mechanic, and, when the machine begun by him has been brought into proper operation, then, in addition to the usual annual salary, with a sum of money up to two hundred rubles; concerning which the chancellery of the mining authorities requests, through this, the gracious confirmation from the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty. And as for the project submitted by schichtmeister Polzunov, an exact copy thereof is attached herewith. June 18, 1763.” At the end are made the same signatures as under the decree of April 25, 1763.

Appendix No. 6.

Extract from the decree of July 8, 1763, of the chancellery to the Commissary Administration on the release of supplies, etc., for the construction of the machine.

In this decree the chancellery again repeats verbatim its decree of April 25, 1763, and at the end adds: “And by virtue of that decree the aforesaid Polzunov declared by written undertaking that, first, for the sake of experiment, in

the construction of the fire-operated machine with knowledgeable master workmen, on the same basis as is set forth in that decision; and since he wishes to undertake and carry all this out under his own supervision and by his own labor, and since, by decree of HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY and by the determination of the Chancellery of the Mining Administration, the aforesaid Polzunov, by virtue of the aforementioned determination, has been permitted to make the indicated machine under his direction, therefore for the work on it, according to his, Polzunov’s, requirements, master workmen are to be supplied, and provisions and materials are to be released at cost from the Commissariat Administration by memorandum; and concerning this, action is to be taken in all respects according to HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY’S decree. July 8, 1763.”

Appendix No. 7.

Extract from the reply decree of the Cabinet of November 19, 1763, sent in response to the Chancellery’s submission of June 18 of the same year.

In paragraph 6 of this decree, relating to Polzunov and to the project drawn up by him, it is stated: “The project composed by shiftmaster Ivan Polzunov, with a plan and a very thorough description of a new machine by which smelting furnaces could be operated not by the customary water-driven wheels, but by fire, through the agency of air and vapors arising from the boiling of water in a boiler, and by cylinders attached thereto with other mechanical members, was, by the pleasure of HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, examined by Mr. Actual State Councillor Schlatter, who, with special praise for the diligence and skill of the aforesaid Polzunov, submitted his opinion in the copy appended hereto; and HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, as a profound and generous patroness of the sciences and arts, was graciously pleased not only with him, Polzunov, but also, for the greater encouragement of him and of others, following his example, in such useful exercises, to command: to grant him, Polzunov, the rank of mechanic with the rank and salary of an engineer captain-lieutenant, and to issue to him as a reward 400 rubles. Also, should he not be needed at the works, then to send him to the Most High Cabinet with silver, so that, in order to acquire greater skill in mechanics, he might spend two or three years at the Academy of Sciences and, there, with greater instruction, devote himself to it and afterward employ his natural gifts and abilities with better success for the benefit of the works.”

Appendix No. 8.

“Opinion” on the fire-operated machine designed by shiftmaster Polzunov.

“1st. This machine was already invented at the beginning of this century in England by Mr. Savery, and from time to time has been brought into better condition and im—

…has been brought to perfection and is used with great benefit in England, France, and Hungary for drawing water from deep ore and coal mines.

1. Shichtmeister Polzunov based his project precisely on such machines as actually exist and are in operation, as were described by the famous French mathematician Bélidor,¹ and which I presented and described in the mining book published in the Russian language;² only he, the shichtmeister, with an ingenuity worthy of praise, was able to alter and depict that machine so that this invention of his should be honored as a new invention—and instead of all such existing machines being identical and consisting of a single cylinder, he proposes to divide it into two and make it of two cylinders; consequently he must also have devised other members for the motion of this machine of his than are found in ordinary ones, in which he has had considerable success.

2. That fire-acting machine of his, Polzunov’s, may be used with exactly such benefit as he represents, except that to build such a clever machine, consisting of many members, for setting bellows in motion at each smelting furnace would be impracticable, for the following reasons, I acknowledge, namely: a) the more complicated the machine, the more liable it is to damage, and if something in it should be spoiled, then the smelting furnace would stop, cool down, and in smelting there might occur interference and loss, for it would be impossible to repair it quickly and put it back into operation, as is necessary so that the smelting furnace not be stopped; b) to keep this machine in operation, every twenty-four hours 2 sazhens of firewood are required, reckoning each sazhen as 8 in length and 4 feet in height and width, which will amount almost to as much as the charcoal required for smelting the ore, from which the smelted metal may become very expensive, if such an expensive and ingeniously composed machine is set up at each smelting furnace.

3. If it is necessary to set bellows in motion by such machines, then, in my opinion, it is sufficient to build two identical ones, that is, with one cylinder—one operating, and the other in reserve—which would raise water by pumps to the required height and pour it into a basin built for that purpose, and from that basin—onto water wheels, as much as is required to be let to the smelting furnaces, making those water wheels of such proportion in height and width that they would not require as much water for their operation as ordinary ones do; and in this way many smelting furnaces may operate at once by one machine; for such a machine, composed of one cylinder, operates or raises water 15 times every minute to a height of 46 sazhens, and each time by 9⅔ buckets, which makes up to 580 buckets per hour, by which method up to six wheels, and each…

¹ In Architecture Hydraulique, 1739.
² In A Detailed Instruction for the Mining Business, 1760.

can be brought into operation by one machine for two smelting furnaces, instead of, according to his, Polzunov’s, design, one machine being required for each furnace.

1. I report the foregoing not in order to refute the fire machine so ingeniously devised by shiftmeister Polzunov—not only because it is proper to make proper use of this machine; but so that both he, Polzunov, and others who are endowed with the same natural gifts in mechanics may be encouraged and approved toward the greatest attainment of useful methods—then, in my judgment, it is proper to assign him the rank of berg-mechanicus of captain’s grade with a satisfactory salary, and to order that such a machine as he has designed be built and put into operation, so that by practice he may confirm his theory. The original was signed by Ivan Schlatter, and the copy sent from the Cabinet by Assessor Akim Slatnin. September 9, 1763.”

Appendix No. 9.

Decision of the Chancellery of January 22, 1764, drawn up upon receipt of the reply decree from the Cabinet concerning the submitted project.

“To announce to Mechanicus Polzunov that he, with the utmost diligence and every possible observance of accuracy, is to build the machine described in his project, operated by fire and steam for setting the smelting bellows in motion, according to the force of the previous chancellery decision, for the first occasion though at one smelting furnace, so that it may have perfect operation and that thereby he may undoubtedly receive the prescribed reward. And as to how many supplies and materials are needed for this, as well as when, for what time, and what and precisely which master craftsmen and working people are necessary, he is to submit a statement thereof. Likewise, from among the officers’ and other service children, and from schoolboys, or else from non-commissioned officers, two or three men are to be chosen for him as pupils, who know arithmetic and geometry well and have aptitude and ability for it; and at the same time he is to present them—and when they are assigned, then, for instruction, they are to be employed in the construction of the above-mentioned machine, and meanwhile he is to teach, instruct, and clearly explain to them theoretically the first mechanical principles and rules, so that assistance may also be obtained from them; and for the perfect production of that machine, put into operation by him, Polzunov, the forest-management, guidance, and orderly conduct of the charcoal business now entrusted to him are to be removed from him, and in his place there is to be appointed, from among the newly granted officers, whomever, at the discretion of the gentleman Councillor, shall prove capable of this; and this is to be reported to the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty, and it is to be requested whether it would be inadvisable to postpone his dispatch to the Academy of Sciences for some time, for there is the utmost necessity for him here, in order to put into perfect operation, by practice, that steam-powered machine, because with the newly established, by God’s help, Novo-Lazur-

at the Novo-Lazursky and Semenovsky mines, lead ores are being obtained only in small quantities, and work at them is carried out by manual labor, not so much for the extraction of these poor ores as for the discovery and prospecting of genuine lead-ore veins; for here there is the utmost need of lead. And since the aforementioned ores obtained and being obtained at the new mines are poor, and it is highly unprofitable to transport them to the smelting works because of the distance, while to smelt them there, both because their production is still small, and especially because of the lack there of timber—and what there is must be preserved for use in the mines—it is impossible to build a smelting plant powered by water. Thus the idea is being entertained that, if the machine projected and now, at the first opportunity, determined to be made, powered by steam, is made by him, Polzunov, and brought into proper operation, then the Chancellery intends, at the aforementioned Novo-Lazursky and Semenovsky mines, for the smelting of the indicated poor ores in order to obtain lead, to make at least one smelting furnace powered through the said machine; and after the completion of those machines, to send him, Polzunov, to the Academy of Sciences, for better confirmation of the mechanical rules, which will be very useful both for his understanding and for instruction at the Academy; and therefore to await a decree concerning this.”

Appendix No. 10.

Extract from the report of March 7, 1764, of the Chancellery to the Cabinet concerning the cancellation of Polzunov’s dispatch to the Academy of Sciences, etc.*)

“And so it is considered that, should that projected machine, after its apparatus has been made and after even a small, approximate trial has been performed, prove the force of its action, then, in that hope, the mechanical parts made by him, Polzunov, for that machine will not be so difficult to transport there**) and to assemble; and, according to the quantity of ore, to attach to it one or several smelting furnaces for smelting lead contained in those ores, with silver, from which no small benefit and reduction of great expenses may result. In that hope the Chancellery resolved that he, Polzunov, should begin the construction, as reported in the former memorandum; but it still remains in expectation of confirmation, and ventures to cancel the dispatch of Polzunov to Saint Petersburg until that machine has been brought into operation. For the same reason, the silver smelted in 1763, on which occasion he was to be sent, has, until receipt of that decree, been sent with another officer. March 7, 1764.”

*) This report was printed in Russkaya Starina for 1884.
**) To the Semenovsky or Novo-Lazursky mine.

Appendix No. 11.

Polzunov’s report, heard by the Chancellery after consideration of the memorandum of March 7, 1764, in the Cabinet¹.

By the determination of the Chancellery of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Mining Administration of the 22nd day of January of this year, I was ordered to build the fire-acting machine, as well as the bellows for the smelting furnaces, designed by me, and to bring it into perfect operation; and to submit a statement of how many and what kinds of supplies and materials are needed for this, and also when and for what period, what kind and exactly which master craftsmen and working people are required; and, in addition, to select from among officers’ and other servants’ children, from school pupils, or from non-commissioned officers, those who know arithmetic and geometry well and have the understanding and ability to be apprentices—two or three men. And, according to that order, for the construction of the said machine, for the casting and forging of various supplies, as to how much of what, according to an approximate estimate, is required, and exactly whom from among the master craftsmen and other people must be put to work, a register is appended hereto. As for the selection of children as apprentices, I recognize as capable in understanding and, by their inclination, reliable in comparison with others for useful occasions in the future: from the coal pupils, Dmitrii Levzin and Feodor Ovchinnikov; from the officers’ children, Ivan Chernitsyn; and from the non-commissioned officers, Petr Vyatchelin; of these, with the Chancellery’s permission, three are needed. As for the supplies which, in the very work itself, beyond the prescribed number in the register, will be needed from time to time—such as various tools of every craft, ropes for lifting weights, pine logs for windlasses and other fastenings, patterns and templates of different boards and crooks, as well as clay and, for various needs connected with this, charcoal, firewood, and the like, which cannot be known in advance—it is requested that these be issued without requisitions according to the register, and afterward, with return, the expenditure be entered already as a charge to the machine; and for the continuous supervision of the tools and other things used in that work, assign, under my exact authority, a guard of four soldiers.

