Abstract
IN the first lecture it was pointed out that the first practical steam engine was Newcomen's, about the middle of the eighteenth century, and it used about 20 lb. of coal per horse-power hour. James Watt succeeded in reducing this to 5 lb. or 7 lb. of coal per horse-power hour, chiefly through the introduction of the separate condenser, and the Watt engine remained in principle without other than detail improvements until the gradual rise of steam pressure, and consequent extra expansion, caused compound, triple, and finally quadruple expansion engines to be introduced, and as a result the coal bill is now some one-fifteenth of what it was in the time of Newcomen.
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Steam Turbines 1 . Nature 82, 204–206 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/082204c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082204c0