query: When was the first commercially successful steam engine invented?

title: Steam engine

text: stations and supplying water to water wheels that powered textile machinery. Savery engine was of low cost. Bento de Moura Portugal introduced an improvement of Savery's construction "to render it capable of working itself", as described by John Smeaton in the Philosophical Transactions published in 1751. It continued to be manufactured until the late 18th century. One engine was still known to be operating in 1820. The first commercially-successful engine that could transmit continuous power to a machine, was the atmospheric engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen around 1712. It improved on Savery's steam pump, using a piston as proposed by

title: History of the steam engine

text: History of the steam engine The first recorded rudimentary steam engine was the aeolipile described by Heron of Alexandria in 1st-century Roman Egypt. Several steam-powered devices were later experimented with or proposed, such as Taqi al-Din's steam jack, a steam turbine in 16th-century Ottoman Egypt, and Thomas Savery's steam pump in 17th-century England. In 1712, Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine became the first commercially successful engine using the principle of the piston and cylinder, which was the fundamental type steam engine used until the early 20th century. The steam engine was used to pump water out of coal mines During the

title: Marine steam engine

text: Marine steam engine A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat. This article deals mainly with marine steam engines of the reciprocating type, which were in use from the inception of the steamboat in the early 19th century to their last years of large-scale manufacture during World War II. Reciprocating steam engines were progressively replaced in marine applications during the 20th century by steam turbines and marine diesel engines. The first commercially successful steam engine was developed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. The steam engine improvements brought forth by James Watt

title: Steam engine

text: called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term "steam engine" can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.) such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. Steam-driven devices were known as early as the aeliopile in the first century AD, with a few other uses recorded in the 16th and 17th century. Thomas Savery's dewatering pump used steam pressure operating directly on water. The first commercial engine producing continuous rotary motion was only developed in 1712 by Newcomen.

title: History of the steam engine

text: his death. The first steam engine to be applied industrially was the "fire-engine" or "Miner's Friend", designed by Thomas Savery in 1698. This was a pistonless steam pump, similar to the one developed by Worcester. Savery made two key contributions that greatly improved the practicality of the design. First, in order to allow the water supply to be placed below the engine, he used condensed steam to produce a partial vacuum in the pumping reservoir (the barrel in Worcester's example), and using that to pull the water upward. Secondly, in order to rapidly cool the steam to produce the vacuum,

title: Steam power during the Industrial Revolution

text: wagon. Railroad tracks, which were already in use in mines and various other situations, became the new means of transportation after the first locomotive was invented. Steam power during the Industrial Revolution Improvements to the steam engine were some of the most important technologies of the Industrial Revolution, although steam did not replace water power in importance in Britain until after the Industrial Revolution. From Englishman Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine, of 1712, through major developments by Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt, the steam engine began to be used in many industrial settings, not just in mining, where the

title: History of the steam engine

text: Thomas Newcomen was a merchant who dealt in cast iron goods. Newcomen’s engine was based on the piston and cylinder design proposed by Papin. In Newcomen's engine steam was condensed by water sprayed inside the cylinder, causing atmospheric pressure to move the piston. Newcomen’s first engine installed for pumping in a mine in 1712 at Dudley Castle in Staffordshire. Denis Papin (22 August 1647 – c. 1712) was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker. In the mid-1670s Papin collaborated with the Dutch physicist Christiaan

title: Steam engine

text: powered inventions, including a water pump for draining inundated mines. Denis Papin, a Huguenot refugee, did some useful work on the steam digester in 1679, and first used a piston to raise weights in 1690. The first commercial steam-powered device was a water pump, developed in 1698 by Thomas Savery. It used condensing steam to create a vacuum which raised water from below and then used steam pressure to raise it higher. Small engines were effective though larger models were problematic. They had a limited lift height and were prone to boiler explosions. Savery's engine was used in mines, pumping

title: History of the steam engine

text: improvement of Savery's construction "to render it capable of working itself", as described by John Smeaton in the Philosophical Transactions published in 1751. It was Thomas Newcomen with his "atmospheric-engine" of 1712 who can be said to have brought together most of the essential elements established by Papin in order to develop the first practical steam engine for which there could be a commercial demand. This took the shape of a reciprocating beam engine installed at surface level driving a succession of pumps at one end of the beam. The engine, attached by chains from other end of the beam,

title: Marine steam engine

text: in the later half of the 18th century greatly improved steam engine efficiency and allowed more compact engine arrangements. Successful adaptation of the steam engine to marine applications in England would have to wait until almost a century later after Newcomen, when Scottish engineer William Symington built the world's "first practical steamboat", the "Charlotte Dundas", in 1802. In 1807, the American Robert Fulton built the world's first commercially successful steamboat, simply known as the "North River Steamboat", and powered by a Watt engine. Following Fulton's success, steamboat technology developed rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic. Steamboats initially had a

title: Engine

text: Rivaz and independently, by the Niépce brothers. They were theoretically advanced by Carnot in 1824. In 1853–57 Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci invented and patented an engine using the free-piston principle that was possibly the first 4-cycle engine. The invention of an internal combustion engine which was later commercially successful was made during 1860 by Etienne Lenoir. In 1877 the Otto cycle was capable of giving a far higher power to weight ratio than steam engines and worked much better for many transportation applications such as cars and aircraft. The first commercially successful automobile, created by Karl Benz, added to

title: History of the steam engine

text: This boat could typically make 7 to 8 miles per hour, and traveled more than during its short length of service. The Fitch steamboat was not a commercial success, as this route was adequately covered by relatively good wagon roads. In 1802 William Symington built a practical steamboat, and in 1807 Robert Fulton used a Watt steam engine to power the first commercially successful steamboat. Oliver Evans in his turn was in favour of "strong steam" which he applied to boat engines and to stationary uses. He was a pioneer of cylindrical boilers; however Evans' boilers did suffer several serious

title: Compound steam engine

text: Compound steam engine A compound steam engine unit is a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. A typical arrangement for a compound engine is that the steam is first expanded in a high-pressure "(HP)" cylinder, then having given up heat and losing pressure, it exhausts directly into one or more larger-volume low-pressure "(LP)" cylinders. Multiple-expansion engines employ additional cylinders, of progressively lower pressure, to extract further energy from the steam. Invented in 1781, this technique was first employed on a Cornish beam engine in 1804. Around 1850, compound engines were first introduced into

