Bento de Moura Portugal (21 March 1702 – 27 January 1766)José Joaquim Simões de Paiva e Figueiredo (ed.), ''Inventos e vários planos de melhoramento para este reino: escriptos nas prisões da junqueira por Bento de Moura Portugal'', Coimbra, 1821
accessed on Google Books 2015-12-20
/ref> was a Portuguese aristocrat, a Knight of the Order of Christ, and a scientist best known for his improvements to

Thomas Savery Thomas Savery (; c. 1650 – 15 May 1715) was an English inventor and engineer. He invented the first commercially used steam-powered device, a steam pump which is often referred to as the "Savery engine". Savery's steam pump was a revolutiona ...

's steam engine. He was an early supporter of Newtonian science and became known as the ''Portuguese Newton''.

Life

Moura Portugal was born in Moimenta da Serra,

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. In 1741 he was elected to the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in London. In 1742 he demonstrated his improved steam engine, based on that of Thomas Savery, to the Portuguese court in Lisbon. In 1747 he was tried and found guilty of ''proposições heréticas e escandalosas'' for the assembly of such "fire machines" by the

Inquisition The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...

,António Baiño, ''Episódios dramáticos da inquisião portuguesa'',
accessed at Google Books 2015-12-20
/ref> and spent the rest of his life going gradually insane in Junqueira Prison in Lisbon.

References

1702 births 1766 deaths Portuguese scientists Fellows of the Royal Society {{Portugal-scientist-stub