Unit 4 The Dictators

Revolution in the machinery!

 James Watt invents the modern steam engine.

James Watt has patented his first efficient steam machine. He has not invented it but he has improved at stratospheric levels the Thomas Newcomen´s machine making it more useful and efficient for the manual jobs.

Plane of a steam engine

The first working steam engine had been patented in 1698 and by the time of Watt's birth, Newcomen engines were pumping water from mines all over the country. In around 1764, Watt was given a model Newcomen engine to repair. He realised that it was hopelessly inefficient and began to work to improve the design. He designed a separate condensing chamber for the steam engine that prevented enormous losses of steam. His new patent covered this device and other improvements on Newcomen's engine.

Portrait of James Watt.

Watt and Matthew Boulton, who owns an engineering works in Birmingham are starting to manufacture and commercialize this new steam machine. Watt's two most important improvements were the separate condenser and rotary motion. The separate condenser, located external to the cylinder, condensed steam without cooling the piston and cylinder walls as did the internal spray in Newcomen's engine. Watt's engine's efficiency was more than the double of the Newcomen´s engine. Rotary motion was more suitable for industrial power than the oscillating beam of Newcomen's engine. It is a vacuum or "atmospheric" engine using steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to create a partial vacuum beneath the piston.


This machine is useful for many manual and tedious tasks. It will revolution the industry speeding up the production in a 150%.