I'm more steampunk than you'll ever be.
I'm writing a _massive_ research paper on the history of power and now know everything there ever was to know about steam.
The v.3 rough draft is below. It''s about 88% complete but needs spellcheck and independant fact check.. This is part one in a two part project going from 1600's to 1877 (Rise of Steam) and from 1700's to 1950's (Rise of Electricity).
Feedback is always appreciated.
“Press'd by the ponderous air the Piston falls
Resistless, sliding through its iron walls;
Quick moves the Balanced beam, of giant-birth,
Wields his large limbs, and nodding shakes the earth.” -Erasmus Darwin
Introduction
Western civilization has changed more in the past three hundred years than it did in the thousand years preceding and owes the rate of this great change to a handful of inventors and businessmen who possessed the vision, resourcefulness, and dogged determination to master the forces of nature and to harness it’s great power. For most of the history of mankind nearly all power has come from the labor of the muscles of men and beasts. What natural power could be used was inexpertly stolen from flame, wind, and stream and relied on the capitulation of those capricious forces. Mankind had tools with which to aid him in the application of those forces; the hammer, primitive plow, water wheel, and wind catcher, but even with these tools most work had to be done personally and through, time consuming labor. Near the end of the 17th century a kind of critical mass in thinking, experimentation, urbanization, and political dynamic resulted in an explosion of creativity in England that led to the development and implementation of the first steam engines. Steam power was an innovation which would sweep the world, and would be seized upon with especial fervor in America, until even its ability to produce power that a generation prior would have been considered nearly infinite was outstripped. Man had a taste for mechanical power, and now wanted more. It wanted easier to use, ubiquitous power, to feed it’s ever growing industry. This demand would ultimately produce a new generation of Wizards who would tame lightning itself.
Taming the Flame
To use the power of steam with maximum efficiency the mechanics of its action needed to be understood. Up until the late 17th century fire was used to cook, and for warmth, but was dangerous and very poorly understood. Robert Hooke and Sir Isacc Newton of the Royal Society of London first posited in the 1680’s that “heat is a property of a body arising from the motion or agitation of it’s parts.” (Klien 71). While we now know that they had the right of it, they did not have a grasp upon the specific mechanics, had not the terminology to express what they did know, and were muddled by the ideas of Alchemy, which at this point held that fire was an elemental force that acted on the world through mystical sympathy. Later western Alchemists and natural philosophers held that flame was the release of a mass bearing substance called Phlogiston, or the inflamible principle. In the mid 18th century Anton Lavosier, the father of modern chemistry, asserted Phlogiston was “[something] the existence of which can not be proved, which is sometimes represented as heavy, sometimes is given a negative weight, which sometimes passes through vessels, and sometimes does not pass-in other words, which is made of whatever is desired.” Lavoisier’s research was cut short, as it were, by his beheading during the French Revolution. His ideas contributed to the rise of the Caloric theory of heat wherein bodies possessed a fluid of a specific weight which would move from warm areas to colder ones by chemical or mechanical action. This theory would persist in modern thinking all the way into the 1800’s though it would be replaced by the Mechanical Theory of heat in the 1850’s. The caloric theory of heat allowed for reasonably accurate measurements of the movement and activity of heat and greatly improved our understanding of heat as a force. From caloric theory would rise Watt’s formulae for the British Thermal Unit (the amount of energy needed to raise one pound of liquid one degree, or one pount to a height of 778 feet), friction or kinetic theory, and the mechanical theory of heat. All of these expansions in understanding would lead to greater and more efficient engines.
Roots of Steam?