Appendix No. 12

Register² of master craftsmen and various supplies required for the construction of the fire-acting machine.

Concerning supplies.

	Number	Total, p.	Total, f.
For casting cylinders, pump pipes, and the apparatus belonging thereto, red spelter copper	—	500	—
Pure ingot copper, suitable for forging, for the boiler and air pipes	—	60	—

Item	Number	Weight, poods	Weight, pounds
Lead for water pipes, valves, and emboli	—	600	—
Tin. If, in casting large things, the masters, of course, cannot do without it, then it will be needed for mixing; supposing at least 2 pounds per pood, then 15 poods are required, and if it is possible to do without it, in that case for one p... and solder	—	—	20
Wire for tying together patterns and casings of various numbers	—	6	—
Iron for binding the furnace, patterns, and casings with their cores, of various sorts	—	150	—
For forging whole machines, screws, toothed wheels, and other implements of various sorts	—	60	—
Steel and iron for welding tools, for bellows, for drilling, and for springs	—	4	—
Nails of various sorts	2000	—	—
Tanned thick hides for pistons and for joints between pipes	5	—	—
Pump leather for emboli	1	—	—
For the casting supply: sal ammoniac	—	—	2
For the casting supply: borax	—	—	2
For the casting supply: verdigris	—	—	20
For the casting supply: salpeter	—	—	20
For polishing, etc.: emery or pumice	1	—	—
For polishing, etc.: tripoli	—	—	10
For polishing, etc.: old rags	—	2	—
For polishing, etc.: beef tallow	—	—	—
For polishing, etc.: rendered beef tallow	—	1	20
For polishing, etc.: shredded hemp	—	1	—
For polishing, etc.: cow’s or sheep’s wool	—	1	—
For polishing, etc.: pig bristles	—	—	20
For polishing, etc.: bone ash	—	1	—
For polishing, etc.: wood ash	—	4	—
Rye malt for drying, mixed with clay	—	5	—
For laying furnaces, for the foundry work and for blacksmith’s fuel: bricks	3000	—	—
Sheet iron for a double and single cover against the heat, sheets	30	—	—
Naphtha hides for lining, to preserve the filings	10	—	—

ON THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOW, IN THE FIRST INSTANCE, NEEDED.

For the foundry work.

From among the pattern-makers: Ivan Shevangin.

Sergey Trusov.

Fyodor Vas. Kirsanov.
Ivan Naum. Kolesin.

From the blacksmiths: Vasily Mityorin.
From the charcoal burners: Mikhailo Gustokashin.
From the retired master craftsmen: Grigory Bobrovnikov and Spiridon Bobrovnikov.

For the copper smelting:

Filipp Medvyedev.
Semyon Korenev.
Kozma Devkin.

For the boiler work, copperwork, blacksmithing, and locksmithing:

Ivan Klyuev.
Andrei Zuev.
Sofon Vasiliev.
Grigory Kharitonov.

From the carpenters for making models and patterns:

Nikolai Rechkunov.
Stepan Khudyakov.

To them, workers from among the coopers:

Ivan Safatov.
Petr Kungurov.

At whichever mine—whether at Novolazursky, or, if at Semyonovsky—it is determined first to build this machine, then at that place, for the construction of the house and its annex, in which the machine will be located, it will be necessary to prepare in the months of March and April—to fell, haul, and stack on site for drying:

Item	Quantity	Weight, poods	Weight, pounds
Pine logs, 4 sazhens long	300	—	—
Pine logs, three-sazhen	100	—	—
Four-sazhen timber: larch and moss-grown	200	—	—
Four-sazhen timber: for the shed	150	—	—
Four-sazhen timber: for roofing	400	—	—
Firewood to prepare, for the first occasion, 1 1/2 arshins long, of which it is sufficient to have for one third of a year, sazhens	200	—	—
Fired brick for the furnace for the machine	30000	—	—
Iron: strip	—	40	—
Iron: flat	—	60	—
Iron: hoop and drill iron	—	40	—
Iron: bolt and quadrangular	—	20	—

	Number	Weight, poods	Weight, pounds
Buckets of tar	100	—	—
Thick and thin ropes for lifting weights during construction, the number required according to the circumstances of the time	—	—	—

For the above-described construction, if the peasants are assigned to it, then in the months of July and August 40 men will be needed, and with them, from the Bergtauers, 10 carpenters.

Appendix No. 13.

Decision of the Chancellery of March 26, 1764, on Polzunov’s submitted report concerning supplies, etc.

“On March 26, 1764, by decree of Her Imperial Majesty, in the chancellery of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk Mining Administration, having heard the report from the mechanic Polzunov concerning the granting to him, for the construction of the machine he had designed for operation at the smelting furnaces by means of bellows, of the pupils he had selected, as well as of various master craftsmen and, for that work, copper, lead, and other materials and supplies according to the schedule attached thereto, it was ordered: 1) that Levin, Ovchinnikov, Chernitsyn, and Vyatlenin be pupils with him, and that he employ them not only in mathematical calculations and drawings, but in actual work, namely carpentry, turning, work in copper, lead, and soldering, and other suitable tasks, and conduct matters so that they, laboring and making with their own hands everything necessary, might make each thing properly, efficiently, proportionally, and in the best quality, and might have not only an understanding but also exact knowledge and guidance for the masters; and that they become capable in that mechanical and other appropriate mining and factory sciences, and in time, according to their diligence, become reliable officers in the art; and, with a view to this, prudently, without shame or disdain for dirty work, disregarding all contempt, if they wish to be good people, they are to labor with utmost diligence; and on working days, in order to avoid vain and improper finery, they are to be forbidden, not permitted, and prevented from wearing uniforms and swords, but are to wear work clothes, and new ones, such as there are; and when there is no work, or on the first present occasion, in shifts, they are to reinforce arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, and the mechanical rules and all those sciences, especially what concerns mechanics, under his, Polzunov’s, guidance, and to study with utmost care; in their daily life, their actions and conduct are to be diligently observed, the good interpreted favorably, and the bad and improper, without any omission, by suitable means, and in the event of failure to carry out orders and instructions, by severity, to be averted; and should anyone, even after threefold admonition and punishment, fail to correct himself in such matters for punishment and expulsion and for assignment to ordinary mining work, without any

to submit the silence to the chancery, so that the sciences may be held in honor and good and reliable people not at all be confused with bad and unreliable ones; concerning him, Polzunov, for his excessive connivance and silence, the chancery will answer in such manner as, upon consideration of the weakness, it will have hope in the honor of his rank.

Furthermore, of the pupils Levzin and Ovchinnikov, when necessary, with change or at discretion, to make use of them according to their former training, in the laying of furnaces and in burning coal in them, until others are sufficiently taught and accustomed to this. In order to give them zeal for the service and for the above-mentioned honorable craft and science, to reckon them henceforth as shaft-masters, Levzin and Ovchinnikov in the second, and Vyatchenin and Chernitsyn in the third class, and in everything to deal with them as is invariably set forth in the determination made on the 19th day of this month concerning Chernitsyn. Their pay, henceforth until further consideration, is to be made to Levzin and Ovchinnikov as before, and to Vyatchenin, beginning from the 1st day of the coming April, according to the twenty-four-ruble salary.

2) Of the actual, competent servicemen, bellows-men, and other master craftsmen and laborers required for the construction of that machine, to provide as many as he, Polzunov, may at any time have work for, and not in such a way that, when there is no work, they would merely be counted under his precise command; and especially, from among the competent servicemen required by him, those who are used for copper refining, and from the bellows-men, if possible, to assign at least half of those required, and in addition to provide others who know that craft; for at a copper works, both in copper refining and in the operation of bellows, there is an extreme, necessary need and requirement. This, to the commissarial administration, and especially to the gentlemen Ober-Hütten-Verwalters Hahn and Chernitsyn, is once more to be firmly confirmed, so that they should have immediate and diligent care for this, fearing answerability and penalty.

Of the other master craftsmen who are at the Kolyvan works, namely Filat Medvedev—with indication of his salary and the date from which it is paid—and also the retired Spiridon Bobrovnikov, the Kolyvan works office is to send them immediately, and for transporting them from there to here to give both, with the issue of travel money to be charged to the account of that machine, one cart. The salary is to be paid to all of them according to their rates; and to the retired Bobrovnikov, one grivna per day, and if he works diligently, then from the month of May, upon special representation by Polzunov, to pay five altyns per working day. And the soldiers on guard duty are to use the same as at the glass works; and if there are only three men here, then a fourth is to be added, for the work on the machine will be carried on there, while the glass business has already, for the present, been stopped until the coming autumn—and for this reason all the things formerly used in that craft are to be ordered put away in convenient places; and where there are doors and little windows, to have them stopped up and sealed, and to keep those places, as well as the locks and seals, and to report about them to the same guard.

1. Floured and pure bar copper, as well as green copper, sal ammoniac, borax, spelter, emery, tow, lead, tin, iron, steel,

pig iron, wire, tinplate, nails, pump leather, cuff and doubling leather, pork and beef fat, hemp, wool, bristles, ashes, rye malt, bricks—the required quantity, with an indication of the true factory price, to enter as expenditure, and, with a receipt from him, Polzunov, to issue all at once, or as much of whatever is needed when; and such small things as are not available on hand, having sought them out, to buy and supply, and to enter the sums issued in advance to the account of that machine. Whatever additional supplies and tools he may need from time to time and which can be returned, or the latter items of the very lowest price, such as aspen logs for sawing, clay prepared by the craftsmen, wooden vessels, and the like, as well as horses and, in addition, for lifting for several hours, people—these are to be given and released from the factory expenditure, from what has already been entered as expenditure for factory needs, with a special note; and, upon the end of that need, to return them to their former uses. And if something entered as expenditure is insufficient, then, according to his special requests, to release from what is on hand as receipts, with an entry as expenditure and a receipt; and whatever is worn out to the point of unfitness—to charge the price to the account of that machine; and whatever can be returned without any damage, or with minor repairs, then without entry as expenditure, but with the above-mentioned special note and receipt.

4th. For the mechanic Polzunov to establish notebooks, and to enter therein, without the slightest omission, all things received, with the price, and so that all shall be consistent with the notes of those places from which anything was released; and whatever quantity of anything serviceable for other use may be returned from that, to exclude it upon release from that account. Likewise, for the master craftsmen, working people, and apprentices working on it, to have a correct list of how much, according to their salaries, during working days and during holidays that occur in the meantime (except for guard soldiers), and likewise for him, Polzunov, according to his salary, will be paid in wages; this, at each issue of wages for that time, is to be reported by him to the commissary administration at the proper time, so that there, together with the other servants, it may be entered in the list as a separate sum; so that when, upon the bringing of that machine into operation, inquiry is made about the expenditures incurred, it will be possible, without further references, to explain it correctly and without any delay, in the shortest possible time.

