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{{Short description|Heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid}}{{About|the history of the reciprocating-type steam engine|the parallel development of turbine-type engines|Steam turbine}}File:Savery-engine.jpg|upright|thumb|The 1698 Savery Steam Pump - the first commercially successful steam powered device, built by Thomas SaveryThomas Savery{{Citation |title=AN ACCOUNT OF THE INVENTION AND PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENT OF THE STEAM ENGINE |date=2014-07-17 |work=The Steam Engine |pages=1–46 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781107279940.004 |access-date=2024-04-21 |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} The first recorded rudimentary steam engine was the aeolipile mentioned by Vitruvius between 30 and 15 BC and, described by Heron of Alexandria in 1st-century Roman Egypt."turbine." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 18 July Several steam-powered devices were later experimented with or proposed, such as Taqi al-Din's steam jack, a steam turbine in 16th-century Ottoman Egypt, Denis Papin's working model of the steam digester in 1679 and Thomas Savery's steam pump in 17th-century England. In 1712, Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine became the first commercially successful engine using the principle of the piston and cylinder, which was the fundamental type of steam engine used until the early 20th century. The steam engine was used to pump water out of coal mines.During the Industrial Revolution, steam engines started to replace water and wind power, and eventually became the dominant source of power in the late 19th century and remaining so into the early decades of the 20th century, when the more efficient steam turbine and the internal combustion engine resulted in the rapid replacement of the steam engines. The steam turbine has become the most common method by which electrical power generators are driven.BOOK, Energy resources: occurrence, production, conversion, use, Wiser, Wendell H., 2000, Birkhäuser, 978-0-387-98744-6, 190,weblink Investigations are being made into the practicalities of reviving the reciprocating steam engine as the basis for the new wave of advanced steam technology.

Precursors

Early uses of steam power

{{See also|Aeolipile|Steam jack}}File:Aeolipile illustration.png|thumb|150px|right|AeolipileAeolipileThe first to use steam as a way to transform heat into movement was Archytas, who propelled a wooden bird along wires using steam as propellant around 400 BC.BOOK, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Author and his Achievement, 2005, Oxford University Press, 0-19-928980-8, Revised paperback, EB1911, Archytas, 2, 446, Aulus Gellius, "Attic Nights", Book X, 12.9 at LacusCurtiusARCHYTAS OF TARENTUM, Technology Museum of Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081226181400weblink|date=December 26, 2008}} The earliest known rudimentary steam engine and reaction steam turbine, the aeolipile, is described by a mathematician and engineer named Heron of Alexandria in 1st century Roman Egypt, as recorded in his manuscript Spiritalia seu Pneumatica.Heron Alexandrinus (Hero of Alexandria) (c. 62 CE): Spiritalia seu Pneumatica. Reprinted 1998 by K G Saur GmbH, Munich. {{ISBN|3-519-01413-0}}.BOOK The same device was also mentioned by Vitruvius in De Architectura about 100 years earlier. Steam ejected tangentially from nozzles caused a pivoted ball to rotate. This suggests that the conversion of steam pressure into mechanical movement was known in Roman Egypt in the 1st century, however, its thermal efficiency was low. Heron also devised a machine that used air heated in an altar fire to displace a quantity of water from a closed vessel. The weight of the water was made to pull a hidden rope to operate temple doors.WEB , Some historians have conflated the two inventions to assert, incorrectly, that the aeolipile was capable of useful work.{{citation needed|date=December 2015}}According to William of Malmesbury, in 1125, Reims was home to a church that had an organ powered by air escaping from compression "by heated water", apparently designed and constructed by professor Gerbertus.WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/19970629015211weblink">weblink dead, 1997-06-29, Thurston, Robert (1878), "A history of the growth of the steam engine", History.rochester.edu, 1996-12-16, 2012-01-26, Among the papers of Leonardo da Vinci dating to the late 15th century is the design for a steam-powered cannon called the Architonnerre, which works by the sudden influx of hot water into a sealed, red-hot cannon.BOOK, Thurston, Robert Henry, A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine, 1996, reprint,weblink Elibron, 1-4021-6205-7, 12, A rudimentary impact steam turbine was described in 1551 by Taqi al-Din, a philosopher, astronomer and engineer in 16th century Ottoman Egypt, who described a method for rotating a spit by means of a jet of steam playing on rotary vanes around the periphery of a wheel. A similar device for rotating a spit was also later described by John Wilkins in 1648.Taqi al-Din and the First Steam Turbine, 1551 A.D. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080218171045weblink |date=2008-02-18 }}, web page, accessed on line October 23, 2009; this web page refers to Ahmad Y Hassan (1976), Taqi al-Din and Arabic Mechanical Engineering, pp. 34-5, Institute for the History of Arabic Science, University of Aleppo. These devices were then called "mills" but are now known as steam jacks. Another similar rudimentary steam turbine is shown by Giovanni Branca, an Italian engineer, in 1629 for turning a cylindrical escapement device that alternately lifted and let fall a pair of pestles working in mortars.WEB,weblink University of Rochester, NY, The growth of the steam engine online history resource, chapter one, History.rochester.edu, 2012-01-26, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120204034636weblink">weblink 2012-02-04, The steam flow of these early steam turbines, however, was not concentrated and most of its energy was dissipated in all directions. This would have led to a great waste of energy and so they were never seriously considered for industrial use.In 1605, French mathematician David Rivault de Fleurance in his treatise on artillery wrote on his discovery that water, if confined in a bombshell and heated, would explode the shells.Robert Henry Thurston, A history of the growth of the steam-engine, D. Appleton and company, 1903, Google Print, p.15-16 (public domain)In 1606, the Spaniard Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont demonstrated and was granted a patent for a steam-powered water pump. The pump was successfully used to drain the inundated mines of Guadalcanal, Spain.BOOK, Garcia, Nicolas, Mas alla de la Leyenda Negra, 2007, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, 9788437067919, 443–454, In 1679, French Physicist Denis Papin, invented the (Steam digester#:~:text=It is a device for,and the domestic pressure cooker.|Steam Digester) (pressure cooker) which was used to extract fats from bones in a high pressure environment and then also create Bone meal.

