Savery, coming on the stage at more nearly the right time to seize upon an opportunity, gained more than either of his predecessors; but we have no evidence that he ever acquired any large compensation or met with any remarkable business success in the introduction of the rude engine which bore his name; nor did Desaguliers, the great philosopher, or even Smeaton, the great engineer, of the later years of that century, make any great success of it. It was reserved for Watt to reap the harvest. But, though he so effectively reaped where his predecessors had sown, Watt is not the greatest of the inventors of the steam engine, if we rate his standing by the magnitude of the improvement which marked his reconstruction of the engine. It was NEWCOMEN who made the modern steam engine. When Newcomen came forward the labors of Worcester in Great Britain had sufficed to attract the attention of all intelligent men to the character of the problem to be solved, and to convince them of its importance and promise. The work of Savery had shown the practicability of the solution of the problem, both in mechanics and finance. He succeeded, though under great disadvantages and comparatively inefficiently. Once the task had been performed, though ever so rudely, the rest came easily and promptly. The defects of the Savery system were at once recognized; its great wastes of heat and of steam were noted, and the fact that they were inherent in the system itself was perceived. A complete change of type of machine was obviously requisite; it was this which constituted the greatest invention in the whole history of the steam engine, from Hero's time to our own; and to Newcomen we owe more than to any other man who ever lived, the value of the invention itself being considered, and the importance of the services of its introducer being left out of consideration. No such complete and vital improvement and modification of the machine has ever been effected by any other man, Watt and Corliss not excepted. Newcomen and his comrade Calley--we do not know how the honors should be divided--produced the modern steam engine. Its predecessor, the Savery engine, had been a mere steam "squirt." Newcomen constructed an engine. Savery built a simple combination of cylindrical or ellipsoidal vessels which wastefully and at once performed all the several offices of engine, pump, condenser, and boiler; Newcomen divided the several elements among as many parts, each especially adapted to the performance of its task in the most effective manner--the condenser excepted; for that was Watt's principal invention--and thus produced the first steam engine in the modern sense of that term.