Sublime

The stationary steam engine constructed by the English inventor Thomas Newcomen in 1712, building on the work of previous experimenters, was used to pump water out of flooded coal mines. Early steam engines were large (Newcomen engines were typically housed in buildings three stories tall) and inefficient, but this did not matter much because they

By 1750, after decades of marginal improvements, a standard-sized, Newcomen, inefficient steam engine developed about 15 kW, weighed nearly 9.6 t, and had a mass/power ratio of about 640 g/W (Smil,

Watt's more efficient steam engine, opened the way to the mass production of fabric and as higher incomes in urbanizing and industrializing societies created new markets for all kinds of textile products by expanding the ownership of clothes beyond what was commonly just a single set (or two) of outer garments.

Newcomen’s steam engine from a machine of limited usefulness and very low efficiency to a much more practical device capable of about 20 kW that began revolutionizing many tasks in coal mining, metallurgy, and manufacturing

One of the most revolutionary of all technological inventions, the jet engine, had a rather rocky and painfully slow gestation. It was the invention of another of my heroes, Frank Whittle, whose sheer determination and perseverance have inspired me since even before I first set up on my own as a manufacturer.

These experiments (which were begun in the 1730s with his Junto colleague Joseph Breintnall, based on the theories of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle) included putting cloth patches of different colors on snow and determining how much the sun heated each by measuring the melting. Later,

Only after Watt’s

1776 patent had expired did it become possible to develop new high-pressure designs suitable for mobile applications