title: History of the steam engine

text: weight and adding a weight around the shaft. This significantly improved speed control. Porter's governor became the leading type by 1880. The efficiency of the Porter-Allen engine was good, but not equal to the Corliss engine. The uniflow engine was the most efficient type of high-pressure engine. It was invented in 1911 and was used in ships, but was displaced by steam turbines and later marine diesel engines. History of the steam engine The first recorded rudimentary steam engine was the aeolipile described by Heron of Alexandria in 1st-century Roman Egypt. Several steam-powered devices were later experimented with or proposed,

title: History of the steam engine

text: boiler explosions, which tended to lend weight to Watt's qualms. He founded the Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company in 1811 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company introduced high-pressure steam engines to the riverboat trade in the Mississippi watershed. The first high-pressure steam engine was invented in 1800 by Richard Trevithick. The importance of raising steam under pressure (from a thermodynamic standpoint) is that it attains a higher temperature. Thus, any engine using high-pressure steam operates at a higher temperature and pressure differential than is possible with a low-pressure vacuum engine. The high-pressure engine thus became the basis for most further development of

title: Corliss steam engine

text: Corliss steam engine A Corliss steam engine (or Corliss engine) is a steam engine, fitted with rotary valves and with variable valve timing patented in 1849, invented by and named after the American engineer George Henry Corliss of Providence, Rhode Island. Engines fitted with Corliss valve gear offered the best thermal efficiency of any type of stationary steam engine until the refinement of the uniflow steam engine and steam turbine in the 20th century. Corliss engines were generally about 30 percent more fuel efficient than conventional steam engines with fixed cutoff. This increased efficiency made steam power more economical than

title: Corliss steam engine

text: fitted with Corliss valve gear. Corliss steam engine A Corliss steam engine (or Corliss engine) is a steam engine, fitted with rotary valves and with variable valve timing patented in 1849, invented by and named after the American engineer George Henry Corliss of Providence, Rhode Island. Engines fitted with Corliss valve gear offered the best thermal efficiency of any type of stationary steam engine until the refinement of the uniflow steam engine and steam turbine in the 20th century. Corliss engines were generally about 30 percent more fuel efficient than conventional steam engines with fixed cutoff. This increased efficiency made

title: Compound steam engine

text: cooling was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his "Woolf high pressure compound engine" in 1805. In the compound engine, high-pressure steam from the boiler first expands in a high-pressure (HP) cylinder and then enters one or more subsequent lower pressure (LP) cylinders. The complete expansion of the steam occurs across multiple cylinders and, as there is less expansion in each cylinder, less heat is lost by the steam in each. This reduces the magnitude of cylinder heating and cooling, making higher expansion ratios practical and increasing the efficiency of the engine. There are other advantages:

title: Marine steam engine

text: time. A triple-expansion engine is a compound engine that expands the steam in three stages—i.e. an engine with three cylinders at three different pressures. A quadruple-expansion engine expands the steam in four stages, and so on. The first successful commercial use was an engine built at Govan in Scotland by Alexander C. Kirk for the SS "Aberdeen" in 1881. Multiple-expansion engine manufacture continued well into the 20th century. All 2,700 Liberty ships built by the United States during World War II were powered by triple-expansion engines, because the capacity of the US to manufacture marine steam turbines was entirely directed

title: Steam engine

text: individual cylinder. A method to lessen the magnitude of energy loss to a very long cylinder was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his "Woolf high-pressure compound engine" in 1805. In the compound engine, high-pressure steam from the boiler expands in a high-pressure (HP) cylinder and then enters one or more subsequent lower-pressure (LP) cylinders. The complete expansion of the steam now occurs across multiple cylinders, with the overall temperature drop within each cylinder reduced considerably. By expanding the steam in steps with smaller temperature range (within each cylinder) the condensation and re-evaporation efficiency issue (described

title: Compound steam engine

text: the harsh railway operating environment and limited space afforded by the loading gauge (particularly in Britain). Compounding was never common on British railways and not employed at all after 1930, but was used in a limited way in many other countries. The first successful attempt to fly a heavier-than-air fixed-wing aircraft solely on steam power occurred in 1933, when George and William Besler converted a Travel Air 2000 biplane to fly on a 150 hp angle-compound V-twin steam engine of their own design instead of the usual Curtiss OX-5 inline or radial aviation gasoline engine it would have normally used.

title: Steam engine

text: is the steam engine indicator. Early versions were in use by 1851, but the most successful indicator was developed for the high speed engine inventor and manufacturer Charles Porter by Charles Richard and exhibited at London Exhibition in 1862. The steam engine indicator traces on paper the pressure in the cylinder throughout the cycle, which can be used to spot various problems and calculate developed horsepower. It was routinely used by engineers, mechanics and insurance inspectors. The engine indicator can also be used on internal combustion engines. See image of indicator diagram below (in "Types of motor units" section). The

title: History of the steam engine

text: back pressure on the exhaust side of the piston. On 21 February 1804, at the Penydarren ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, the first self-propelled railway steam engine or steam locomotive, built by Richard Trevithick, was demonstrated. Around 1811 Richard Trevithick was required to update a Watt pumping engine in order to adapt it to one of his new large cylindrical Cornish boilers. When Trevithick left for South America in 1816, his improvements were continued by William Sims. In a parallel, Arthur Woolf developed a compound engine with two cylinders, so that steam expanded in a high-pressure cylinder before

title: Hornsby-Akroyd oil engine

text: built from 26 June 1891 by Richard Hornsby and Sons, a large manufacturer of steam engines and agricultural equipment, as the "Hornsby Akroyd Patent Oil Engine" under licence and were first sold commercially on 8 July 1892. It was the first internal combustion engine to use a pressurised fuel injection system. The engine was hugely successful. During the period from 1891 through 1905, a total of 32,417 engines were produced. Hornsby-Akroyd oil engine The Hornsby-Akroyd oil engine was the first successful design of internal combustion engine using "heavy oil" as a fuel. It was the first to use a separate

title: Grasshopper beam engine

text: Many grasshopper engines were built as stationary engines. A few notable early steam locomotives used beam engines, all of which were of the grasshopper pattern. Rather more grasshopper engines were built as marine engines. One of the most important uses for the grasshopper engine was as a marine engine for paddle steamers. After Evans' unsuccessful experiments with the "Oruktor Amphibolos", the first successful grasshopper engine was that of the first commercially successful steamboat, the of 1812. In marine use, the grasshopper engine was termed the 'half-lever' engine and used a pair of low-set levers, one each side of the cylinder.

