Steam, Its Generation and UseBabcock & Wilcox Company
History
Steam, Its Generation and Use
Babcock & Wilcox Company
Steam-boilers, Water-tube
In 1675, Sir Samuel Moreland was decorated by King Charles II, for a
demonstration of "a certain powerful machine to raise water." Though
there appears to be no record of the design of this machine, the
mathematical dictionary, published in 1822, credits Moreland with the
first account of a steam engine, on which subject he wrote a treatise
that is still preserved in the British Museum.
[Illustration: 397 Horse-power Babcock & Wilcox Boiler in Course of
Erection at the Plant of the Crocker Wheeler Co., Ampere, N. J.]
Dr. Denys Papin, an ingenious Frenchman, invented in 1680 "a steam
digester for extracting marrowy, nourishing juices from bones by
enclosing them in a boiler under heavy pressure," and finding danger
from explosion, added a contrivance which is the first safety valve on
record.
The steam engine first became commercially successful with Thomas
Savery. In 1699, Savery exhibited before the Royal Society of England
(Sir Isaac Newton was President at the time), a model engine which
consisted of two copper receivers alternately connected by a three-way
hand-operated valve, with a boiler and a source of water supply. When
the water in one receiver had been driven out by the steam, cold water
was poured over its outside surface, creating a vacuum through
condensation and causing it to fill again while the water in the other
reservoir was being forced out. A number of machines were built on this
principle and placed in actual use as mine pumps.
The serious difficulty encountered in the use of Savery's engine was the
fact that the height to which it could lift water was limited by the
pressure the boiler and vessels could bear. Before Savery's engine was
entirely displaced by its successor, Newcomen's, it was considerably
improved by Desaguliers, who applied the Papin safety valve to the
boiler and substituted condensation by a jet within the vessel for
Savery's surface condensation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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