Jerónimo de Ayanz's steam pump
Bomba de vapor de Jerónimo de Ayanz
- Date
- 1606 · confidence medium
- Place
- Guadalcanal, Seville, Andalusia, Spain
- Credited to
- Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Among the 48 inventions Jerónimo de Ayanz was granted a royal privilege for in 1606 is a device that used steam from a boiler to drive water out of flooded mines. It is regarded as a forerunner of Savery's steam pump, almost a century earlier.
The 1606 privilege (Valladolid) proves the invention, but there are no drawings or solid testimonies of how it worked, and no demonstrated link to Savery (1698) or Newcomen. A trial in the Guadalcanal mines is attributed to Ayanz.
What it led to
- drainage trials in the silver mines of Guadalcanal
- a Spanish precedent for the steam pump, with no known industrial continuity
- historiographical recovery from the 20th century