Except for occasional attendances at the House of Lords and constant worries about his debts, Worcester's closing years were devoted to the mechanical studies and experiments which have been urged as justifying his claim to be the inventor of the steam-engine. Soon after his first marriage in 1628 he had engaged the services of Caspar Kaltoff, a skilled mechanic, and set up a laboratory. One of his inventions was a wheel, fourteen feet in diameter, carrying forty weights of fifty pounds each, which was exhibited to Charles I, probably about 1638–9. It professed to solve the fallacious problem of perpetual motion by providing ‘that all the weights of the descending side of a wheel shall be perpetually further from the centre than those of the mounting side’ (Century of Inventions, No. 56; a diagram and commentary are given in Dircks's Worcester, p. 453). Some time afterwards he established Kaltoff at Vauxhall, in a house which he is said to have designed as ‘a college for artisans’ (Hartlib to Boyle in Dircks, p. 267); and here most of his experiments were carried on. In 1655 he completed his ‘Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected.’ This work was first published in 1663, with a dedication to Charles II; subsequent editions appeared in 1746, 1748, 1763, 1767, 1778 (two editions), 1786, 1813 (three editions), 1825 (ed. with biographical memoir by Charles Frederick Partington [q. v.]) and 1843; it has also been reprinted in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1789; Tilloch's ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ 1801, xii. 43–57; ‘Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture,’ 1802; ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ 1809, vol. iv.; Olinthus Gregory's ‘Treatise of Mechanics,’ 1815, 3rd ed. vol. ii.; James Smith's ‘Mechanic,’ 1822; ‘The Kaleidoscope,’ 1824; ‘The Mechanics' Magazine,’ 1825, vol. iii.; ‘One Thousand Notable Things,’ 1827; ‘Mechanics' Magazine,’ New York, 1833, vol. i.; Weale's ‘Quarterly Papers on Engineering,’ 1856, vol. v., and with exhaustive notes as an appendix to Dircks's ‘Life of the Marquis of Worcester,’ 1865.
There is little in this famous book to substantiate Worcester's claim to have ‘tried and perfected’ the inventions described in it. For the most part it consists of nebulous ideas without any attempt to work them out in practical detail (cf. Farey, Treatise on the Steam-Engine, Historical, Practical, and Descriptive, p. 89), and the book he promised, in which the means of putting his inventions into execution were to be described, was never written. Some of the devices—e.g. that of shorthand, No. 5—were practicable, and in use before Worcester's time. Others may have suggested inventions subsequently worked out by later mechanics—e.g. the calculating machine, No. 84, which also occupied Morland's attention [see Morland, Sir Samuel]. But many must still be regarded as mere chimeras, such as No. 77, ‘How to make a man fly;’ many ‘are in the style of legerdemain, and others of them absolutely impossible and contrary to all established rules of science’ (Farey, p. 90).
The most notable of Worcester's devices, and that on which his claim as inventor of the steam-engine rests, is his ‘water-commanding engine.’ Before the civil war he made experiments in this direction on the walls of Raglan Castle, but the traces that still remain (see engraving in Dircks, p. 21) are insufficient to ‘point distinctly to precise particulars of arrangement.’ The experiments were, however, renewed at Vauxhall, and there in 1663 Samuel Sorbière saw and described the ‘hydraulic machine which the Marquis of Worcester has invented.’ It was designed for purposes of irrigation, and would ‘raise to the height of forty feet, by the strength of one man and in the space of one minute of time, four large buckets of water.’ Cosmo de' Medici, duke of Tuscany, visited it in 1669, when a similar description was given (Dircks, pp. 264, 302). Robert Hooke [q. v.], however, described it as ‘one of the perpetual motion fallacies.’ This is apparently the machine described in the ‘Century,’ No. 100, and in Addit. MS. 23115, f. 45, as ‘a most admirable and stupendious invention.’ Worcester set great store by it, and in 1663 obtained a monopoly of its profits by act of parliament, granting one tenth to the king. In the same year he issued a folio broadside (reprinted in 1858) containing a description of the engine, the act of parliament, and some verses. He hoped by its means to pay off his debts, and the machine was actually working for seven years. Nothing, however, is really known of Worcester's ‘water-commanding engine’ beyond his own ‘vague and somewhat bombastic description’ (Mr. R. B. Prosser in Engineer, 19 May 1876). Henry Dircks [q. v.] spent much time and money in the endeavour to ascertain the precise mode of construction, and search was even made in the marquis's grave for a model which was said to have been buried there, but without result (ib.) There is, moreover, no mention of either steam or fire in the act of parliament or any of the descriptions, and Worcester's claim as inventor of the steam-engine rests upon the assumption that this
