As I noted in Part I, the general idea of using heat and steam for mechanical work had a long and continuous history back to ancient times. But when we talk of the breakthrough “steam engine” in the eighteenth-century sense, we don’t mean a machine that exploits steam’s expansive, or pushing force. We actually mean a machine that does the exact opposite, exploiting the apparent sucking power that occurs when hot steam is rapidly condensed with a spray of cold water. It’s the relative weight of the atmosphere, compared to the sudden vacuum from condensing steam, that does all the work.
Fascinating as always. Thank you. A question however. In the first illustration, glass lenses are shown. Wouldn't plain glass windows have let in the same amount of heat or energy in such a setup?
Only small technical remarks - most of described machines work by shrinking and expansion of gas (air), not by condensation. Even Savery's machine works by mixed shrinking of air and condensation.
Why haven't you mentioned the Worcester's water-commanding engine?
1663 description of "fire-water work" in Worcester's Century of Inventions:
“ An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire; not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the philosopher colleth it intra sphaeram activitatis, which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no bounder, if the vessel be strong enough ; for I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three quarters full of water, stopping and screwing up the broken end, as also the touchhole, and making a constant fire under it; within twenty-four hours it burst, and made a great crack : so that, having a way to make my vessels, so that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream, forty feet high : one vessel of water, rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water, and a man that tends the work, is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim between the necessity ot turning the said cocks.”
The link in footnote 14 is broken.
Fascinating as always. Thank you. A question however. In the first illustration, glass lenses are shown. Wouldn't plain glass windows have let in the same amount of heat or energy in such a setup?
Great reading!
Only small technical remarks - most of described machines work by shrinking and expansion of gas (air), not by condensation. Even Savery's machine works by mixed shrinking of air and condensation.
And Huygens is Christiaan, not Constantijn.
Today original thinkers can be reached by the veneer of advanced education.
The concept of perpetual motive can be closely approached using air pressure provided by a VAWT.
The air over hydraulic configuration can drive any machine with incredible force.
Combining this method with a hydraulic hub and one has motive power.
MORE to the story.....
Why haven't you mentioned the Worcester's water-commanding engine?
1663 description of "fire-water work" in Worcester's Century of Inventions:
“ An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire; not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the philosopher colleth it intra sphaeram activitatis, which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no bounder, if the vessel be strong enough ; for I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three quarters full of water, stopping and screwing up the broken end, as also the touchhole, and making a constant fire under it; within twenty-four hours it burst, and made a great crack : so that, having a way to make my vessels, so that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream, forty feet high : one vessel of water, rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water, and a man that tends the work, is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim between the necessity ot turning the said cocks.”