title: Steam engine

text: engines were used in mines and for water supply until the late 19th century. Early builders of stationary steam engines considered that horizontal cylinders would be subject to excessive wear. Their engines were therefore arranged with the piston axis vertical. In time the horizontal arrangement became more popular, allowing compact, but powerful engines to be fitted in smaller spaces. The acme of the horizontal engine was the Corliss steam engine, patented in 1849, which was a four-valve counter flow engine with separate steam admission and exhaust valves and automatic variable steam cutoff. When Corliss was given the Rumford Medal, the

title: Compound steam engine

text: in steamships as by exhausting to a condenser the water could be reclaimed to feed the boiler, which was unable to use seawater. Land-based steam engines could simply exhaust much of their steam, as feed water was usually readily available. Prior to and during World War II, the expansion engine dominated marine applications where high vessel speed was not essential. It was superseded by the steam turbine when speed was required, such as for warships and ocean liners. HMS "Dreadnought" of 1905 was the first major warship to replace the proven technology of the reciprocating engine with the then-novel steam

title: Watt steam engine

text: Watt steam engine The Watt steam engine, alternatively known as the Boulton and Watt steam engine, was the first practical steam engine and was one of the driving forces of the industrial revolution. James Watt developed the design sporadically from 1763 to 1775 with support from Matthew Boulton, Watt's design saved so much on fuel costs compared to earlier designs that they were licenced based on the amount of fuel they would save. Watt never ceased developing the steam engine, introducing double-acting designs (with two cylinders) and various systems for taking off rotary power. Watt's design became synonymous with steam

title: Steam engine

text: corresponding cylinder. Land-based steam engines could exhaust their steam to atmosphere, as feed water was usually readily available. Prior to and during World War I, the expansion engine dominated marine applications, where high vessel speed was not essential. It was, however, superseded by the British invention steam turbine where speed was required, for instance in warships, such as the dreadnought battleships, and ocean liners. of 1905 was the first major warship to replace the proven technology of the reciprocating engine with the then-novel steam turbine. In most reciprocating piston engines, the steam reverses its direction of flow at each stroke

title: Watt steam engine

text: picture shows the model built and tested in 2016. Currently, a project to build and test a 2 kW engine is under preparation. An example of how it was built with its material. Watt steam engine The Watt steam engine, alternatively known as the Boulton and Watt steam engine, was the first practical steam engine and was one of the driving forces of the industrial revolution. James Watt developed the design sporadically from 1763 to 1775 with support from Matthew Boulton, Watt's design saved so much on fuel costs compared to earlier designs that they were licenced based on the

title: History of the steam engine

text: Industrial Revolution, steam engines started to replace water and wind power, and eventually became the dominant source of power in the late 19th century and remaining so into the early decades of the 20th century, when the more efficient steam turbine and the internal combustion engine resulted in the rapid replacement of the steam engines. The steam turbine has become the most common method by which electrical power generators are driven. Investigations are being made into the practicalities of reviving the reciprocating steam engine as the basis for the new wave of advanced steam technology. The earliest known rudimentary steam

title: Marine steam engine

text: are exclusive to marine applications. The side-lever engine was the first type of steam engine widely adopted for marine use in Europe. In the early years of steam navigation (from c1815), the side-lever was the most common type of marine engine for inland waterway and coastal service in Europe, and it remained for many years the preferred engine for oceangoing service on both sides of the Atlantic. The side-lever was an adaptation of the earliest form of steam engine, the beam engine. The typical side-lever engine had a pair of heavy horizontal iron beams, known as side levers, that connected

title: Steam engine

text: Steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force is transformed, by a connecting rod and flywheel, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine. Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is

title: Darby Steam-Digger

text: Darby Steam-Digger The Darby Steam-Digger, a light traction engine, was invented circa 1879 by farmer Thomas Darby and built at Lodge Farm Pleshey, near Chelmsford in Essex, England. Robert Hasler, seen driving the Digger, helped to build this first prototype. In effect the machine was an early tractor designed mainly for ploughing, and could accomplish an hour (1 m²/s) to a maximum depth of 14 inches (360 mm). This first digger was constructed on pedestrian principles and had six "feet" and really did walk over the fields. Unfortunately it jumped too much to be really successful. The digger was later

title: Cutoff (steam engine)

text: maximum start-up forces. But, since there will still be unexploited pressure in the cylinder at the end of the stroke, this is achieved at the expense of engine efficiency. In this situation the steam will still have considerable pressure remaining when it is exhausted resulting in the characteristic “chuff chuff” sound of a steam engine. An early cutoff has greater thermodynamic efficiency but results in a lower Mean effective pressure so less average force on the piston and is used for running the engine at higher speeds. The steam engine is the only thermodynamic engine design that can provide its

title: Steam engine

text: power station (producing several hundred megawatts of electrical output) with steam reheat, economizer etc. will achieve efficiency in the mid 40% range, with the most efficient units approaching 50% thermal efficiency. It is also possible to capture the waste heat using cogeneration in which the waste heat is used for heating a lower boiling point working fluid or as a heat source for district heating via saturated low-pressure steam. Steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push

title: Steam engine

text: a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency. Trevithick visited the Newcastle area later in 1804 and the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of steam locomotives. Trevithick continued his own experiments using a trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in 1808. Only four years later, the successful twin-cylinder locomotive "Salamanca" by Matthew Murray was used by the edge railed rack and pinion Middleton Railway. In 1825 George Stephenson built the "Locomotion" for the Stockton and

title: Steam engine

text: committee said that "no one invention since Watt's time has so enhanced the efficiency of the steam engine". In addition to using 30% less steam, it provided more uniform speed due to variable steam cut off, making it well suited to manufacturing, especially cotton spinning. The first experimental road going steam powered vehicles were built in the late 18th century, but it was not until after Richard Trevithick had developed the use of high-pressure steam, around 1800, that mobile steam engines became a practical proposition. The first half of the 19th century saw great progress in steam vehicle design, and

