Newcomen steam engine - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The atmospheric engine invented by Thomas Newcomen

Thomas Newcomen

Thomas Newcomen was an ironmonger by trade and a Baptist lay preacher by calling. He was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England, near a part of the country noted for its tin mines. Flooding was a major problem, limiting the depth at which the mineral could be mined...

in 1712, today referred to as a Newcomen steam engine (or simply Newcomen engine), was the first practical device to harness the power of steam

Steam

Steam is the technical term for water vapor, the gaseous phase of water, which is formed when water boils. In common language it is often used to refer to the visible mist of water droplets formed as this water vapor condenses in the presence of cooler air...

to produce mechanical work

Mechanical work

In physics, work is a scalar quantity that can be described as the product of a force times the distance through which it acts, and it is called the work of the force. Only the component of a force in the direction of the movement of its point of application does work...

. Newcomen engines were used throughout Britain

Kingdom of Great Britain

The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...

and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, principally to pump water out of mines

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

, starting in the early 18th century. James Watt

James Watt

James Watt, FRS, FRSE was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.While working as an instrument maker at the...

's later Watt steam engine

Watt steam engine

The Watt steam engine was the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to drive the piston helped by a partial vacuum...

was an improved version of the Newcomen engine. For this, Watt is more well known in association with the origin of the steam engine today.

Precursors

Prior to Newcomen a number of small steam

Steam

devices of various sorts had been made, but most were essentially novelties. Around 1600 a number of experimenters used steam to power small fountain

Fountain

A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....

s working something on the principle of a coffee percolator

Coffee percolator

A coffee percolator is a type of pot used to brew coffee. The name stems from the word "percolate" which means to cause to pass through a permeable substance especially for extracting a soluble constituent....

. First a container was filled with water, then heated to make it boil; the steam generated displaced the water, forcing it up a pipe that reached down to the bottom of the water so that it spurted out of a nozzle

Nozzle

A nozzle is a device designed to control the direction or characteristics of a fluid flow as it exits an enclosed chamber or pipe via an orifice....

on top of the container. However, these devices would have been limited in their effectiveness and could only serve to demonstrate a principle.

In 1662 Edward Somerset, second Marquess of Worcester

Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester

Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester , styled Lord Herbert of Ragland from 1628–1644, was an English nobleman involved in royalist politics and an inventor...

, published a book containing several ideas he had been working on. One was for a steam-powered pump to supply water to fountains; the device alternately used a vacuum

Vacuum

In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...

and steam pressure. Two containers were alternately filled with steam, then sprayed with cold water making the steam condense; this produced a vacuum that would draw water through a pipe up from a well

Water well

A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...

to the container. A fresh charge of steam under pressure then drove the water from the container up another pipe to a higher-level header before being condensed and repeating the cycle. By working the two containers alternately, delivery rate to the header tank could be increased.

Savery's "Miner's Friend"

In 1698 Thomas Savery

Thomas Savery

Thomas Savery was an English inventor, born at Shilstone, a manor house near Modbury, Devon, England.-Career:Savery became a military engineer, rising to the rank of Captain by 1702, and spent his free time performing experiments in mechanics...

patented a steam-powered pump he called the Miner's Friend, essentially identical to Somerset's design and almost certainly a direct copy. The process of cooling and creating the vacuum was fairly slow, so Savery later added an external cold water spray to quickly cool the steam.

Savery's invention had no moving parts. Consequently it cannot be strictly regarded as the first steam "engine", since it could not transmit its power to any external device. There were evidently high hopes for the Miner's Friend, which led Parliament to extend the life of the patent by 21 years, so that the 1699 patent would not expire until 1733. Unfortunately, Savery's device proved much less successful than had been hoped.

A problem with Savery's device stemmed from the fact that a vacuum could only raise water to a maximum height of about 30 ft (9 m), to this could be added another 40 ft (12 m), or so, raised by steam pressure. This was insufficient to pump water out of a mine. In Savery's pamphlet, he suggests setting the boiler and containers on a ledge in the mineshaft and even a series of two or more pumps for deeper levels. Obviously these were inconvenient solutions and some sort of mechanical pump working at surface level – one that lifted the water directly instead of "sucking" it up – was desirable. Such pumps were common already, powered by horses, but required a vertical reciprocating drive that Savery's system did not provide.

Denis Papin's experimental steam cylinder and piston

Louis Figuier

Louis Figuier was a French scientist and writer. He was the nephew of Pierre-Oscar Figuier and became Professor of chemistry at L'Ecole de...

in his monumental work gives a full quotation of Denis Papin

Denis Papin

Denis Papin was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine and of the pressure cooker.-Life in France:...

