The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is often referred to as the Newcomen fire engine (see below) or simply as a Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam drawn into the cylinder, thereby creating a partial vacuum which allowed the atmospheric pressure to push the piston into the cylinder. It was historically significant as the first practical device to harness steam to produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout Britain and Europe, principally to pump water out of mines. Hundreds were constructed throughout the 18th century.
James Watt's later engine design was an improved version of the Newcomen engine that roughly doubled fuel efficiency. Many atmospheric engines were converted to the Watt design, for a price which was based on a fraction of the fuel-savings. As a result, Watt is today better known than Newcomen in relation to the origin of the steam engine.
Prior to Newcomen a number of small steam devices of various sorts had been made, but most were essentially novelties. Around 1600 a number of experimenters used steam to power small fountains working like a coffee percolator. First a container was filled with water via a pipe, which extended through the top of the container to nearly the bottom. The bottom of the pipe would be submerged in the water, making the container airtight. The container was then heated to make the water boil. The steam generated pressurized the container, but the inner pipe, immersed at the bottom by liquid, and lacking an airtight seal at top, remained at a lower pressure; expanding steam forced the water at the bottom of the container into and up the pipe to spurt out of a nozzle on top. These devices had limited effectiveness but illustrated the principle's viability.
In 1606, the Spaniard, Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont demonstrated and was granted a patent for a steam powered water pump. The pump was successfully used to drain the inundated mines of Guadalcanal, Spain.
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A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall. The efficiency of the engines was improved by engineers including James Watt, who added a separate condenser; Jonathan Hornblower and Arthur Woolf, who compounded the cylinders; and William McNaught, who devised a method of compounding an existing engine.
Boulton & Watt was an early British engineering and manufacturing firm in the business of designing and making marine and stationary steam engines. Founded in the English West Midlands around Birmingham in 1775 as a partnership between the English manufacturer Matthew Boulton and the Scottish engineer James Watt, the firm had a major role in the Industrial Revolution and grew to be a major producer of steam engines in the 19th century. Watt steam engine The partnership was formed in 1775 to exploit Watt's patent for a steam engine with a separate condenser.
The Watt steam engine design became synonymous with steam engines, and it was many years before significantly new designs began to replace the basic Watt design. The first steam engines, introduced by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, were of the "atmospheric" design. At the end of the power stroke, the weight of the object being moved by the engine pulled the piston to the top of the cylinder as steam was introduced. Then the cylinder was cooled by a spray of water, which caused the steam to condense, forming a partial vacuum in the cylinder.
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