title: Thomas Savery

text: the late 18th century. Several later pumping systems may be based on Savery's pump. For example, the twin-chamber pulsometer steam pump was a successful development of it. Thomas Savery Thomas Savery (; c. 1650 – 1715) was an English inventor and engineer, born at Shilstone, a manor house near Modbury, Devon, England. He invented the first commercially used steam powered device, a steam pump which is often referred to as an "engine". Savery's "engine" was a revolutionary method of pumping water, which solved the problem of mine drainage and made widespread public water supply practicable. Savery became a military engineer,

title: History of the steam engine

text: same university. When Watt learned that the University owned a small working model of a Newcomen engine, he pressed to have it returned from London where it was being unsuccessfully repaired. Watt repaired the machine, but found it was barely functional even when fully repaired. After working with the design, Watt concluded that 80% of the steam used by the engine was wasted. Instead of providing motive force, it was instead being used to heat the cylinder. In the Newcomen design, every power stroke was started with a spray of cold water, which not only condensed the steam, but also

title: Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company

text: Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company The Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company was the first company to manufacture and sell gasoline powered farm tractors. Based in Waterloo, Iowa, the company was created by John Froelich and a group of Iowa businessmen in 1893, and was originally named the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company. In 1892, Froelich had invented the first practical gasoline-powered tractor, and the new company was given the opportunity to manufacture and sell the tractor Froelich designed. Unfortunately, the tractor was not successful commercially, and of the four tractors built by the company only two were purchased, and these were later

title: Steam engine

text: the boiler or steam generator, and the "motor unit", referred to itself as a "steam engine". Stationary steam engines in fixed buildings may have the boiler and engine in separate buildings some distance apart. For portable or mobile use, such as steam locomotives, the two are mounted together. The widely used reciprocating engine typically consisted of a cast iron cylinder, piston, connecting rod and beam or a crank and flywheel, and miscellaneous linkages. Steam was alternately supplied and exhausted by one or more valves. Speed control was either automatic, using a governor, or by a manual valve. The cylinder casting

title: Steam engine

text: applied for propulsion of large ships throughout most of the 20th century. Although the reciprocating steam engine is no longer in widespread commercial use, various companies are exploring or exploiting the potential of the engine as an alternative to internal combustion engines. The company Energiprojekt AB in Sweden has made progress in using modern materials for harnessing the power of steam. The efficiency of Energiprojekt's steam engine reaches some 27–30% on high-pressure engines. It is a single-step, 5-cylinder engine (no compound) with superheated steam and consumes approx. of steam per kWh. There are two fundamental components of a steam plant:

title: Steam engine

text: the development of modern high-pressure and -temperature boilers and the steam turbine. The efficiency of an engine cycle can be calculated by dividing the energy output of mechanical work that the engine produces by the energy input to the engine by the burning fuel. The historical measure of a steam engine's energy efficiency was its "duty". The concept of duty was first introduced by Watt in order to illustrate how much more efficient his engines were over the earlier Newcomen designs. Duty is the number of foot-pounds of work delivered by burning one bushel (94 pounds) of coal. The best

title: Steam engine

text: engines in power generation, due to lower cost, higher operating speed, and higher efficiency. The first recorded rudimentary steam-powered "engine" was the aeolipile described by Hero of Alexandria, a mathematician and engineer in Roman Egypt in the first century AD. In the following centuries, the few steam-powered "engines" known were, like the aeolipile, essentially experimental devices used by inventors to demonstrate the properties of steam. A rudimentary steam turbine device was described by Taqi al-Din in Ottoman Egypt in 1551 and by Giovanni Branca in Italy in 1629. Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont received patents in 1606 for 50 steam

title: Automotive engine

text: 19th century and almost half the 20th century. The main drawback of the steam engine in automobiles was the fact that operators were required to have full knowledge of boilers and steam engines before operating, as it was detrimental to the engine itself if the operator neglected it. Electric vehicles seemed to be the most viable option, similar to the steam automobiles. It was first invented in the early 1800s, and became a viable option of transportation around 1890, when William Morrison created the first electric car that traveled 14 miles per hour. The electric cars offered low pollution and

title: Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede

text: it was 20 years out of date." Pierre Michaux's son Ernest is credited by L. J. K. Setright and David Burgess-Wise as having first fitted the Perreaux patented engine to the velocipede, while Charles M. Falco says it was Louis-Guillaume Perreaux. The Michaux-Perreaux machine was constructed using the first commercially successful pedal bicycle, a boneshaker which Michaux had been building over 400 of annually since 1863, and the single cylinder alcohol fueled Perreaux engine, which used twin flexible leather belt drives to the rear wheel. A steam pressure gauge was mounted in the rider's view above the front wheel, and

title: Fireman (steam engine)

text: the famous wreck. KFC founder Colonel Sanders worked as a railroad stoker when he was 16 or 17. A 14-year old Martin Luther King Sr. worked as a fireman on the Atlanta railroad. Fireman (steam engine) Fireman or stoker is the job title for someone whose job is to tend the fire for the running of a boiler, to heat a building, power a steam engine, etc. On steam locomotives the term "fireman" is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the term is usually "stoker" (although the British Merchant Navy did

title: Steam car

text: a "car", Verbiest's device is likely to be the first ever engine-powered vehicle. The first real experimental steam powered cars were built in the late 18th and 19th centuries, but it was not until after Richard Trevithick had developed the use of high-pressure steam, around 1800, that mobile steam engines became a practical proposition. By the 1850s it was viable to produce them commercially: steam road vehicles were used for many applications. Development was hampered by adverse legislation from the 1830s and then the rapid development of internal combustion engine technology in the 1900s, leading to their commercial demise. Relatively

title: Oil field engine

text: of the best known include: Oil field engine The term "Oil Field Engine" can refer to any sort of internal combustion engine used as a power source in the production of crude petroleum, but most commonly refers to a class of reciprocating engines built in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is the focus of this article. With the drilling of the first commercially successful oil well by Edwin Drake in 1859, a new industry was born- one that would rapidly demand new technologies for extraction. Initially, the steam engine used for drilling the well was

