Operators · Arcane working · Artifice
Engine Reader
Watcher of Gauges
Engine houses, pumping stations and laboratories; fixed beside the machinery it watches
A fixed apparatus of lenses, a calculating drum and a printing recorder, built to watch the gauges of an engine, record them and work the valves when a reading passes its mark. It watches through the night so that an engineman may sleep.
An engine reader stands beside the engine it keeps, its lenses fixed on the gauges. Every reading it takes is printed on a moving roll, and when a reading passes the mark it was set, it turns a valve, rings a bell or both. The great pumping engines of Sarrum keep them, and so do the Cambridge laboratories that cannot leave an apparatus unwatched. Its roll is the best record of an engine's life that exists, and the insurers ask for it after an accident before they ask for anything else.
It does nothing it was not set to do, and so it is only as good as the man who set it. An engine reader set to the wrong mark will hold an engine at the edge of bursting for a whole night and print every reading faithfully, and its roll will show exactly when the engineman should have known.
As witnesses describe it
A tall fixed machine of brass and dark iron with a cluster of lenses, a turning calculation drum, a paper recorder and jointed arms that reach to valves and levers. When charged its lenses glow amber or blue; in an abandoned room it shows only a faint control light.
