Newcomen Memorial Engine
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The Newcomen Memorial Engine (sometimes called the Coventry Canal Engine) is a preserved
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 ...
in
Dartmouth, Devon Dartmouth () is a town and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is a tourist destination set on the western bank of the estuary of the River Dart, which is a long narrow tidal ria that runs inland as far as Totnes. It lies within the ...
. It was preserved as a memorial to
Thomas Newcomen Thomas Newcomen (; February 1664 – 5 August 1729) was an English inventor who created the atmospheric engine, the first practical fuel-burning engine in 1712. He was an ironmonger by trade and a Baptist lay preacher by calling. He ...
(d. 1729), inventor of the beam engine, who was born in Dartmouth. The engine is the world's oldest surviving steam engine.


The engine


Newcomen engines

Newcomen's first successful engine is considered to be the
Dudley Castle engine Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the ...
of 1712.
Newcomen engine The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is often referred to as the Newcomen fire engine (see below) or simply as a Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam drawn into the cylinder, thereby creati ...
s were used for applications that required the raising of water, such as the draining of coal mines. These 'fire engines' became popular for mining and 104 were in use by 1733, eventually over two thousand of them were installed.


Re-use of old engines

Although a radical new invention at its time, the Newcomen design was later, ca. 1775, supplanted by improved engines to the designs of Smeaton or
Watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...
. The original Newcomen engine was inefficient in its use of fuel and was often replaced by a more efficient engine to save on fuel costs. This led to an extensive trade in both upgrading older engines with newly invented features, and in trading older engines to less demanding sites as they were replaced. Older engines would often continue in colliery areas where coal was cheap. Engines of this period had a considerable cost in the manufacture of their cylinder, a difficult engineering problem for the day. Their timber beams, pumps and engine house were relatively cheap in comparison. When second-hand engines were traded to other sites, it is this cylinder that is most easily traced, with many working on several sites over their lifetime. The surviving engines of this period have mostly been moved from their original leading-edge sites to some quiet backwater, often pumping water into
canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...
s, where they languished with only intermittent use. This was often seasonal, pumping only being required during a dry summer, and so the heavy coal consumption of an early engine was acceptable.


Griff Colliery

The early history of this engine is unclear but it was built some time around the start of the 18th century. Newcomen constructed an engine for Griff Colliery near
Nuneaton Nuneaton ( ) is a market town in the borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth in northern Warwickshire, England, close to the county border with Leicestershire and West Midlands County.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : Nuneaton's ...
in 1714 "to draw water by the impellant force of fire". The first engine was to be capable of pumping 16,700 litres of water per hour from the mine, with a maximum depth of . This first engine was working by 1715. It had "a copper boiler, a
brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...
steam barrel (cylinder) and piston, two pit barrels of pott metal (
cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...
) and other pypes cisterns and appurtenances thereto belonging". The brass cylinder may have been in diameter and long. For this engine a patent premium of £7 "payable on Saturday of each week" was due. Seeing how well the engine performed, the mine owners hoped to take over the maintenance of the engine, and its costs, with an option to build other engines under the terms of the patent. This was agreed, and the partners paid £150 for the first six months with further payments of £420 per year for each mine drained. A second engine was erected around 1719. The mine though was not as profitable as expected and the original partners surrendered their 29-year lease in 1720, after only 7 years. New owners had a third engine, the surviving Memorial Engine, erected in 1725. It is likely that this was a rebuilt version of the first engine, with the original brass cylinder replaced with a larger bore one of cast iron with a stroke of . The engine was capable of pumping at 12 strokes per minute, moving 68,200 litres of water every hour. The engine was not large, even for its time, and used a simple one-piece wooden beam, without additional struts or being made of multiple laminated timbers. It was also carried on a timber frame, rather than being house-built. Further investment followed in 1728 with a new boiler for one of the engines. The colliery was worked out though and produced little coal after 1728. The
Savery Savery is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Constance Savery (1897-1999), English author * Gil Savery (1917-2018), American journalist * Henry Savery (1791–1842), Australian novelist * Jan Savery (1589–1654), Flemish paint ...
patents were still in effect and operating two engines attracted premiums of £300 per annum. The colliery closed over the next few years and the equipment was sold. In 1729 a spare brass cylinder was sold to Measham Colliery, probably that replaced when the Memorial Engine cylinder had been replaced with cast iron. The engines, one of which would become the Memorial Engine, were sold in 1731 to Henry Green of the
Bedworth Bedworth ( or locally ) is a market town and unparished area in the borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth, Warwickshire, England.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : It is situated between Coventry, 6 miles (9.5 km) to the south, a ...
Coal Works, south of Griff, and one in 1734 to John Wise, bringing a close to mining at Griff.