title: Oil field engine

text: Oil field engine The term "Oil Field Engine" can refer to any sort of internal combustion engine used as a power source in the production of crude petroleum, but most commonly refers to a class of reciprocating engines built in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is the focus of this article. With the drilling of the first commercially successful oil well by Edwin Drake in 1859, a new industry was born- one that would rapidly demand new technologies for extraction. Initially, the steam engine used for drilling the well was kept in-place to lift the

title: Steam engine

text: could be made small enough for transport applications. Thereafter, technological developments and improvements in manufacturing techniques (partly brought about by the adoption of the steam engine as a power source) resulted in the design of more efficient engines that could be smaller, faster, or more powerful, depending on the intended application. The Cornish engine was developed by Trevithick and others in the 1810s. It was a compound cycle engine that used high-pressure steam expansively, then condensed the low-pressure steam, making it relatively efficient. The Cornish engine had irregular motion and torque though the cycle, limiting it mainly to pumping. Cornish

title: Steam engine

text: operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning. The governor was improved over time and coupled with variable steam cut off, good speed control in response to changes in load was attainable near the end of the 19th century. In a simple engine, or "single expansion engine" the charge of steam passes through the entire expansion process in an individual cylinder, although a simple engine may have one or more individual cylinders. It is then exhausted directly into the atmosphere or into a condenser. As steam expands in passing through a high-pressure engine, its temperature drops because no heat is

title: History of the steam engine

text: cooled the walls of the cylinder. This heat had to be replaced before the cylinder would accept steam again. In the Newcomen engine the heat was supplied only by the steam, so when the steam valve was opened again the vast majority condensed on the cold walls as soon as it was admitted to the cylinder. It took a considerable amount of time and steam before the cylinder warmed back up and the steam started to fill it up. Watt solved the problem of the water spray by removing the cold water to a different cylinder, placed beside the power

title: Steam engine

text: Darlington Railway. This was the first public steam railway in the world and then in 1829, he built "The Rocket" which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830 making exclusive use of steam power for both passenger and freight trains. Steam locomotives continued to be manufactured until the late twentieth century in places such as China and the former East Germany (where the DR Class 52.80 was produced). The final major evolution of the steam engine design was the use of steam turbines starting in the late part of the 19th

title: Steam digester

text: Steam digester The steam digester (or bone digester, and also known as Papin’s digester) is a high-pressure cooker invented by French physicist Denis Papin in 1679. It is a device for extracting fats from bones in a high-pressure steam environment, which also renders them brittle enough to be easily ground into bone meal. It is the forerunner of the autoclave and the domestic pressure cooker. The steam-release valve, which was invented for Papin's digester following various explosions of the earlier models, inspired the development of the piston-and-cylinder steam engine. Artificial vacuum was first produced in 1643 by Italian scientist Evangelista

title: History of the steam engine

text: connected to the condenser pressure. Newcomen's indicator diagram, almost all below the atmospheric line, would see a revival nearly 200 years later with the low pressure cylinder of triple expansion engines contributing about 20% of the engine power, again almost completely below the atmospheric line. The first known advocate of "strong steam" was Jacob Leupold in his scheme for an engine that appeared in encyclopaedic works from around 1725. Various projects for steam propelled boats and vehicles also appeared throughout the century one of the most promising being Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's who demonstrated his "fardier" (steam wagon), in 1769. Whilst the

title: Marine steam engine

text: rotational speed than the engine itself ran at. As engines became faster and more powerful through the latter part of the 19th century, gearing was almost universally dispensed with, and the propeller ran at the same rotational speed as the engine. This direct drive arrangement is mechanically most efficient, and reciprocating steam engines are well suited to the rotational speed most efficient for screw propellers. Marine steam engine A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat. This article deals mainly with marine steam engines of the reciprocating type, which were in

title: Uniflow steam engine

text: No 825 of 1913, and No 2212 of 1919, and the Midland Railway Paget locomotive. Experiments were also made in France, Germany, the United States and Russia. In no case were the results encouraging enough for further development to be undertaken. The first large-scale utilization of a Uniflow engine was in Atkinson steam wagons, in 1918. The final commercial evolution of the uniflow engine occurred in the United States during the late 1930s and 1940s by the Skinner Engine Company with the development of the Compound Unaflow Marine Steam Engine. This engine operates in a steeple compound configuration and provides

title: Corliss steam engine

text: power while the barring gears are engaged. The Corliss Steam Engine Company was originally known as Fairbanks, Clark & Co. in the 1830s. In 1843 it was renamed Fairbanks, Bancroft & Co. when Edward Bancroft joined the company. In 1846 it was renamed Bancroft, Nightingale & Co. when George H. Corliss joined the company, and in 1847 it was renamed Corliss, Nightingale and Co. In 1848 the company moved to the Charles Street Railroad Crossing in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1857 the company was renamed for the last time to Corliss Steam Engine Company. By 1864 Corliss bought out his

title: Marine steam engine

text: the same pressure. Since this was by far the most common type of engine in the early period of marine engine development, the term "simple expansion" is rarely encountered. An engine is assumed to be simple-expansion unless otherwise stated. A compound engine is a steam engine that operates cylinders through more than one stage, at different pressure levels. Compound engines were a method of improving efficiency. Until the development of compound engines, steam engines used the steam only once before they recycled it back to the boiler. A compound engine recycles the steam into one or more larger, lower-pressure second

title: Steam engine

text: high temperature steam is condensed as water droplets onto the metal surfaces, significantly reducing the steam available for expansive work. When the expanding steam reaches low pressure (especially during the exhaust stroke), the previously deposited water droplets that had just been formed within the cylinder/ports now boil away (re-evaporation) and this steam does no further work in the cylinder. There are practical limits on the expansion ratio of a steam engine cylinder, as increasing cylinder surface area tends to exacerbate the cylinder condensation and re-evaporation issues. This negates the theoretical advantages associated with a high ratio of expansion in an

title: Model steam engine

text: Model steam engine A model steam engine is a small steam engine built as an educational toy for children (in which case it is also called a toy steam engine) or for adult live steam enthusiasts. Between the 18th and early 20th centuries, demonstration models were also in use at universities and engineering schools, frequently designed and built by students as part of their curriculum. Model steam engines have been made in many forms by a number of manufacturers, but building model steam engines from scratch is popular among adult steam enthusiasts, although this generally requires access to a lathe

