Thomas Newcomen
Thomas Newcomen was baptized at St. Saviour's Church in Dartmouth, Devon, on the 28th of February 1664. He spent his working life selling tools to miners. He preached Baptist sermons on Sundays. And yet, by 1712, he had built a machine that would change the way the world moved water, ore, and eventually everything else.
The problem Newcomen inherited was ancient and brutal. Mines across Britain were flooding. The deeper miners dug for coal and tin, the faster the water rose. No pump of the age could reliably solve this. Men and horses worked exhausting shifts hauling water by bucket and beam, and still whole mines were abandoned to the flood.
Newcomen's answer was a cylinder, a piston, and steam. How an ironmonger from Devon arrived at that answer, and what happened when the rest of the world tried to use it, is a story that runs from Baptist churches in Dartmouth to lead mines in Flintshire to a museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Dartmouth in the late seventeenth century was a merchant town, and Newcomen was born into it. His family had roots in trade, and he eventually built an ironmonger's business that specialised in tools for the mining industry. That specialisation mattered. It put him in daily contact with the men who felt the flooding problem most acutely.
His faith shaped his professional world in ways that are easy to underestimate. Newcomen was a lay preacher in the local Baptist church and, after 1710, its pastor. His father had been part of the group that brought the Puritan minister John Flavel to Dartmouth. That network of Dissenting Christians stretched far. His London business contact Edward Wallin was a Baptist minister of Swedish descent who had connections with Doctor John Gill of Horsleydown, Southwark.
The practical reach of those church ties became clear later. The engineers Jonathan Hornblower Sr. and his son were members of the same Baptist congregation at Bromsgrove. Their involvement in that church played a direct role in spreading the Newcomen engine to new districts.
Before Newcomen, the most serious attempt at a mine-drainage engine was Thomas Savery's "fire engine." Savery's device admitted steam into an empty container, then condensed it. The resulting vacuum sucked water upward from the mine sump. It was an elegant idea with a hard ceiling: it could not draw water from much beyond thirty feet deep.
Newcomen almost certainly knew Savery personally. Savery's family had been merchants in south Devon, and he held a post with the Commissioners for Sick and Hurt Seamen that brought him to Dartmouth. The two men shared a region and a problem, and Newcomen also drew on the work of Denis Papin in designing the cylinder and piston at the heart of his engine.
The mechanical logic of what Newcomen built was a departure from Savery's approach. Instead of using the vacuum to lift water directly, he used it to pull down a piston inside a cylinder. That piston was linked to one end of a large wooden beam rocking on a central fulcrum. The other end of the beam connected by chain to a pump at the base of the mine. As the steam cylinder refilled and readied for the next stroke, the pump drew water up and expelled it to the surface.
Newcomen and his partner John Calley built the first successful engine of this design at the Conygree Coalworks in Tipton, West Midlands. A working replica stands at the Black Country Living Museum nearby.
After 1715, the commercial side of the engine was run through an unincorporated company called the Proprietors of the Invention for Raising Water by Fire. Its secretary and treasurer was John Meres, clerk to the Society of Apothecaries in London. That society operated under a monopoly supplying medicines to the Navy, a connection that tied the engine's business back to Savery, whose will Meres had witnessed.
The engines spread under Savery's patent, which had been extended by statute and did not expire until 1733. By that year, roughly 125 engines had been installed across the important mining districts of Britain and on the Continent. They drained coal mines in the Black Country, Warwickshire, and near Newcastle upon Tyne. They worked tin and copper mines in Cornwall. They pumped lead mines in Flintshire and Derbyshire.
The machine's weakness was heat. Every time steam condensed inside the cylinder to create the power stroke, the cylinder itself cooled down. The next charge of steam had to reheat it before any useful work could be done. Enormous amounts of fuel were lost in this cycle. At a colliery, where unsaleable small coal was freely available, this inefficiency was manageable. In Cornwall, where coal had to be transported in from elsewhere, the same inefficiency made the engine expensive to run.
