Thomas Savery
Thomas Savery, an English engineer, promised in a patent of 1698 that his machine would drain mines, supply towns with water and turn mills by "the impellent force of fire." It was a bold claim. His pump became the first steam-powered device put to commercial use, and people called it the "Savery engine." Yet the same pump tore itself apart, stalled in the very mines it was meant to rescue, and pulled another inventor, Thomas Newcomen, into Savery's orbit. What did the machine actually do, and why did it falter where it mattered most? And how did one man's patent keep a grip on an entire industry long after he was dead?
Shilstone manor house, near Modbury in Devon, is where Thomas Savery was born around 1650. He received a good education and became a military engineer, reaching the rank of captain by 1702. His free hours went to experiments in mechanics.
In 1696 Savery took out two patents. One covered a machine for polishing glass or marble. The other promised "rowing of ships with greater ease and expedition than hitherto been done by any other," using paddle-wheels turned by a capstan. The Admiralty dismissed the ship scheme after a negative report from Edmund Dummer, the Surveyor of the Navy.
The Sick and Hurt Commissioners gave Savery steadier work. He contracted to supply medicines to the Navy Stock Company, which was connected with the Society of Apothecaries. Those duties took him to Dartmouth, in Devon. That is probably where he first met Thomas Newcomen, a man whose name would soon be tied to his own.
On the 14th of June 1699, Savery showed his machine to the Royal Society. The patent itself had come with no drawings and no description. Only in 1702 did he explain the design, in a book called The Miner's Friend; or, An Engine to Raise Water by Fire. There he claimed the device could pump water out of mines. The word "engine" then meant any contrivance, which is why the pump took that name.
Savery's pump had no piston and no moving parts apart from its taps. A boiler raised steam, and the steam was let into a first working vessel. From there it blew out through a downpipe into the water that was to be lifted. Once everything was hot and full of steam, the tap from the boiler was shut. If needed, the outside of the vessel was cooled, so the steam inside condensed.
Atmospheric pressure did the first half of the job. The condensing steam left a partial vacuum, and the weight of the air pushed water up the downpipe until the vessel was full. Then the tap below the vessel was closed and the tap to the up-pipe was opened. Fresh steam from the boiler went in. As its pressure built, it drove the water out of the vessel and up the up-pipe to the top of the mine.
Every step in that cycle had a price, and some of those prices were steep.
Savery's design had four serious problems, and the first was wasted heat. Each time water entered the working vessel, much of the heat went into warming that water instead of doing useful work.
The second problem was pressure. The lifting stage needed high-pressure steam, yet the pump's soldered joints could barely withstand it. They needed frequent repair.
The third problem was depth. In theory, steam pressure placed no limit on how high a single pump could push water. In practice, safety and common sense meant a deep mine would need a chain of moderate-pressure pumps, stacked from the bottom level to the surface.
The fourth limit was about 30 ft. Water entered the vessel only because atmospheric pressure shoved it against a vacuum of condensed steam. So the pump could sit no more than about 30 ft above the water. That forced the whole apparatus to be installed, run and mended far down in the dark of the mine.
Real installations, in London and in the coalfields, were about to test every one of these weaknesses.
In March 1702, a newspaper announced that Savery's pumps were ready for use. Visitors could see them on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons at his workhouse in Salisbury Court, London, over against the Old Playhouse.
York Buildings in London received one of the pumps. Later accounts said it made steam "eight or ten times stronger than common air," roughly 8 to 10 atmospheres. That force blew the machine's joints open, and Savery had to solder them with spelter.
Hampton Court had another pump, built to control its water supply. A third, at Campden House in Kensington, kept working for 18 years.
Mines proved harsher. At Wednesbury, then in Staffordshire, a pool called Broad Waters and the nearby coal mines had been swamped by a sudden eruption of water some years earlier. A Savery pump was tried there. It could not be "brought to answer," and the steam it raised was so great that it "rent the whole machine to pieces." The scheme was dropped as impracticable, perhaps around 1705.
In 1706, George Sparrow proposed another pump at Newbold, near Chesterfield. A landowner there was struggling to win his neighbours' consent for a sough, an underground channel to drain his coal. Nothing came of it, perhaps because of the Broad Waters explosion. A steam pump may also have been tried at Wheal Vor, a copper mine in Cornwall, though the record is uncertain.