title: Steam engine

text: boilers were the main type used for early high-pressure steam (typical steam locomotive practice), but they were to a large extent displaced by more economical water tube boilers in the late 19th century for marine propulsion and large stationary applications. Many boilers raise the temperature of the steam after it has left that part of the boiler where it is in contact with the water. Known as superheating it turns 'wet steam' into 'superheated steam'. It avoids the steam condensing in the engine cylinders, and gives a significantly higher efficiency. In a steam engine, a piston or steam turbine or

title: Steam engine

text: long haul freight operations in Sweden and for express passenger work in Britain, but were not repeated. Elsewhere, notably in the United States, more advanced designs with electric transmission were built experimentally, but not reproduced. It was found that steam turbines were not ideally suited to the railroad environment and these locomotives failed to oust the classic reciprocating steam unit in the way that modern diesel and electric traction has done. An oscillating cylinder steam engine is a variant of the simple expansion steam engine which does not require valves to direct steam into and out of the cylinder. Instead

title: Steam engine

text: Such safety valves traditionally used a simple lever to restrain a plug valve in the top of a boiler. One end of the lever carried a weight or spring that restrained the valve against steam pressure. Early valves could be adjusted by engine drivers, leading to many accidents when a driver fastened the valve down to allow greater steam pressure and more power from the engine. The more recent type of safety valve uses an adjustable spring-loaded valve, which is locked such that operators may not tamper with its adjustment unless a seal illegally is broken. This arrangement is considerably

title: Corliss Steam Engine (Pawnee, Oklahoma)

text: on the National Register of Historic Places on May 7, 1979, with NRIS number 79002016. The application states that the significance of this engine is:"...(1) its position of pre-eminence in the history of American technology, (2) its role in the Industrial development of Oklahoma, and (3) its survival as one of the country's few remaining functional Corliss Engines." A steam engine fitted with rotary valves and having variable valve timing was invented by and named for an American Engineer, George Henry Corliss, in 1849. Engines fitted with Corliss valve gear offered the best thermal efficiency of any type of stationary

title: Model steam engine

text: are either oscillating (single-acting or double-acting) or fixed cylinder using slide-valves, piston valves or poppet valves (normally double-acting). Spring safety valves and steam whistles are other common features of model steam engines. Some stationary engines also have feedwater pumps to replenish boiler water, allowing them to run indefinitely as long as sufficient fuel is available. Model steam engine A model steam engine is a small steam engine built as an educational toy for children (in which case it is also called a toy steam engine) or for adult live steam enthusiasts. Between the 18th and early 20th centuries, demonstration models

title: Steam engine

text: of providing power when rotating in one direction. Therefore, a reversing stage or gearbox is usually required where power is required in the opposite direction. Steam turbines provide direct rotational force and therefore do not require a linkage mechanism to convert reciprocating to rotary motion. Thus, they produce smoother rotational forces on the output shaft. This contributes to a lower maintenance requirement and less wear on the machinery they power than a comparable reciprocating engine. The main use for steam turbines is in electricity generation (in the 1990s about 90% of the world's electric production was by use of steam

title: Steam engine

text: motion to a water pump. Each piston was raised by the steam pressure and returned to its original position by gravity. The two pistons shared a common four way rotary valve connected directly to a steam boiler. The next major step occurred when James Watt developed (1763–1775) an improved version of Newcomen's engine, with a separate condenser. Boulton and Watt's early engines used half as much coal as John Smeaton's improved version of Newcomen's. Newcomen's and Watt's early engines were "atmospheric". They were powered by air pressure pushing a piston into the partial vacuum generated by condensing steam, instead of

title: Cutoff (steam engine)

text: Cutoff (steam engine) In a steam engine, cutoff is the point in the piston stroke at which the inlet valve is closed. On a steam locomotive, the cutoff is controlled by the reversing gear. The point at which the inlet valve closes and stops the entry of steam into the cylinder from the boiler plays a crucial role in the control of a steam engine. Once the valve has closed, steam trapped in the cylinder expands adiabatically. The steam pressure drops as it expands. A late cutoff delivers full steam pressure to move the piston through its entire stroke, for

title: History of the steam engine

text: he ran cold water over the reservoir. Operation required several valves; when the reservoir was empty at the start of a cycle a valve was opened to admit steam. The valve was closed to seal the reservoir and the cooling water valve turned on to condense the steam and create a partial vacuum. A supply valve was opened, pulling water upward into the reservoir, and the typical engine could pull water up to 20 feet. This was closed and the steam valve reopened, building pressure over the water and pumping it upward, as in the Worcester design. The cycle essentially

title: Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company

text: Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company The Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company, originally the Pittsburgh Engine Company was a company founded in 1811 by Oliver Evans to manufacture high-pressure steam engines. It opened for business soon after Fulton's low-pressure "New Orleans" left Pittsburgh on her maiden voyage as the first steamboat west of the Appalachian Mountains. In addition to engines, the company made other heavy equipment and iron castings, including anchors used by Commodore Perry in the War of 1812 in Lake Erie. It manufactured rolling mills for the iron industry as well. It was located at the corner of Front Street and

title: Uniflow steam engine

text: generate about 25 kW electrical output. The single-acting uniflow steam engine configuration closely resembles that of a two-stroke internal combustion engine, and it is possible to convert a two-stroke engine to a uniflow steam engine by feeding the cylinder with steam via a "bash valve" fitted in place of the spark plug. As the rising piston nears the top of its stroke, it knocks open the bash valve to admit a pulse of steam. The valve closes automatically as the piston descends, and the steam is exhausted through the existing cylinder porting. The inertia of the flywheel then carries the

title: Uniflow steam engine

text: piston back to the top of its stroke against the compression, as it does in the original form of the engine. Also like the original, the conversion is not self-starting and must be turned over by an external power source to start. An example of such a conversion is the steam-powered moped, which is started by pedalling. Uniflow steam engine The uniflow type of steam engine uses steam that flows in one direction only in each half of the cylinder. Thermal efficiency is increased in the compound and multiple expansion types of steam engine by separating expansion into steps in

