Separate-condenser steam engine
Máquina de vapor de condensador separado
- Date
- 1765-1769 · confidence high
- Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- James Watt
- People
- 👤 James Watt1736–1819
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
An improvement on the Newcomen engine that condensed steam in a separate chamber, avoiding cooling the cylinder on every stroke and cutting coal consumption by more than two-thirds. It turned steam into an economical, widely applicable power source.
The idea was conceived in Glasgow in 1765; patented in 1769, with commercial production from 1776 at Soho (Birmingham) with Matthew Boulton.
What it led to
- Factories no longer tied to rivers and water power
- The Boulton & Watt partnership and the model of industrial patent licensing
- Expansion of deep coal and tin mining
- The definition of horsepower as a unit of power
Built on
- Aeolipile and Heron's automatac. 60 CE
- Boyle's law1662
- Savery steam pump1698
- Newcomen atmospheric engine1712
- Savery's pump
- Boyle's gas law
Made possible
- Rotative steam engine (sun-and-planet gear, double acting)1781
- Pyroscaphe (first working steamboat)1783
- Watt's linkage1784
- High-pressure steam engine1801-1802
- Charlotte Dundas (first practical steam tug)1802
- Steam locomotive1804
- Woolf's compound steam engine1804
- Commercial steamboat1807
- Mechanical vapour-compression refrigeration1834-1856
- Four-stroke internal combustion engine1876
- Pearl Street power station1882
- Steam turbine1884
- Trevithick's high-pressure engine