Steam power traces its roots, quite literally, underground. The first primitive steam engine, built by Thomas Savery was patented in 1698 as the “Engine for the raising of water by the impellent force of fire.” (Savery, pg 7) Mines in England were perpetually stymied by being regularly flooded by the countries frequent rains. Many techniques and schemes had been developed for the removal of the water, but they were inadequate at best, and dangerous or comically abysmal at worst. Among the devices used were the nearly effective but back breaking manual bellows pump, and a disastrous device that used buckets tied to ropes connected to a pulley. Savery, a Gentleman inventor proposed a different way, similar to the manual bellows pump, but acted on by the force of the vacuum generated when steam is condensed by cooling in a sealed chamber. This work built upon the discoveries of Boyle and Newton nearly a decade earlier. Boyle being the first to invent a vacuum pump which remains the principle designs of those still in use today. (1) By applying the mechanical principle of the mechanical vacuum pump with the motive action of the steam engine Savery was able to create a crude device that replaced human muscle with the harnessed power of fire. Savery’s engine worked by burning coal or wood which was used to heat water in a sealed chamber which once it reached sufficient pressure would burst through a one way valve into a chamber where it would evacuate the ambient atmosphere, cold water was then sprayed into the chamber which would condense the steam and create a vacuum which was used to suck the water out of the mine. The Savery engine was plagued with problems, the main of which was that there was no industry for the making of the parts necessary for an engine of this sort. Metalworking in this period was an artisan affair and was not generally capable of producing parts needed to construct and repair these engines. Savery was a charming and charismatic individual and associated with the Royal Society of London, a respected body of thinkers founded by the charter of Charles II to research the mysteries of natural philosophy, and thus was able to sell a few of his Engines to various mining works. His engines functioned, but poorly and at terrible economy of fuel, not at all in line with his promises of massively increased productivity and universal betterment saying, “I belive no ingenious person will deny this engine to have the preference in all respects, being of more general use than any yet discovered or invented.” (Savery, pg 10)
Savery’s engines may not have functioned with the mythical universal utility promised but they did function and served as both inspiration and proof of concept to the men who would take up his legacy of power.
The Rise of Steam-
Around 1710 Thomas Newcomen introduced what would be known as the Newcomen Beam Engine, a refinement of Savery’s water pump. Newcomen would combine the principles of Saverys engine with that of Denis Papin, a French inventor whos contribution was a steam release valve for use with his pressure cooker, to produce the cylinder and piston mechanical action. There is very little recorded history about the life and business of Newcomen; but what is known is that his engine was also a low pressure atmospheric model which again used the vacuum formed by the condensation of steam as it’s impellent force. The principle difference in the Newcomen beam engine would be in the inclusion of a piston system where cold water was sprayed into the cylinder by the action of the piston which would cause the steam to condense thus drawing the piston back down which was attached to a center pivot beam pulley which was in turn connected to the pump mechanism. The steam condensation vacuum was no longer the direct force working to pull the water from the well but was being used indirectly to produce more efficient use of the energy. The Newcomen engine proved to be fairly successful and it’s estimated that nearly 70 were in use around the time of his death.
While Newcomen’s contribution to the mechanics of steam powered engineering were invaluable, it was Scottish Engineer and Curmudgeon James Watt who would ultimately be responsible for the evolution of steam into a force which would revolutionize the way the world did work. In 1769 Watt, then a maker of mathematical instruments at the University of Glasgow, became fascinated with the conundrum of steam and heat. He began working on various proofs which he called to the attention of a professor and colleague Joseph Black which would lead to Black’s discoveries of Latent Heat, and Specific Heat which would become the foundations of modern thermal science. (2) Watt would use the formula created by Black to devise many of the theories for which he would become famous. Watt’s first contribution to the continued evolution o f the Steam engine would be the Condenser. Watt’s growing understanding of the dynamics of heat and pressure led him to the idea that continuously heating and cooling the cylinder was a waste of energy and that to maximize return the cylinder must be kept continuously hot. To this end he invented the condenser, a separate vessel connected to the cylinder into which steam would be voided as the piston was compressed by ambient atmospheric pressure. The steam would then condense into water in the condenser and be returned to the system. This led to a vast improvement in the fuel economy of the engine, which was partially responsible for his engines “becoming the prototype of the only effective pumping engine for 60 years.” (Klien pg 23) Watt endeavored to sell his invention, but was both antisocial and awkward commenting frequently in letters.
