This diagram depicts the Newcomen steam engine.
Artokoloro / Alamy Stock Photo
It can be hard to imagine a world without cars, trains, and the endless varieties of goods available today. These were made possible by the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perhaps the most important innovation behind this new era was the steam engine.
Thomas Newcomen, a British engineer and Baptist lay-preacher, is credited with inventing the first practical steam engine in 1712, which was used to pump water out of mines. Steam engines soon proved to be more efficient and versatile than machines that relied on wind or water, fueling the growth of factories and igniting the industrial age.
Already the steam engine works our mines, impels our ships, excavates our ports and our rivers, forges iron, fashions wood, grinds grains, spins and weaves our clothes, transports the heaviest burdens, etc.”
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, 1824
