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Thomas Newcomen

 

Perhaps less well known than some of his fellow innovative contemporaries, Thomas Newcomen is no less important to the advancement of technology in the 18th century. Newcomen saw the need for a more efficient way to drain flooded mines, and built upon existing technology to create a steam-powered engine that could pump water faster and from greater depths than ever before. Other engineers would refine Newcomen's design to create th steam engines that would power locomotives, steam ship, and the Industrial Revolution.

 

Personal Life

Not much is known about Thomas Newcomen's personal life, starting with his birth date. Records show he was baptized on February 28, 1664, indicating he was born sometime in late 1663 or early 1664. He was in Dartmouth, Devon, in southwest England. There is no record of his education, so it is not known if he received any kind of training in mechanical engineering. As a young man he went into business as an ironmonger, and later in life became a Baptist lay preacher. He died in 1729 in Southwark,England. Documentation of Newcomen's life makes no mention of a wife or children.

 

Inventing the Newcomen Steam Engine

As an ironmonger, Newcomen worked closely with coal and tin mine operators. Flooding in the mines was a frequent problem, limiting the accessible mines and therefore affecting the materials Newcomen needed to carry out his work. 

 

Newcomen began to look for remedies for the flooding problems. A steam-driven water pump already existed, patented in 1698 by Thomas Savery, for whom Newcomen worked. Savery called his invention a "fire engine," in which condensed steam would create a vacuum used to suck up water from the mines. This "fire engine" worked extremely slowly (about one horsepower), was prone to boiler explosions, and could only work in depths up to thirty feet. However, Savery's patent was extensive, covering any vessel or engine powered by fire and used to pump water. The result was that when Newcomen set out to create a steam pump of his own, he had to work in partnership with Savery, to avoid violating the patent. 

 

With the help of John Calley, a plumber, Newcomen spent the first decade or so of the eighteenth century developing his steam engine. The innovation that Newcomen and Calley arrived at was to replace the receiving vessel where steam condensed with a cylinder containing a piston. According to Wikipedia, the engine worked as follows:

"Instead of the vacuum drawing in water, it drew down the piston. This was used to work a beam engine, in which a large wooden beam rocked upon a central fulcrum. On the other side of the beam was a chain attached to a pump at the base of the mine. As the steam cylinder was refilled with steam, readying it for the next power stroke, water was drawn into the pump cylinder and expelled into a pipe to the surface by the weight of the machinery."

This process allowed the pump to work continuously, making it the most efficient way to pump water. At first, the engine only produced six to eight strokes a minute, but Newcomen and Calley continued to improve the engine until it could produce ten to twelve strokes a minute. For a visual explanation of how the Newcomen steam engine works, click here

 

Around 1712, the first working engine was installed at a coal mine in Dudley in the West Midlands, an increasingly industrialized area. Although Newcomen's design was still far from perfect (as Thomasina points out in Arcadia, the heat lost during the condensing process meant that the engine would never run at full efficiency), it was the most effective steam-powered pump available. Newcomen steam engines were installed at mines all over England, so that by the time Newcomen died, there were about 125 spread throughout the country. 

 

The use of the Newcomen steam engine continued after his death, as did work on improving it. John Smeaton, the self-proclaimed "father of civil engineering" improved the mechanical details of the engine in the 1770s. Around the same time, the Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt tackled the efficiency problem by building a separate condenser, which would save energy because the cylinder would no longer have to be repeatedly cooled and heated. Watt, and later his partner Matthew Boulton, would continue to modify and improve the steam engine, creating the double-acting engine and rotary engine that would be critical in the Industrial Revolution and development of steam-powered vehicles like trains and steamships.

 

Despite Watts' and Boultons' improvements, Newcomen's continued to be popular throughout the early 19th century, as they were cheaper and less complicated to build. Therefore, it was would not have been uncommon for a landskip architect like Mr. Noakes to be using one in his improvements at Sidley Park.

 

 

 

Sources/Further Reading

Encyclopedia.com - Thomas Newcomen

YourDictionary.com - Thomas Newcomen

BBC.com - Famous Devonians

BBC History - Thomas Newcomen

The Industrial Revolution Wordpress

About.com - The Steam Engines of Thomas Newcomen

Encyclopedia Brittanica - Thomas Newcomen

Wikipedia - Thomas Newcomen

 

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