In 1712, Thomas Newcomen built the world's first successful steam engine which was used for pumping water from coal mines on Lord Dudley's estates.
The first piston steam engine, developed by Thomas Newcomen around 1710, was slightly over one half percent (0.5%) efficient.
Both groups took their name from Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729), the British industrial pioneer whose invention of the atmospheric steam engine in 1712 led to the first practical use of such a device -- lifting water out of mines.
The first problem to be confronted in such an enterprise was drainage, which was dealt with by using early Newcomen steam engines.
The early steam engines developed by Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen which drew water from mines and the industrial steam engines perfected by James Watt and others employed the ancestors of today's engineers.
Though The End of Oil is not a chronological history of humanity's use of fossil fuels, Roberts begins by recounting how Thomas Newcomen, in 1712, presented the first large steam engine, and thus helped spark the Industrial Revolution.
His father had been one of a group who brought the well-known Puritan John Flavel to Dartmouth.
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