Improvements
Unfortunately Newcomen's engine was not very powerful and it was too slow. Many other inventions, like the flying shuttle and the spinning jenny, that came along with Newcomen's steam engine, still depended on waterwheels, windmills or muscle power.
So its main application was to pump water out of flooded mines.
While repairing a Newcomen engine for the University of Glasgow in 1765, James Watt, a Scottish instrument maker, realized that the cooling of the cylinder and its reheating wasted energy that could be used for work. As he wrote:
So its main application was to pump water out of flooded mines.
While repairing a Newcomen engine for the University of Glasgow in 1765, James Watt, a Scottish instrument maker, realized that the cooling of the cylinder and its reheating wasted energy that could be used for work. As he wrote:
http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/pioneers/watt.html
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"I perceived that, to make the best use of steam, it was necessary ... that the cylinder should be maintained always as hot as the steam which entered it. ... It occurred to me that if a communication [connection] were opened between a cylinder containing steam, and another vessel which was exhausted [empty] of air ... the steam would immediately rush into the empty vessel ... and if that vessel were kept very cool ... more steam would continue to enter until the whole was condensed [turned into liquid water]."
Quoted in Burke, The Day the Universe Changed, p. 189. |
To prevent the loss of power when the steam already condensed upon contact with cool air in the cylinder, Watt added a separate condensing chamber, where the steam was cooled by a cold water jet, so the cylinder would keep being hot.
Watt also added a second steam pipe to the cylinder so that steam could be admitted on both sides of the piston.
With the faster cooling and the steam pushing the piston in both directions, the engine become a lot more efficient and faster. This model of the steam engine was more successful than it's forerunner and could be used in more fields. It powered for example locomotives.
"Fortunately few intellectual refinements were necessary to make the Industrial Revolution. Its technical inventions were exceedingly modest, and in no way beyond the scope of intelligent artisans experimenting in their workshops, or of the constructive capacities of carpenters, millwrights, and locksmiths: the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the mule. Even its scientifically most sophisticated machine, James Watt's rotary steam-engine (1784), required no more physics than had been available for the best part of a century."
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (1962)
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (1962)
Editor of this website
Julianna Schiemann
Julianna Schiemann