ABSTRACT
As we advance towards machinery for more complicated objects, other demands arise, without satisfying which our further course is absolutely stopped. It becomes necessary to see at a glance, not only every successive movement of each amongst thousands of different parts, but also to scrutinize all contemporaneous actions. This gave rise to the Mechanical Notation, a language of signs, which, although invented for one subject, is of so comprehensive a nature as to be applicable to many. If the whole of the facts relating to a naval or military battle were known, the mechanical notation would assist the description of it quite as much as it would that of any complicated engine.
