Thomas Newcomen , baptized on February 24th 1664 with Dartmouth (Devon, England), deceased on August 5th 1729, was Forgeron, Plombier, and tinner by tradition, and Pasteur Baptiste by vocation. The area of Devon was rich in tin and of many mine S were exploited there. The drainage of infiltration constituted an main issue then, and the flood of the wells prevented the extraction of the ore starting from a certain depth. The contribution of Newcomen was to develop a steam engine usable for the pumping out.
A first “hearth machine”
Newcomen developed his steam engine with his associate Thomas Savery in 1712. Savery had proposed a “hearth machine” functioning like a kind of Thermosiphon. The device included/understood an empty tank connected by a pipe to a Puisard underground in the mine. Vapor with low pressure allowed in the tank, then was condensed (by pulverized cool water) to produce a Vide aspiring the water of the sump. The water retained in the tank was evacuated, before repeating the process. This “hearth machine” was not very effective, and could function only in lower part a low depth.
The “machine with beam”, known as “machine of Newcomen”
Newcomen designed a machine with Balancier, consisted of a large wood beam being balanced around a central pivot. On a side of this beam leaves a chain connected to a Pompe in bottom mine, and other side, a chain is connected to the stem of a Piston which can move inside a vertical cyclindre open at its higher end. The sealing is ensured by a joined primitive consisted of a cord of hemp rolled up around the piston, whose circumference is bevelled. This cord, inflated by moisture, is in a hurry by means of metal weights.
Vapor with low pressure, produced in the balloon of a boiler, is allowed in the cylinder. A vacuum is then created by a condensate sprinkling the vapor, and the atmospheric pressure which is exerted on the higher face of the piston reduces it. This movement actuates the moving parts of the pump, which return then to their initial position by their own weight. The vapor is then again allowed under the piston, driving out the condensates by a pipe of purging, and renewing the process.
Success and improvements
At the beginning, the Valve S of admission of vapor and water of sprinkling were operated manually. It is reported that in 1713 a boy named Humphrey Potter, asked to open and close the valves of the machine, made it function without assistance while suitably placing cords and thrusts in order to open and close the valves. This device was simplified in 1718 per Henry Beighton, who suspended on the beam, a bar acting on stems which actuated the valves.Newcomen manufactured in 1711 a marketable machine whose power was equivalent that of 500 horses. In 1712, Newcomen and John Calley built their first machine close to a mine shaft flooded, and pumped it during hours in order to show its power. It was then used the same year by Conygree Coalworks close to Dudley in West the Midlands, and a functional counterpart of this machine can be seen in a nearby museum, the Black Country Living Museum . Soon, the orders flowed of mines in wet ground of all England. Newcomen shared his patent with Savery, because of the use of his system of sprinkling. The machine of Newcomen will be largely used with the pumping out of the mines of the south-west of England, in particular in the tin mines of Cornwall.
With his death, Newcomen had installed more than one hundred of his machines, in the south-west of England, in the the Midlands, in the north of the Wales and in Cumbrie.
In 1725, these machines were usually of use in the collieries, where they were exploited without much change during three-quarter of century. John Smeaton, which built many machines of this type towards 1770, improved it by many technical details.
Bonds
The machine of Newcomen, in detail and interactivePhotographs and diagrams of steam engines of first generation
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