5th. But since this requirement, beyond the previous estimate and office determination, will amount to expenditure of no small sum, then to him, Polzunov, the position and business of producing that machine, as is known, imposes the obligation that it be capable of continuous and uninterrupted operation not for one, but for six or more smelting furnaces; therefore, concerning this, he must have every diligent care and zeal.

Appendix No. 14.

Extract from the Cabinet’s reply decree of April 30, 1764, concerning the retention of Polzunov at the works.

By this decree, sent in reply to the Chancery’s submission of March 7 of the same year 1764, the Cabinet, among other things, resolved: “to leave the mechanic Polzunov at the works for the indicated needs, and after their correction to send him off.”

Appendix No. 15.

Extract from the Cabinet’s decree of March 27, 1765, with an inquiry concerning the progress of the construction of the machine¹.

By this decree the Cabinet informed the Chancery that “HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY has been most highly pleased to order that the Chancery of the Mining Administration be required to send immediately to the Cabinet a detailed report on the progress of the making of the fire-acting machine invented by the mechanic Polzunov: has it been completed, and if not, then when will it be made and what will be its effect in actual practice?” As a result of such an inquiry, the Chancery, on the basis of its determination issued that same year on May 10, asked about the state of Polzunov’s construction; he then presented the “Explanation” printed below.

Appendix No. 16.

Explanation submitted by the mechanic Ivan Polzunov on the construction and assembly of the newly invented fire-acting machine and on the delay in bringing it into operation, which consists of the following.

The construction of fire-acting machines must be composed of many members, which must be made in such a way as a thoroughly theoretical mind can comprehend; and the assembly of the members is joined from a very great multitude of parts requiring careful work and proportional skill, and craftsmen knowledgeable in the copper craft, such as founders and solderers, as well as turners and polishers, and such men as might, under their supervision, finish what was conceived to a suitable end, are entirely lacking because of the emptiness of this place. And for this work there were chosen by me men who know nothing of that craft, but only have some inclination toward it, two from among the local master workmen, with whom I alone, and all of us, unwillingly, with the help in lifting and moving heavy things of ordinary laborers, super—

… I myself take action, and therefore it is impossible soon to show either the completion of the machine or the desired success; however, at present, as to the various parts of this machine, there are no fewer than one hundred and ten pieces, not counting the boiler and its fittings, which by casting and turning work have almost been brought to readiness, and only a few of them remain to be finished by turning and grinding; and thereafter it will also be necessary to build the house and to assemble in it, on a large scale, the aforementioned parts into the structure. Of these, at least six are of a weight from twenty to one hundred and seventy poods, while the rest are from one to ten poods; and every such thing, after its casting, required, for proper preparation, machine turning on water wheels, according to the circumstances of the turning work. Not excluding also the fact that for that work, in accordance with each thing, no little time was spent on the tools with which it was possible to work upon those parts. And upon completion of all the above-mentioned, both of the wooden structure and of the assembly of the machine parts therein, although the whole machine will have been completed and brought to readiness, it will nevertheless require some further time afterward in order first to become accustomed to its operation, because such machines are not like water wheels, which are set into proper operation simply and plainly by the measured weight of the water falling upon them, but invisibly, by a subtle spirit, are stirred into motion and rapidly reveal fierce power. And thus, for the completion of all that has been described above, it is impossible to fix an exact time, but I suppose that it may provisionally be brought to readiness around the month of October of this year.

May 20, 1765.

Appendix No. 17.

Report of the Chancellery of May 21, 1765, to the Cabinet, with the submission of Polzunov’s “Explanation.”

Having set forth the essence of the Cabinet’s demand, expressed in its decree of March 27, 1765, the Chancellery further writes in the present report: “from the very beginning of the undertaking of that project, although the Chancellery, out of its sincere zeal and curiosity, for the benefit of society, impatiently desired the production of that very work, nevertheless, foreseeing, because of the remoteness and emptiness of the local place, many deficiencies for its establishment, it did not fail, in the resolution adopted on April 25, 1763, to conclude that if that machine was to be put into operation as desired, then it was absolutely necessary, for lack of craftsmen in the local places, to accept from him, Polzunov, that labor and guidance, so that over the craftsmen chosen by him, in the casting of cylinders, emvols, various sorts of pipes and other items belonging to the composition of the parts and members—copper, tin, locksmith’s, and, as regards wood, the proper work—he would supervise, so as thereby to avoid many alterations and great losses to the treasury, for which he, Polzunov, having the same …

zealous eagerness and curiosity, undertook to direct and, with the men assigned to him, to enter upon that matter in that same year, about which a detailed report was submitted to the Highest Cabinet on June 18, 1763. And with good reason the chancellery can assure that, beyond the official obligation, out of zeal, eagerness, and curiosity, frequent reminders, assistance, and supervision, he, Polzunov, had not only unremitting care for it, but also constant personal labor and direction; yet the desired success—at a time when it was impossible reliably to obtain skilled practitioners in the crafts—was not achieved. The chief reason for this is that the projector and director of that undertaking, although he has praiseworthy curiosity, tireless zeal, sincere diligence, and sufficient theoretical understanding and leadership, has not seen in practice a single member of that machine, composed of many parts, nor its power of action, and must find it out by curiosity, calculations, and outlays. All the more so because there are no skilled craftsmen at all in casting, forging, turning, and bringing into precision those members, very numerous in number and complex; and thus, both on the part of the director and especially on the part of the craftsmen, slowness arises not so much from remaking things as, owing to ignorance and the danger of causing excessive expense, from reflections, consultations, deliberations, and manifold easy and superfluous trials—this is why the present preparation and assembly of that machine continues so excessively long. However, now all the parts belonging to the assembly of that enormous machine, especially the heavy ones, are already half finished, and the chancellery not only does not forget but does not cease, even for a short time, to think about bringing that machine to completion. For this reason, in assurance concerning that slowness, a free and frank explanation has been taken from him, Polzunov, and communicated with this; and when all the numerous parts consisting of many pieces have been prepared and assembled, as to whether that machine will have the desired action and benefit, the chancellery will not fail to report at that time without any delay; yet, having entered upon this matter and expended great costs, it cannot abandon it, but also cannot compel Polzunov to bring it to the speediest completion, lest it cause hindrance and drive into despair and confusion a man who is applying all his strength, mind, and spiritual gifts....

May 21, 1765.

Appendix No. 18.

Extract from the communication of August 12, 1765, sent by the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Chancellery to Nerchinsk in response to the latter’s question about the machine.

On February 23, 1765, the chancellery of the Nerchinsk mining administration addressed the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Chancellery with a question about the machine being constructed, writing at the same time that at the local works the air-blowing bellows at the silver-smelting furnaces are set in motion by horse power and

asked that she be sent a description and drawing of the machine invented by Polzunov, and, if possible, also the master; to this the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Chancellery replied on August 12, 1765, that “since 1763 the mechanic Polzunov has been engaged in assembling that enormous machine; parts belonging to the construction of that machine, and a house for putting it together, are being built, only because of its novelty, and, at the same time, because of the mechanic’s lack of skill in the practice of it, and still more because of the small quantity of supplies and materials belonging to it, and because of the scarcity and lack of skill here, for the work of those numerous and delicate parts, of master craftsmen, it has not yet been brought to completion and assembled, and what effect it will have in actual practice is still unknown; but regarding its construction, if it can have useful effect, the Nerchinsk Mining Chancellery will not be left without notification.”

Appendix No. 19.

Extract from Polzunov’s report to the Chancellery of December 16, 1765, on the progress of construction of the machine.

On December 7, 1765, the Chancellery again addressed Polzunov with an inquiry¹) about the progress of construction of the machine, and also about the strength of its action, demanding thereby that he present detailed drawings of the mechanism being constructed by him. In response to this Polzunov, in a report of December 16, 1765, explained, first, that the house proper for assembling that machine had been completed in the last days of October; the mechanical parts had all been made, set in their places, and in general assembled “and even, in trials, instead of fur-bearing load by the hanging of logs, the machine was brought into motion, from which, in the power it showed in moving weights, it revealed not only a reason but also a definite hope for the desired successes”; by that power from 6 to 8 smelting furnaces could be kept in operation, “but it will be impossible to put it into continuous motion and subject it to evident practice until the wooden boxes suitable for assembling it, that is, the bellows of enormous size, are made by carpentry and bellows work and set in due order in place at the machine; these, because of the extreme need and shortage of men in the present month, especially for the construction of new works, have only just begun to be made, and it is hoped that they will continue until completion no earlier than the month of May; meanwhile, various defects have also appeared in the machine parts during trials in motion, which are being corrected and adjusted. And when all this is made ready, and when the machine, by the continuous motion of the bellows, presents to the living eye the order of its action, from which there follows a not small one, in proportion, to increase or else to maintain still unbounded—

¹) Both in Russkaya Starina and among the lists reproduced here there is no inquiry of December 7, 1765, but there is a mention of it. The report of December 16, 1765, is also not present in its complete form, and therefore it is reconstructed here from scattered excerpts mixed in with the lists.

…its valued force, a case whereby hope will be opened up beyond any calculation and probable conjectures. For, as is known, power in machines cannot arise of itself if it is not provided with a complete and ready assembly of parts, artificial control, and sensible mechanics; and for that reason it is altogether impossible, and indeed unreliable, to determine both how long it will last and its durability, and also to define by calculation its fiery force, since the degree of fire by which the machine must operate, and also the strength of the bodies of which it is composed, cannot, to me, as one untaught in higher mathematical mechanics, be foreseen, but only recognized from the most practical experience…. And when the undertaking of the machine has confirmed itself in its powers and has given hope of that, and therefore an inclination is aroused no longer toward experiments, but almost the time for proceeding to the action itself, then, in my judgment, it is necessary in advance to prepare a boiler of cast iron or of copper, one inch thick, capable of containing about seventy buckets of water, cast and with a reliable cover; or else to make for the cast boiler a cover of thick copper sheets, by good workmanship riveted with nails, by no means less than \(1/4\) inch thick, from every good copper, and not from such as has been used only for initial trial, for lack of skilled coppersmiths and foundrymen.” “Second: likewise, in connection with it, in my judgment, to make a proper number of smelting furnaces and to smelt through them several thousand poods of ore, so that from the new undertaking no unforeseen circumstances may arise and so that the parts suffering during the motion of the machine may reveal their strength.” “Third: in constructing the furnaces, as is usually done, the equipment should be rejected; for the foundation, piles should not be driven, nor should the earth be dug out deeply; likewise, the necessary air spaces in the foundation should not be laid out, but simply, after removing the upper turf, beams should be laid directly on the ground, covered with slabs, leveled above with rubble, sand, or gravel, and then the ordinary setting of the furnaces should be carried out.”

Appendix No. 20.

Extract from the decree of the Chancellery of December 16, 1765, drawn up as a consequence of Polzunov’s report submitted on the same date*).

