Although the plan of this new edition of Beckmann's 'History of Inventions and Discoveries' was to confine it to the subjects treated of in the original work, yet we feel it imperative to make an exception in favour of the Steam-Engine, the most important of all modern inventions. The power of steam was not entirely unknown to the ancients, but before the aera rendered memorable by the discoveries of James Watt, the steam-engine, which has since become the object of such universal interest, was a machine of extremely limited power, inferior in importance and usefulness to most other...