Enter James Roebuck, chemist, former student of Joseph Black, and entreprinure. Roebuck had recently purchased a collier which proved to fill with water so quickly that the Newcomen engine he had was unable to drain it quickly enough. Roebuck heard about Watt and his improved engines and approached him with a proposition to bankroll his work in exchange for a majority ownership of the production. Watt quickly agreed glad to be rid of the necessity of working at the University to pay for his experiments and to dispose of the necessity of handling the business end of inventing in one go. Under Roebucks patronage Watt began producing his improved engines which Roebuck then sold with some success. Unfortunately Roebuck later went bankrupt and was forced to sell his portion of the company to Mathew Bolton, an entrepreneur and businessman who had been enthusiastically following Watt’s progress since shortly after Roebuck joined. Bolton was a gentleman socialite who counted individuals such as Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin, who he had sent a Savery Engine asking for ideas to improve it without success, among his circle. The insolvency of Roebuc was a windfall for Bolton, who quickly incorporated himself and Watt. Thus Bolton & Watt was formed, a name which within a few years would become synonymous with steam power and would remain the prime and principle producer of quality steam engines for decades.
Over the year that followed Watt produced numerous advances and innovations in the application of steam including the Sun and Planet gear, the Governor, tube boiler, and primitive gauges. Watt was a genious who’s “only advantage, besides a brilliant mind, was a lack of preconceived notions about what a steam engine should be.”(Klien Pg 23) A few early adopter textile mills had bought Newcomen engines with the intent of using them to drive their looms, but the Newcomen had an irregular stroke and thus was unsuited to industries need for smooth continuous motion. Watt devised a drive shaft operated off of a rotating wheel driven by the pressure of the steam which produced a much smoother stroke which revolutionized the English textile industry and began the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
For all Watt’s genius however, the rise of steam might have been postponed indefinitely had it not been for the business acumen on Mathew Bolton. After buying out Roebuck, Bolton put Watt working full time to develop his engine, moved the two of them to London, and opened the Bolton & Watt engine company. Bolton was as social as Watt was introverted and the two of them would form a lifelong partnership to the benefit of both themselves and the world. Watt’s innovations may have stood upon their own merit, but it was Bolton’s advertising that sold them to first the textile makers of London, and then to innovative entrepreneurs seeking to apply this new force to new industry. Bolton was once quoted saying, “I sell here is what all the world desires to have, Power!” (3) While Bolton & Watt were certainly not the first Inventor and Businessman team, they were the greatest of the age. This symbiosis of inventor and business man would prove to be a common model in the industrial age.
Transport
The application of steam power to methods of conveyance had been dreamed of by engineers since the earliest days of its invention. Watt patented a steam carriage in 1782 for his assistant William Murdoc though due to the use of a low pressure engine it proved to be impractical.(Klien pg 34)
Before man would stripe their continents with endless miles of steel roads, they would conquer a course already laid for them by nature. It was the American Rivers which made steam travel practical. While early locomotive and steamboat innovation happened semi-concurrently it would be the boats which would first prove to be economically and practically viable.
History has generally held that the American Robert Fulton invented the steam boat, but this is misleading. Fulton was rather the first man to, with the help of the international Famous Robert Livingston, successfully market the Steamboat.
Before Fulton there would be Denis Papin, William Henry, John Fitch, John Stevens, Oliver Evans, Claude De Jouffroy, and James Rumsey.
Papin would invent the steam digestor which would later inspire many of Watt's inventions, and experimented with a type of primitive cylinder and piston engine to push a paddle. It's unclear whether the paddlewheeler he built in 1704 was powered by his engine or pedals, though foot power seems far more likely. He tried to find backers in England for his ideas but was unsuccessful and thus the birth of the paddleboat would pass on to another.
