Every-day Science: Volume 6. The Conquest of Nature

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

THOMAS SAVERY'S STEAM PUMP

This principle was clearly grasped, however, by another Englishman, Thomas Savery, a Cornish mine captain, who in 1698 secured a patent for a steam engine to be applied to the raising of water, etc. A working model of this machine was produced before the Royal Society in 1699. The transactions of the Society contain the following: "June 14th, 1699, Mr. Savery entertained the Royal Society with showing a small model of his engine for raising water by help of fire, which he set to work before them: the experiment succeeded according to expectation, and to their satisfaction."

The following very clear description of Savery's engine is given in the introduction to Beckmann's History of Inventions:

"This engine, which was used for some time to a considerable extent for raising water from mines, consisted of a strong iron vessel shaped like an egg, with a tube or pipe at the bottom, which descended to the place from which the water was to be drawn, and another at the top, which ascended to the place to which it was to be elevated. This oval vessel was filled with steam supplied from a boiler, by which the atmospheric air was first blown out of it. When the air was thus expelled and nothing but pure steam left in the vessel, the communication with the boiler was cut off, and cold water poured on the external surface. The steam within was thus condensed and a vacuum produced, and the water drawn up from below in the usual way by suction. The oval vessel was thus filled with water; a cock placed at the bottom of the lower pipe was then closed, and steam was introduced from the boiler into the oval vessel above the surface of the water. This steam being of high pressure, forced the water up the ascending tube, from the top of which it was discharged, and the oval vessel being thus refilled with steam, the vacuum was again produced by condensation, and the same process was repeated. By using two oval steam vessels, which would act alternately—one drawing water from below, while the other was forcing it upwards, an uninterrupted discharge of water was produced. Owing to the danger of explosion, from the high pressure of the steam which was used, and from the enormous waste of heat by unnecessary condensation, these engines soon fell into disuse."

THOMAS SAVERY'S STEAM ENGINE.

The principle involved is that of the expansion of steam exerting a propulsive force and its subsequent condensation to produce a vacuum. These are the principles employed in the modern steam engine, but the only use to which they were put in Savery's engine was the elevation of water by suction.

This description makes it obvious that Savery had the clearest conception of the production of a vacuum by the condensation of steam, and of the utilization of the suction thus established (which suction, as we know, is really due to the pressure of outside air) to accomplish useful work. Savery also arranged this apparatus in duplicate, so that one vessel was filling with water while the other was forcing water to the delivery pipe. This is credited with being the first useful apparatus for raising water by the combustion of fuel. There was a great waste of steam, through imparting heat to the water, but the feasibility of the all-important principle of accomplishing mechanical labor with the aid of heat was at last demonstrated.

As yet, however, the experimenters were not on the track of the method by which power could be advantageously transferred to outside machinery. An effort in quite another direction to accomplish this had been made as early as 1629 by Giovanni Branca, an Italian mathematician, who had proposed to obtain rotary motion by allowing a jet of steam to blow against the vanes of a fan wheel, capable of turning on an axis. In other words, he endeavored to utilize the principle of the windmill, the steam taking the place of moving air. The idea is of course perfectly feasible, being indeed virtually that which is employed in the modern steam turbine; but to put the idea into practise requires special detailed arrangements of steam jet and vanes, which it is not strange the early inventor failed to discover. His experiments appear not to have been followed up by any immediate successor, and nothing practical came of them, nor was the principle which he had attempted to utilize made available until long after a form of steam engine utilizing another principle for the transmission of power had been perfected.