page_title: Lap Engine
section_title: Innovations
hierarchical_section_title: Lap Engine / Innovations
caption_attribution_description: English: Model of Matthew Boulton &amp; Jamse Watt's 1788 Lap Steam Engine. Commissioned for display in Birmingham Science Museum. Editing undertaken: Unsharp Mask
context_page_description: The Lap Engine is a beam engine designed by James Watt, built by Boulton and Watt in 1788. It is now preserved at the Science Museum, London.
  It is important as both an early example of a beam engine by Boulton and Watt, and also mainly as illustrating an important innovative step in their development for its ability to produce rotary motion.
  The engines name comes from its use in Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory, where it was used to drive a line of 43 polishing or lapping machines, used for the production of buttons and buckles.
context_section_description: Watt did not invent the steam engine and there is no single 'Watt steam engine' as such. He developed a number of separate innovations, each of which improved the existing engines of the day, beginning with Newcomen's.  The Lap Engine of 1788, also the Whitbread Engine (1785), represent survivors of the first engines to show all of Watt's major improvements in one.
caption: A 1950 model of the engine, now in Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum
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