History of the steam engine

[1] The first recorded rudimentary steam engine was the aeolipile mentioned by Vitruvius between 30 and 15 BC and, described by Heron of Alexandria in 1st-century Roman Egypt.

[citation needed] According to William of Malmesbury, in 1125, Reims was home to a church that had an organ powered by air escaping from compression "by heated water", apparently designed and constructed by professor Gerbertus.

Another similar rudimentary steam turbine is shown by Giovanni Branca, an Italian engineer, in 1629 for turning a cylindrical escapement device that alternately lifted and let fall a pair of pestles working in mortars.

In 1605, French mathematician David Rivault de Fleurance in his treatise on artillery wrote on his discovery that water, if confined in a bombshell and heated, would explode the shells.

"The discoveries that, when brought together by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, resulted in the steam engine were:"[17] In the late 15th century, Italian polymath, engineer, painter and architect Leonardo da Vinci wrote papers that described the Architonnerre, a Steam powered cannon that used high pressure environments to launch large and heavy projectiles with incredible force.

Da Vinci's design resembled the original cannon with a long cylindrical tube on one end used to aim the projectile correctly and the other end a large chamber which was used to heat up water into steam and when it was ready to fire a small cap would be placed tightly on a hole on top of the cannon, causing rapid buildup of steam and creating a very high pressure environment and propelled the projectile with immense force towards the target.

[18] Denis Papin became interested in using a vacuum to generate motive power while working with Christiaan Huygens and Gottfried Leibniz in Paris in 1663.

[18] In 1663, Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester published a book of 100 inventions which described a method for raising water between floors employing a similar principle to that of a coffee percolator.

In Newcomen's engine steam was condensed by water sprayed inside the cylinder, causing atmospheric pressure to move the piston.

[18] Denis Papin (22 August 1647 – c. 1712) was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker.

In the mid-1670s Papin collaborated with the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens on an engine which drove out the air from a cylinder by exploding gunpowder inside it.

Papin also designed a paddle boat driven by a jet playing on a mill-wheel in a combination of Taqi al Din and Savery's conceptions and he is also credited with a number of significant devices such as the safety valve.

Papin's years of research into the problems of harnessing steam was to play a key part in the development of the first successful industrial engines that soon followed his death.

[21] Savery's engine solved a problem that had only recently become a serious one; raising water out of the mines in southern England as they reached greater depths.

[22] Bento de Moura Portugal, FRS, introduced an ingenious improvement of Savery's construction "to render it capable of working itself", as described by John Smeaton in the Philosophical Transactions published in 1751.

[26] It was Thomas Newcomen with his "atmospheric-engine" of 1712 who can be said to have brought together most of the essential elements established by Papin in order to develop the first practical steam engine for which there could be a commercial demand.

Using the piston and beam allowed the Newcomen engine to power pumps at different levels throughout the mine, as well as eliminating the need for any high-pressure steam.

[29] While working at the University of Glasgow as an instrument maker and repairman in 1759, James Watt was introduced to the power of steam by Professor John Robison.

Fascinated, Watt took to reading everything he could on the subject, and independently developed the concept of latent heat, only recently published by Joseph Black at the same university.

When Watt learned that the university owned a small working model of a Newcomen engine, he pressed to have it returned from London where it was being unsuccessfully repaired.

In the Newcomen design, every power stroke was started with a spray of cold water, which not only condensed the steam, but also cooled the walls of the cylinder.

Instead, Watt and his business partner Matthew Boulton licensed the improvements to engine operators, charging them a portion of the money they would save in reduced fuel costs.

[32] Humphrey Gainsborough produced a model condensing steam engine in the 1760s, which he showed to Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a member of the Lunar Society.

The earliest example was built as a demonstrator and was installed in Boulton's factory to work machines for lapping (polishing) buttons or similar.

[38][39] As the 18th century advanced, the call was for higher pressures; this was strongly resisted by Watt who used the monopoly his patent gave him to prevent others from building high-pressure engines and using them in vehicles.

This did not apply in the US, and in 1788 a steamboat built by John Fitch operated in regular commercial service along the Delaware River between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Burlington, New Jersey, carrying as many as 30 passengers.

[citation needed] Oliver Evans in his turn was in favour of "strong steam" which he applied to boat engines and to stationary uses.

[45] Around 1811, Richard Trevithick was required to update a Watt pumping engine in order to adapt it to one of his new large cylindrical Cornish boilers.

The take-up of these Cornish improvements was slow in textile manufacturing areas where coal was cheap, due to the higher capital cost of the engines and the greater wear that they suffered.

[49] The Corliss engine had greatly improved speed control and better efficiency, making it suitable to all sorts of industrial applications, including spinning.