Steam engine inventor

International System of UnitsRead more about the International System of Units and its path to adoption. James Watt, (born January 19, 1736, Education and training Watt’s father, the treasurer and magistrate of Greenock, ran a successful ship- and house-building business. A delicate child, Watt was taught for a time at home by his mother; later, in Deciding at age 17 to be a mathematical-instrument maker, Watt first went to Glasgow, where one of his mother’s relatives taught at the university, and then, in 1755, to London, where he found a master to train him. Although his health broke down within a year, he had learned enough in that time “to work as well as most journeymen.” Returning to Glasgow, he opened a shop in 1757 at the university and made mathematical instruments (e.g., quadrants, Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. After Watt’s patent was extended by an act of Parliament, he and Boulton in 1775 began a partnership that lasted 25 years. Boulton’s financial support made possible rapid progress with the engine. In 1776 two engines were installed—one for pumping water in a Staffordshire colliery, the other for blowing air into the furnaces of British industrialist During the next five years, until 1781, Watt spent long periods in Cornwall, where he installed and supervised numerous pumping engines for the double-acting engine, in which the piston pushed as well as pulled. The engine required a new method of rigidly connecting...

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Richard Trevithick, (born April 13, 1771, Illogan, Trevithick spent his youth at Illogan in the tin-mining district of Cornwall and attended the village school. The schoolmaster described him as “disobedient, slow and obstinate.” His father, a mine manager, considered him a loafer, and throughout his career Trevithick remained scarcely literate. Early in life, however, he displayed an extraordinary talent in New Castle Trevithick built his first steam carriage, which he drove up a hill in Camborne, Cornwall, on Christmas Eve 1801. The following March, with his cousin Andrew Vivian, he took out his historic Catch-me-who-can, on a circular track laid near Euston Road in London. He then abandoned these projects, because the cast-iron rails proved too brittle for the weight of his engines. In 1805 Trevithick adapted his high-pressure engine to driving an iron-rolling mill and propelling a barge with the aid of paddle wheels. His engine also powered the world’s first steam dredgers (1806) and drove a threshing machine on a farm (1812). Such engines could not have succeeded without the improvements Trevithick made in the design and construction of Trevithick, a quick-tempered and impulsive man, was entirely lacking in business sense. An untrustworthy partner caused the failure of a London business he started in 1808 for the manufacture of a type of iron tank Trevithick had patented; bankruptcy followed in 1811. Three years later, nine of Trevithick’s engines were ordered for the...

Elijah J. McCoy (May 2, 1844 Early life [ ] Elijah McCoy was born in 1844 in Upper Canadian schools were [ citation needed] Career [ ] When Elijah McCoy arrived in Michigan, he could find work only as a Similar automatic oilers had been patented by him previously; one is the McCoy continued to refine his devices and design new ones, and was noted in periodicals of the time, including the After the turn of the century, he attracted notice among his Story of the Negro (1909), recognized him as having produced more patents than any other Black inventor up to that time. This creativity gave McCoy an honored status in the Black community that has persisted to this day. He continued to invent until late in life, obtaining as many as 57 patents; most related to lubrication, but others also included a folding Regarding the phrase "The real McCoy" [ ] Main article: This popular expression, typically meaning the real thing, has been attributed to Elijah McCoy's oil-drip cup invention. One theory is that railroad engineers looking to avoid inferior copies would request it by name, The expression " Marriage and death [ ] McCoy married for the second time in 1873 to In popular culture [ ] • 1966, an ad for • 2006, Canadian playwright Andrew Moodie's The Real McCoy portrayed McCoy's life, the challenges he faced as an African American, and the development of his inventions. It was first produced in • In her 2001 novel • A 1945 song by Legacy [ ] • In 1974, the state of Michigan put a hi...

