Animation of a schematic Newcomen steam engine. Steam is coloured pink and water is blue. Valves move from open (green) to closed (red)

The atmospheric engine invented by Thomas Newcomen, today referred to as a Newcomen steam engine (or simply Newcomen engine), was the first practical device to harness the power of steam to produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout England and Europe principally to pump water out of mines starting in the early 18th century. James Watt's later engine was an improved version. Although Watt is far more famous today, Newcomen rightly deserves the first credit for the widespread introduction of steam power. Image File history File links Newcomen_atmospheric_engine_animation. ... Thomas Newcomen (baptised 24 February 1664; died 5 August 1729) was an ironmonger by trade, and a Baptist lay preacher by calling. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into articles entitled steam and water vapor, accessible from a disambiguation page. ... Mechanical work is a force applied through a distance, defined mathematically as the line integral of a scalar product of force and displacement vectors. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size. ... This article is about mineral extraction. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... James Watt James Watt (19 January 1736 – 19 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. ... Watt Steam Engine - showing the improvement of the separate condenser, which was not found on the Newcomen steam engine. ...

Precursors

Prior to Newcomen a number of small steam engines of various sorts had been built, but most were essentially novelties. Around 1600 a number of experimenters used steam to power small fountains, first filling a container with water, then pressurizing it with steam to shoot it out. However these devices could not be scaled up, as the ability to produce large containers for high pressures simply didn't exist. // The term steam engine may also refer to an entire railroad steam locomotive. ...

In 1662 Edward Somerset, second Marquess of Worcester, published a book containing several ideas he had been working on. One was a steam-powered fountain, which used vacuum instead of pressure. In his design two containers would alternately be filled with steam and then allowed to condense to produce a vacuum that would suck up more water from a well. A new charge of steam then pushed the water out as in earlier designs. By running the two containers back to back the fountain could be made somewhat continuous. Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester was born before 1613, perhaps in 1601, to Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester and Anne Russell. ...

Savery's Miner's Friend

In 1698 Thomas Savery introduced a steam powered pump he called the Miner's Friend, essentially identical to Somerset's design and almost certainly a direct copy. Applied to pumping out mines, the water was no longer driven from the cylinder by a new steam charge, but simply allowed to flow out of a valve once the steam condensed and the cylinder was filled. The process of cooling and creating the vacuum was fairly slow, so Savery later added a small water inlet or spray to quickly cool the steam. Thomas Savery (c. ...

Like other vacuum-based pumping systems, Savery's had the problem that it could not lift water more than 32 feet at a time. For deeper mines some sort of mechanical pump needed to be used, one that lifted the water directly instead of "sucking" it up. Such pumps were common already, but required a vertical reciprocating action that Savery's system did not provide.

Savery's invention acted as a kind of siphon, and had no moving parts. Consequently, it cannot really be regarded as the first steam engine, since it could not transmit its power to any external device. There were evidently high hopes for the Miner's Friend, which led Parliament to extend the life of the patent by 21 years, so that the 1699 patent would not expire until 1733. Unfortunately, Savery's device proved much less successful than had been hoped. siphon principle A siphon (also spelled syphon) is a continuous tube that allows liquid to drain from a reservoir through an intermediate point that is higher than the reservoir, the up-slope flow being driven only by hydrostatic pressure without any need for pumping. ...

Several other experimenters attempted to provide mechanical work from existing engine designs. One of the most interesting was that of Denis Papin, who succeeded in raising a piston by boiling water in a cylinder, and showed that the vacuum created when the steam condensed could lift a heavy weight. However, this was merely a laboratory toy; he failed to develop it into a practical steam pump. Denis Papin Denis Papin (August 22, 1647 - c. ...

Introduction and spread

Thomas Newcomen developed the principles of Savery and Papin into the beam engine, in which a large wooden beam rocked up and down upon a central fulcrum. Instead of siphoning the water up, as in Savery's engine, a cylinder pump at the bottom of the mine was operated by the motion of the beam. The cylinder was filled with steam from a boiler (usually below it). This was condensed using a jet of water. The resultant vacuum pulled down one end of the beam, thus operating the pump attached to the other. Look up Fulcrum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Fulcrum may refer to one of the following. ...

