The Baptist preacher and iron monger Thomas Newcomen and his partner John Calley held their breath as they watched and waited for the beam of their new strange device to swing up and down. Newcomen betted 10 years of their lives, hardwork and experimentation on this device. Its result dictated not only if this bet paid off but also the fate of England’s mining industry and even beyond.
Newcomen Enigma
Mystery shrouded the early life of Thomas Newcomen. Only few details came and repeated countlessly in every life story of this native of Dartmouth. His livelihood eventually brought him a challenge that captivated most part of his life.
No definitive record existed on Newcomen’s birth. Estimates placed his birth in 1663 and baptism on February 28, 1664 in Dartmouth, Devonshire. Stories of his background described his family’s history as former nobles who lose their fortune under King Henry VIII. His father worked as a merchant and a follower of the Baptist Church.
His family's Baptist belief made them a target of persecution. Sects deviating from the Church of England aka Anglican Church became known as Nonconformist, which not only include Baptist, but also Quakers and Presbyterians among others. With Anglicanism as the state religion, Nonconformist suffered discrimination leading the Newcomens parents laying low and the for scanty records on his early Life.
Thomas Newcomen revolved his life around his religion and the extensive mining industry. He grew up as an iron monger, part blacksmithing small tools and part salesman. In the sides, he studied his faith, ultimately being a preacher to a small congregation of Baptists. For his trade, his contacts and visits made him aware of the challenges of the iron as well as coal industry both integral to his work.
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| Newcomen House |
The Mining Industry
Mining existed in the British Isle for more than a millennia. The rising demand for iron and also coal led miners to dig ever deeper in the ground. This brought challenges to the industry that hampered their production, which reached and confronted Newcomen with a challenge.
Since the time of the Bronze Age, around 2,000 BCE, tin mines in Cornwall supplied metals to Eurasia. By Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the industry faced a problem. Demand for metals required digging deeper, but the miners started hitting underground water reservoirs that flooded shafts. The Virgin Queen, out of the 52 patents issued under her, 7 related to water pumping.
Fast forward to the 17th century, the flooding problem turned industry-wide. Demand for iron and tin, as well as coal grew larger due to wars and a search for alternatives to wood as a source of fuel. Thus, to meet this, more miners dug deeper and suffered from flooding.
Solving the flooding problem, however, cost a great deal of resources. For example, a mine in Warwickshire called used 500 horses just to hoist buckets of water one after another. In cases of absence of the beast of burden, the miners themselves raised the bucket. This band aid solution cost a lot of time and money with inefficient results.
These problems eventually reached the ears of Newcomen. It mysteriously triggered Newcomen to view it as challenge and began to work for a solution. To this day even the exact circumstances of his dedication to the work remains unknown.
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| Flooded mines in Wales, 1877 |
Starting Point
With an industry in crisis, Newcomen heeded the call and began to work. Because of his Nonconformist background, he lacked higher education hence access to the latest scientific knowledge and inventions that may help him in his quest. Once again, mystery shrouded his progress, questioning even if the available developments during Newcomen’s time even influenced his work.
By the time Newcomen worked on his pump, a series of concepts began to gain traction. The English Marquess of Worcester and the French Protestant exile Denis Papin already played with the idea of steam powered machines, but failed to find an application. In 1698, Thomas Savery applied this theories in his steam-powered, or what he called “fire engine”, water pump dubbed the “Miner’s Friend” which he patented and commercially sold.
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| Savery Engine, 1698 |
Unfortunately, Miner’s Friend failed to be a major success due to its disadvantages. It lack the power to pump water out of deep mines. Increasing its power risked an of explosion due to its design. It had 2 receivers that collected hot steam before being sprinkled by cold water causing condensation which triggered a vacuum sucking the water from the mines. It required manual intervention in the sprinkling of water and increasing the power meant more steam, which if uncontrolled may result for the receivers blowing up.