title: Watt steam engine

text: walls of the cylinder were alternately heated, then cooled with each stroke. Each charge of steam introduced would continue condensing until the cylinder approached working temperature once again. So at each stroke part of the potential of the steam was lost. In 1763, James Watt was working as instrument maker at the University of Glasgow when he was assigned the job of repairing a model Newcomen engine and noted how inefficient it was. In 1765, Watt conceived the idea of equipping the engine with a separate condensation chamber, which he called a "condenser". Because the condenser and the working cylinder

title: Stationary steam engine

text: electricity supply and the internal combustion engine became more widespread. There are different patterns of stationary steam engines, distinguished by the layout of the cylinders and crankshaft: Stationary engines may be classified by secondary characteristics as well: When stationary engines had multiple cylinders, they could be classified as: An engine could be run in simple or condensing mode: Stationary engines may also be classified by their application: Stationary engines could be classified by the manufacturer In order of evolution: This series reproduces some 1,500 images from the Steam Engine Record made by George Watkins between 1930 and 1980, which is

title: Engine

text: device was described by Taqi al-Din in 1551 and by Giovanni Branca in 1629. In the 13th century, the solid rocket motor was invented in China. Driven by gunpowder, this simplest form of internal combustion engine was unable to deliver sustained power, but was useful for propelling weaponry at high speeds towards enemies in battle and for fireworks. After invention, this innovation spread throughout Europe. The Watt steam engine was the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to drive the piston helped by a partial vacuum. Improving on the design

title: Marine steam engine

text: cylinder simple engines, and/or more than one engine. A double acting engine is an engine where steam is applied to both sides of the piston. Earlier steam engines applied steam in only one direction, allowing momentum or gravity to return the piston to its starting place, but a double acting engine uses steam to force the piston in both directions, thus increasing rotational speed and power. Like the term "simple engine", the term "double acting" is less frequently encountered in the literature since almost all marine engines were of the double acting type. These terms refer to the orientation of

title: The Engine Collection

text: The name, Otto, is also seen in the, Otto-Motor, synonymous of the conventional, 4-stroke engine, which was invented by Niklaus August Otto (1832 - 1891) a little less than a decade after the same Otto co-invented the atmospheric engine. The Otto-engine is a technological pillar stone of modern society. For example the 4-stroke Otto-Engine is the working principle behind the car engine. After the heyday of the steam engines, and before electrification lead to electric motors being the main power source for machines, the stationary combustion engine was an important power source in industry and farming. The stationary internal combustion

title: Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company

text: Redoubt Alley in Downtown Pittsburgh blocks from the Monongahela wharf. Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company The Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company, originally the Pittsburgh Engine Company was a company founded in 1811 by Oliver Evans to manufacture high-pressure steam engines. It opened for business soon after Fulton's low-pressure "New Orleans" left Pittsburgh on her maiden voyage as the first steamboat west of the Appalachian Mountains. In addition to engines, the company made other heavy equipment and iron castings, including anchors used by Commodore Perry in the War of 1812 in Lake Erie. It manufactured rolling mills for the iron industry as well.

title: Watt steam engine

text: a similar Newcomen one. In 1775, Watt designed two large engines: one for the Bloomfield Colliery at Tipton, completed in March 1776, and one for John Wilkinson's ironworks at Willey, Shropshire, which was at work the following month. A third engine, at Stratford-le-Bow in east London, was also working that summer. Watt had tried unsuccessfully for several years to obtain an accurately bored cylinder for his steam engines, and was forced to use hammered iron, which was out of round and caused leakage past the piston. Joseph Wickham Roe stated in 1916: "When [John] Smeaton saw the first engine he

title: Steam engine

text: (counterflow), entering and exhausting from the same end of the cylinder. The complete engine cycle occupies one rotation of the crank and two piston strokes; the cycle also comprises four "events" – admission, expansion, exhaust, compression. These events are controlled by valves often working inside a "steam chest" adjacent to the cylinder; the valves distribute the steam by opening and closing steam "ports" communicating with the cylinder end(s) and are driven by valve gear, of which there are many types. The simplest valve gears give events of fixed length during the engine cycle and often make the engine rotate in

title: Uniflow steam engine

text: Uniflow steam engine The uniflow type of steam engine uses steam that flows in one direction only in each half of the cylinder. Thermal efficiency is increased in the compound and multiple expansion types of steam engine by separating expansion into steps in separate cylinders; in the uniflow design, thermal efficiency is achieved by having a temperature gradient along the cylinder. Steam always enters at the hot ends of the cylinder and exhausts through ports at the cooler centre. By this means, the relative heating and cooling of the cylinder walls is reduced. Steam entry is usually controlled by poppet

title: Marine steam engine

text: cylinders first, to use more of its heat energy. Compound engines could be configured to either increase a ship's economy or its speed. Broadly speaking, a compound engine can refer to a steam engine with any number of different-pressure cylinders—however, the term usually refers to engines that expand steam through only two stages, i.e., those that operate cylinders at only two different pressures (or "double-expansion" engines). Note that a compound engine (including multiple-expansion engines, see below) can have more than one "set" of variable-pressure cylinders. For example, an engine might have two cylinders operating at pressure x and two operating

title: Marine steam engine

text: to the beam or side-lever engine. This type of engine had two identical, vertical engine cylinders arranged side-by-side, whose piston rods were attached to a common, T-shaped crosshead. The vertical arm of the crosshead extended down between the two cylinders and was attached at the bottom to both the crankshaft connecting rod and to a guide block that slid between the vertical sides of the cylinders, enabling the assembly to maintain the correct path as it moved. The Siamese engine was invented by British engineer Joseph Maudslay (son of Henry), but although he invented it after his oscillating engine (see

title: Steam engine

text: the power of steam and atmospheric pressure and knowledge of properties of heat and steam. The experimental measurements made by Watt on a model steam engine led to the development of the separate condenser. Watt independently discovered latent heat, which was confirmed by the original discoverer Joseph Black, who also advised Watt on experimental procedures. Watt was also aware of the change in the boiling point of water with pressure. Otherwise, the improvements to the engine itself were more mechanical in nature. The thermodynamic concepts of the Rankine cycle did give engineers the understanding needed to calculate efficiency which aided