It is probable that the first Newcomen engine was in Cornwall, but its location is uncertain. This was followed by two in the Black Country, of which the more famous was that erected at the Conygree Coalworks near Dudley, but this was probably preceded by one built a mile and a half east of Wolverhampton. Both these were used by Newcomen and his partner John Calley to pump out water-filled coal mines. A working replica can today be seen at the nearby Black Country Living Museum, which stands on another part of what was Lord Dudley's Conygree Park. Soon orders from wet mines all over England were coming in, and some have suggested that word of his achievement was spread through his Baptist connections. The Newcomen engine was hardly used in North America due to disputes regarding its possible interference with the production of traditionally made beaver pelts. Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is a county in South West England, United Kingdom, on the peninsula that lies to the west of the River Tamar. ... The Black Country is a loosely-defined area of conurbation to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton in the English West Midlands, around the South Staffordshire coalfield. ... Map sources for Dudley at grid reference SO9390 Dudley is a town in the West Midlands, England. ... The Black Country Living Museum is located in Dudley in the West Midlands in England. ... The title Baron Dudley was created by writ in the Peerage of England for Sir John Sutton, who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. ... Baptist is a term describing a tradition within Christianity and may also refer to individuals belonging to a Baptist church or a Baptist denomination. ...

Since Savery's patent had not yet run out, Newcomen operated under that patent, since its term was much longer than any Newcomen could have easily obtained. During the latter years of its currency, the patent belonged to an unincorporated company, The Proprietors of the Invention for raising water by fire.

Although its first use was in coal-mining areas, Newcomen's engine was also used for pumping water out of the metal mines in his native West Country, such as the tin mines of Cornwall. By the time of his death, Newcomen and others had installed over a hundred of his engines, not only in the West Country and the Midlands but also in north Wales, near Newcastle and in Cumbria.

Diagram of the Newcomen steam engine

Image File history File links Newcomen6325. ...

Technical details

Newcomen's engine consisted of a boiler A, in which the steam was generated. This was usually a haystack boiler, situated directly below the cylinder. It produced low pressure steam, all that the current state of boiler technology could cope with. Steam at this pressure would be unable to move a piston of any size. A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated under pressure. ...

One side of the beam was attached by a chain to the pump at the base of the mine, and the chain at the other side suspended a piston within a cylinder B. The cylinder was open at the top end, above the piston P, to the atmosphere. The piston had a bevelled edge, around which hemp rope, kept in place by metal weights, acted as a primitive seal. (The rope was kept wet, so that it would expand against the sides.) A piston and cylinder from a steam engine A cylinder in an internal combustion engine is the space within which a piston travels. ... piston + connecting rod Components of a typical, four stroke cycle, DOHC piston engine. ...

When the valve V was opened, the steam was admitted into the cylinder. After this valve was closed, valve V' was opened to allow cold water from the tank C into the cylinder, thus condensing the steam and reducing the pressure under the piston. The atmospheric pressure above then pushed the piston down in the power stroke. These water valves are regulated by handles. ... The term condenser has the following meanings: In electronics, it is another (old-fashioned) word for capacitor. ... The use of water pressure - the Captain Cook Memorial Jet in Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra. ... A power stroke is, in general, the stroke of a cyclic motor which generates force. ...

This raised the working parts of the pump, but their weight immediately returned the beam to its original position. Steam was then readmitted, driving the remains of the condensate out through a one way snifter valve as the process started all over again.

Early versions used manual operation of the valves to work, but the action was slow enough that this was not a serious concern. Later versions used controls attached to the rocking beam to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions. The common story is that in 1713 a boy named Humphrey Potter, whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord"[1]). This device was simplified by 1718 according to an illustration by Henry Beighton, who showed suspended from the beam a rod called the plugtree, which worked the valves by means of tappets.

