Steam engine, Bygones Museum, Claydon - geograph-1687594-by-Chris-Allen

A table engine is a variety of

stationary steam engine Stationary steam engines are fixed steam engines used for pumping or driving mills and factories, and for power generation. They are distinct from locomotive engines used on railways, traction engines for heavy steam haulage on roads, steam cars ...

where the cylinder is placed on top of a table-shaped base, the legs of which stand on the baseplate which locates the crankshaft bearings. The piston rod protrudes from the top of the cylinder and has fixed to it a cross-head which runs in slides attached to, and rising from, the cylinder top. Long return rods connect the crosshead to the crankshaft, on which is fixed the flywheel. This pattern of engine was first introduced by James Sadler at the

Portsmouth Dockyard His Majesty's Naval Base, Portsmouth (HMNB Portsmouth) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Devonport). Portsmouth Naval Base is part of the city of Portsmouth; it is l ...

in 1798 and was house-built in that its framing was formed by the

engine house __NOTOC__ An engine house is a building or other structure that holds one or more engines. It is often practical to bring engines together for common maintenance, as when train locomotives are brought together. Types of engine houses include: * m ...

, as had been common practice for

beam engine A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newco ...

Henry Maudslay Henry Maudslay ( pronunciation and spelling) (22 August 1771 – 14 February 1831) was an English machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology. His inventions were a ...

patented an improved version of this a few years later, and other makers adopted the configuration. It was supplied for low-speed, low-power applications around the first half of the nineteenth century. They continued to be made in a range of sizes, down to very small, with a bore and stroke of only a few inches. The table engine was one of the first types

Richard Trevithick Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was a British inventor and mining engineer. The son of a mining captain, and born in the mining heartland of Cornwall, Trevithick was immersed in mining and engineering from an early age. He w ...

had also built a number of stationary engines which used their boiler as a framework to support their cylinder and crankshaft. where the engine was constructed as an independent unit, rather than being house-built. This made the engines cheaper, and more importantly quicker, to erect on site. Entire engines could be built and tested at their factory before delivery. Engines could also be pre-built, then offered for sale from stock, rather than having to be designed and constructed for each site. One reason for the continued use of a vertical cylinderEngines up to this point, with only rare exceptions, were

s using a vertical cylinder. was the belief that with a horizontal cylinder, the weight of the piston within the cylinder would lead to uneven wear on the lower bore of the cylinder. This erroneous view was not dispelled until around 1830 and the increasing number of steam locomotives using horizontal cylinders without such wear problems.

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External links

{{Commons category, Table engines
Maudslay table engine at the Science Museum, London
Stationary steam engines Steam engines Steam engines by layout