Thomas Newcomen (baptised 24 February 1664; died 5 August 1729) was an ironmonger by trade and a Baptist lay preacher by calling. He was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England, near a part of the country noted for its tin mines. Flooding was a major problem, limiting the depth at which the mineral could be mined. Newcomen perfected a practicable steam engine for pumping water, the Newcomen Engine. Consequently, he is often referred to as a father of the Industrial Revolution.
He could be said to have been more than a lay preacher as he was a teaching elder in the local Baptist church. That he continued in business is almost certainly because the church could not afford to pay him as a full time elder. His father had been one of a group who brought the well known Puritan John Flavel to Dartmouth. Later one of Newcomen's business contacts in London, Edward Wallin, was another baptist minister who had connections with the well known Dr John Gill of Horsleydown, Southwark. Newcomen's connection with the Baptist church at Bromsgrove materially aided the spread of his steam engine.
Newcomen's great achievement was his steam engine, probably developed about 1710, combining the ideas of Thomas Savery and Denis Papin. It is likely that Newcomen was already acquainted with Savery, whose forebears were merchants in south Devon in 1712. Savery also had a post with the Commissioners for Sick and Hurt Seamen, which took him to Dartmouth. Savery had devised a 'fire engine', a kind of thermic syphon, in which steam was admitted to an empty container and then condensed. The vacuum thus created was used to suck water from the sump at the bottom of the mine. The 'fire engine' was not very effective and could not work beyond a limited depth of around thirty feet.
Newcomen replaced the receiving vessel (where the steam was condensed) with a cylinder containing a piston. Instead of the vacuum drawing in water, it drew down the piston. This was used to work a beam engine, in which a large wooden beam rocked upon a central fulcrum. On the other side of the beam was a chain attached to a pump at the base of the mine. As the steam cylinder was refilled with steam, readying it for the next power stroke, water was drawn into the pump cylinder and expelled into a pipe to the surface by the weight of the machinery. Newcomen and his partner John Calley built one of the first engines at the Conygree Coalworks near Dudley in the West Midlands.
A working replica of this engine can be seen at the Black Country Living Museum nearby.
Comparatively little is known of Newcomen's later life. By the time of his death, over a hundred of his engines, operating under Savery's patent (extended by statute so that it did not expire until 1733), had been installed by Newcomen and others in most of the important mining districts of Britain: draining coal mines in the Black Country, Warwickshire and near Newcastle upon Tyne; and lead mines in Flintshire and Derbyshire, amongst other places.
In his later life (at least), the engine affairs were conducted through an unincorporated company, the 'Proprietors of the Invention for Raising Water by Fire'. Its secretary and treasurer was John Meres, clerk to the Society of Apothecaries in London. That society formed a company which had a monopoly on supplying medicines to the Navy providing a close link with Savery, whose will he witnessed. The Committee of the Proprietors also included Edward Wallin, a Baptist of Swedish descent; and pastor of a church at Maze Pond, Southwark. Newcomen died at his house in 1729, and his body was buried at Bunbury Fields.
By 1725, the engine was in common use in collieries, and it held its place without material change for about three-quarters of a century. Near the close of its career its mechanical details were much improved by John Smeaton, who built many large engines of this type about the year 1770.
Attempts to drive machinery by Newcomen engines were unsuccessful, as the single power stroke produced a very jerky motion. Despite Watt's improvement, Common Engines (as they were then known) remained in use for a considerable time. Probably the last Newcomen-style engine to be used commercially—and the last still remaining on its original site—is at Elsecar, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire.
See Also
Sources of Information
[1] Wikipedia