Click on any of the links below and you will be given a more detailed description of each engine

The Engines in Chronological Order Are:

  1. Thomas Newcomen’s Dudley Castle Engine which was built to remove the flood water from a coal mine in 1712. This was the world’s first commercial steam engine.
      
  2. James Watt’s The Smethwick Engine which was built to conserve water on the Birmingham canal system in 1779. This is the first of James Watt’s three valve engines.
        
  3. James Pickard and Matthew Wasbrough’s Engine which was built in 1780. This was the first engine in the world to provide rotary motion by the use of a crank and flywheel.
      
  4. James Watt’s The Lap Engine, the first engine to use all of Watt’s patented ideas on rotary engine design. The Lap Engine was built in 1788.
       
  5. Francis Thompson’s The Arnold Mill Engine. This was a rotary beam engine which was built to avoid patent litigation with the Boulton and Watt organisation and was built in 1797.
        
  6. Richard Trevithick’s The Lambeth Engine. This was a new design of an engine which operated with steam at a high pressure and was built in 1804.
        
  7. This shows a typical small Beam Engine which would have been made in c1860 to drive many industries throughout the world.

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