Fourteen years of protection came with Savery's patent of July 1698. In 1699, an Act of Parliament added 21 more. Its title was "Encouraging Thomas Savery's invention for raising water and relating to all sorts of mill work," but it became known as the "Fire Engine Act." The patent was drawn so broadly that it covered every pump that raised water by fire.
In Scotland, the architect James Smith of Whitehill acquired the right to use Savery's pump. He made an agreement with the inventor in 1699. Two years later, the Parliament of Scotland granted him a patent modelled on Savery's English one and set to run for the same length of time.
Smith described the machine as "an engine or invention for raising of water and occasioning motion of mill-work by the force of fire." He claimed to have modified it to pump from a depth of 14 fathoms, or 84 feet.
Back in England, the same patent was about to corner Thomas Newcomen.
By 1712, Savery and Newcomen had arranged to work together, because Savery's patent left Newcomen little choice. Newcomen's more advanced steam engine was marketed under that patent. Water tanks and pump rods were added so that it could reach deeper mines. It worked purely by atmospheric pressure, which avoided the dangers of high-pressure steam.
The piston at the heart of Newcomen's engine came from the Frenchman Denis Papin, who had invented the idea in 1690. Combined with Newcomen's design, it produced the first steam engine able to raise water from deep mines.
Papin himself returned to London in 1707. Isaac Newton, the new President of the Royal Society, asked him to work with Savery. Papin did so for five years. Savery, however, never gave the Frenchman any credit or payment.
Savery died on the 15th of May 1715. His patent and the Act of Parliament then passed to a company called The Proprietors of the Invention for Raising Water by Fire. It licensed others to build and run Newcomen engines, charging as much as £420 a year in royalties. One colliery paid £200 a year plus half its net profits "in return for their services in keeping the engine going." The Fire Engine Act did not expire until 1733, four years after Newcomen died.
A Savery pump of 2 to 4 horsepower cost between 150 and 200 pounds. That was far below the price of a Newcomen engine. Savery pumps also came in small sizes, down to a single horsepower.
Newcomen engines were larger and much dearer, and the reason was the piston. Piston steam engines grow very inefficient when small, and that held true until around 1900, when 2-horsepower piston engines finally became available. Savery-type pumps stayed in production well into the late 18th century.
The idea outlived even that. The twin-chamber pulsometer steam pump was a successful development of Savery's design, and several other pumping systems may also trace their roots to it.
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Common questions
Who was Thomas Savery?
Thomas Savery was an English inventor and engineer, born around 1650 in Devon. He rose to the rank of captain as a military engineer and died on the 15th of May 1715. He is remembered for the first commercially used steam-powered device, a pump.
How did the Savery engine work?
A boiler sent steam into a vessel, and cooling it made the steam condense. The partial vacuum let atmospheric pressure push water up a downpipe into the vessel. Fresh steam from the boiler then forced that water up a second pipe to the top of the mine.
Why did Savery's pump struggle in mines?
It wasted heat, strained soldered joints under high-pressure steam, and would have needed a series of pumps to clear a deep mine. It could also sit no more than about 30 ft above the water, which put it down in the mine itself.
What was the Fire Engine Act?
It was an Act of Parliament passed in 1699 that added 21 years to Savery's original 14-year patent. Because the patent covered all pumps that raised water by fire, it later forced Thomas Newcomen into partnership with Savery. The Act did not expire until 1733.
Did Savery's pump disappear after Newcomen's engine arrived?
No. It cost far less and came in sizes down to one horsepower, so Savery-type pumps stayed in production well into the late 18th century. The twin-chamber pulsometer pump was later developed from the idea.
All sources
19 references cited across the entry
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- 3BookThe Miner's Friend: Or, an Engine to Raise Water by FireThomas Savery — S. Crouch — 1827
- 6NewsSteam Condensate: Important Things to Know DFT Valves2018-03-06
- 7L. T. C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen (Landmark Publishing, Ashbourne 1997).
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- 13Richard Wilkes of Willenhall, quoted in Stebbing Shaw, History and Antiquities of Staffordshire (1798–1801) II(1), 120
- 14P. W. King. 'Black Country Mining before the Industrial Revolution' Mining History: The Bulletin of the Peak District Mines History Society 16(6), 42–43.
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- 16BookThe Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the PresentDavid. S. Landes — Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge — 1969
- 17BookA History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1730–1930, Vol. 3: The Transmission of PowerLouis C. Hunter et al. — MIT Press — 1991
- 19BookLinks in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor TimesRhys Jenkins — Ayer Publishing — 1936