To report to the Cabinet of Her Majesty that, for that machine at the Barnaul plant, in the dam that has been built, with an abundance of water, there is no need; and that, as is evident from the former projects, decrees, and submissions, it was begun to be constructed solely for experiment and for consideration of its operation in actual practice in such places where there is no water or no such method, but where there is forest; and it would be very necessary for the remaining ores suitable for smelting, and for long-distance transport to the plants near Zmeinogorsk, and [for] the poor ores mined at the Semenovsky and Novolazursky mines

) This decree was printed in Russkaya Starina* in 1884; here are cited from it only the excerpts preserved among the lists of documents.

ores, which, because of their poverty, the costs do not permit being transported to the factories here, by the distance of the haul, be set up in the Alei district, near the Shulbinsky pine forest, for which, [as] for other such places that have no water, an examination has been undertaken, and its force and curious action have been put into construction.” To decree further, in view of the unreliability, explained by Polzunov, of the boiler previously made, that such a boiler be ordered on the spot, the chancellery continues: “Although Polzunov reasons that the machine may put into operation 6 or 8 furnaces, still, since multiplying them, with a view to preserving the forests, is not advisable, and also because, in addition, it is not yet known whether it can operate continuously, then, in order not to increase expenses, one may learn the power of the machine even with a small number of furnaces, and there is no reason to build more than three.”

Appendix No. 21.

Extract from the report of December 26, 1765, of the Cabinet chancellery, with which the drawings of the machine being constructed were submitted.

Having repeated the contents of Polzunov’s report of December 16, 1765, and of its own resolution made on that same date, the chancellery, after the explanation that the construction of the machine “for examining its power and curious action has been undertaken,” concludes the present report thus: “but since the said mechanic Polzunov explains that, for lack here of skilled coppersmiths and founders, the boiler made for that experiment from copper sheets, at the first occasion, to contain within itself great forces from vapors, is unreliable in actual use, therefore on the 16th day of this month it was written from here to the Yekaterinburg chancellery of the Chief Administration of the Factories, that assistance be rendered in this: whether there are such craftsmen there who could cast the boiler and cover, to the indicated measure, from local copper; or else that efforts be made—whether the factory owners Demidovs or Turchaninovs will undertake to cast it at their factories, and at what exact final price and why they will ask so much per pood—of this they should not fail to notify us. However, the chancellery, out of fidelity and zeal for the public benefit, having this always in mind, to the utmost possibility, not to cease striving that this enterprise, for the reasons set forth, should in fact be successful, and what from time to time will happen, will not fail to report. And in what order the house where the machine is established is built, of what members the machine has its composition, and is assembled, and is brought into action, there are attached herewith: the construction in projection, and the assembly in plan and profile, drawings with a description.” The description of this, among the papers of Polzunov’s case and machine that were examined, unfortunately, is not present; a drawing of the machine, modified in comparison with the first project, is appended at the end; and concerning the order of the boiler in Yekaterinburg, from the extracts it is only apparent that the Yekaterinburg chancellery later notified the Kolyvano-Voskresensk chancellery that, at the state—

there are no masters at the factories, therefore the private factory owners have been ordered to report: can they undertake the making of the boiler?

Appendix 22.

Polzunov’s petition of April 21, 1766, for the payment of the delayed reward and for his release from the construction of the machine¹).

“The project composed by me, with a plan and description of a new machine by which smelting furnaces may operate by means of air and steam produced from the boiling of water in a boiler, Your Imperial Majesty, as early as 1763, deigned to examine and most graciously approve and to be pleased with; and, for the encouragement of me and others, following my example, in similarly useful exercises, deigned to command that four hundred rubles be issued to me as a reward, which grant, by the decree from the Cabinet of Your Imperial Majesty, was ordered to be carried out by the Chancellery of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Mining Administration, but from that time to this day it has not been issued to me. And although I have not been deemed worthy to receive that grant of Your Imperial Majesty’s most generous mercy, nevertheless my zeal for the service of Your Imperial Majesty, as of a true and generous patroness of the sciences, increased all the more; and, after the above-mentioned machine had been demonstrated by me, I, through constant, tireless effort, made it in all its parts, and, having assembled it in the factory that had been built, installed it and brought it to readiness for operation at the smelting furnaces. This has been attested by the Chief Commander over the Kolyvano-Voskresensk factories, Major General and Cavalier Poroshin, together with certain other officers; and in that construction I endured no small burden and exhaustion of health. At the same time, in the whole arrangement of the machine, among the mechanic apprentices attached to me, Dmitrii Levzin and Ivan Chernitsyn have deliberately understood its composition in its parts, and they know its operation, and, if anything in it should hereafter prove damaged, they can repair it. And that, by the highest decree of Your Imperial Majesty, it might be commanded: for the aforesaid tireless labor and effort of mine in arranging the machine, that the four hundred rubles graciously granted by Your Imperial Majesty be issued to me by the Chancellery of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Mining Administration; and, if I, by the will of God, should die of the illness now upon me, then to my surviving wife, for her sustenance and for the commemoration of my soul; and as for the apprentices Levzin and Chernitsyn, would You not most graciously deign to order the aforesaid Major General and Cavalier, or other mining officers, to examine them in their knowledge, and to release me, because of my illness, from all this machine work.”

¹) This petition was printed in Russkaya Starina, 1884.

Appendix 23.

Determination of the Chancery, made on April 21, 1766, following Polzunov’s petition¹.

1. “Although by that decree², pursuant to the determination made in the Chancery of the Mining Administration on January 22, 1764, the issuance of said reward has until now been withheld, on the reasoning that, according to the assurance given by him, Polzunov, the operation of that machine should be seen in actual practice—something to which he, Polzunov, then agreed and did not object, wishing to show his services to Your High Excellency and to receive the reward still more joyfully; and after that he undertook the best endeavors to construct that machine with a larger body, for the operation not of one, as mentioned in that determination, but of many smelting furnaces; and, since in preparing that machine the members, by the instruction and guidance of their own, insufficient in the arts, helped the master craftsmen here, so in reflections and investigations concerning the better action of that machine, notwithstanding his ordinary illness, he worked diligently and untiringly from time to time, and through this prepared all the members, constructed it, assembled it for operation and, for an exact observation of the force of its uninterrupted action, made a presentation concerning the construction here, temporarily, of smelting furnaces; but because of his worsened consumptive illness, and because of the present inclement weather, the laying of the furnaces has not yet been reached; nevertheless there remains no doubt as to the motion of the action, only he, from that illness, has come into the most complete weakness and, from the increased flow of blood from the throat, is in despair of life. Therefore, so that he should have no doubt regarding the issuance of the reward assigned to him and should be calmed in spirit, those four hundred rubles in silver coin are now to be issued from the Commissary Administration to him, Polzunov; and if, more unfortunately, he should not live to see it—then to his wife, charging it to the account with a receipt, and a decree about this is to be sent to that Administration.

2. Until his, Polzunov’s, recovery, the mechanics’ apprentices Chernitsyn and Levzin are to have supervision over that machine and all its appurtenances; and as to how much of the copper, tin, and other supplies and materials issued to him for the construction of that machine has actually been used in it, and what then remains on hand, and likewise concerning all expenses, those apprentices, under the supervision and guidance of Mr. Bergmeister Kuznetsov and Mine Surveyor Pyatin, are to draw up an account and, with an attestation, submit it without delay.”

Appendix 24.

The testimony of Levzin and Chernitsyn, recorded in the Chancery on May 4, 1766, concerning the state of the construction of the machine.

“The mechanics’ apprentices Chernitsyn and Levzin reported to the Chancery that, in the machine constructed by the mechanic Polzunov, what had been not yet—

...it has been done, all this is coming to completion, and the chest set opposite the large bellows should be reinforced, and the copper pipes inserted into the bellows should be firmly riveted to it; and at the transverse end of that chest, holes should be bored, at discretion, in order to ascertain—to how many furnaces, through the action of that machine, there will be force, or air, from the installed bellows; for this reason it has also been ordered: to send the bellows master Emel’yanov, and to do all this, and on the transverse side of the chest to bore twelve round holes, and to turn out and insert into them wooden through-pipes, with nails, so that the holes in those pipes should be, in diameter, equal to the usual bellows nozzles at smelting furnaces; and those pipes should be reinforced, so that the air from the chest, apart from those pipes, could not force its way through.”

Appendix No. 25.

Report of the Barnaul physician Yakov Kizing of May 20, 1766, on the death of Polzunov and on his preceding illness¹).

“Mechanic Ivan Polzunov, who was attached to the Barnaul Works, had for many years suffered from an illness with spitting of blood from the throat, for which, while the staff physician Nozhevshchikov was still here, and afterward by me, he had repeatedly been treated and had been sent back to the duty assigned to him. And this year, on April 18, there occurred in him bleeding from the throat with a severe rush, and it continued for no little time; this was stopped, but after that a great stabbing pain ensued, and he likewise came to be rid of it. And so, after a short time, there appeared a severe diarrhea, but that too was checked; from these illnesses, day by day, he weakened, and his strength diminished, and then he came into such weakness that he could make almost no movement with his own body. And at last the consumptive fits intensified greatly, that is, fever, a most cruel sweat, and coughing with expectoration of pus; and on this May 16, after midday at the 6th hour, he, by the will of God, died, and of this I humbly report to the Chancery of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Mining Administration. May 20, 1766.”

Signed: physician Yakov Kizing.

Appendix No. 2.

Content of the determination of the Chancery, drawn up on May 20, 1766, on the occasion of Polzunov’s death.

In this determination it was resolved by the Chancery, first: to attach, for a clear examination of the circumstances of the illness and its treatment, a copy of physician Kizing’s report, and to report Polzunov’s death to the Cabinet; second:

¹) This report was also printed in Russkaya Starina, 1884.

“the steam engine, designed and being constructed to operate by fire, through steam, [is to be] brought into operation and put into motion, as soon as possible, by the apprentice mechanics Chernitsyn and Levzin; and when it has been put into operation, its power in action is to be certified by the mining officers present here.” Chernitsyn and Levzin were to complete the machine under the closest supervision of Kuznetsov, a member of the chancellery and bergmeister, and of Kuzma Frolov, a shift master serving at the Zmeinogorsk mines, who, however, it was decided to summon to Barnaul somewhat later.

Appendix No. 27.

Report to the Chancellery, May 20, 1766, to the Cabinet, on the death of Polzunov.

“The mechanic Ivan Polzunov, who was at the local works, died, by the will of God, on the 16th day of this May, of an illness that had long been increasing. For a clear consideration of the circumstances of that illness and its treatment, an exact copy of the report submitted by Doctor Kizing is attached herewith. As for the steam engine designed and being constructed here by him, Polzunov, as was previously reported, the assembly of all its parts has been completed, and the bellows described in the last report were made and installed in their place at the beginning of the present month; only, because of that illness of his, Polzunov’s, they have not been put into operation, and the power and continuous operation of that machine have not yet been tested. This certification, after the completion of repairs, will begin in the coming month of June; and if its power and continuous operation are fully observed, then, for proof by practice itself, three melting furnaces can at that time be built and put into operation; and whatever appears and takes place, the chancellery shall without delay report on this in full detail. May 20, 1766.”

