50 NETWORK HISTORY
No More Heroes, or why timing in engineering is
everything, by Justin Pollard
the eccentric engineer
Aquarius Collection
win!
IF THERE’S a single iconic
invention in the history of
engineering and technology
it has to be the steam engine.
Its story is often told, and every
British schoolchild knows it
was invented by Thomas
Newcomen. Well, not quite.
Newcomen was an inventor in
the days when, unless you were
an aristocrat with a lot of spare
time, being a scientist wasn’t
considered a very good job.
Coming from humble Devonport
stock he was of a class known as
schemers and was generally
referred to as a blacksmith.
Newcomen went to the mines of
Cornwall to study the problem of
pumping water out of deep
diggings but, despite being the
‘father of the steam engine’, one
of the first things he came across
there was... a steam engine.
This steam engine had been
built by Thomas Savery, who
wrote about it in his book ‘An
engine to raise water by fire’.
Savery, who was much posher
than Newcomen, had the grand
title of military engineer
although that didn’t stop those in
charge from snubbing him.
When he suggested to the
Admiralty a novel little idea he’d
had for propelling a ship using
paddle wheels, they couldn’t see
why they should “...have
interloping people, that have no
concern with us, to pretend to
contrive or invent things for us”?
Savery built his ship anyway
and paddled it up and down the
Engineering & Technology August 2007 www.theiet.org/engtechmag
Dutch astronomer Christian
Huygens, who had designed an
engine driven by gunpowder.
By now you’re probably
wondering who then actually did
invent the steam engine, and the
answer is simple – none of the
above, for the steam engine had
been invented over 1,600 years
before. The only problem was noone wanted it. The first steam
powered device wasn’t a simple
steam engine, it was a fully
formed jet turbine, invented
sometime in the first century AD
by Hero of Alexandria. It
consisted of a boiler leading to a
freely rotating copper sphere
with two angled outlets. As the
pressure built up in the sphere,
steam shot out of the angled
nozzles, making the whole thing
spin round like a Catherine
Wheel. At the time it was the
fastest moving man-made object
in the world. So impressed were
the Romans, who then ruled
Egypt, that they totally ignored
the device. Had they taken it
seriously, the industrial
revolution might have started
2,000, rather than 300 years ago.
Hero’s problem was not a
matter of what he did but of
when he did it. Romans had
slaves and the last thing they
wanted was a machine that gave
them time to, say, revolt. Hero
had simply invented it too early
leaving Newcomen to take the
laurels a millennia-and-a-half
later – which just goes to show
that in engineering, timing is
everything. I
Rex
he later changed this to ‘the
miner’s friend’. His real problem
however was that his engines
were weak and used a huge
amount of fuel to lift a small
quantity of water. In short,
donkeys and buckets were better.
Mine owners were also rather
frightened that his great hissing
boilers might explode – which of
course they did. Even after they
had been fitted with pressure
valves (invented by Desaguliers),
they could still go wrong, as
operators had the habit of
putting weights on the valve
to create more steam
pressure and hence get
their job done quicker.
Without humans to do the hard
work the Romans might have taken This was usually the
more interest in Hero’s prototype
last bright idea they
steam engine, but what did the
ever had.
slaves think? The best suggestion
Newcomen realised
Thames,
wins a prize. Send your entries
that Savery had gone
but no-one
to features editor Vitali
about the whole thing
important
Vitaliev at
back-to-front. Savery used
was watching
[email protected]
steam pressure to push a
so he turned his
plunger up a piston. This meant
skills to inventing an
you needed high steam pressure
engine for pumping out mines.
in a boiler which led to
Well, at least that depends to
explosions. So Newcomen
some degree on your definition
invented the ‘atmospheric
of ‘inventing’. There are
engine’, which gained its power
rumours that Savery based his
from the huge pressure of the
work on that of Edward
atmosphere all around us.
Somerset, Second Marquis of
Newcomen filled a piston with
Worcester, who a century earlier
steam and then suddenly cooled
had pondered the knotty
it, using water. This made the
problem of perpetual motion.
steam condense out, creating a
Another possible inventor of the
partial vacuum in the piston
steam engine, Jean Theophile
tube which led to atmospheric
Desaguliers claimed that Savery
pressure outside pushing the
not only read Worcester’s book,
piston back down. Atmospheric
but bought all the copies and
burnt them so that he could
pressure is enormous compared
claim to have invented the
to the pressure in a dodgy ‘Papin
engine himself. Then there was
pressure cooker’, so his engine
the fact that Savery certainly
was much more powerful.
based his boiler on Frenchman
And was the world impressed?
Denis Papin’s ‘digester’ or
No. Desaguliers grudgingly
‘pressure cooker’ of 1679.
admitted that Newcomen and his
Even if Savery did borrow and
partner John Calley had found a
improve other people’s ideas he
good solution but added: “Not
can still be credited with first
being either philosophers to
realizing in practise what
understand the reason, or
Worcester called his “semimathematicians enough to
omnipotent and water
calculate the powers and
commanding engine”. Having
proportions of the parts, they
perfected his model, he proudly
very luckily, by accident, found
displayed it at Hampton Court to
what they sought for.”
King William III, who granted
The very celebrated Robert
him a patent in 1689. But things
Hooke was even more dismissive
did not work out well for Savery.
and told them they should never
Firstly, he decided to call his
proceed with the idea in the first
invention a ‘fire engine’ which
place. Perhaps Hooke was trying
was rather confusing, although
to buy time for his friend, the
쐽 July’s caption winner was Bob
Wright of Wirral, UK who wins a set
of Moixa USBCell batteries, AA
cells that can be recharged simply
by plugging into a USB port. His
winning entry is: “OK, OK, I’ll
decrease the radius to 2 mille so
your chariot garage will be outside
the congestion charge zone.”