Its main castings were made at the Morley Park foundry near Heage, and it weighed 7 tons and generated 35 horsepower at a head of 96 feet of water.
Stephen Glover, in his gazetteer of Derbyshire, was enthusiastic about the prospects for the disc engine, foreseeing its use in all manner of applications, domestic as well as industrial, not only as a prime mover but also as a pump.
He stated that John Dakeyne had also commissioned a disc engine to drive the bellows of an organ in the family's residence, Knabb House.
[2] A larger model was constructed to drain lead mines at Alport near Youlgreave and many steam versions were subsequently built by other people.
Frank Nixon, in his book The Industrial Archaeology of Derbyshire (1969), commented that:The most striking characteristic of this ingenious machine is perhaps the difficulty experienced by those trying to describe it; the patentees and Stephen Glover only succeeded in producing descriptions of monumental incomprehensibility.