In 1764 Watt was repairing a steam engine when he noticed that it wasted a lot of steam. He developed a way to improve the machine. He was given a patent for his steam engine in 1769. (A patent is an official document that gives inventors control over who may use their invention.) In 1774 Watt moved to • The same safe and trusted content for explorers of all ages. • Accessible across all of today's devices: phones, tablets, and desktops. • Improved homework resources designed to support a variety of curriculum subjects and standards. • A new, third level of content, designed specially to meet the advanced needs of the sophisticated scholar. • And so much more! Choose a language from the menu above to view a computer-translated version of this page. Please note: Text within images is not translated, some features may not work properly after translation, and the translation may not accurately convey the intended meaning. Britannica does not review the converted text. After translating an article, all tools except font up/font down will be disabled. To re-enable the tools or to convert back to English, click "view original" on the Google Translate toolbar.

The Steam Engine Powers the Overview The invention of the Background By the late 1600s England had a fuel problem. Harsh winters and a growing population had resulted in the depletion of many of England's great forests, as trees were cut down and burned. What wood remained was more valuable as lumber than fuel. To solve the problem, England turned to its rich deposits of coal. Unfortunately, the mining of coal created its own set of problems, primarily the tendency of water to seep into the lowest reaches of coal mines, making it difficult if not impossible to extract the coal. Some attempts were made to remove the water by using hand-pumps to create vacuums in tubes: the water would then be sucked up the vacuum. Hand-pumping, however, was slow and ultimately ineffectual against the volume of water in the mineshafts. Inventor and merchant Four years later he published a treatise describing his invention, The Miners Friend; Or, An Engine to Raise Water by Fire. His engines became known as Miners' Friends, although it is unclear whether any of them found actual use in coal mines. There were some technical problems with the Miners' Friends, not least of which was the poor quality of metal fittings at the time. Because the device required control of internal pressure—technically, Savery's invention was an atmospheric engine rather than a true steam engine—it was vital that all of the pipes be tightly sealed. Such seals proved difficult to maintain, however, and Savery's device...

Steam Engine A —since it burns its fuel outside of the engine —a The earliest known steam engines were the novelties created by Greek engineer and mathematician Hero (Heron) of Alexandria (c. 10 –70) who lived during the first century AD. His most famous invention was called the aeliopile. This invention was a small, hollow sphere to which two bent tubes were attached. The sphere was attached to a boiler that produced steam. As the steam escaped from the sphere ’s hollow tubes, the sphere itself would begin to whirl and rotate. Hero and several other Greeks designed many other steam –powered devises, such as a steam organ and automatic doors, but always in the context of playfulness and seemingly without any interest in using steam in a practical way. Nonetheless, their work established the principle of steam power and their playful devices were a real demonstration of converting steam power into some kind of motion. Although the Greeks established the principle of steam power, it lay ignored for over 1,500 years until the late 1600s in –sixteenth century, work on air pumps had established the notion of a piston working in a cylinder, and around 1680, French physicist – 1712) put some water at the bottom of a tube, heated it, converted it to steam, and saw that the expanded steam pushed forcibly and moved a piston just ahead of it. When the tube cooled, the piston returned to its previous position. Although Papin was well aware he had created an engine that could eventuall...

The question, ‘Who invented the first steam engine and in what year ?’ is an interesting one, because the answer is so fuzzy. Heron (also called Hero) is sometimes credited as the one who invented the steam engine at about 100 A.D, because he built a device which rotated by jet power from exhausting steam. Another candidate, Thomas Savery, patented a means of pumping water out of coal mines by steam power in 1698. In about 1712, Thomas Newcomen, working with Thomas Savery, invented an atmospheric steam engine as an improved device for pumping water from coal mines. In approximately the last quarter of the 18th century, James Watt invented several improvements to the steam engine that made it into a device that could be used for power in factories. Each of these candidates for recognition as the one who invented the steam engine will be discussed in the following sections of this article, then one will be identified as the best candidate. Heron of Alexandria and his Aeolipile The man credited with invention of the aeolipile, identified as either ‘Hero’ or ‘Heron,’ was a Greek who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, from about 10 to 70 A.D. A diagram of the aeolipile built by Hero is shown at the left. In this device, steam was generated by a fire under a closed pot of water. The steam entered the ball through the vertical tubes connecting the ball to the heated pot. The steam escaped from the ball through the tubes that are bent at a 90o angle, so that the jet action from the exhau...