ASSIGNMENT #3

PICK AN AGE IN HUMAN HISTORY AND IDENTIFY AN ENERGY TRANSITIONS

THAT OCCURRED IN THAT ERA. DISCUSS IT, AND ITS IMPACTS ON HUMAN
SOCIETY AND ITS ENERGY NEEDS.

NEWCOMEN’S STEAM REVOLUTION – 1712

Born in Dartmouth in 1663, Thomas Newcomen made a significant

contribution to the industrial revolution with his invention of
the atmospheric engine.

By 1685 Newcomen had set himself up as an ironmonger in his

hometown.

Some of his biggest customers

were the mine owners in
Cornwall, who faced
considerable difficulties
with flooding, as the mines
became progressively deeper.

The standard methods used to

remove the water - manual
pumping, or teams of horses
hauling buckets on a rope -
were slow and expensive, and
they were looking for an
alternative.

In 1712 Newcomen invented the

world's first successful
atmospheric steam engine.

The engine pumped water using a vacuum created by condensed

steam.

It became an important method of draining water from deep mines

and was therefore a vital component in the Industrial Revolution
in Britain.

Newcomen's invention enabled mines to be drained to greater

depths than had previously been economically possible and so
helped provide the coal, iron, and other metals that were vital
to the expansion of the industry.
The atmospheric engine can, with some justification, claim to be
the single most important invention of the Industrial Revolution.

While it had an efficiency of only one percent, it was cheaper

than using horses to power a pump.
Newcomen's first working engine was installed at a coal mine at
Dudley Castle in Staffordshire in 1712.
It had a cylinder 21
inches in diameter and
nearly eight feet
long, and it worked at
12 strokes a minute,
raising 10 gallons of
water from a depth of
156 feet.

The engines were

rugged and reliable
and worked day and
night - a factor that
made them hugely
successful.

By the time Thomas

Newcomen died in 1729,
there were at least
100 of his engines
working in Britain and across Europe.

They were used throughout the 18th century and were still
influential into the 20th century.

One engine at Pentich was still operating 127 years after it was
first installed.

However, Newcomen did not die a wealthy man. He received little

credit for his invention, most of the limelight falling onto
James Watt who refined Newcomen's idea.

The principle was used in the following century to create the

'Atmospheric Railway' where a train ran along lines, being
propelled by the pressure difference created in a tube connected
to steam engine houses along the route.