2: Increasing Power

Babbage considers the manner in which power can be accumulated or concentrated from natural forces. The most simple example is the manner in which a knife allows a person to concentrate the force of their arm into a very small area - the pressure that would normally be dispersed over the entire area of the palm is concentrated along a narrow ridge to provide greater power in a smaller location.

He considers the arrangement of gears - in which a slowly-turning larger gear meshes with a smaller one, which produces much greater velocity. Also, the manner in which a weight can be raised by a number of slow pulls, then dropped at once to exert a greater amount of force. Also, the manner in which steam pressure is built by means of a plate with a small hole that concentrates the manner in which the steam escapes the boiler.

The mechanism of a gun demonstrates this as well. Placed in the open, gunpowder burns rapidly and the gasses of its combustion dissipate evenly in the surrounding space. Placed within a tube with one end plugged, there is only one escape route for the expanding gas, so its force is concentrated in the direction necessary to propel a bullet. And if the muzzle of a gun is plugged with clay, the force of the suddenly expanding gas exerts itself upon the barrel until it explodes, quite dramatically. The effect of wading in a rifle allows pressure to increase, as the wadding provides resistance against the expanding gas until it either burns or is pushed aside, further increasing the velocity of the expanding gas once it is released.

(EN: This carries on for quite a while, but the point is well made about controlling the force and direction of natural energies - which is more a matter for physics than economics. But again, this level of detail might have been necessary in the author's time, when ignorance of the laws of physics caused people to regard machines as supernatural.)