's paper published in 1690 in Acta eruditorum at Leipzig, entitled "Nouvelle méthode pour obtenir à bas prix des forces considérables" (A new method for cheaply obtaining considerable forces). It seems that the idea came to Papin whilst working with Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...

at the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

in London. Papin describes first pouring a small quantity of water into the bottom of a vertical cylinder, inserting a piston on a rod and after first evacuating the air below the piston, placing a fire beneath the cylinder in order to boil the water away and create enough steam pressure to raise the piston to the top end of the cylinder. The piston was then temporarily locked in the upper position by a spring catch engaging a notch in the rod. The fire was then removed, allowing the cylinder to cool, which condensed steam back into water, thus creating a vacuum beneath the piston. To the end of the piston rod was attached a cord passing over two pulleys and a weight hung down from the cord's end. Upon releasing the catch, the piston was sharply drawn down to the bottom of the cylinder by the pressure differential between the atmosphere and the created vacuum; enough force was thus generated to raise a 60 lb (27.2 kg) weight. Although the engine certainly worked as far as it went, it was devised merely to demonstrate the principle and having got thus far, Papin never developed it further, although in his paper he did write about the potential of boats driven by "firetubes". Instead he allowed himself to be distracted into developing a variant of the Savery engine.

Introduction and spread

It can be said that Thomas Newcomen took forward Papin's experiment and made it workable, although little information exists as to exactly how this came about, apart from reference to his access to Royal Society documents through acquaintance with Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke FRS was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but...

. The main problem to which Papin had given no solution was how to make the action repeatable at regular intervals. The way forward was to provide as Savery had done, a boiler capable of assuring a continuous supply of steam to the cylinder, provide the vacuum power stroke by condensing the steam, and once that had done its work to dispose of the condensed water. The power piston was hung by chains from the end of a rocking beam. Unlike Savery's device, pumping was entirely mechanical, the work of the steam engine being to lift a weighted rod slung from the opposite extremity of the rocking beam. The rod descended the mine shaft by gravity and drove a force pump, or pole pump (or most often a gang of two) inside the mineshaft. The suction stroke of the pump was only for the length of the upward (priming) stroke, there consequently was no longer the 30 foot restriction of a vacuum pump and water could be forced up a column from far greater depths. Making all this work needed the skill of a practical engineer; furthermore Newcomen was by trade an "ironmonger" or metal merchant which would also have given him valuable access to a variety of practical know-how regarding materials resistance etc.. The boiler supplied the steam at extremely low pressure and was at first located immediately beneath the power cylinder, but could also be placed behind a separating wall with a connecting steam pipe.

It is possible that the first Newcomen engine was in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

. Its location is uncertain, but it is known that one was in operation at Wheal Vor

Wheal Vor

Wheal Vor was a metalliferous mine about two miles north west of Helston and one mile north of the village of Breage in the west of Cornwall, England, U.K. It is considered to be part of the Mount's Bay mining district. Until the mid–19th century the mine was notable for its willingness to try out...

mine in 1715. The earliest examples for which reliable records exist were two engines in the Black Country

Black Country

The Black Country is a loosely defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton. During the industrial revolution in the 19th century this area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in the nation...

, of which the more famous was that erected in 1712 at the Conygree Coalworks near Dudley

Dudley

Dudley is a large town in the West Midlands county of England. At the 2001 census , the Dudley Urban Sub Area had a population of 194,919, making it the 26th largest settlement in England, the second largest town in the United Kingdom behind Reading, and the largest settlement in the UK without...

, This is generally accepted as the first successful Newcomen engine, but it may have been preceded by one built a mile and a half east of Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...

. Both these were used by Newcomen and his partner John Calley

John Calley (engineer)

John Calley , a metalworker, plumber and glass-blower, was Thomas Newcomen's partner. He helped develop the Newcomen steam engine, and his name is listed on the patent with Newcomen and Thomas Savery.-References:...

to pump out water-filled coal mines. A working replica can today be seen at the nearby Black Country Living Museum

Black Country Living Museum

The Black Country Living Museum is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings, located in Dudley in the West Midlands of England. The museum occupies a urban heritage park in the shadow of Dudley Castle in the centre of the Black Country conurbation...

