Excerpt from The Combustion of Coal and the Prevention of Smoke, Chemically and Practically Considered Being much interested in the improvement of steam vessels, from my connection with several steam navigation companies, and having had a longer and more extended experience in the details of their building and equipping than, perhaps, any indi vidual director of a steam company in the kingdom, my atten tion has been uninterruptedly given to the subject since the year 1823, when I first established a steam company, and undertook to have the first steam-vessel constructed capable of maintaining a commercial intercourse across the Irish Channel, during the winter months, and which, till then, had been con sidered impracticable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.