All these developments happened during Newcomen's development, but a question arose: did he knew and applied it? According to John Robison who wrote from around 1793, Newcomen corresponded with scientist Robert Hooke whom he discussed the studies of Marquess Worcester and Denis Papin. Others surmised, due to his close proximity to Savery who lived less than 20 miles from Dartmouth, Newcomen may have worked with the Miner’s Friend.
In 1936, Newcomen Society President Rhys Jenkins discredited the correspondence between Hooke and Newcomen pushing that the Baptist iron monger developed his engine independently.
Whatever the case, it may have been in between. Due to close proximity between each other and their works within the same industry, Newcomen may have heard about the exploits of Savery. Moreover, his baptist community may also have been sources of information which helped their brethren in his studies. Indeed, the true extent of Newcomen’s knowledge of scientific developments and its influence remains tragically a mystery.
The Work
With or without knowledge, Newcomen and Calley toiled for more than 10 years developing their steam engine through trial and error. With the help from their community, they proceeded and by 1712, their moment of truth came. Was it all worth it?
From the 1690s to 1700s, Newcomen worked tirelessly in their workshop to get the right formula for a powerful pump. The materials and labor cost lightened with the help from their Baptist community. The secrecy tightened the community offering each other moral and financial support by setting up a community bank or cooperative of some sort. These supports helped Newcomen and Calley until they finally reached their finish line.
Around the 1700s, the partners finally found their winning formula. The Swedish admirer of Newcomen, Marten Triewald, attributed it to sheer luck as he wrote:
The cold water, which was allowed to flow into a headache embracing the cylinder, pierced through an imperfection which had been mended with tiny soldier. The heat of the Steam caused the tin-solder to melt and thus opened a way for the cold water, which rushed into the cylinder and immediately condensed the steam, creating such a vacuum that the weight of the water in the pumps, proved to be so insufficient that the air, which pressed with a tremendous power on the piston, caused its chain to break and the piston crushed the bottom of the cylinder as well as the lid of the smaller boiler.
With a small crack, they unveiled their final prototype. A moment that John Desagulier wrote:
Not being either philosophers to understand the reason, or mathematicians enough to calculate the powers and proportions of the parts, they very luckily, by accident, found what they sought for
The Atmospheric steam engine or the Newcomen Engine came as the end product. It composed a pump connected vertically to one side of a beam while the other side of a piston inside a cylinder that filled with steam from a boiler and a fire stack next to it.
As the boiler produced steam that filled the cylinder, it raised the piston, and once filled a valve stopped steam from entering further. Cold water then entered the cylinder which then caused the steam to condensate turning liquid that goes to a drain. The condensation then resulted in a vacuum and the outside atmospheric pressure brought the piston down, resulting in the connected beam to tilt to the side of the cylinder and raising the connected pump. (If this sounds confusing, try this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GMgP-4O99qU?si=qj5As2uga3FliTPG )
The Newcomen Engine relied on numerous scientific concepts. It used condensation to create a vacuum which in turn used atmospheric pressure to drive down the piston that hoisted the water pumps. The use of pistons and valves also became a significant improvement offered by the engine. As Jenkins wrote, “It embodies a vast number of distinct inventions, the labour of many minds…”
With its developments, the Newcomen Engine offered significant advantages in comparison to the Savery engine. It generated more power in a safer manner. It continuously worked without any manual labor, which only needed, under the new engine, in stoking fire and making sure enough supply of water for the boiler and the sprinkler.
Nevertheless, some problems existed in the Newcomen Engine. For instance it required a heavy load of coal to operate. A writer in 1778 quoted by David Landes:
A fire-engine cost 3,000 Pounds to operate annually while it took only 900 Pounds for men and horses
It also posted inefficiency in the use of heat because rather than continuously generating heat, the cylinder must be cooled down to generate the condensation and vacuum. In conclusion, the engine worked with advantages to its predecessor, while still posting challenges for future inventors to solve.
