cessing, using a boiler under heavy pressure.

To avoid
explosion, Papin added a device which is the first safety
valve on record. Papin also invented a boiler with an
internal firebox, the earliest record of such construction.
Many experiments concentrated on using steam
pressure or atmospheric pressure combined with a
vacuum. The result was the first commercially successful steam engine, patented by
Thomas Savery in
1698, to pump water by direct displacement (Fig. 5).
The patent credits Savery with an engine for raising
water by the impellant force of fire, meaning steam.
The mining industry needed the invention, but the
engine had a limited pumping height set by the pressure the boiler and other
vessels could withstand.
Before its replacement by Thomas Newcomen�s engine
(described below), John Desaguliers improved the
Savery engine, adding the Papin safety valve and using an internal jet for the
condensing part of the cycle.
Steam engine developments continued and the earliest cylinder-and-piston unit was
based on Papin�s
suggestion, in 1690, that the condensation of steam
should be used to make a vacuum beneath a piston,
after the piston had been raised by expanding steam.
Newcomen�s atmospheric pressure engine made practical use of this principle.
While Papin neglected his own ideas of a steam engine to develop Savery�s
invention, Thomas
Newcomen and his assistant John Cawley adapted
Papin�s suggestions in a practical engine. Years of experimentation ended with
success in 1711 (Fig. 6).
Steam admitted from the boiler to a cylinder raised a
piston by expansion and assistance from a counterweight on the other end of a beam,
actuated by the
piston. The steam valve was then closed and the steam
in the cylinder was condensed by a spray of cold water. The vacuum which formed
caused the piston to
be forced downward by atmospheric pressure, doing
work on a pump. Condensed water in the cylinder was
expelled through a valve by the entry of steam which
was at a pressure slightly above atmospheric. A 25 ft
(7.6 m) oak beam, used to transmit power from the
cylinder to the water pump, was a dominant featur