Oakthorpe Colliery

Details of the engine's longest period of service, nearly a century, are uncertain. It seems to have been the later engine sold from Griff in 1734 to John Wise, who was the owner of Oakthorpe Colliery at
Measham Measham is a large village in the North West Leicestershire district in Leicestershire, England, near the Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire boundaries. It lies off the A42, 4½ miles (7.25 km) south of Ashby de la Zouch, in the Natio ...
.
Joseph Wilkes Joseph Wilkes (1733–1805) was an 18th-century English industrialist and agricultural improver born in the village of Overseal in Derbyshire but more commonly associated with the village of Measham in Leicestershire. From a farming family, Wil ...
would later own the colliery, and its engines.


Rebuilding

A second rebuilding, or more, took place during this service. Following
James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fun ...
's production of the much-improved separate condenser for Newcomen engines there were a number of improvements that were often applied to existing engines. The most important of these was the 'pickle pot' condenser, a device with the advantages of the separate condenser yet avoiding, barely, the Watt patent. As Watt's patent for the separate condenser ran from 1769 to 1800, these patent-avoiding devices can often be dated to this period: after their invention by Watt, but before the Watt device could simply be copied directly. The Engine also shows evidence of a patched hole in the side of the cylinder, where the original Newcomen injection valve was removed. The pickle-pot condenser is an extension below the cylinder connected by a large diameter pipe. A
jet condenser The Watt steam engine design became synonymous with steam engines, and it was many years before significantly new designs began to replace the basic Watt design. The first steam engines, introduced by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, were of the "at ...
within this works in the same way as the separate Watt condenser. The Watt condenser is attached by a longer, narrow pipe to the cylinder. By claiming that the pickle pot was an 'extension' of the main cylinder, rather than a separate component, it avoided infringing the Watt patent. A requirement for this was also that the
haystack boiler There have been a vast number of designs of steam boiler, particularly towards the end of the 19th century when the technology was evolving rapidly. A great many of these took the names of their originators or primary manufacturers, rather than a m ...
was moved away from its traditional Newcomen position, directly beneath the cylinder. This was an innovation described by
John Curr John Curr (c. 1756 – 27 January 1823) was the manager or viewer of the Duke of Norfolk's collieries in Sheffield, England from 1781 to 1801. During this time he made a number of innovations that contributed significantly to the development of t ...
in his ''The Coal Viewer & Engine Builder's Companion'' of 1797. Other developments applied to the Engine included plate chain to connect to the arch heads of the beam, rather than the earlier
link chain A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A c ...
s. The Engine's valves were replaced with
drop valve The double-beat valve, drop valve or equilibrium valve is a type of poppet valve arranged to allow it to be opened against a high pressure with a minimum of force. One of its uses is in steam engines to admit steam to the cylinders and to release t ...
s, operated by a
rack and pinion A rack and pinion is a type of linear actuator that comprises a circular gear (the '' pinion'') engaging a linear gear (the ''rack''). Together, they convert rotational motion into linear motion. Rotating the pinion causes the rack to be driven ...
driven from the arbor, worked by horns and
tappet A tappet is most commonly a component in an internal combustion engine which converts the rotating motion of the camshaft into linear motion of the valves, either directly or indirectly. An earlier use of the term was for part of the valve gear ...
s on the moving vertical plug rod. After pumping at the colliery until around 1821 the engine was in the ownership of a Jonathan Woodhouse. Probably due to replacement by a newer engine, as the colliery continued working, it was sold again. This time out of the coal industry, and to a canal


Coventry Canal

The Coventry Canal Company purchased the engine in 1821 and set it to work pumping water from a well to maintain levels in the canal. An engine house, still surviving, was built at the
Hawkesbury Junction Hawkesbury Junction or Sutton Stop () is a canal junction in England, at the northern limit of the Oxford Canal where it meets the Coventry Canal, near Hawkesbury Village, Warwickshire, between Bedworth and Coventry. The alternative name, Su ...
,
Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...
in 1837. The engine has sometimes been known as the "Coventry Canal Engine", after this service. The engine stayed in intermittent service here until 1913, a second service of over ninety years.


Preservation

The engine was preserved in 1963 by the
Newcomen Society Newcomen may refer to: People * John Newcomen (c.1613–1630), English first white settler murdered by another white settler in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts * Matthew Newcomen (c. 1610–1669), English nonconformist churchman *Thomas Newcomen (16 ...
, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Newcomen. It was moved to his birthplace in Dartmouth and re-erected in a new museum there, known as the Newcomen Engine House. This building, originally an
electricity substation A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions. Between the generating station and ...
, also contains the
Tourist Information Centre A visitor center or centre (see American and British English spelling differences), visitor information center, tourist information center, is a physical location that provides tourist information to visitors. Types of visitor center A visi ...
. The engine is now worked by modern
hydraulics Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counter ...
and may be seen moving in action.


Notes


References


External links


Dartmouth Tourist Information Centre
- Adjacent to the Newcomen Engine House
Newcomen Engine House
- Devon Museums * {{Use dmy dates, date=March 2015 Memorial Engine Preserved beam engines Dartmouth, Devon Museums in Devon History of the steam engine 1725 in Great Britain Industrial Revolution Steam museums in England Industrial archaeological sites in Devon Thomas Newcomen