Newcomen and Calley, whether with knowledge or just by luck, created a machine that answered some problems from the Savery engine. It utilized some new features that generated more power for less labor.N Nevertheless, it had disadvantages and the question of practicality remained.
Newcomen and his partner finally came up with their engine. They must, however, secure their invention as well as make sure it does work and meet the objectives of the whole quest: to solve flooding mines. Doing both of these actions dictated the fate of Newcomen.
Newcomen sought a patent for his engine, but faced an instant problem. His engine, unfortunately, already covered by the patent issued to Savery with a broad description, as stated:
Vessels or engines for raising water on occasioning motion to an sort of millworks by the implement force of fire.
This patent remained valid until 1733, thus, to proliferate their invention, Newcomen proposed a partnership with Savery, who luckily agreed while being busy with his other government duties.
With licenses and patents secured, the question remained if the engine solved the problem that it meant to solve. A chance in 1711, when a certain Mr. Griff asked them to pump water from his mine, failed for unknown reasons. Another came in 1712 in a coal mine in Dudley Castle in Staffordshire, but unlike the previous attempt, this worked.
The Newcomen Engine made of 21 inches in diameter and 8 ft. long cylinder operated well in Dudley. It generated 12 strokes a minute capable of draining 10 gallons of water per minute from a depth of 156 ft. 10 years of toil by Newcomen and Calley with all those investments from their fellow Baptist, and all the trials and errors that ended with an accident paid off.
The use of the Newcomen Engine spread within England and beyond. By 1725 Warwickshire coal mines used this engine to pump out water while Scotland also began to use it as well. By 1726, London installed its Newcomen Engine for public usage, but then the problem of expense led to its discontinuation in 1731. By 1767, 57 Newcomen Engine operated producing 1,200 horsepower in Newcastle while 18 operated in Cornish mines by 1780.
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| Marten Triewald |
The Newcomen Engine took Europe as well. From 1722 to 1724, Newcomen Engines began to operate in Hungary, Vienna,and Cassel. Marten Triewald who worked for 10 years with Newcomen engines brought the technology to his homeland of Sweden and its Dannemora Mines. The spread surely made Newcomen a wealthy pastor and iron monger.
Unfortunately, scanty information also plagued the later years of Newcomen. Rhys Jenkins surmised that since Newcomen continued to work as an ironmonger, the engine failed to deliver wealth. Thomas Newcomen passed away in 1729.
Legacy
Newcomen’s decades of toils succeeded in solving the flooding problem of mines. The tragedy laid, if Jenkins theory of Newcomen failing to be wealthy after his invention, the inventor failed to be rewarded handsomely for the revolution that he ushered in. His engine, as Jenkins wrote:
...whether applied in the locomotive, in the steamship, or for driving in factories, it is nevertheless directly descended from the pumping engine constructed by Newcomen in 1712.
His machine triggered later developments, so much so, by 1870, a single British engine generated a power equivalent to 6 million horses or 40 million men. Newcomen’s engine allowed for , as David Landes stated, “Inanimate source of power that has enabled man to transcend the limitations of biology and increase his productivity a hundred times over.”
See also:
Bibliography:
Website:
“Newcomen, Thomas.” Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Encyclopedia.com. Accessed on December 24, 2024. URL:
“Thomas Newcomen (1663 - 1729).” BBC. Accessed on December 24, 2024. URL:
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Thomas Newcomen.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed on December 24, 2024. URL: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/newcomen-thomas
Triewald, Marten. “A Short Description of the Fire- and Air- Machine at the Dannemora Mines.” Intratext. Accessed on December 24, 2024. URL: https://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1218/
Books:
Jenkins, Rhys. The Collected Papers of Rhys Jenkins. Freeport, New York; Book for Libraries Press, 1971.
Landes, David. The Unbound Prometheus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Stuart, Robert. A Descriptive History of the Steam Engine. Pateroster Row, London: John Knight and Henry Lacey, 1824.
Thuston, Robert. A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine. New York, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1886.
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