Invention of the Steam Engine

James Watt
13 pages (2008/1915); 129KB download
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00402

DESCRIPTION

James Watt, an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, was tasked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine in the late 1750s. This task caused Watt to observe faults in Newcomen’s design and began Watt’s road to his famous invention.

“In Newcomen’s engine, which was used for pumping water from mines, the steam was let into the bottom of a vertical cylinder. This allowed the piston to be pulled up by a counterpoise at the farther end of a beam. Then the boiler was disconnected, the steam in the cylinder condensed by cold water, and the air forced the piston down, which latter action did the work of the engine. Watt was a friend of Joseph Black, and learned from him that the fact that heat becomes latent in changing water into steam, would cause a great loss of energy in alternately cooling the cylinder in condensing the steam and in having to heat it before the steam would force the piston to rise.”-- Oliver Joseph Thatcher

Watt describes how he overcame the shortcomings of Newcomen’s design and developed the steam engine that he patented in 1769.