Illustration
A diagram showing the essential design features of the early atmospheric steam engine designed by Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) during the Industrial Revolution. Heated water (blue) creates steam (pink) which has a much great volume. When the steam condenses back to water (by adding cool water from the upper tank), a vacuum is created which pulls in the piston at the top. The falling piston raises the arched lever or chain, which in turn pulls up a weight. When the vacuum tank is emptied, the piston rises again, pulled by the arched lever/chain as it falls back to its natural position thanks to gravity.
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Original image by Emoscopes. Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 06 February 2023. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon a work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
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Cite This Work
APA Style
Emoscopes. (2023, February 06). Newcomen Steam Engine Diagram. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/17008/newcomen-steam-engine-diagram/
Chicago Style
Emoscopes. "Newcomen Steam Engine Diagram." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified February 06, 2023. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/17008/newcomen-steam-engine-diagram/.
MLA Style
Emoscopes. "Newcomen Steam Engine Diagram." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 06 Feb 2023. Web. 22 Feb 2025.
