Steam power

The idea of using steam had occurred to a scientist in Egypt long ago. The exact date is uncertain, AD 60 , one possibility. While the seeds of Christianity were being sown, the first steam engine was being conceived. The scientist was Hero sometimes known as Heron. Among his works was a description of an elementary steam-engine. The steam from a kettle went into a globe shape, with two tubes sticking out in opposite directions and when the steam rushed through, the globe rotated. But, unlike Christianity, no useful purpose was found and the idea lay undeveloped for more than 1600 years.

But the principle had been demonstrated. Water when it gets hot expands into steam, which wants to take up a lot more more space. If enclosed in some way can it produce a force.

Devonian, Thomas Savery (1650-1715) knows the problems the tin mines nearby are having with flooding as they dig deeper for ore, and in 1698 has patented the first practical steam engine which will pump water out. His device is a tank with two pipes and hand-operated valves connected to it . And a fire and kettle to produce the steam.

1 Turn on first valve to let steam from kettle into the sealed vessel. Close the valve.

2 Now open valve on other pipe which leads from the vessel into the unwanted water below.

3 Pour cold water over the steam filled vessel.

Result; the cold water makes the steam inside contract forming a vacuum, and water from below is sucked up into the vessel.

Slow? Very.

Efficient? No.

Mould-breaking? Yes.

To human muscular power, over the centuries, animal power, and wind and water power had helped take the strain. Now along came steam power, and the world changed.

Here, could be argued, was the start of one of the greatest inventions ever. Savery patented it for, ' Raising water and imparting motion to all sorts of mill work by the impellant force of fire."

Thomas Newcomen was a blacksmith and ironmonger in his twenties. Many of his customers were mine owners. They used buckets and ropes and horses to remove the water. But Newcomen saw the shortcomings in Savery's design. He had his own vision and by 1710 in a small workshop close by the River Dart the world's first practical steam engine with a piston and forward and backward motion was born.

It took another 50 years and no less a person than James Watt to take the steam engine on another stage. Watt improved on the efficiency of this type of steam engine, but he did not invent it.

It was the devout Baptist, Ironmonger and blacksmith Thomas Newcomen of Dartmouth whose engine was the first to use a piston successfully, and in so doing made mechanical power from fire and water a reality.

The first commercial engine was erected in Dudley in the West Midlands in 1712. By 1765 coal mines all over the country were using similar engines.

In 1965, in recognition of his work, a special engine house was completed in Dartmouth near the site of the inventor's workshop, a fitting and belated memorial to a remarkable man.