The Steam Engine 

In the late 17th Century, England faced a timber crisis as shipbuilding and firewood consumed forests. The wood for the ships was necessary due to trading and defense, coal was a good alternative to wood but producing more coal meant that they had to dig deeper coal mines, which had increased the chance of water seeping into the mines causing problems. They needed a new method of pumping water out of the mines. 

In 1698, Thomas Savery who was a military engineer had created a steam pump device which he nicknamed ''The Miners Friend''.The device consisted of a boiling chamber that routed steam into a second container where a pipe with a non-return valve descended into the water that needed to be removed. Cold water was poured over the container of steam and as the water vapor inside cooled to a liquid state, the resulting vacuum drew up water from below. The sucked-up water was unable to flow back past the non-return valve and was then drained through another pipe. His invention was not used very much by the mining industry and most of his sales were made to private homes for home and gardening needs that wanted to draw out excess water from their homes. The reason for his invention being so unsuccessful was the fact that the steam chamber's heating and cooling had to be managed manually and the engine could only draw up water from a limited depth which meant that if they had to dig a deep mine they would have had to put several engines installed at different levels. 

Though in 1712 Thomas Newcomen who was a blacksmith and his assistant John Calley who was a glass blower created a much more effective steam powered pump system. It was called the Newcomen Engine combined Thomas Savery's separation of the boiler and steam cylinder with Papin's steam-driven Piston. Newcomen's engine was similar to Thomas Savery's it included a steam-filled chamber that was cooled by a quick injection of cold water to create a vacuum-inducing change in atmospheric pressure. This time, however, the force of the vacuum pulled a piston down and pulled a chain that activated a pump on the other end of a suspended beam. When the water in the piston cylinder turned to steam again, it pushed the piston up and a weight on the other side of the beam reset the pump. The Newcomen engine was a major success and was used in hundreds of mines all over Britain and abroad.

But the steam engine of now is of James Watts creation. Watt was in employment at a business near the Glasgow University when one of the universities Newcomen  engines needed repairs. When watt was fixing the steam engine he realised that there was a flaw in the design such as time, steam and fuel were being wasted by having both heating and cooling take place in the piston cylinder.  Watt had solved the problem by adding a separate condenser. 

Howstuffworks, 2013, Howstuffworks. [Online] Available at: <http://science.howstuffworks.com/steam-technology2.htm> [Accessed 20th April 2013]