Living at Dartmouth, within some fifteen miles of Savery’s home, were two men, Newcomen, an ironmonger, and Cawley, a glazier. These two had, doubtless, every opportunity of seeing Savery’s engine at work. They appreciated its limitations and defects, and, undertaking the task of improving it, they so transformed the steam engine that within a short time their design had almost entirely superseded the more primitive form. Here, too, it might be said that they invented nothing. The merit of their new machine consisted in the achievement in practical form of ideas which hitherto had had scarcely more than an academic value. The labours of others gave them valuable aid. Newcomen, it is certain, could claim considerable knowledge of science, and though little is known of his personality there is evidence that he had pursued for years the object which he now achieved. He knew of the previous forms of piston engine which had been invented. He had probably read a translation, published in the _Philosophical Transactions_, of Papin’s proposal for an atmospheric engine with a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. He obtained from Savery the idea of a separate boiler, and other details. And where Papin had failed, Newcomen and his partner succeeded. Their Atmospheric Steam Engine, as it was aptly called, was produced in the year 1705, and at once proved its superiority over the old “Miner’s Friend.” It had assumed an entirely new form. In a large-bore vertical cylinder a brass piston was fitted, with a leather flap round its edge and a layer of water standing on it to form a seal against the passage of steam or air. The top of the cylinder was open to the atmosphere, the bottom was connected by a pipe with a spherical boiler. The piston was suspended by a chain to one end of an overhanging timber beam, which was mounted on a brick structure so as to be capable of oscillating on a gudgeon or axis at its middle. One end of this beam was vertically over the piston; at the other end was the bucket of a water-pump, also attached to a crosspiece or “horse-head,” by means of a chain or rod. The whole machine formed a huge structure like a pair of scales, one of which (the water-pump) was loaded with weights so as to be slightly heavier than the other (the steam engine). [Illustration: NEWCOMEN’S ENGINE]