Appendix No. 28

Petition submitted on June 7, 1766, to the chancellery by Polzunov’s widow concerning a model of the machine begun by her husband.

Polzunov’s widow, Pelageya Ivanovna, explained in this petition that “for the steam engine designed by her late husband, he had made a small copper model, for which the parts were almost all made, but not assembled, and these, with the expenses incurred, had cost him 63 rubles 41¾ kopecks; and since she had no need of it,” she therefore asked the chancellery “that the parts made by her late husband for the model of the steam engine, as well as the remaining cast and soldered copper, 1 pood 5 pounds, and other supplies, be accepted into the treasury, and that money be issued to her for all this.” According to the certification of the chancellery, cited in one of the submissions

to her Cabinet,¹) the money was issued to Polzunov’s widow, while the model was ordered actually to be completed “at treasury expense” by the pupils Levzin and Chernitsyn.

Appendix No. 29.

Journal kept in 1766 during the testing of Polzunov’s steam engine.

This document is entitled as follows: “A daily record, by virtue of the order made in the chancellery of the Kolyvano-Voskresensk Mining Administration on May 20, 1766, concerning the certification of the force of action of the machine constructed by the late mechanic Ivan Polzunov, which, by means of fire, or by boiling water in a boiler, sets in motion the bellows, or blowing apparatus, at smelting furnaces, and which is operated by the mining-factory officers attached to the Barnaul works, and, from time to time, in the presence of the chief commander, Major-General and Knight Poroshin.”

Further, entered under the same date, there follows the previously explained testimony of Levzin and Chernitsyn of May 4, 1766²) and the order then made concerning the strengthening of the air chest, the fitting to it of bellows copper pipes and of inserts into the holes, designated at the end of the chest, of wooden keyed tubes with stoppers—after which the following entries follow:

“May 22. The said Chernitsyn, Levzin, and the bellows master Emelyanov reported that all this had been done, wherefore it was ordered: on the following day, early in the morning, to light the fire under the boiler, to boil the water, and to set the machine in motion.

May 23. At noon, at one o’clock, the chief commander was at that factory, and in his presence the water from the cistern was raised into the upper chest (for discharge into the cylinders of the fountains and for other action) by men using scoops. The boiling in the boiler and the steam began to rise at the third hour, and the machine began to operate; the bellows had a deliberate motion. From the chest attached to the bellows pipes, or nozzles, of the chest, air went sufficiently into all twelve tubes, and it was observed that there would be enough of that air for 10, or even all 12, furnaces. However, it was necessary to make the most accurate calculation; at the same time, upon inspection, the said Chernitsyn and Levzin reported that, for raising water into the upper chest, the pipe in the cistern was not lowered deeply enough, so that the cup or piston, through which it raises the water, was above the horizon, and therefore as much water did not rise as was needed in that chest for operation; moreover, because the cylinders were not perfectly round in circumference, although leather and sailcloth had been fastened to the edge of the pistons with pressure by springs, nevertheless they were quickly rubbed off and shrank, and from above the pistons downward water made its way through, as a result of which the steam diminished and

¹) Report of January 29, 1767.
²) Appendix 24.

the machine cannot produce all its force and cannot impart the desired motion to the bellows; for which reason it was ordered: to lower the box in the cistern, and in the water-lifting pipe to cast another elbow of copper and lower it, so that the glass and the piston would be in the standing water in the cistern and would have effect; for the bellows, according to their requirement, to take from the pharmacy, from the physician, and to screw on, instead of leather and canvas, sound bark; for measuring the air coming from the bellows pipes, to make a barometer and, attaching it to the ordinary smelting bellows, carefully note and record how high in the barometer the water will rise from the blowing of those bellows, then, in the same order, to set that barometer by the machine, at one pipe, and likewise note and record it, with due attention, by means of the officers.

June 10. Chernitsyn and Levzin reported: the additional pipe has been cast, set in the cistern; sound bark has been taken from the pharmacy, from the physician, used on the edges of the bellows, and three and a quarter pounds screwed under the springs; a barometer has been made. Whereupon it was ordered: after the coming holiday (the Descent of the Holy Spirit), that is, on the morning of the 13th, early, to fill the boiler with water, heat it, and bring the machine into operation. Meanwhile, to bring the barometer to the smelting factory and, in the presence of the officers, by attaching it to the nozzle of the smelting bellows, to make a test; and then to Mr. Ober-Hüttenverwalter Hahn, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, mine surveyor Pyatin, and the masters, likewise pupils at the machine factory, to examine both the force and the uninterrupted blowing action of that machine; after a day or two to have a full record of everything.

June 13. In the morning at 8 and 9 o’clock, in the second, so-called new smelting factory, in the presence of Major General and Cavalier Poroshin, Ober-Hüttenverwalter Hahn, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, and mine surveyor Pyatin, the barometer No. 6 was attached by pupil Chernitsyn to the furnace, and water was admitted to the wheel through the whole window, as is proper for the bellows to be in full operation; in the barometer it made a rise on one fist to two feet and unfailingly seven inches, and on another, two feet five inches. At the same time, since at furnace No. 4 the bellows were observed to act more strongly than the others, the barometer was moved and attached to one of those bellows, and when put into operation on the same water it showed a rise of three feet five inches . . . . . . . . . . . At noon, at the beginning of the 3rd hour, in the presence of His Excellency Mr. Major General and Cavalier Poroshin with the aforementioned officers, that fire-operated machine was set in motion so that, with the same barometer, during that action, it would be possible to determine what difference there would be, compared with the test made in the smelting works over the bellows, by the air passing from the bellows into the air chest, and from it through the openings turned out through twelve pipes; but in this operation the following faults appeared:

1. The pistons moving in the cylinders, with the sound bark screwed on, did not move freely, so that, although with extreme necessity, with considerable noise and exertion, from the strong vapors occurring in the boiler, they ...

…were brought into rapid motion, but however much they were strengthened by those vapors, they nevertheless continued in action with a very labored stroke, as a result of which both the bellows were compelled to lose the proper motion; secondly, the rivets on the bellows were completely warped and became angular, and partly twisted, so that they could hardly retain the air taken into them, because of that defect; thirdly, into the lower cistern, in a recess in the water, a new copper pipe had been inserted, and on the two pump frames rods with pistons had been hung, for raising the water into the upper basin, by which, through that oblique motion, although water was raised by the plungers, it was very little, so that the proportion required for all that action could scarcely be obtained by half—and from this it is evident that in those pistons or cups there is some extreme defect. For this reason, upon stopping that machine at the sixth hour, the apprentices Chernitsyn and Levzin were ordered, with the utmost caution, to disassemble the aforesaid defects and to seek out the best means for better motion, so that there should be no stoppage in anything.

June 15. At two o’clock in the afternoon, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, upon stopping the machine and lowering the water in the boiler, while inspecting the pistons removed from the cylinders in which the fountains are, found: because of the smallness of the holes, during operation the water beneath the pistons ought to forcefully break through for the quenching of the vapors, but those holes were completely clogged by impure water, and almost no water passed through them, which was why the prescribed quiet motion occurred; likewise the pumps placed in the lower cistern had become closed with impurity, and for that reason there was not the proper sufficiency in raising water into the upper basin. For this reason it was ordered: that both the upper basin and the lower cistern be cleaned, and covered on top with matting and canvas, so that nothing might litter them.

June 16. In the presence of Ober-Hüttenverwalter Hahn and Bergmeister Kuznetsov, after correction of the above-mentioned incidents, that machine was put into action at two o’clock in the afternoon, and it continued until the seventh hour. During that action, both the pistons and the bellows had motion, in comparison with the former, much better; only from the lower cistern, by the pump pipes, water was raised into the upper basin with a deficiency, because opposite the swing of the bellows there was less motion from the semicircular middle wheels, which deficiency they were compelled to remedy by nothing other than the sole expedient of taking away from that wheel and hanging onto the hand lever, to be raised by men, through which more water also appeared in the lift. And for this reason they were compelled to stop that machine, and after that, for a better method, it was decided to undertake another measure, namely: from those two middle semicircular wheels to remove the previously hung pump frames and to hang them on the ends of the large semicircular levers, in such a way that bars be attached to the upper bellows frames and fitted into them, two fingers in each, and opposite them to place two rollers with handles, from which the aforementioned pump frames are to be fastened at one end; and thus, when

... the bellows will be lowered, then by means of those fingers the marked handles, together with the pump frames, would rise and fall, instead of once, two times; by which method, contrary to the former one, it will bring twice as much water, because the sweep of the frames will increase, from which the pistons will also take in water better. Meanwhile, for better and general consideration, an order should be sent to the Zmeinogorsk office to dispatch here the shift-master Frolov, who is there.

On June 25, after noon, at 4 o’clock, in the presence of His Excellency Mr. Major General and Cavalier Poroshin, together with the mining and works officers: Ober-Hüttenverwalter Gan, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, Markscheider Pyatin, Hüttenverwalter Meder, and Shift-master and Ober-Steiger Frolov,—after the installation of the prescribed shafts with handles, with attached bars with fingers, from the ends of the upper large semicircles to the bellows nests,—that machine was put into operation, and it continued until 9 o’clock. During that operation the same deficiency appeared; and although, contrary to the former case, the water was being raised with deliberate success and increase, nevertheless, because of the more rapid downward descent with the fingers of the pump iron frames with the pistons, a strong shaking was caused, so that it was perceptible throughout the whole machine. And therefore, because of this malfunction, and still more because of the insufficiency of the water being raised to the feed pipes and into the cylinder fountains, it was necessary to stop the machine; after which, having made sufficient deliberation about the best methods, it was resolved: those pump frames with the pistons should be set aside altogether and no longer be put into operation; and, in order to avert all the foreseen uselessness, it was judged and ordered that the aforementioned Shift-master Frolov construct, according to mining custom, external pumps, which should be attached to the same upper semicircular levers and placed perpendicularly on the same lower cistern; and, for the immediate presence here, cast-iron pipes should be taken from the Zmeinogorsk mine, such as are used at the mine there for pumping water out of the mining works, and, for the delivery of them, Unter-Shift-master Levzin should be sent.

