"Those who admire modem civilization usually identify it with the steam engine..."
George Bernard Shaw, playwright and writer
Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729), a Devonshire blacksmith, developed the first successful steam engine in the world and used it to pump water from mines. His engine was a development of the thermic syphon built by Thomas Savery, whose surface condensation patents blocked his own designs.
Newcomen's engine allowed steam to condense inside a water-cooled cylinder, the vacuum produced by this condensation being used to draw down a tightly fitting piston that was connected by chains to one end of a huge, wooden, centrally pivoted beam. The other end of the beam was attached by chains to a pump at the bottom of the mine. The whole system was run safely at near atmospheric pressure, the weight of the atmosphere being used to depress the piston into the evacuated cylinder.
Newcomen's first atmospheric steam engine worked at Conygree in the West Midlands of England. Many more were built in the next seventy years, the initial brass cylinders being replaced by larger cast iron ones, some up to 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter. The engine was relatively inefficient, and in areas where coal was not plentiful was eventually replaced by double- acting engines designed by James Watt (1736-1819). These used both sides of the cylinders for power strokes and usually had separate condensers.
