A Forerunner to the Industrial Revolution

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen patented the atmospheric steam engine. Together with John Calley, he built the first engine on top of a water filled mine shaft and used it to pump water out of the mine.



In 1769, James Watt patented a design for improving the efficiency of the Newcomen engine by separating the condensing chamber. Instead of heating and then cooling a single chamber over and over again, Watt's engine would keep one cylinder always hot so that it could receive steam from the boiler, and the second cylinder always cool so that the steam passed to it from the first chamber would condense into water. This water could then be drawn off and recycled for use by the boiler.


Watt's engine soon became the dominant design for all modern steam engines and a unit of power was named after him, the Watt equal to 1/746 of a horsepower.  In 1774, Watt started a business in Birmingham with investor Matthew Boulton to manufacture his improved steam engine. The Boulton & Watt Company produced steam engines that could be used anywhere, and demand for them was high. Watt and Boulton became leading figures in the Industrial Revolution.


During his childhood in Scotland, enjoyed Watt making models in his father's carpenter's workshop, and at the time he invented the condensing chamber was providing models to Joseph Black, a Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University, to use in his lectures on the properties of heat.  He probably would have approved of the model engineers, such as my late father, who continue to enjoy the hobby, and the model steam engine shown was built by my father using castings from a long standing firm, Stuart Turner.