On July 4, in the morning at 9 o’clock, after the aforementioned Shift-master and Ober-Steiger Frolov had, according to mining custom, installed external four pumps, with cast-iron pipes and wooden branch pipes, for raising water from the lower cistern to the upper reservoir, the fire-operated machine, in the presence of the chief commander, Mr. Major General and Cavalier Poroshin, together with the mining and works officers: Ober-Hüttenverwalter Gan, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, Markscheider Pyatin, Lieutenant Popov, and Shift-master Frolov,—was put into operation. At this, at first, until noon, because of the novelty of the new pumps, although, from some leaks in the joints of the hemp packing, the required amount of water was lacking; however, when all those weak hemp packings were foreseen and duly repaired, then, until late evening, that is, until 10 o’clock, with every uninterrupted proper working and with a deliberate surplus, for all necessary machine use...

rose into the upper reservoir, and all surplus water from this use flowed into the reserve reservoir. After this, after due deliberation on all that was prescribed above concerning the proper operation of the machine and the sufficient success in raising water by means of those external pumps, and concerning the construction of smelting furnaces, it was resolved: for the most reliable trial, by actual ore smelting, first to build three smelting furnaces, at a distance from the machine factory and the bellows shed down the pond toward the works by 20 sazhen, so that during the present smelting operation the sparks carried out of the pipes could cause no damage or danger of fire to the entire machine structure that had been built; and in the meantime, while those furnaces with the factory building are being continued, it was then resolved to make the following repairs: 1, at the 3rd and 4th floors of the machine factory, for the external pumps that had been built, according to the usual mining practice, so that in wintertime, from the severe winds and snowstorms occurring because of the local climate, and especially from the cold, there should be no hindrance or stoppage in raising water by them, to join those pumps to the mentioned floors and behind them to enclose them into pillars with thick boards and hemp packing. 2, the pump connecting rod with the semicircles, because of its thinness, and especially because it had been made of damp timber, which in the extremely recent summer warped, so that during the bellows motion the chains attached to it along the semicircles did not descend perpendicularly downward and rise upward, for this reason to make a new one, using dry timber for it, and to remove the old iron binding and bind the new one in the same manner as before; 3, the upper reservoir, because of the continuous flow of water from it, to break down, and in its place to make one of good bellows timber and boil pitch inside it; 4, the furnace pipe, carried upward through three floors, which had been laid in one brick, without iron ties, during the continuing operation of the machine became very hot from the smoke passing through it with flame, and, moreover, from the machine’s motion, because of its excessive height and thinness, shook perceptibly, so that in view of such visible danger from an unexpected accident, it was taken as the best expedient to break down that pipe to the surface of the furnace, and instead of the vertical one to lead it obliquely through the lower floor to the ground and conduct it horizontally farther away from the machine factory, so that there should be no danger from fire; moreover, to the furnace walls into which the machine boiler is set, for safety from fire, to attach brickwork two and a half feet thick and to bind it all around with iron ties, with external iron bolts; 5, to the newly designated smelting factory, from the bellows air chamber, for the admission of air for the operation of the smelting furnaces, to make air pipes out of logs, which should be 7 inches in diameter and, laying them on posts, cover them with thin sawn boards, and instead of the usual bellows nozzles insert into them, opposite each furnace, copper pipes; 6, before the bellows to make the air chamber sufficiently high, so that the bellows blast entering it cannot, in speed, be able to

to feed it, it was deemed necessary: to shorten it above by one and a half feet; the plugs for the external lower pumps, made by Obersteiger Frolov, had, for the sake of speed, been made very thin, through which the outside air made its way through the cracks, and especially it was impossible to fasten the small side plugs properly with rope, from which, during the machine’s operation, it somewhat hindered the raising of water; for this reason, to remove those thin plugs and make new ones from thick logs, and in the proper places to put iron hoops on those plugs.

August 4. Upon the construction of the smelting factory and, in it, of three krummöfen of ordinary size, and likewise upon the fulfillment of all the above-prescribed needs, the machine, manufactured and arranged, was put into operation (in the morning at the seventh hour), with the enterprise and intention of putting those smelting furnaces into action for ore smelting; the machine remained in its proper operation until noon, until the second hour, and meanwhile, for putting those furnaces into operation, His Excellency Major General and Knight Poroshin arrived with the officers: Oberhüttenverwalter Gan, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, and mine surveyor Pyatin; at this time, regarding the sudden stopping of the machine, sub-ensign Pimen Ponov and the mechanics’ apprentices Levzin and Chernitsyn reported that this machine, from the beginning of its starting, without any stoppage or interference, had operated properly until that second hour; but finally, for reasons unknown, the piston of the left cylinder suddenly stopped at the bottom. In this circumstance they were compelled to raise it by means of a block up out of the cylinder; but upon inspecting the cylinder and the lower parts, nothing harmful was found there. Instead, it was soon noticed that at the left cylinder, while the fountain was being started, the valve did not draw in at all, and from this they clearly learned that, in that machine’s operation, no damage had occurred from anything else than solely to the regulator fixed in the boiler; and because of this damage, they let the hot water out of the boiler and, after it had cooled, filled it with cold water from one of the reserve basins. After this cooling, the said regulator was inspected by Bergmeister Kuznetsov, who found that, from weakness in the screw nut, the pin by which the steam is held back and shut off had turned behind the transverse iron bar, and because of this no steam was admitted into the cylinder through the steam pipe, since that regulator was damaged. For this reason, the aforesaid damaged regulator was ordered to be repaired as quickly as possible by the said apprentices Levzin and Chernitsyn.

August 7. After the regulator had been repaired, that machine, before noon at the sixth hour, and the smelting furnaces after noon at the second hour, were successfully put into operation.

August 8. That machine continued in operation with the smelting furnaces with good success.

August 9. In the morning at the eighth hour, the mechanics’ apprentice Levzin reported to the chief commander, Major General and Knight Poroshin, that during the past night, in order to repair the pistons, the machine had been stopped and

...those [pieces] were removed from the cylinders more than once, because in the test bark inserted into the iron quarters, owing to the smallness of its pieces, certain parts of those quarters fell out, from which water was admitted into the cylinders in a great leak, so that even when let in in large streams it was insufficient; for this reason no small hindrance occurred in the operation of the machine, and especially from the rapid spontaneous motion, from which a considerable shaking of the whole machine body took place. For this reason it was ordered that the machine be stopped and the smelting furnaces be blown out, which in that action continued to smelt according to another charge, namely, 390 poods were smelted in all. And since none of that test bark remained at turner Kizing’s, it was resolved, in view of that deficiency, to request up to half a pood from the Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg pharmacies.

August 10. Upon stopping that machine and the smelting furnaces, before noon at one o’clock, by Bergmeister Kuznetsov, after the removal of the pistons from the cylinders, the aforesaid test bark was examined; it proved truly unfit for operation, because, for want of good bark, it had been taken from the local pharmacy, for the most part in small pieces, and moreover worm-eaten, through which holes, and especially owing to the smallness of the particles, in the joints it could not at all hold water in the cylinder, and merely held, for the time being, by its natural firmness, until, from the great vapors, it lost its strength and firmness; and when it had already begun to be drawn entirely to the sides of the cylinders from time to time and had become wholly weakened, then, in such a case, from the compression and pressure of the atmosphere, the water, for lack of its natural elasticity, began to pass through. Under these circumstances no further means remained except only to devise, in place of the aforesaid bark, to make [it] of birch bark, laying it in plates 1¾ inches thick, and securing it in the former iron quarters by means of screws—with the reasoning that through that birch bark no leak would be admitted.

August 14. In the morning at the 9th hour, in the presence of the chief commander, His Excellency Major-General Poroshin, Bergmeister Kuznetsov inspected the cylinders inside and weighed them with a water level, and it appeared: the first had inclined to the east by 4, and the second had inclined to the same side by 1½ lines of an inch; and moreover, from uneven grinding and the difference in diameter there were also not small hollows, and in many places large cavities.

August 16 to 17. After correction of those prescribed, by replacing the test bark with birch-bark plate rings, that machine was put into operation; in its operation it continued for a short time, because, when the cylinders reached their usual heat from the incoming vapors, the aforesaid birch bark became very hardened and could in no way be pressed tightly to the cylinder sides by means of the springs attached to the quarters. And thus, owing to the unevenness of those...

water passes into the cylinders, into the concave places, to an extraordinary degree, and for that reason, on the morning of the 17th, the mechanic’s pupils Levzin and Chernitsyn were compelled to stop that machine. After this, Chernitsyn, that same morning, reported to the chief commander, Mr. Major General and Cavalier Poroshin, on the whole unfortunate incident with its circumstances; upon which report Ober-Hüttenverwalter Hahn, Bergmeister Kuznetsov, Markscheider Pyatin, and Hüttenverwalter Meider were ordered to inspect the advantage presented and the deficiency of the birch-bark method, and to declare which means they considered the best for it, after they had made sufficient judgment; whereupon various methods were sought and it was resolved to do the following, namely: to leave the old iron quadrants, together with the plate birch bark, in place and not to put them into operation any more until the required bark is brought from Tobolsk or from Yekaterinburg; and when it is obtained, then, instead of the former ordinary ones, to make others, according to the unevenness of the cylinders, in small parts, in the likeness of a horse collar, into which to insert that delivered test bark and to fasten it with screws; and, to improve their movement, to attach standing springs, fixed in embrasures, by which the said quadrants will freely press against the unevennesses of the cylinders, and, finally, by that method all the aforementioned defects will be eliminated. For this reason, until the arrival of the said bark, it was ordered that these be prepared; and, in addition, for uninterrupted operation, it was deemed advisable to make, for reserve during repairs that might occur, other pistons with the same apparatus.

September 26. After the pistons had been repaired with the bark sent from Yekaterinburg, with the above-prescribed quadrants and springs, the machine was put into operation before noon, at 9 o’clock, together with the smelting furnaces; this continued successfully until October 9, and during that time no interference or stoppages occurred, and in that time ore was smelted at 970 poods per furnace, and 2910 poods in all.

October 12.¹ After the smelting furnaces had been charged and repaired, the machine was put into operation before noon, at 11 o’clock, together with the smelting furnaces. During that smelting stoppages occurred: first, on the 16th and 17th, because of damage to the pistons; the stoppage lasted altogether 2½ hours; second, on the 21st before noon, because of the breaking of the rod by which the regulator steam dampers in the boiler are turned, on account of which circumstance the smelting furnaces were also stopped, and with that repair the stoppage continued until the 24th, until 8 o’clock before noon, and at that hour the machine was again put into operation; third, on November 7 and 8, because of the cleaning of the fontal and the changing of the pistons, the stoppage was 2½ hours. And on the 10th, at 6 o’clock before noon, during very orderly and uninterrupted operation, it was discovered that, because of the heating of the brick vaults beneath the boiler, a considerable water leak from that boiler had put out the fire beneath the boiler; for this reason they were compelled—

...that one machine, together with the smelting furnaces, must be stopped. In its operation, ore was smelted over 26 days and 18 hours in all the furnaces: 6,000 poods; and in all the above-described operation, ore was smelted: 9,037 poods 10 f., and from these, roshtein was obtained: 1,076 poods 15 f.; matte: 26 poods; könig: 2 poods 34 f.

Appendix No. 30.

Extract from the reply decree of the Cabinet of 13 November 1766 to the report of the Chancellery on the death of Polzunov.