, which stands on another part of what was Lord Dudley

Edward Ward, 9th Baron Dudley

Edward Ward, 9th Baron Dudley and 4th Baron Ward was the only son of Edward Ward, 8th Baron Dudley and 4th Baron Ward and his wife Diana daughter and heiress of Thomas Howard of Ashtead, Surrey...

's Conygree Park.

Soon orders from wet mines all over England were coming in, and some have suggested that word of his achievement was spread through his Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

connections. Since Savery's patent had not yet run out, Newcomen was forced to come to an arrangement with Savery and operate under the latter's patent,as its term was much longer than any Newcomen could have easily obtained. During the latter years of its currency, the patent belonged to an unincorporated company, The Proprietors of the Invention for raising water by fire.

Although its first use was in coal-mining areas, Newcomen's engine was also used for pumping water out of the metal mines in his native West Country, such as the tin mines of Cornwall. By the time of his death, Newcomen and others had installed over a hundred of his engines, not only in the West Country and the Midlands but also in north Wales, near Newcastle and in Cumbria. Small numbers were built in other Europe

Europe

an countries, including in France, Belgium, Spain, and Hungary, also at Dannemora, Sweden

Dannemora, Sweden

Dannemora is an old mining town and a locality situated in Östhammar Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden with 238 inhabitants in 2005.-Dannemora mine:...

. Evidence of the use of a Newcomen Steam Engine associated with early coal mines was found in 2010 in Midlothian, VA (site of some of the first coal mines in the U.S.).
(Dutton and Associates survey dated 11/24/2009).

Components

Although based on simple principles, Newcomen's engine was rather complex and showed signs of incremental development, problems being empirical

Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....

ly addressed as they arose. It consisted of a boiler

Boiler

A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications.-Materials:...

A, usually a haystack boiler, situated directly below the cylinder. This produced large quantities of very low pressure steam, no more than 1 - 2 psi (0.07 - 0.14 bar) - the maximum allowable pressure for a boiler that in earlier versions was made of copper with a domed top of lead and later entirely assembled from small riveted iron plates. The action of the engine was transmitted through a rocking “Great balanced Beam”

Beam engine

A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall...

the fulcrum

Lever

In physics, a lever is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to either multiply the mechanical force that can be applied to another object or resistance force , or multiply the distance and speed at which the opposite end of the rigid object travels.This leverage...

E of which rested on the very solid end-gable wall of the purpose-built engine house with the pump side projecting outside of the building, the engine being located in-house. The pump rods were slung by a chain from the arch-head F of the great beam. From the in-house arch-head D was suspended a piston P working in a cylinder

Cylinder (engine)

A cylinder is the central working part of a reciprocating engine or pump, the space in which a piston travels. Multiple cylinders are commonly arranged side by side in a bank, or engine block, which is typically cast from aluminum or cast iron before receiving precision machine work...

B, the top end of which was open to the atmosphere above the piston

Piston

A piston is a component of reciprocating engines, reciprocating pumps, gas compressors and pneumatic cylinders, among other similar mechanisms. It is the moving component that is contained by a cylinder and is made gas-tight by piston rings. In an engine, its purpose is to transfer force from...

and the bottom end closed, apart from the short admission pipe connecting the cylinder to the boiler; early cylinders were made of cast brass, but cast iron was soon found more effective and much cheaper to produce. The piston was surrounded by a seal in the form of a leather ring, but as the cylinder bore was finished by hand and not absolutely true, a layer of water had to be constantly maintained on top of the piston. Installed high up in the engine house was a water tank C (or header tank) fed by a small in-house pump slung from a smaller arch-head. The header tank supplied cold water under pressure via a stand-pipe for condensing the steam in the cylinder with a small branch supplying the cylinder-sealing water; at each top stroke of the piston excess warm sealing water overflowed down two pipes, one to the in-house well and the other to feed the boiler by gravity.

Operation

The pump equipment was heavier than the steam piston, so that the position of the beam at rest was pump-side down/engine-side up. When the regulator valve

Valve

A valve is a device that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically pipe fittings, but are usually discussed as a separate category...

V was opened, steam was let out of the boiler filling the space in the cylinder beneath the piston. The regulator valve was then closed and the water injection valve V' briefly snapped open and shut sending a spray of cold water into the cylinder. This condensed

Condenser (heat transfer)

In systems involving heat transfer, a condenser is a device or unit used to condense a substance from its gaseous to its liquid state, typically by cooling it. In so doing, the latent heat is given up by the substance, and will transfer to the condenser coolant...

the steam and created a partial vacuum under the piston. Pressure differential with the atmosphere then drove the piston down making the power stroke

Power stroke

Power Stroke may refer to:In motoring:*Power stroke , the stroke of a cyclic motor which generates force*Ford Power Stroke engine, Ford diesel engineOther:*In baseball, a batter who hits for extra bases is said to have a power stroke...

whilst raising the pump gear. Steam was then readmitted, driving the condensate down the sinking pipe and destroying the vacuum by pushing on a release valve snifter valve that opened to atmosphere. Meanwhile, the weight of the pump returned the beam to its initial position whilst driving the water up from the mine. This cycle was repeated around 12 times per minute.

