Steam Engines Used in the Industrial Revoution

Thomas Savery

• The Savery Pump essentially is the first version of a steam engine, although it had a very narrow range of usefulness. Its only real use was to lift water up out of mines through the use of steam power instead of horses. Thomas Savery used steam to create a vacuum that sucked up water from the mine shaft below. The design had many flaws, but along with other inventions of the time, it signaled the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Thomas Newcomen

• Although other men worked on and achieved some success with steam engines, the next important step forward came from Thomas Newcomen. Newcomen's device combined elements of Savery's engine with a piston-based design developed by a man named Papin. The Newcomen engine went into much wider production than Savery's, and was used throughout the mining industry. It also became a new type of well pump that towns would use to power a water supply.

James Watt

• Watt likely is the best-known name associated with the steam engine because of the developments he made in the emerging field. Watt took the Newcomen engine and made it into something that changed the world. He greatly increased the pressure and the power produced in a steam engine. He did this by closing the system and making use of steam power in both directions that the piston moves. The engine required less fuel, made more power and quickly was adapted to a huge host of applications.

Applications

• The basic steam engine designed by Watt and the subsequent improvements to that model were used in many different aspects of life during the industrial revolution. Industry was transformed because steam engines could power machines in factories at previously unheard-of rates. They also saved the time, cost and effort of using power sources such as water and wind. Factories could be built anywhere when relying on steam power. Transportation also was revolutionized. Steam engines started to power trains and ships in the first decade of the 19th century, which drastically changed the ease with which both people and cargo were transported.