The Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology

Abstract

OF all the features which distinguish the present age from those of the past, none is more striking than that of the extended application of power to every need of man. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans depended on the work of tens of thousands of slaves—we to-day depend on coal and oil. The discovery of how to produce power from the combustion of fuel must therefore ever rank as one of the great landmarks in the progress of civilisation, and the inventor of the first practical steam engine, Thomas Newcomen, as one of the world's greatest benefactors. That Newcomen but applied the discoveries of others; that he invented neither the cylinder, the piston, the beam, nor the pump incorporated in his engine, detracts nothing from the merits of his achievement. He it was who solved a problem which had long exercised men's minds, and by so doing set on foot the great power industry of the present age.

The Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology.

Extra Publication No. 1: Marten Triewald's Short Description of the Atmospheric Engine, published at Stockholm 1734. Translated from the Swedish, with Foreword, Introduction and Notes. Pp. xxii + 61. 12s. 6d. net. Extra Publication No. 2: R. D'acres's The Art of Water-Drawing. Published by Henry Brome., at the Gun in Ivie Lane, London, 1659 and 1660. With Introduction and a Diagram by Rhys Jenkins. Pp. xxiii + 43. 7s. 6d. net. (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, Ltd., 1928 and 1930.)