The Story of Great Inventions

by Elmer Ellsworth Burns

If you had visited the coal-mines of England and Scotland three hundred years ago, you might have seen women bending under baskets of coal toiling up spiral stairways leading from the depths of the mines. At some of the mines horses were used. A combination of windlass and pulleys made it possible for a horse to lift a heavy bucket of coal. There came a time, however, when slow and crude methods such as these could not supply the coal as fast as it was needed. The shallower mines were being exhausted. The mines must be dug deeper. The demand for coal was increasing. The supply of coal, it was thought, would not last until the end of the century. The wood supply was already exhausted. It seemed that England was facing a fuel famine.

There was only one way out of the difficulty. A machine must be invented that would do the work of the women and horses, a machine strong enough to raise coal with speed from the deepest mines. Then it happened that two great inventors, Newcomen and Watt, arose to produce the machine that was needed. When the world needs an invention it seldom fails to appear. It is true of the world, as of an individual, that "Necessity is the mother of invention."

In the mean time Torricelli had performed his famous barometer experiment, and Otto von Guericke had astonished princes with proofs of the pressure of the air. There was no apparent connection between these experiments and the art of coal-mining, yet these discoveries made possible the steam-engine which was to revolutionize first the coal-mining industry and, later, the entire industrial world.

The First Steam-Engine with a Piston

The first steam-engine with a piston was made by Denys Papin, a Frenchman. Papin had observed that, in Guericke's experiment, air-pressure lifted several men off their feet. So he thought the air could be made to lift heavy weights and do useful work. But how should he produce the vacuum? His first thought was to explode gunpowder beneath the piston. The gunpowder engine had been tried by others and found wanting. He next turned his attention to steam, and discovered that if the piston were forced up by steam and then the steam condensed, a vacuum was formed beneath the piston, and air-pressure forced the piston to descend. If the piston were attached to a weight by a rope passing over a pulley, then, as the piston descended, it would lift the weight. Papin's engine consisted simply of a cylinder and piston (Fig. 12). There was no boiler, but the water was placed in the cylinder beneath the piston. A fire was placed under the cylinder and, as the water boiled, the steam raised the piston. Then the fire was removed and, as the cylinder cooled, the steam condensed, and the piston was forced down by air-pressure. This was a slow and awkward method. The engine required several minutes to make one stroke.

FIG. 12–PAPIN'S ENGINE

The first steam-engine with a piston. When the piston B was forced down by air-pressure, a weight was lifted by means of a rope TT passing over pulleys.

The principle of Papin's engine was first successfully applied by Thomas Newcomen. Newcomen was a blacksmith by trade, and his great successor, Watt, was a mechanic. Thus we see that great discoveries soon become common property. The blacksmith and the mechanic soon learn to use the discoveries of the scientist.