“Concerning the mechanic Polzunov, of whose unexpected and premature death Her Imperial Majesty herself, with especial regret, deigned to hear, it was ordered that the grant awarded by Her Imperial Majesty, for the encouragement of him as a man of such excellent gifts, namely four hundred rubles, which, however, the Chancellery of the Mining Administration, even upon his death, did not judge it proper to issue in full; therefore, so that in this manner no one, for his merits, diligence, and labors, should be brought into despondency, but rather should see just encouragement, and, looking upon that, others also might have the desire to imitate such examples, it is to be issued, upon receipt of this, without the least delay, to the unfortunate widow and orphans left after him (?) not only the sum not yet given to her late husband, included in the above-declared four hundred rubles, but also, in addition, to give them as a reward another five hundred rubles; likewise, to send, for presentation to Her Imperial Majesty, the copper model of the machine invented by the said Polzunov, made by him for Privy Councillor Olsufiev, for which his heirs, from the bounty of Her Imperial Majesty, as the magnanimous patroness of science and the arts, may hope for yet another special reward.”

Appendix No. 31.

Reply report of the Chancellery to the Cabinet concerning its decree on sending the model and so forth, written 29 January 1767.

The drawings made in 1763 by the shichtmeister, and later mechanic, Polzunov, concerning the construction, for operation at the works of smelting furnaces, by him, by means of steam, through the boiling of water in a boiler and atmospheric pressure, of a functioning machine, and sent from here to the Highest Cabinet together with a plan and description, Her Imperial Majesty not only deigned to approve, but, for the greater encouragement of such useful undertakings, was pleased to reward the aforementioned Polzunov with the rank of mechanic and a sum of money, and ordered that he be sent to Saint Petersburg so that, at the Academy of Sciences, he might acquire the greatest skill in mechanics. To this it was represented: that, for the complete [implementation] of that machine in practice...

by the very act of operation and of ascertaining its strength and constancy, to permit it to be set up here; to which Polzunov willingly offered himself, and to assure the Chancellery thereof, and that the dispatch of him, Polzunov, to the Academy of Sciences for a time be canceled. For this reason, on April 30, 1764, from the Most High Cabinet there came a decree: that Polzunov be left at the works for the indicated needs, and, after they had been corrected, sent to St. Petersburg. In consequence of this, Polzunov assembled the river machine, with all its parts, by himself and through the apprentices assigned to him and, among other factory personnel, master craftsmen and laborers, in the factory built for that purpose above the Barnaul works, by the pond and near the glassworks, and prepared it for operation; but before that machine was put into action, on May 16 of the past year 1766, he died.

But the Chancellery of the Mining Administration, out of its unfeigned zeal for the benefit, and still more for the fulfillment of the Most High Imperial Majesty’s gracious consent, could not abandon the undertaking that had been begun, and determined: that the apprentices Lezin and Chernitsyn, who had been with him, Polzunov, under the supervision and instruction of the chancellery officials present, should bring it to perfect operation. However, in the raising into a single action of the water and in the other parts, many defects were found, which, according to the judgment and guidance of the said chancellery officials, through the unremitting efforts and diligent supervision of Bergmeister Kuznetsov and of the shift foreman Frolov, taken from the Zmeinogorsk mine, were in many respects corrected and set right by those apprentices; and after this had been completed, a certificate was drawn up by the mining officers present here. And, in order to test in actual practice the strength and constancy of its operation, three smelting furnaces were built for it, and for the remelting in them, from ores and sands of various sorts brought from the Zmeinogorsk mine, to that factory there were charged, excluding raw material, 9,037 poods 10 pounds; and those furnaces, through that machine, in the months of August, September, and October, from time to time had proper operation, and there still remained from it enough surplus blast for six smelting furnaces or more. But, as during the construction of that machine it had been reported many times to the Most High Cabinet, and subsequently on August 12, that, because in this remote and distant place there were no skilled craftsmen and tools, by necessity—even under the diligent guidance of the said mechanic Polzunov—the boiler with its cover and many other parts of that machine could not be made with subtlety, and especially the cylinders and pistons could not be brought to the proper circumference; therefore through the pistons, and the sole leather nailed to them, the water present on them passed downward and diminished the vapors rising from the boiler, whereby it took away the motion of the pistons and bellows, and the leather fitted to the pistons could not withstand the increasing heat. Instead of it, as much as could be obtained here in nearby places and from Yekaterinburg, cork bark was used; but, because of its deficiency, it was impossible to keep more of its smelting furnaces in operation.

it is already impossible; and if the boiler required for that purpose could be cast of copper, and not made of riveted sheets as it was made, and the other principal members, essentially, had been made by skilled craftsmen and under the direction of a real mechanic, then that machine, both for draining deep mining works and for raising water to any height whatever, and especially for the operation of smelting furnaces, where there is enough wood but no water, would have been very capable; for, by the action of that machine, the blowing of heat in smelting furnaces, with an experienced and diligent smelter, from the uninterrupted flow of air, is incomparably more useful and hastens the smelting of metals more than machines acting by water at smelting furnaces. However, in spite of all this, through the construction of that machine and of the smelting furnaces attached to it, not only were all the expenses incurred for it recovered, but no small profit also remained, because the above-mentioned ores, delivered to that factory, were smelted, and from that auriferous silver there was obtained, according to assay, of the very purest, without alloy, 15 poods 12 pounds 40 zolotniks with fractions, at prescribed prices, and with the gold, for 18,471 rubles with kopecks, as is shown concerning this and the expenses in the compiled statements and accounts. Thus, the benefits of that machine proved to be quite unquestionable, and hope as well; but both because of the above-noted unreliability of the boiler and members made for it, and because there is a sufficiency, at the local works, of water for the operation of smelting furnaces, that machine, until an order and until a case is considered in which it may be needed for putting water into action at smelting furnaces, has now had its operation stopped. From among the pupils assigned to the late mechanic Polzunov, Levzin and Chernitsyn in the installation and management of that machine, and during its operation for correcting the damages that occurred inside the cylinders, did not spare themselves, climbed into them, and in doing so, from the heat and the vapors produced, endured extreme difficulties and wore out no small amount of clothing and footwear.—With all this, the Chancellery had an invariable intention and constant concern to introduce this useful machine in Russia into custom and to put its construction into better knowledge, for which purpose it repeatedly proposed to the late mechanic Polzunov, especially in the year 1765, for dispatch to the Cabinet, that such a machine, with all its apparatus, for a model and for the guidance of pupils in all places, be made on a reduced scale, in small form; but that mechanic declined for lack of time, being occupied with the construction of the present machine; and for that dispatch drawings in plan and elevation were made of that whole machine and its members, which in it, in December of 1765, were sent. However, afterward, whether out of his perfect zeal and curiosity, or for some other reason, he undertook the intention of making such a model on his own, at his own expense; and during his lifetime several large-work items were made, namely: the boiler with its cover, the bottoms, cylinders with cups and emboli—and after his death his wife announced this and requested that those things be accepted into the treasury, and that the copper, tin, lead, iron, and other supplies used for this from her husband’s own expense, and the craftsmen’s labor, be reimbursed—

the expenditure, in all 63 rubles 41 3/4 kopecks, be issued, which has in fact been issued to her; and those parts of the small machine begun by Polzunov were corrected, and such parts as were lacking, and all minor apparatus, were made at the treasury’s expense, and through the said pupils Lezvin and Chernitsyn were duly assembled; and that machine was completely brought into operation, and, just as the proper large machine had done, it produced action. That machine cost altogether 127 rubles 58 1/4 kopecks; in its assembly and construction the most labor was contributed by the aforesaid pupil Chernitsyn. For this reason, on the 22nd day of that month, by decree of Her Imperial Majesty, and by determination of the Chancellery of the Mining Authority entrusted to the pupil, from the accounts, reports, statements, and papers that had entered the chancery, a brief account was compiled, with seven appendices, of how much, from the beginning of the project to the completion of the action, was spent in all monetary and related expenses on the construction of the large machine that had been built, likewise on the construction of the smelting factory and furnaces, on the smelting of matte from ore and its conversion into silver, and how much, at the prescribed prices, that silver and gold should amount to. By virtue also of the cabinet decrees of 19 November 1763 and 30 April 1764, for the acquisition at the Academy of Sciences of the greatest confirmation of skill in mechanics, instead of the late mechanic Polzunov, there were sent from among his pupils, those who proved to have the most applicable understanding and reliability, the above-mentioned Lezvin and Chernitsyn, to the Highest Cabinet, and with them the above-mentioned machine, made on a small scale, disassembled into parts and packed in the boxes made for it, was sent, if it should be permitted, both for presentation, in accordance with the well-known curiosity of Her All-Highest Imperial Majesty, and for the inspection of the Cabinet, or for delivery to the Kunstkamera.”

Appendix No. 32.

“Brief Account.”

“How much, in 1764, was expended on the construction of the large fire-operated machine projected by the mechanic Polzunov and of the smelting factory with three furnaces attached to it; and how much profit was obtained from the matte and other metals smelted in those furnaces by that machine, according to the silver and gold contained in them, is shown below:

	Sum
	Rub. Kop.
On the construction of the large machine, expenditures were made from 1764: in money, namely in salary and reward to the mechanic Polzunov, to the mechanical pupils, to masters and working people, and in peasant offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	2609 84 1/2
In related expenses: for copper, iron, brick, and forest supplies; articles made from them, including those actually present at the large machine, assembled and fully ready for operation

	SUM. Rub.	Kop.
of assembled copper, iron, and other parts, at a price of 1402 rubles 21¾ kopecks	2419	2
For the construction, together with that machine, of a smelting factory and in it three furnaces:
Cash: for wages to master craftsmen and working people	38	56¾
Supplies: for iron, brick, stone, iron, cast-iron, and timber supplies	434	24
Total expenses for the construction of the machine and factory with furnaces	5501	67¼
In the above-described smelting factory there was smelted by the machine: ore from the Zmeinogorsk mine, 9037 poods 10 pounds, at a price of	813	75
For smelting those ores, roasting and remelting the roasted matte, furnace slags, and könig slags, and bringing it into silver, expenses were used:
Cash for wages	171	50¾
Supplies—for coal, firewood, lead, etc.	746	62¼
Total expenses for smelting and refining	1731	88
The small machine made, with all expenses, cost	127	58¼
To two mechanical apprentices, for dispatch to St. Petersburg, wages for the January third	31	68
For transporting that machine and for travel allowances to those apprentices	60	96¾
For packing it, for boxes, sledges, matting, and ropes	1	73½
Total expenses for the small machine	221	96½
In all, for the construction of the large and small machines, the smelting factory with furnaces, smelting and refining, expenses amounted to	7455	51¾
From that expenditure there was obtained pure:
Silver, poods, pounds, zolotniks, shares: 14 38 17 42
Gold, poods, pounds, zolotniks, shares: — 14 22 75
Total 15 12 40 21, at official prices, for	18471	62
And after deducting the above-mentioned expenses, there should be profit	11016	10¼
But if, among the made, assembled, and actually existing parts for the large machine, the price of what they exactly cost—that is, 1402 rubles 21¾ kopecks—is not included as an expense, but is deducted from the expense, because they themselves exist in kind, then there should be profit	12418	32

Appendix No. 33.

Correspondence concerning test bark for the emboils of the fire-acting machine.