Automation

In early versions the valve

Valve

s or plugs as they were then called, were operated manually by the plug man but the repetitive action demanded precise timing, making automatic action desirable. This was obtained by means of a plug tree which was a beam suspended vertically alongside the cylinder from a small arch head by crossed chains its function being to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions, by means of tappets and escapement

Escapement

In mechanical watches and clocks, an escapement is a device that transfers energy to the timekeeping element and enables counting the number of oscillations of the timekeeping element...

mechanisms using weights. On the 1712 engine, the water feed pump was attached to the bottom of the plug tree, but later engines had the pump outside suspended from a separate small arch-head. There is a common legend that in 1713 a cock boy named Humphrey Potter, whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord"); however the plug tree device (the first form of valve gear

Valve gear

The valve gear of a steam engine is the mechanism that operates the inlet and exhaust valves to admit steam into the cylinder and allow exhaust steam to escape, respectively, at the correct points in the cycle...

) was very likely established practice before 1715 and is clearly depicted in the earliest known images of Newcomen engines by Henry Beighton 1717 (believed by Hulse to depict the 1714 Griff colliery engine) and by Thomas Barney (1719) (depicting the 1712 Dudley Castle engine). Because of the very heavy steam demands, the engine had to be periodically stopped and restarted, but even this process was automated by means of a buoy rising and falling in a vertical stand pipe fixed to the boiler (the first pressure gauge?). The buoy was attached to the scoggen, a weighted lever that worked a stop blocking the water injection valve shut until more steam had been raised.

Pumps

Most images show only the engine side, giving no information on the pumps. Current opinion is that at least on the early engines, dead-weight force pumps were used, the work of the engine being solely to lift the pump side ready for the next downwards pump stroke. This is the arrangement used for the Dudley Castle replica which effectively works at the original stated rate of 12 strokes per minute/10 gallons (54.6litres) lifted per stroke. The later Watt engines worked lift pumps powered by the engine stroke and it may be that later versions of the Newcomen engine did so too.

Development and Application

Towards the close of its career, the atmospheric engine was much improved in its mechanical details and its proportions by John Smeaton

John Smeaton

John Smeaton, FRS, was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist...

, who built many large engines of this type during the 1770s. The urgent need for an engine to give rotary motion was making itself felt and this was done with limited success by Wasborough and Pickard

James Pickard

James Pickard was an English inventor. He modified the Newcomen engine in a manner that it could deliver a rotary motion. His solution, which he patented in 1780, involved the combined use of a crank and a flywheel....

using a Newcomen engine to drive a flywheel through a crank. Although the principle of the crank had long been known, Pickard

James Pickard

managed to obtain a 12-year patent in 1780 for the specific application of the crank to steam engines; this was a setback to Boulton and Watt who got round the patent by applying the sun and planet

Sun and planet gear

The sun and planet gear was a method of converting reciprocal motion to rotary motion and was utilised in a reciprocating steam engine....

motion to their advanced double-acting rotative engine of 1782.

By 1725 the Newcomen engine was in common use in mining, particularly collieries

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

. It held its place with little material change for the rest of the century. Use of the Newcomen engine was extended in some places to pump municipal water supply; for instance the first Newcomen engine in France was built at Passy

Passy

Passy is an area of Paris, France, located in the XVIe arrondissement, on the Right Bank. It is traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.Passy was formerly a commune...

in 1726 to pump water from the Seine to the city of Paris. It was also used to power machinery indirectly, by returning water from below a water wheel

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of free-flowing or falling water into useful forms of power. A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface...

to a reservoir above it, so that the same water could again turn the wheel. Among the earliest examples of this was at Coalbrookdale

Coalbrookdale

Coalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. This is where iron ore was first smelted by Abraham Darby using easily mined "coking coal". The coal was drawn from drift mines in the sides...

