Excerpt from Valve Gears Probably the part of a steam engine most interesting to the lay man as well as to the experienced engineer, is the valve gear. This is particularly true of the more complicated arrangements such as are used on Corliss and other four-valve engines, locomotives, reversing engines, poppet valve engines, blowing engines, etc. The action of the valve is of primary importance in the opera tion of the engine since its function is to control the flow of steam into and out of the cylinder. In order for an engine to operate successfully and efficiently, a definite amount of steam, pro portional to the load being carried, must enter and leave the engine cylinder at definite, predetermined times in the working cycle of the engine. The study of valve gears is essentially a study of the relative motions and simultaneous positions of the piston, crank and valve. 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.