Thomas Newcomen was an English inventor who created the atmospheric engine, the first practical fuel-burning engine in 1712. He was an ironmonger by trade and a Baptist lay preacher by calling.
Thomas Savery was an English inventor and engineer. He invented the first commercially used steam-powered device, a steam pump which is often referred to as the "Savery engine". Savery's steam pump was a revolutionary method of pumping water, which improved mine drainage and made widespread public water supply practicable.
The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is often referred to as the Newcomen fire engine or simply as a Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam drawn into the cylinder, thereby creating a partial vacuum which allowed the atmospheric pressure to push the piston into the cylinder. It was historically significant as the first practical device to harness steam to produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout Britain and Europe, principally to pump water out of mines. Hundreds were constructed throughout the 18th century.
Robert Stephenson, DCL was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father. Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century. Stephenson's death was widely mourned, and his funeral afforded marks of public honour. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Falkirk is a town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, 23+1⁄2 miles northwest of Edinburgh and 20+1⁄2 miles (33 km) northeast of Glasgow.
Lionel Thomas Caswall Rolt was a prolific English writer and the biographer of major civil engineering figures, including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He is also regarded as one of the pioneers of the leisure cruising industry on Britain's inland waterways, and was an enthusiast for vintage cars and heritage railways. He played a pioneering role in both the canal and railway preservation movements.
The Newcomen Society is an international learned society that promotes and celebrates the history of engineering and technology. It was founded in London in 1920, and takes its name from Thomas Newcomen, one of the inventors associated with the early development of the steam engine and who is widely considered the "father of the Industrial Revolution". An early president was Loughnan St. L. Pendred.
William Symington (1764–1831) was a Scottish engineer and inventor during the Georgian era. He is most well known as the builder of the first practical steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas. The engine has been described as "without doubt the most compact and efficient marine steam engine up to that time" and its design would influence later steamboat and steamship engine designs. While Symington died in poverty after failing to commercialise his steam engine designs, he is still credited as one of the great inventors of the early Industrial Revolution.
Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 17th century, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to Watt's improved steam engine designs in the late 18th century. It is these later designs, introduced just when the need for practical power was growing due to the Industrial Revolution, that truly made steam power commonplace.
A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall. The efficiency of the engines was improved by engineers including James Watt, who added a separate condenser; Jonathan Hornblower and Arthur Woolf, who compounded the cylinders; and William McNaught, who devised a method of compounding an existing engine. Beam engines were first used to pump water out of mines or into canals but could be used to pump water to supplement the flow for a waterwheel powering a mill.
Callendar House is a mansion set within the grounds of Callendar Park in Falkirk, central Scotland. During the 19th century, it was redesigned and extended in the style of a French Renaissance château fused with elements of Scottish baronial architecture. However, the core of the building is a 14th-century tower house.
Fingask Castle is a country house in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It is perched 200 feet (61 m) above Rait, three miles (5 km) north-east of Errol, in the Braes of the Carse, on the fringes of the Sidlaw Hills. Thus it overlooks both the Carse of Gowrie and the Firth of Tay and beyond into the Kingdom of Fife. The name derives from Gaelic fionn-gasg: a white or light-coloured appendage.
London's water supply infrastructure has developed over the centuries in line with the expansion of London.
Events from the year 1712 in Great Britain.
Sir Archibald Grant, 2nd Baronet, of Monymusk, Aberdeen, was a company speculator and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1722 to 1732. He was expelled from the House of Commons for his involvement in the frauds on the Charitable Corporation, and returned to Scotland where he devoted his time to improving his estate.
Sir John Meres FRS of Kirby Bellars, Leicestershire was an English knight and the director of a number of companies in the early 18th century, including the Charitable Corporation, the York Buildings Company, and Company of Mineral and Battery Works. He was also one of the Six Clerks in Chancery.
George Livingston PC was a military officer and third Earl of Linlithgow.
The British Engineerium is an engineering and steam power museum in Hove, East Sussex. It is housed in the Goldstone Pumping Station, a set of High Victorian Gothic buildings started in 1866. The Goldstone Pumping Station supplied water to the local area for more than a century before it was converted to its present use. The site has been closed to the public since 2006, and in March 2018 the entire complex was put up for sale.
The Hollow Sword Blades Company was a British joint-stock company founded in 1691 by a goldsmith, Sir Stephen Evance, for the manufacture of hollow-ground rapiers.
Lendal Tower is a medieval tower that formed part of the city defences of York, England. It is located on the east bank of the River Ouse at the point where the river enters the walled city from the north-west. The building was used as a waterworks from 1616 until 1846 after which it was converted into offices. It has since been turned into rental accommodation.