By 1725 the engine was in common use in collieries, and it held its place without material change for about three-quarters of a century. Towards the close of its career the atmospheric engine was much improved in its mechanical details by John Smeaton, who built many large engines of this type about the year 1770. Events February 8 - Catherine I became empress of Russia February 20 - The first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans takes place in New Hampshire colony. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Portrait of John Smeaton, with the Eddystone Lighthouse in the background. ... Battle of Chesma, by Ivan Aivazovsky. ...

While its main use was pumping water out of mines, the Newcomen engine was also used in some places to pump water to drive machinery, for example refilling the upper pool at Coalbrookdale so that there was more water available to drive the blast furnaces, also at Madeley Wood or Bedlam Furnaces and others of the same period (the 1750s. Richard Arkwright, for example, even attempted to use a Newcomen engine to pump water to power a waterwheel. Coalbrookdale is a settlement in a side valley of the Ironbridge Gorge in the borough of Telford and Wrekin and ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. ... Blast furnace in Sestao, Spain. ... The Madeley Wood Company was formed in 1756 when the ironworks at Bedlam Furnaces, one mile west of Blists Hill, on the River Severn, was founded. ... Scientific navigation is developed The Seven Years War (1756-1763) fought between two rival alliances: the first consisting of the Kingdom of Great Britain, Hanover, and Prussia; the second consisting of Austria, France, Imperial Russia, Saxony, and Sweden. ... Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an Englishman credited with the spinning frame — later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power. ...

Successor

The main problem with the Newcomen design was that it was very expensive to operate. After the cylinder was cooled to create the vacuum, the cylinder walls were cold enough to condense some of the steam as it was sprayed in. This meant that a considerable amount of fuel was being used just to heat the cylinder back to the point where the steam would start to fill it again. As the heat losses were related to the surfaces, while useful work related to the volume, increases in the size of the engine increased efficiency. Newcomen engines became larger in time. However, efficiency did not matter very much within the context of a colliery, where coal was freely available. Attempts were made to drive machinery by Newcomen engines, but these were unsuccessful, as the single power stroke produced a very jerky motion.

Newcomen's engine was only replaced when James Watt improved it to avoid this problem (Watt had been asked to repair a model of a Newcomen engine by Glasgow University. A model exaggerated the scale problem of the Newcomen engine.). In the Watt steam engine, condensation took place in a separate container, attached to the steam cylinder via a pipe. When a valve on the pipe was opened, the vacuum in the condensor would, in turn, evacuate that part of the cylinder below the piston. This eliminated the cooling of the main cylinder, and dramatically reduced fuel use. It also enabled the development of a reciprocating engine, with upwards and downwards power strokes more suited to transmitting power to a wheel. James Watt James Watt (19 January 1736 – 19 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. ... The University of Glasgow is the largest of the three universities in Glasgow, Scotland. ...

Watt's design, introduced in 1769, did not eliminate Newcomen engines immediately. Watt's vigorous defence of his patents resulted in the desire to avoid royalty payments as far as possible. A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally maximum 20 years from the filing date, depending on extension). ... Royalties, sometimes simply referred to as royalty is typically the sum of money paid to the proprietor or Licensor of Intellectual Property (IP) Rights for the benefits derived, or sought to be derived, by the user (the Licensee) through the exercise of such rights. ...

The expiry of the patents led to a rush to install Watt engines in the 1790s, and Newcomen engines were eclipsed - even in collieries. Probably the last Newcomen-style engine to be used commercially – and the last still remaining on its original site – is at Elsecar, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. Elsecar is a village in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. ...

Further reading

• L. T. C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen (landmark Publishing, Erny 1997).

See also

• Timeline of steam power
• Watt steam engine

See Steam engine, Steam power during the Industrial Revolution. ... Watt Steam Engine - showing the improvement of the separate condenser, which was not found on the Newcomen steam engine. ...

External links

• Animated illustration

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...