title: Steam engine

text: by the 1850s it was becoming viable to produce them on a commercial basis. This progress was dampened by legislation which limited or prohibited the use of steam powered vehicles on roads. Improvements in vehicle technology continued from the 1860s to the 1920s. Steam road vehicles were used for many applications. In the 20th century, the rapid development of internal combustion engine technology led to the demise of the steam engine as a source of propulsion of vehicles on a commercial basis, with relatively few remaining in use beyond the Second World War. Many of these vehicles were acquired by

title: Steam engine

text: Papin. Newcomen's engine was relatively inefficient, and mostly used for pumping water. It worked by creating a partial vacuum by condensing steam under a piston within a cylinder. It was employed for draining mine workings at depths hitherto impossible, and for providing reusable water for driving waterwheels at factories sited away from a suitable "head". Water that passed over the wheel was pumped up into a storage reservoir above the wheel. In 1720 Jacob Leupold described a two-cylinder high-pressure steam engine. The invention was published in his major work "Theatri Machinarum Hydraulicarum". The engine used two heavy pistons to provide

title: Corliss steam engine

text: configured as two cylinders side-by-side. Each cylinder was bored to with a stroke of . The Centennial Engine was tall, had a flywheel in diameter, and produced . After the fair it was disassembled and shipped back to Corliss's plant in Providence. Seven years later it was sold and powered a Chicago factory owned by George Pullman until 1910, when it was sold as scrap. This engine became a cultural icon, so much so that to many modern historians the term Corliss Engine (or Corliss Steam Engine) refers to this specific engine and not to the broad class of engines

title: Steam engine

text: must be emitted as waste heat at relatively low temperature. The simplest cold sink is to vent the steam to the environment. This is often used on steam locomotives to avoid the weight and bulk of condensers. Some of the released steam is vented up the chimney so as to increase the draw on the fire, which greatly increases engine power, but reduces efficiency. Sometimes the waste heat from the engine is useful itself, and in those cases very high overall efficiency can be obtained. Steam engines in stationary power plants use surface condensers as a cold sink. The condensers

title: Marine steam engine

text: straight line between the two. The configuration is similar to that of a modern internal combustion engine (one notable difference being that the steam engine is double acting, see below, whereas almost all internal combustion engines generate power only in the downward stroke). Vertical engines are sometimes referred to as "hammer", "forge hammer" or "steam hammer" engines, due to their roughly similar appearance to another common 19th-century steam technology, the steam hammer. Vertical engines came to supersede almost every other type of marine steam engine toward the close of the 19th century. Because they became so common, vertical engines are

title: Expansion valve (steam engine)

text: Expansion valve (steam engine) An expansion valve is a device in steam engine valve gear that improves engine efficiency. It operates by closing off the supply of steam early, before the piston has travelled through its full stroke. This cut-off allows the steam to then expand within the cylinder. This expanding steam is still sufficient to drive the piston, even though its pressure decreases as it expands. As less steam is supplied in the shorter time for which the valve is open, use of the expansion valve reduces the steam consumed and thus the fuel required. The engine (on 1875

title: Steam engine

text: popular with large passenger liners (such as the "Olympic" class), but this was ultimately replaced by the virtually vibration-free turbine engine. It is noted, however, that triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines were used to drive the World War II Liberty ships, by far the largest number of identical ships ever built. Over 2700 ships were built, in the United States, from a British original design. The image to the right shows an animation of a triple-expansion engine. The steam travels through the engine from left to right. The valve chest for each of the cylinders is to the left of the

title: Expansion valve (steam engine)

text: An engine working with an expansion valve set to an early cut-off is thus less powerful than with the valve fully open. Accordingly, the engine must now be "driven", so that the valve is manually adjusted as the load on the engine changes. An engine running under light load may be operated efficiently with an early cut-off, an engine under heavy load may require a longer cut-off and the cost of more steam consumption. When Trevithick supplied his 1801 engine for a rolling mill at Tredegar Iron Works, the engine was more powerful when worked without expansion and Samuel Homfray,

title: History of the steam engine

text: of the cylinder and introducing low-pressure steam above the piston. Now the power was not due to the difference of atmospheric pressure and the vacuum, but the pressure of the steam and the vacuum, a somewhat higher value. On the upward return stroke, the steam on top was transferred through a pipe to the underside of the piston ready to be condensed for the downward stroke. Sealing of the piston on a Newcomen engine had been achieved by maintaining a small quantity of water on its upper side. This was no longer possible in Watt's engine due to the presence

title: Marine steam engine

text: not usually referred to as such, but are instead referred to based upon their cylinder technology, i.e. as compound, triple-expansion, quadruple-expansion etc. It should be noted that the term "vertical" for this type of engine is imprecise, since technically any type of steam engine is "vertical" if the cylinder is vertically oriented. An engine someone describes as "vertical" might not be of the vertical inverted direct-acting type, unless they use the term "vertical" without qualification. A simple-expansion engine is a steam engine that expands the steam through only one stage, which is to say, all its cylinders are operated at

title: Watt steam engine

text: condenser that was communicated to the space of the cylinder by the connecting passage. External atmospheric pressure then pushed the piston down the cylinder. The separation of the cylinder and condenser eliminated the loss of heat that occurred when steam was condensed in the working cylinder of a Newcomen engine. This gave the Watt engine greater efficiency than the Newcomen engine, reducing the amount of coal consumed while doing the same amount of work as a Newcomen engine. In Watt's design, the cold water was injected only into the condensation chamber. This type of condenser is known as a "jet

title: History of the steam engine

text: the displacement of the cylinder, combustion and evaporation rates and condenser capacity. Maximum theoretical efficiency was limited by the relatively low temperature differential on either side of the piston; this meant that for a Watt engine to provide a usable amount of power, the first production engines had to be very large, and were thus expensive to build and install. Watt developed a double-acting engine in which steam drove the piston in both directions, thereby increasing the engine speed and efficiency. The double-acting principle also significantly increased the output of a given physical sized engine. Boulton & Watt developed the

title: Stirling engine

text: the best steam engines whose efficiency was about 10%. After James Stirling, such efficiency was possible only thanks to the use of the economiser (or regenerator). The Stirling engine (or Stirling's air engine as it was known at the time) was invented and patented in 1816. It followed earlier attempts at making an air engine but was probably the first put to practical use when, in 1818, an engine built by Stirling was employed pumping water in a quarry. The main subject of Stirling's original patent was a heat exchanger, which he called an "economiser" for its enhancement of fuel