Samuel Morey

Samuel Morey (October 23, 1762 – April 17, 1843) was an American inventor, who worked on early internal combustion engines and was a pioneer in steamships who accumulated a total of 20 patents.

Early life

The son of a Revolutionary War Officer, he was the second of seven children born to Israel Morey (1735–1809) and Martha Palmer (1733–1810) and was born in Hebron, Connecticut, but moved to Orford, New Hampshire, with his family in 1768. His father Israel Morey served in the colonial militia and rapidly rose from private to general. Samuel Morey operated a successful lumber business in Orford and Fairlee, Vermont. He died in 1843, and was buried in Orford. Lake Morey in Vermont is named in his honor.

Steam work

Morey's first patent, in 1793, was for a steam-powered spit, but he had grander plans. Morey realized that steam could be a power source in the 1780s, and he probably appreciated a steamboat's potential from work on his father's ferry and the locks he designed along the Connecticut river. In the early 1790s he fitted a paddle wheel and steam engine to a small boat and powered it up and down the Connecticut River. Legend has it, this was done on a Sunday morning, when the town was at church, to avoid ridicule if he failed.

Morey's first boat was little more than a proof of concept, so he built another in New York. In a letter to New York legislator William Duer, Morey describes how over the next three summers he traveled down to New York, and the following summer to Hartford, Connecticut to improve and exhibit his boat. Finally, in 1797 he went to Bordentown, New Jersey (a stop on Fitch's failed Philadelphia-to-Trenton passenger service), because it was “sickly in New York”, and built a boat employing two side-mounted paddle wheels. At this point, Morey considered his boat ready for commercial use and sought financial backers. For reasons that are unclear, his backing fell through because of “a series of misfortunes”.

The engine has much in common with modern ones. It has two cylinders, a carburetor, a familiar arrangement of valves and cams. However, unlike modern engines, and unlike the earlier 1807 François Isaac de Rivaz engine, the explosion did not directly provide power. Instead, the explosion expelled air from the cylinder through a one-way valve. The cylinder was cooled by a water jacket and water injected into the combustion chamber after it fired. The cooling gasses caused a vacuum and atmospheric pressure drove the piston. He funded the creation of two working replicas of Morey's Engine — one is in the possession of the Smithsonian and the other is owned by Dean Kamen — and posited that Morey's engine was a direct precursor of the modern engine, a position with which others disagree. Recently, Morey's work has received renewed attention by people other than locals and engineers, in particular American comedian Jay Leno, who is an avid car collector.

Writing

Patent "discovery" In 2004, 10 of Morey's patents, including the one for the internal combustion engine, were rediscovered in the Dartmouth College archives.

Honors Samuel Morey Elementary School

Articles by Samuel Morey "On preserving Indian Corn from frost", Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, Volume 4 "On a new revolving steam engine", Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 1 (1819): pp. 348–352 (also in American Journal of Science 1818) "On the Revolving Steam Engine" of SAMUEL MOREY. J. L. SULLIVAN. American Journal of Science and Arts, 4, 57, (1819). "On the Revolving Steam Engine". ISAAC DOOLITTLE. American Journal of Science and Arts, 2, 101, (1820). "On A New Means of Producing Heat and Light". SULLIVAN. American Journal Of Science and Arts, 1, 91 (1819). "On heat and light", American Journal of Science and Arts 2 (1820): pp. 118–132. "On Heat and Light". MOREY. American Journal of Science and Arts, 2, 118, 122 (1820). "Bubbles blown in Melted Rosin." MOREY. American Journal of Science and Arts, 2, 179 (1820). "On artificial mineral waters, with some remarks on artificial light", American Journal of Science and Arts 3 (1821): pp. 94–102. "On Fetid Crystallized Limestone". MOREY. American Journal of Science and Arts, 3, 324 (1821). "Remarks on the patent Water-Burner". American Journal of Science and Arts 7 (1824): pp. 141–145. "An account of a new explosive engine, generating a power that may be substituted for that of the steam engine". American Journal of Science and Arts 11 (1826): pp. 104–110. "An Account of a New Explosive Engine", generating a Power that may be Substituted for that of the Steam Engine. MOREY. American Journal of Science and Arts, r I, 104 ( 1826). Journal Of the Franklin Institute, 2, 115 (1826). "Observations on combustion and the powers concerned in that process", American Journal of Science and Arts 25 (1834): pp. 146–151.

Recovered X-patents

Granted July 14, 1815

Mode of obtaining power between the difference of a column of rarified and unrarified air. Samuel Morey, Philadelphia, PA 1867X Fireplace and chimney for saving fuel 2753X Boiler for steam engines 3042X Treble pipe steam boiler 3043X Improvement on the American water burner