Lives of Boulton and Watt. Principally from the Original Soho Mss.: Comprising also a history of the invention and introduction of the steam engineSmiles, Samuel
History
Lives of Boulton and Watt. Principally from the Original Soho Mss.: Comprising also a history of the invention and introduction of the steam engine
Another account[41] states that a draft of Savery’s engine having come
under Newcomen’s notice, he proceeded to make a model of it, which he
fixed in his garden, and soon found out its imperfections. He entered
into a correspondence on the subject with the learned and ingenious Dr.
Hooke, then Secretary to the Royal Society, a man of remarkable ingenuity,
and of great mechanical sagacity and insight. Newcomen had heard or read
of Papin’s proposed method of transmitting motive power to a distance by
creating a vacuum under a piston in a cylinder, and transmitting the power
through pipes to a second cylinder near the mine. Dr. Hooke dissuaded
Newcomen from erecting a machine on this principle, as a waste of time and
labour; but he added the pregnant suggestion, “could he (meaning Papin)
make a speedy vacuum under your piston, your work were done.”
[40] Switzer, ‘Introduction to a System of Hydrostatics and
Hydraulics,’ p. 342.
[41] Harris, ‘Lexicon Technicum.’
The capital idea thus cursorily thrown out--of introducing a moveable
diaphragm between the active power and the vacuum--set Newcomen at
once upon the right track. Though the suggestion was merely that of a
thoughtful bystander, it was a most important step in the history of the
invention, for it contained the very principle of the atmospheric engine.
Savery created his vacuum by the condensation of steam in a closed vessel,
and Papin created his by exhausting the air in a cylinder fitted with a
piston, by means of an air-pump. It remained for Newcomen to combine the
two expedients--to secure a sudden vacuum by the condensation of steam;
but, instead of employing Savery’s closed vessel, he made use of Papin’s
cylinder fitted with a piston. After long scheming and many failures,
he at length succeeded, in the year 1705,[42] in contriving a model that
worked with tolerable precision; after which he sought for an opportunity
of exhibiting its powers in a full-sized working engine. It ought to be
mentioned, that in the long course of experiments conducted by Newcomen
with the object of finding out the new motive power, he was zealously
assisted throughout by one John Calley, a glazier of Dartmouth, of whom
nothing further is known than that he was Newcomen’s intimate friend,
of the same religious persuasion, and afterwards his partner in the
steam-engine enterprise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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