For roughly 75 years, the Newcomen engine held its place without any fundamental change. Early versions used brass cylinders, which were expensive and limited in size. New iron-casting techniques developed by the Coalbrookdale Company in the 1720s eventually allowed cylinders up to about 6 feet in diameter by the 1760s.
John Smeaton refined the mechanical details substantially in the early 1770s, and his improvements were adopted quickly. By 1775, around 600 Newcomen engines had been built, though many had already worn out and been abandoned or replaced by then.
James Watt's innovation addressed the core inefficiency directly. By condensing steam in a separate condenser outside the main cylinder, the cylinder itself stayed hot between strokes, reducing the fuel wasted on reheating it. Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton collected royalties based on the fuel their design saved. Watt later added the double-acting engine, where both the up and down strokes produced power, which made his engines especially well-suited to textile mills.
Yet the Newcomen engine did not simply vanish. It was cheaper and less complicated than the Watt design, and it kept selling. Of more than 2,200 engines built in the eighteenth century, only about 450 were Watt engines. Even after 1800, Newcomen-type engines continued to be built, and separate condensers were added to them as a retrofit. The informal name for this modification was the "pickle-pot" condenser.
Newcomen died in 1729 at the London house of Edward Wallin, the Baptist minister who had been one of his business contacts and a member of the Proprietors company. He was buried at Bunhill Fields burial ground on the outskirts of the City of London. The exact location of his grave has not been identified.
Physical reminders of the engine he built have survived in scattered locations. The Science Museum in London holds an example, as does the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1964, the Newcomen Society of London arranged for an engine that had been at Hawkesbury Junction, Warwickshire to be moved back to Dartmouth. That engine, known as the Newcomen Memorial Engine, dates from around 1725, with valve gear and other parts added later. It can be seen moving, driven by a hydraulic arrangement rather than steam.
Perhaps the last Newcomen-style engine used commercially, and the only one still on its original site, stands at the Elsecar Heritage Centre near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. It was restored to working condition between 2012 and 2015, and the refurbished engine was unveiled by Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, in May 2016.
On the 23rd of February 2012, Royal Mail released a stamp featuring Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine as part of its Britons of Distinction series. Nearly three centuries after a Dartmouth ironmonger built a working cylinder in Tipton, the image of that machine still circulated through the post.
Common questions
What did Thomas Newcomen invent and when?
Thomas Newcomen created the atmospheric engine in 1712. It used a piston inside a steam cylinder connected to a rocking beam to pump water out of mines, replacing the less effective fire engine designed by Thomas Savery.
Where was Thomas Newcomen born?
Thomas Newcomen was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England, and was baptized at St. Saviour's Church on the 28th of February 1664.
Where was the first Newcomen steam engine built?
The first successful Newcomen engine was built at the Conygree Coalworks in Tipton, in the West Midlands, by Newcomen and his partner John Calley. A working replica can be seen at the Black Country Living Museum nearby.
Why was the Newcomen engine replaced by the Watt engine?
The Newcomen engine lost heat every time steam condensed inside its cylinder, wasting large amounts of fuel. James Watt solved this by condensing steam in a separate condenser, keeping the main cylinder hot and dramatically improving fuel efficiency.
How many Newcomen engines were built in the eighteenth century?
Of more than 2,200 engines built in the eighteenth century, the majority were Newcomen-type engines. Only about 450 were Watt engines, as Newcomen engines were cheaper and less complicated.
Where can surviving Newcomen engines be seen today?
Surviving Newcomen engines are held at the Science Museum in London and the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Newcomen Memorial Engine at Dartmouth dates from around 1725 and can be seen moving on hydraulics. The last engine on its original site is at the Elsecar Heritage Centre near Barnsley, restored and unveiled by Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, in May 2016.
All sources
5 references cited across the entry
- 2bookThe dawn of innovation the first American Industrial RevolutionCharles R. Morris; illustrations by J.E. Morris — PublicAffairs — 2012
- 3webIn pursuit of powerBen Russell — 31 July 2012
- 5magazinePurpose designs Britons of distinction stampsTom Banks — 23 February 2012