Having stopped, on November 10, 1766, the experiments with the machine, the Chancellery had in view subsequently to resume its operation, or to build another one; therefore, in that same year, on December 30, it asked the Cabinet for the purchase, “for the construction with fire, by means of steam, of a machine acting upon emboils, of 5 poods of test bark, brought from France, of the very best quality, not overripe and not worm-eaten, cut into plates according to the sample,” which compelled the Cabinet to apply, on April 16, 1767, to the president of the Berg-Collegium, Schlatter. Schlatter, however, did not find any such bark among the local exchange merchants, “and a letter was written overseas, through the broker Peter Bars, who on July 12 received from there a letter with notification that no such clean and unripe bark was to be had there either. Meanwhile, in Petersburg, from the merchant and accountant of the Academy of Arts, Ivan Meiers, there was found such a test piece, from which 100 plates of the required quality could be cut, weighing 19¼ pounds and costing, according to the merchant’s valuation, 25 rubles. Sending this test piece to Barnaul, the Cabinet, on September 29, 1767, instructed the Chancellery to report whether the test piece was suitable, so that in the affirmative case the rest, to make up the required quantity of 5 poods, might be purchased.”

Appendix No. 34.

Extract from the decree of the Cabinet, sent to the Chancellery on September 29, 1767, concerning the return of Chernitsyn to Barnaul and the leaving of Levzin in Petersburg.

“To Unter-Schichtmeisters Ivan Chernitsyn and Dmitrii Levzin, sent from that Chancellery with the model of the fire-acting machine, in consideration of their considerable labors in the making both of the present large machine and of the aforementioned model, and likewise for the completion of these after the death of the mechanic Polzunov, there has been issued to each, as a reward and for encouragement hereafter toward greater application to the mechanical science and zeal in service, one hundred and fifty rubles. Of these, Ivan Chernitsyn is to be sent back, while Dmitrii Levzin is to be left here for the time being.”

Appendix No. 35.

Decree of the Cabinet, sent to the Chancellery on September 30, 1767, with a demand for an explanation—why the reward to Polzunov was issued belatedly.

“The talents bestowed upon man by nature, when through diligence and curiosity they are brought in some science or art to the highest perfection and, being joined with zeal, bring benefit to society,

deserve, in all fairness and beyond dispute, not only praise and a worthy reward, but, for the most willing continuation of their labors, both for themselves and for others, every possible patronage and encouragement; from this sciences and arts flourish and spread, from this arise people who have acquired excellent skill in them and who bring honor and benefit to the whole human race, and especially to the fatherland. This truth is in itself so obvious that it requires no lengthy proof: the art of all times and the examples of all enlightened peoples bear sufficient witness to it. The same is most strongly confirmed also by HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, through daily examples of the monarch’s generosity in patronage and encouragement of the sciences, arts, virtue, and every kind of merit, wherever and in whomever they may be perceived by the perspicacious eye of HER MAJESTY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . It is impossible even now to remember without the utmost regret the untimely death of the late mechanic Polzunov; the thought always remains that perhaps it could have been averted for a long time, had he been, in due season, rewarded in a manner corresponding to the justice and magnanimity of the MOST MERCIFUL SOVEREIGN LADY, and at the same time, through regard for his talents and labors, encouraged and cheered without delay and without difficulties. Even if his invention of that marvelous machine was not entirely new, or not wholly his own, nevertheless he was always worthy of praise and generous reward if only because, being a man raised in a wilderness remote from the sciences, by his natural acuteness and, so to speak, self-taught, knowing no foreign languages besides, he was able to understand the construction and operation of it and to build such a machine himself. It is known to the Chancellery of the Mining Administration that the Cabinet, for its part, did not delay in the least in rendering, at the first opportunity, all due justice to this worthy man,—and why the monetary reward then assigned to him was not given to him all at once, but in small installments, and even that not in full before his very death, the Cabinet does not understand, but remains awaiting an explanation of this.

Appendix No. 36.

Extract from the report of the Chancellery to the Cabinet, of February 1, 1768,
on the receipt of test bark.

“The above-described machine has until now already long been abandoned, and, because of the abundance of water at the local plant, it is not deemed necessary to put it into operation; and as for moving it to another place, as was explained in the report sent on January 29, 1767, since, for lack here of skilled craftsmen, its parts were made poorly and obstruct its operation, it is not very reliable; therefore, until it is needed for operation in another place and until its parts are made by better craftsmen, the sending of that bark is now unnecessary.”

Appendix No. 37

Extract from the report of the Chancellery to the Cabinet, February 4, 1768,
in reply to an inquiry concerning the delay in issuing Polzunov’s reward.

“To the late mechanic Polzunov, the 400 rubles granted for the composition of his project, with plan and description, of a fire-acting machine, were issued not in small parts, but all at once, while he was still alive, on April 21, 1766; he signed for them with his own hand. Before that time, by the decree received and carried out in the Chancellery of the Mining Administration on January 22, 1764, it had been determined that the issuing of that reward should be deferred, on the reasoning that, in accordance with his own undertaking, the construction and operation of that machine should first be seen in actual practice; to this Polzunov himself then agreed and raised no objection, wishing to demonstrate his outstanding services and afterward to receive the reward with still greater joy. And before the actual issuing of it, there was no reminder from him about it.”

Appendix No. 38.

Communication of the Cabinet of July 17, 1768, to the commission established at the Imperial Academy of Sciences, concerning Levzin.

“The former shift master at the Kolyvano-Voskresensk works, Polzunov, by his natural acuity and special inclination toward mechanics, devised a machine which, at smelting furnaces—especially in such places where there is a shortage of sufficient water—could be used with benefit instead of the ordinary water-powered machines, by means of steam from water boiled in a boiler and of cylinders fitted with pistons. Her IMPERIAL MAJESTY, in approval of the talents and so praiseworthy a zeal of this man, was pleased not only most graciously to promote him to the rank of mechanic, but also to reward him with money; and in addition, when the machine had been made, to command that he be sent here, to the Imperial Academy of Sciences, in order to acquire, on proper foundations of theory, a more perfect knowledge of mechanical art. But, unfortunately, upon completion of the machine and while making the model, he fell into a grave illness and died of it. After his death the machine was put into operation; and, after the correction of certain minor shortcomings, which arose because in that remote place there were not enough skilled craftsmen, it was found useful by the Chancellery of the Mining Administration. The model, however, was completed by the two under-shift masters who had been in training under him and was sent to the Cabinet. With one of them, namely the under-shift master Ivan Levzin, it is now being presented to the IMPERIAL Academy of Sciences, so that it may be added to the objects kept there of the same kind—objects worthy of curiosity and of some notice, all the more as an experiment of the natural acuity of the Russian people. And since, regarding the aforementioned Levzin, it has been represented by the Chancellery of the Mining—”

the authorities, that he, Polzunov, in view of his proficiency in the sciences applied to mining and in every exercise of mining work, had proved reliable, the Cabinet, taking into consideration Her Imperial Majesty’s most gracious attention and concern for the dissemination among society of every kind of useful knowledge and the encouragement of those whom nature has generously endowed with such ability, and at the same time having zeal also for the benefit of the factory service, requests the commission established at the Imperial Academy of Sciences: that, if it be agreeable, the above-mentioned under-smelter Tevzina be left for two or three years at the academy for instruction in mechanics under the professor of this part of mathematics there, through whom the Cabinet should be notified from time to time of his diligence, progress, and conduct.”

Appendix No. 39.

Remarks on Polzunov’s machine, cited in Part 2 of Pallas’s Journey through Various Places of the Russian State

“According to the description, this famous English machine was made with two cylinders, with such intention that everywhere, for bringing winds to the factory, it might be used instead of water wheels, and, consequently, that small smelteries might be built in places rich in forest, where there is no water suitable for this purpose. Since the cylinders could not be made with sufficient precision and those that had been made had to be sealed with leather, cork, and birch bark, which served poorly, this machine could never be brought to the point that it would run constantly, even leaving aside other obstacles that were found in the making of the experiment. Nevertheless, for the experiment a small smeltery with three furnaces was built, at a distance of about fifty sazhens, in which work began on July 30, 1766, and in which it continued for only six weeks; during that time there were many stoppages and repairs, on account of which this work was discontinued. From bellows four sazhens long, which lay in a special section of the house at the machine, the air is gathered in wind chests and goes from there to the factory through a wooden pipe, where a pipe is led into each furnace. At the end of the wooden pipe six openings with plugs were made, so that by releasing air the wind could be moderated. The weak condition and the delay in the work required at every repair, with the great number of people that, it seemed, this whole installation required, were the chief reasons why this experiment was left as it was; however, it is quite fair that if this machine is brought to the necessary perfection by skillful craftsmen and workers and is made entirely like the English one, then its action will be much more prolonged and it will require fewer workers. But if one is to state frankly the reason why it is not used, it is this: because through the uniform and not very compressed and strong blast, the fire is insufficiently taken up and, consequently,

here the still-unjoined ores could not be well smelted, and for this reason it did happen that in the smelting furnaces up to two zolotniks in a pud remained, whereas with an ordinary wind they contain only about one zolotnik. And besides this, it seems to me that so irresistible a force as the inner lar possess could have been produced here—if need required—with less expense and without the aforementioned drawback, by better machines that would act by means of horses, rather than by this one, which costs so much.”

Appendix No. 10.

Extract from the instruction issued on September 24, 1779, to Major General Meller, prescribing the dismantling of Polzunov’s machine.

“…the now-inoperative machine, concerning which the Chancellery of the Mining Administration has reported that not only is it very dilapidated and has for many years stood idle, without any use, but also, because of the abundance at the smelting furnaces of float water, there is no need for it—on the grounds set forth in that report, the machine located at that factory is to be dismantled, and its timber used for whatever it may be fit; the cast-iron parts, however, are to be kept for the future, in case at some time the need arises for such a machine in a place where, for want of water, it may be employed to better advantage.”

Drawing 1

Fire-powered machine of I. I. Polzunov.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

Handwritten caption along the lower margin:

“Original drawing of the fire-acting machine ‘invented’ by Polzunov, to be arranged at the Kolyvano-Voskresensk factories, in order to replace water-powered action.”

Handwritten note near the scale:

“This drawing was copied from the original kept in the Barnaul Archive, September 1780.”

Scale label:

“Scale”

Figure 1.

Drawn by the junior mechanic and student of mechanics Dmitry Levzin.

“Copied from the original in ink by the student of mechanics Ivan Burtsymsky.”

[[unclear: cropped handwritten inscription at the top edge]]

Drawing II.

Steam engine of the round [[unclear: body/casing]] and [[unclear: boiler]] of I. I. Polzunov.

Scale: 10 feet.

Figure 2.

Figure 6.

Full-page technical drawing of Polzunov’s steam engine. No translatable Russian text is visible on this page.

[Full-page technical drawing of Polzunov’s steam engine; no Russian prose or captions are visible on this page.]

1. This entry, like the preceding one, was evidently made not on September 26 and October 12, but later; these dates indicate only the beginning of the machine’s being put into operation. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

2. The decree of the Cabinet of November 19, 1763, is meant. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

3. See Appendix 20. ↩↩↩↩

4. See Appendices 20, 21. ↩↩↩

5. See Appendix No. 19. ↩