The history of steam as a motor generally commences with reference to that toy called the aeolipile, described by Hero of Alexandria in a treatise on pneumatics about two centuries before Christ, and which was the invention of either himself or Ctesibius, his teacher.
This toy consisted of a globe pivoted on two supports, one of which was a communicating pipe leading into a heated cauldron of water beneath. The globe was provided with two escape pipes on diametrically opposite sides and bent so as to discharge in opposite directions. Steam admitted into the globe from the cauldron escaped through the side pipes, and its pressure on these pipes caused the globe to rotate.
Hero thus demonstrated that water can be converted into steam and steam into work.
Since that ancient day Hero's apparatus has been frequently reinvented by men ignorant of the early effort, and the principle of the invention as well as substantially the same form have been put into many practical uses. Hero in his celebrated treatise described other devices, curious siphons and pumps. Many of them are supposed to have been used in the performance of some of the startling religious rites at the altars of the Greek priests.
From Hero's day the record drops down to the middle ages, and still it finds progress in this art confined to a few observations and speculations. William of Malmesbury in 1150 wrote something on the subject and called attention to some crude experiments he had heard of in Germany. Passing from the slumber of the middle ages, we are assured by some Spanish historians that one Blasco de Garay, in 1543, propelled a ship having paddle wheels by steam at Barcelona. But the publication was long after the alleged event, and is regarded as apocryphal.
Observations became more acute in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, experiments more frequent, and publications more full and numerous.
Cardan Ramelli and Leonardo da Vinci, learned Italians, and the accomplished Prof. Jacob Besson of Orleans, France, all did much by their writings to make known theoretically the wonderful powers of steam, and to suggest modes of its practical operation, in the latter part of the sixteenth century.
Giambattista della Porta, a gentleman of Naples, possessing high and varied accomplishments in all the sciences as they were known at that day, 1601, and who invented the magic-lantern and camera obscura, in a work called Spiritalia, described how steam pressure could be employed to raise a column of water, how a vacuum was produced by the condensation of steam in a closed vessel, and how the condensing vessel should be separated from the boiler. Revault in France showed in 1605 how a bombshell might be exploded by steam.
Salomon de Caus, engineer and architect to Louis XIII, in 1615 described how water might be raised by the expansion of steam.
In 1629 the Italian, Branco, published at Rome an account of the application of a steam jet upon the vanes of a small wheel to run it, and told how in other ways Hero's engine might be employed for useful purposes.
The first English publication describing a way of applying steam appeared in 1630 in a patent granted to David Ramseye, for a mode of raising water thereby. This was followed by patents to Grant in 1632 and to one Ford in 1640. During that century these crude machines were called "fire engines." It seems to have been common in some parts of Europe during the seventeenth century to use a blast of steam to improve the draft of chimneys and of blast furnaces. This application of steam to smoke and smelting has been frequently revived by modern inventors with much flourish of originality.
It is with a certain feeling of delight and relief, after a prolonged search through the centuries for some evidence of harnessing this mighty agent to man's use, that we come to the efforts of the good Marquis of Worcester – Edward Somerset. He it was who in 1655 wrote of the Inventions of the Sixteenth Century. He afterwards amplified this title by calling his book A Century of Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as at present I call to mind to have tried and perfected, etc.
There are about one hundred of these "Scantlings," and his descriptions of them are very brief but interesting. Some, if revived now and put to use, would throw proposed flying machines into the background, as they involved perpetual motion.
But to his honor be it said that he was the first steam-engine builder. A patent was issued to him in 1663. It was about 1668 that he built and put in successful operation at Raglan Castle at Vauxhall, near London, a steam engine to force water upward. He made separate boilers, which he worked alternately, and conveyed the steam from them to a vessel in which its pressure operated to force the water up. Unfortunately he did not leave a description of his inventions sufficiently full to enable later mechanics to make and use them. He strove in vain to get capital interested and a company formed to manufacture his engines. The age of fear and speculation as to steam ceased when the Marquis set his engine to pumping water, and from that time inventors went on to put the arm of steam to work.
In 1683 Sir Samuel Morland commenced the construction of the Worcester engines for use and sale; Hautefeuille of France taught the use of gas, described how gas as well as steam engines might be constructed, and was the first to propose the use of the piston. The learned writings of the great Dutch scientist and inventor, Huygens, on heat and light steam and gas, also then came forth, and his assistant, the French physicist and doctor, Denis Papin, in 1690, proposed steam as a universal motive power, invented a steam engine having a piston and a safety valve, and even a crude paddle steamer, which it is said was tried in 1707 on the river Fulda. Then in 1698 came Thomas Savery, who patented a steam engine that was used in draining mines.
The eighteenth century thus commenced with a practical knowledge of the power of steam and of means for controlling and working it.
Then followed the combined invention of Newcomen, Cawley and Savery, in 1705, of the most successful pumping engine up to that time. In this engine a cylinder was employed for receiving the steam from a separate boiler. There was a piston in the cylinder driven up by the steam admitted below it, aided by a counterpoise at one end of an engine beam. The steam was then cut off from the boiler and condensed by the introduction beneath the piston of a jet of water, and the condensed steam and water drawn off by a pipe. Atmospheric pressure forced the piston down. The piston and pump rods were connected to the opposite ends of a working beam of a pumping engine, as in some modern engines. Gauge cocks to indicate the height of water, and a safety valve to regulate the pressure of steam, were employed. Then came the ingenious improvement of the boy Humphrey Potter, connecting the valve gear with the engine beam by cords, so as to do automatically what he was set to do by hand, and the improvement on that of the Beighton plug rod. Still further improved by others, the Newcomen engine came into use through out Europe.
Jonathan Hulls patented in England in 1736 a marine steam engine, and in 1737 published a description of a Newcomen engine applied to his system for towing ships. William Henry, of Pennsylvania, tried a model steamboat on the Conestoga river in 1763.
This was practically the state of the art, in 1763, when James Watt entered the field. His brilliant inventions harnessed steam to more than pumping engines, made it a universal servant in manifold industries, and started it on a career which has revolutionized the trade and manufactures of the world.
To understand what the nineteenth century has done in steam motive power we must first know what Watt did in the eighteenth century, as he then laid the foundation on which the later inventions have all been built.
Taking up the crude but successful working engine of Newcomen, a model of which had been sent to him for repairs, he began an exhaustive study of the properties of steam and of the means for producing and controlling it. He found it necessary to devise a new system.
Watt saw that the alternate heating and cooling of the cylinder made the engine work slowly and caused an excessive consumption of steam. He concluded that "the cylinder should always be as hot as the steam that entered it." He therefore closed the cylinder and provided a separate condensing vessel into which the steam was led after it raised the piston. He provided an air-tight jacket for the cylinder, to maintain its heat. He added a tight packing in the cylinder-head for the piston-rod to move through, and a steam-tight stuffing-box on the top of the cylinder. He caused the steam to alternately enter below and above the piston and be alternately condensed to drive