Newcomen and Watt Steam Engines A man before my time named Thomas Newcomen was an English blacksmith, who invented a steam engine. Steam was admitted to a cylinder, and cooled by a jet of cold water, and the vacuum created on the inside of the cylinder allowed pressure to operate a piston, which was forced downward on its working stroke. Newcomen engines were slow and inefficient, but they were better than any other device yet invented for pumping water out of mines.
I, James Watt was introduced to the steam engine given to repair as part of my instrument-making duties for the University of Glasgow in 1765. My solution to the inefficient engine by Newcomen was to fit it with a separate condenser, which could be connected to the cylinder by a valve. The condenser would be kept cool, while the cylinder would be kept hot (something Newcomen did not do).
English: Watt's steam engine at the lobby of the H...
English: Watt steam engine.
Photo of model Newcomen steam engine at University...Although I patented my separate condenser in 1769, it was some years before I was able operating the engine. My partnership with Mathew Boulton, we had contract with John Wilkinson for making correctly machined cylinders, we requested that Parliament extend the patent until 1800 (instead of letting it expire in 1783), We made numerous other improvements to my original design to insure the quality of the Watt engine better than the Newcomen. My engines were originally used for pumping out mine shafts, but within two decades they were powering rotary drive shafts in other machinery. To an extent my engine was responsible for many of the improvements in life throughout the Industrial Revolution.
My evolvement in the steam engine over time helped a man named Richard Trevithick. He created the first steam powered locomotive. A locomotive was a vehicle with an engine that runs on railroad tracks. It pulled other vehicles behind it. Trevithick's locomotive could pull seventy people along ten miles of railroad tracks. It was powered by a steam engine.
Not everyone liked his new way of traveling. One scientist thought that his high-speed train travel could make the brains fall out. Some farmers disliked like train because the smoke and the noise scared cows and horses. But people wanted to still wanted to use steam trains to go long distances.
Trevithick's great invention of the train/railroad changed the way people lived. People could buy vegetables and fresh milk that the train had transported from faraway places. People could visit faraway places too, or live in the country and catch a ride into the city by train. Trains in the city change how people traveled. Before Trevithick's train, mules and horses pulled trolley cars on tracks. They did not go very fast. Sometimes the horse pulled the car off the tracks by accident, and everyone had to get out and push the car back on again.
I am very proud of what my steam engine, witch I made better from Thomas Newcomen's engine. I am very proud of what is happening with the engine. And I hope it continues to grow and get better.
Animation of a schematic Newcomen steam engine. St...
English: Watt steam engine.
English: Thurston Robert H: History of the Growth ...