William Henry, an American tinker and inventor described by his contemporaries as a man of “refined mind and deep study” (Jordan pg 50) is also credited with being the first to apply the motive power of steam to the propelling of a boat. He too would prove to be unsuccessful, Dr. Robert H. Thurston, late professor of Engineering at Cornell (deceased 1891) would describe his attempt thusly, “In the year 1760 he visited England. Having a mechanical turn of mind, the inventions and the application of steam by Watt being then much discussed, the idea of it's application to the propelling of boats, vehicles, ect., so engrossed his mind that on his return to his home in Lancaster he began the construction of a machine, the motive power of which was steam. In 1763 Mr. Henry completed the machine which was attached to a boat with paddles and with it he experimented on the Conestoga River, near Lancaster but the boat, a stern wheeler, was structurally weak and unable to resist the pounding action of the engine. “ (Jordan pg 49) This was, if we embrace the unlikeliness of Papin's success, the first time that a steam engine was used to propel a boat. However Henry may have been instrumental in inspiring Fulton to his later successes as Robert Fulton's childhood home was dirrectly across the street in Lancaster from the home of William Henry, and one issue of the Lancaster “Pathfinder” from 1858 maintains that young Fulton often visited Henry at work. (Jordan pg 51)
Claude De Jouffroy was a french inventor who produced a working paddle steamer in 1783, which unfortunately was banned by the government from experimenting with it in Paris. Further work on his invention was curtailed by the French Revolution, and thus while he may have built the first working Steamboat he is
Fulton first built a trial Steamboat in 1788, the same year as Trethverick produced his high pressure engine, and would in 1801, in France, design and build the first submarine which he named the Nautilus which inspired Frenchman Jules Verne to write his seminal novel 20000 Leagues Under the Sea.
The first steam powered vehicle in America would strangely enough be built to travel both on land and water. The man who would invent this atavistic amphibious contraption would be American inventor Oliver Evans. Born to a farming family in Delaware and apprenticed to a wheelwright (4) where he learned basic mechanical principles. Evans quit his apprenticeship after a year and turned back to farming and inventing. Over the course of his life Evans would contribute a vast wealth of inventions including grist-milling technology, elevators, and engines. He would pioneer numerous innovations which would in one way or another reduce the amount of human labor involved in the operation of a grist mill. “By 1840 the nation had about twenty-four thousand gristmills in operation, and most of them utilized some or all of Evan's inventions” (Klien 35) His innovations made it possible to produce much more flour at a much lower input of labor cost, thus indirectly contributing hugely to the available work-power in America. He would also become a marginally controversial figure as he fought for the implementation and improvement of American Patent law. He was even mentioned by Thomas Jefferson in correspondence with Issac McPherson concerning his attempt to extend one patent, and the legitimacy of another. Evans, the holder of US patent number 4 (US Patent office) was sometimes overzealous in his quest for renumeration for every idea he ever had, which was addressed by Jefferson thus, “The question then whether such a string of buckets was invented first by Oliver Evans, is a mere question of fact in mathematical history. Now, turning to such books only as I happen to possess, I find abundant proof that this simple machinery has been in use from time immemorial.” (Boyle pg 18) Jefferson it is well known had problems with the potential for long monopolies that could stem from extended patent and worked to prevent the expansion of the terms of patent and intellectual property. Evan’s was possibly Jefferson’s polar opposite in his regard for intellectual property. He felt that he was not being sufficiently renumerated for his genius and that he was being persecuted by a government that wouldn’t grant him permanent monopoly of his ideas. Evan’s passion for patent stemmed from the fact that many of his earliest inventions were stolen from him by unscrupulous neighbors. His whole inventing life was plagued with hardship and infringement which he vigorously battled until disgusted with what he perceived to be the inadequacies of the American patent system he quit inventing altogether and published a harsh criticism in his Young Millers Guide saying,
“The inventor is deluded by the name of a patent, and his hopes raised by the accounts he has heard of the success of inventors in England, and he makes great exertions and sacrifices to mature, and introduce into use, his improvements; but just as he begins to receive compensation his patent expires, his sanguine hopes are all blasted, he finds himself ruined, and conceives that he has been robbed by law, is thrown into a despair, and tempted to deem the precious gift of God…as a curse…I…declare, that all my study, labour and time expended during the most vigorous half of my life in making new inventions,etc. I account as lost to myself and family. ..Two years ago I totally relinquished all pursuit of new improvements… Had the laws been such as to ensure adequate compensation, I coud…have invented and introduced into use other improvements that would have proved ten times as beneficial to my country, as all those which I have accomplished: but I have been forced to bury my talent with disgust.” (Evans, pg 25)
Long before his retirement he would contribute his Oruktor Amphibiolos, which is Greek for “Amphibious Digger”, the first steam powered transport in America. The vessel was commissioned by the city fathers of Philidelphia for the dredging of the Schuylkill River. His 24 ton Oruktor was built to be a self propelled dredging machine which he envisioned would be able to transport itself over land from place to place wherein it would drive into water and propel itself with a paddle wheel. Evan’s managed to build the Oruktor, with the help of his workers who continued to labor even after the money ran out. In the summer of 1805 the vessel was launched before the surprised population of Philidelphia. The behemoth worked, but did so poorly and was so incredibly inefficient that it was retired from service only months after it’s implementation.