Development of the commercial steam engine

"The discoveries that, when brought together by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, resulted in the steam engine were:"BOOK, An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology, McNeil, Ian, 1990, Routledge, London, 0-415-14792-1,weblink

• The concept of a vacuum (i.e. a reduction in pressure below ambient)
• The concept of pressure
• Techniques for creating a vacuum
• A means of generating steam
• The piston and cylinder

In the late 15th century, Italian polymath, engineer, painter and architect Leonardo da Vinci wrote papers that described the (Architonnerre#:~:text=The Architonnerre (Architronito) was a,drawing of the Architonnerre/Architronito.|Architonnerre), a Steam powered cannon that used high pressure environments to launch large and heavy projectiles with incredible force. Da Vinci's design resembled the original cannon with a long cylindrical tube on one end used to aim the projectile correctly and the other end a large chamber which was used to heat up water into steam and when it was ready to fire a small cap would be placed tightly on a hole on top of the cannon, causing rapid buildup of steam and creating a very high pressure environment and propelled the projectile with immense force towards the target. The (Architonnerre#:~:text=The Architonnerre (Architronito) was a,drawing of the Architonnerre/Architronito.|Architonnerre) was designed to shoot a projectile that weighed one Roman (:simple:Talent (measurement)#:~:text=The Roman talent consisted of,(%3E110 lb avoirdupois).|Talent). Many of the principles employed by da Vinci for the (Architonnerre#:~:text=The Architonnerre (Architronito) was a,drawing of the Architonnerre/Architronito.|Architonnerre) were later used in the development of the steam engine.In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli conducted experiments on suction lift water pumps to test their limits, which was about 32 feet. (Atmospheric pressure is 32.9 feet or 10.03 meters. Vapor pressure of water lowers theoretical lift height.) He devised an experiment using a tube filled with mercury and inverted in a bowl of mercury (a barometer) and observed an empty space above the column of mercury, which he theorized contained nothing, that is, a vacuum.BOOK, The Invention of Air: A story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America , Influenced by Torricelli, Otto von Guericke invented a vacuum pump by modifying an air pump used for pressurizing an air gun. Guericke put on a demonstration in 1654 in Magdeburg, Germany, where he was mayor. Two copper hemispheres were fitted together and air was pumped out. Weights strapped to the hemispheres could not pull them apart until the air valve was opened. The experiment was repeated in 1656 using two teams of 8 horses each, which could not separate the Magdeburg hemispheres.Gaspar Schott was the first to describe the hemisphere experiment in his Mechanica Hydraulico-Pneumatica (1657).After reading Schott's book, Robert Boyle built an improved vacuum pump and conducted related experiments.Denis Papin became interested in using a vacuum to generate motive power while working with Christiaan Huygens and Gottfried Leibniz in Paris in 1663. Papin worked for Robert Boyle from 1676 to 1679, publishing an account of his work in Continuation of New Experiments (1680) and gave a presentation to Royal Society in 1689. From 1690 on Papin began experimenting with a piston to produce power with steam, building model steam engines. He experimented with atmospheric and pressure steam engines, publishing his results in 1707.In 1663, Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester published a book of 100 inventions which described a method for raising water between floors employing a similar principle to that of a coffee percolator. His system was the first to separate the boiler (a heated cannon barrel) from the pumping action. Water was admitted into a reinforced barrel from a cistern, and then a valve was opened to admit steam from a separate boiler. The pressure built over the top of the water, driving it up a pipe.Tredgold, pg. 3 He installed his steam-powered device on the wall of the Great Tower at Raglan Castle to supply water through the tower. The grooves in the wall where the engine was installed were still to be seen in the 19th century. However, no one was prepared to risk money for such a revolutionary concept, and without backers the machine remained undeveloped.BOOK Samuel Morland, a mathematician and inventor who worked on pumps, left notes at the Vauxhall Ordinance Office on a steam pump design that Thomas Savery read. In 1698 Savery built a steam pump called "The Miner's Friend." It employed both vacuum and pressure. These were used for low horsepower service for a number of years.Thomas Newcomen was a merchant who dealt in cast iron goods. Newcomen's engine was based on the piston and cylinder design proposed by Papin. In Newcomen's engine steam was condensed by water sprayed inside the cylinder, causing atmospheric pressure to move the piston. Newcomen's first engine installed for pumping in a mine in 1712 at Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.

