steam engine summary

Among the pleasures to be derived from venturing through the early editions of Britannica is the one we think of as “being present at the creation.” Steam engines had been around as novelties for centuries, but the first practical ones were invented by the Englishmen Thomas Savery in 1698 and

George Stephenson was an English engineer and principal inventor of the railroad locomotive. Stephenson was the son of a mechanic who operated a Newcomen atmospheric-steam engine that was used to pump out a coal mine at Newcastle upon Tyne. The boy went to work at an early age and without formal

Richard Trevithick was a British mechanical engineer and inventor who successfully harnessed high-pressure steam and constructed the world’s first steam railway locomotive (1803). In 1805, he adapted his high-pressure engine to driving an iron-rolling mill and to propelling a barge with the aid of

Oliver Evans was an American inventor who pioneered the high-pressure steam engine (U.S. patent, 1790) and created the first continuous production line (1784). Evans was apprenticed to a wheelwright at the age of 16. Observing the trick of a blacksmith’s boy who used the propellant force of steam