After Savery’s invention the next
major innovation in vintage steam engine was made by Thomas Newcomen.
(1663-1729). He combined the three simple notions of balance, condensing of
steam to produce vacuum and the piston working in a cylinder.
Steam was inducted in a cylinder at
a pressure little above that of the
atmosphere with a weighted beam counterbalancing it and drawing up the piston. Cold
water is then sprayed to condense steam. The partial vacuum created forces the
piston down reversing the tilt of the beam raising the load.
As the machine
works owing to the pressure of atmosphere these vintage models were known as
atmospheric engines. Before the commercial
production of Newcomen Engine the early vintage models were manually operated. The
machines were primarily used in the mines of Midland and Cornwall. However owing
to the high level of wastage of fuel in these vintage machines, it was used
only in mines extracting low-grade coal.
No comments:
Post a Comment