Cylinders

File:Papinengine.jpg|100px|thumb|right|Denis PapinDenis PapinDenis Papin (22 August 1647 – {{circa|1712}}) was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker. In the mid-1670s Papin collaborated with the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens on an engine which drove out the air from a cylinder by exploding gunpowder inside it. Realising the incompleteness of the vacuum produced by this means and on moving to England in 1680, Papin devised a version of the same cylinder that obtained a more complete vacuum from boiling water and then allowing the steam to condense; in this way he was able to raise weights by attaching the end of the piston to a rope passing over a pulley. As a demonstration model, the system worked, but in order to repeat the process, the whole apparatus had to be dismantled and reassembled. Papin quickly saw that to make an automatic cycle the steam would have to be generated separately in a boiler; however, he did not take the project further. Papin also designed a paddle boat driven by a jet playing on a mill-wheel in a combination of Taqi al Din and Savery's conceptions and he is also credited with a number of significant devices such as the safety valve. Papin's years of research into the problems of harnessing steam was to play a key part in the development of the first successful industrial engines that soon followed his death.

Savery steam pump

The first steam engine to be applied industrially was the "fire-engine" or "Miner's Friend", designed by Thomas Savery in 1698. This was a pistonless steam pump, similar to the one developed by Worcester. Savery made two key contributions that greatly improved the practicality of the design. First, in order to allow the water supply to be placed below the engine, he used condensed steam to produce a partial vacuum in the pumping reservoir (the barrel in Worcester's example), and using that to pull the water upward. Secondly, in order to rapidly cool the steam to produce the vacuum, he ran cold water over the reservoir.Operation required several valves; at the start of a cycle, when the reservoir was empty, a valve would be opened to admit steam. This valve would be closed to seal the reservoir, and the cooling water valve would be opened to condense the steam and create a partial vacuum. A supply valve would then be opened, pulling water upward into the reservoir; the typical engine could pull water up to 20 feet.Tredgold, pg. 6 This was then closed, and the steam valve reopened, building pressure over the water and pumping it upward, as in the Worcester design. This cycle essentially doubled the distance that water could be pumped for any given pressure of steam, and production examples raised water about 40 feet.Savery's engine solved a problem that had only recently become a serious one; raising water out of the mines in southern England as they reached greater depths. Savery's engine was somewhat less efficient than Newcomen's, but this was compensated for by the fact that the separate pump used by the Newcomen engine was inefficient, giving the two engines roughly the same efficiency of 6 million foot pounds per bushel of coal (less than 1%).BOOK, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present