. A horse-powered pump had been installed in 1735 to return water to the pool above the Old Blast Furnace. This was replaced by a Newcomen engine in 1742-3. Several new furnaces built in Shropshire in the 1750s were powered in a similar way, including Horsehay

Horsehay

Horsehay is a village on the western outskirts of Dawley, which, along with several other towns and villages, now forms part of the new town of Telford in Shropshire, England. Horsehay lies in the Dawley Hamlets parish, and on the northern edge of the Ironbridge Gorge area.Its name is Anglo Saxon...

and Ketley

Ketley

Ketley is a suburb of the new town of Telford in the borough of Telford and Wrekin and ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. It is a civil parish. East Ketley is currently being re-developed as part of the Telford Millennium Community, part of the Millennium Communities Programme...

Furnaces and Madeley Wood or Bedlam Furnaces

Madeley Wood Company

The Madeley Wood Company was formed in 1756 when the Madley Wood Furnaces, also called Bedlam Furnaces, were built beside the River Severn, one mile west of Blists Hill....

. The latter does not seem to have had a pool above the furnace, merely a tank into which the water was pumped. In other industries, engine-pumping was less common, but Richard Arkwright

Richard Arkwright

Sir Richard Arkwright , was an Englishman who, although the patents were eventually overturned, is often credited for inventing the spinning frame — later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power. He also patented a carding engine that could convert raw cotton into yarn...

used an engine to provide additional power for his cotton mill

Cotton mill

A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....

Successor

The main problem with the Newcomen design was that it was very expensive to operate. After the cylinder was cooled to create the vacuum, the cylinder walls were cold enough to condense some of the steam as it was sprayed in. This meant that a considerable amount of fuel was being used just to heat the cylinder back to the point where the steam would start to fill it again. As the heat losses were related to the surfaces, while useful work related to the volume, increases in the size of the engine increased efficiency. Newcomen engines became larger in time. However, efficiency did not matter very much within the context of a colliery, where coal was freely available. Attempts were made to drive machinery by Newcomen engines, but these were unsuccessful, as the single power stroke produced a very jerky motion.

Newcomen's engine was only replaced when James Watt

James Watt

improved it in 1769 to avoid this problem (Watt had been asked to repair a model of a Newcomen engine by Glasgow University. A model exaggerated the scale problem of the Newcomen engine). In the Watt steam engine

Watt steam engine

The Watt steam engine was the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to drive the piston helped by a partial vacuum...

, condensation took place in a separate container, attached to the steam cylinder via a pipe. When a valve on the pipe was opened, the vacuum in the condensor would, in turn, evacuate that part of the cylinder below the piston. This eliminated the cooling of the main cylinder, and dramatically reduced fuel use. It also enabled the development of a reciprocating engine

Reciprocating engine

A reciprocating engine, also often known as a piston engine, is a heat engine that uses one or more reciprocating pistons to convert pressure into a rotating motion. This article describes the common features of all types...

, with upwards and downwards power strokes more suited to transmitting power to a wheel.

Watt's design, introduced in 1769, did not eliminate Newcomen engines immediately. Watt's vigorous defence of his patents resulted in the desire to avoid royalty payments as far as possible.

The expiry of the patents led to a rush to install Watt engines in the 1790s, and Newcomen engines were eclipsed, even in collieries.

Surviving examples

In 1986, a full-scale working replica of the Newcomen steam engine was completed at the Black Country Living Museum

Black Country Living Museum

in Dudley. It is the only full-size working replica of the engine in existence.

The 'Newcomen Memorial Engine' can be seen operating in Newcomen's home town of Dartmouth

Dartmouth, Devon

Dartmouth is a town and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is a tourist destination set on the banks of the estuary of the River Dart, which is a long narrow tidal ria that runs inland as far as Totnes...

, where it was moved in 1963 by the Newcomen Society. This is believed to date from 1725, when it was initially installed at the Griff Colliery near Coventry.

The only Newcomen-style engine still extant in its original location is at what is now the Elsecar Heritage Centre

Elsecar Heritage Centre

Elsecar Heritage Centre is a Living History centre in Elsecar, South Yorkshire. It also comprises various shops, galleries, art studios and an exhibition hall. It runs craft workshops, special events, and a monthly antiques fair. The buildings were originally used for various industries including...

, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. This was probably the last commercially-used Newcomen-style engine, as it ran from 1795 until 1923. Currently it is not operational.

Other examples are in the Science Museum (London)

Science Museum (London)

The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....

and the Ford Museum

The Henry Ford

The Henry Ford, a National Historic Landmark, , in the Metro Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, USA, is a large indoor and outdoor history museum complex...

, Dearborn, USA, amongst other places.