From documents which have been preserved in the Royal Society, it appears that Newcomen was acquainted with Papin's writings, and therefore probably first derived from them the suggestion which he subsequently realised in the atmospheric engine. Among some papers of Dr. Hooke's have been found notes for the use of Newcomen, on Papin's method of transmitting the force of a stream or fall of water to a distance by pipes. Hooke dissuaded Newcomen from attempting any machine on this principle, which, as first proposed by Papin, was impracticable. He exposed the fallacy of Papin's first project in several discourses before the Royal Society, and considered his improved edition of it, though free from fallacy, as impracticable. Papin's project for producing a vacuum under a piston by condensing the steam having been published in the _Actæ Eruditorum_, in Latin, in 1690, and in French, at Cassel, in 1695, and subsequently, in the _Philosophical Transactions_, in England in 1697, cannot be supposed to be unknown to Dr. Hooke; and if known to him, would probably have been communicated to Newcomen. Dr. Hooke died in 1703, some years before the date of Newcomen's invention. John Cawley, who was the associate of Newcomen in his experiments and inquiries, was a plumber and glazier of the same town. Newcomen and Cawley obtained a patent for the atmospheric engine in 1705, in which Savery was associated, he having previously obtained a patent for the method of producing a vacuum by the condensation of steam, which was essential to Newcomen's contrivance. It was not, however, until about the year 1711 that any engine had been constructed under this patent. In the latter end of that year, according to Desaguliers, the patentees "made proposals to drain a colliery at Griff, in [Pg065] Warwickshire, in which work five hundred horses were constantly employed. This proposal not being accepted, they contracted, in the following March, to drain water for Mr. Back of Wolverhampton, where, after many laborious attempts, they succeeded in making their engine work; but not being either philosophers to understand the reason, or mathematicians enough to calculate the power and proportions of the parts, they very luckily, by accident, found what they sought for." [Illustration: _Fig._ 14.]