Evans also contributed many ideas which never came to fruition. He labored his whole life to build an working high pressure engine without much success. “I was astonished to obsere that they had so far erred as to use the steam only to form a vacuum, to apply the mere pressure of the atmosphere, instead of applying the elastic power of steam, for original motion, a power which I supposed was irresistible.” (Klien pg 33) He posited that by raising the temperature and pressure of the contained steam you reaped a geometric increase in power with only an arithmetic increase in fuel consumption (Klein pg 38). Not for another four decades would this insight become widely understood.
Concurrently with Evans British inventor Richard Trethverick began produced a high pressure engine, which he produced in 1788 nearly the same time that Evans produced his Oruktor. Tretheverick would also build the first unmanned locomotive which pulled a cart behind it at an English ironworks. Sources conflict on whether or not he ever acquired patents for his work with modern Historian Maury Klien asserting that he did not (Klien 32) while Luke Herbert's The Engineers's and Mechanic's Encyclopedia by Luke Hebert (published 1846) states that '[high pressure engines] are usually known in [England] by the term “Trevithick boilers” from the supposition that Mr. Trevithick was the inventor. We, however, observe that Mr. Oliver Evans...describes them as being used by him in his high-pressure engine, prior to the patents of Mr. Trevithick, and as Mr. Evans does not claim them, we may suppose they were in use before his time.” (Hebert pg 199). Strange then that Evan's would not have claimed them as rabid as he was for protecting his intellectual property, leading us either to presume that high pressure boilers were invented by someone potentially lost to time, that Mr. Hebert was incorrect, or that the politics surrounding Evan's exclusion-mindedness prevented him from aquiring a patent for this work. Regardless of whether Tretheverick's innovations were legitimate, they caught on. Despite his presumed innovations he was largely responsible for introducing the Locomotive to the world, a fact which would not prevent him from dying impoverished in 1833 (Klien 33).
Anthracite Coal
Railroads-
Harnessing Lightning-
Works Cited:
1-MacIntosh, J. J, and Peter Anstey. “Robert Boyle.” Web. 1 Mar 2010. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boyle/
2-Guerlac, Henry (1970-80). "Black, Joseph". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 173-183. ISBN 0684101149.
3-“I SELL HERE, SIR, WHAT ALL THE WORLD DESIRES TO HAVE -- POWER.” Web. 5 Mar. 2010. http://uh.edu/engines/powersir.htm
4- “Oliver Evans - Steam Engines and Mills.” Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bloliverevans.htm
Boyle, James. The Public Domain. CSPD, 2008. Print.
Evans, Oliver, Cadwallader Evans, and Thomas Ellicott. The young mill-wright and miller's guide. Blanchard and Lea, 1860. Print.
Oliver Evan's Patent # 4 “Patent Images.” Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
US Patent Office online Collection.
http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=00000004&homeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO1%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526d%3DPALL%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsrchnum.htm%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526s1%3D0000004.PN.%2526OS%3DPN%2F0000004%2526RS%3DPN%2F0000004&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=NONE&Input=View+first+page