Steam Engines of the Eighteenth Century

The Pickard Engine

wpe67.jpg (15325 bytes)

This is a model of an engine which operated on the principles first developed By Thomas Newcomen in 1712.

However, it is the first atmospheric engine in the world to directly achieve rotary motion by the use of a crank and flywheel.

This engine was designed and built by Matthew Wasbrough in 1779 for James Pickard who was a Birmingham manufacturer.

James Pickard’s manufactory was situated on the site of the present Snow Hill railway station. Engineers had tried to harness the movement of the atmospheric engine for almost seventy years to directly drive machinery.

When Matthew Wasbrough first built this engine in 1779 his mechanism for providing rotary motion was the fitting of racks and pinions.

This method proved unreliable and, James Pickard removed this mechanism and fitted a simple crank and flywheel.

The Snow Hill engine then became the first engine in the world to provide rotary motion by this new method.

wpe68.jpg (14710 bytes)

wpe69.jpg (19998 bytes)

A patent was granted for this idea on 23^rd August 1780. James Pickard and Matthew Wasbrough can be seen reading through this patent in the accompanying photograph.

The model is a generic representation of what the Snow Hill engine most probably looked like in 1780, because the only known details are that the powering cylinder had a diameter of 30 inches and the piston made a stroke of seven feet.

The details needed to construct this model were gathered together over a period of twenty years. The main source of reference was drawings and descriptions of other 18^th century engines.

Every part of the engine in miniature was hand made.

The central support wall for the main beam contains 9,200 ceramic bricks, and to make the boiler 1,749 rivets was used. The granting of the patent for the sole use of the crank on this engine really did change the course of engineering history. It prevented other engineers from obtaining rotary motion by this simple means. James Watt for instance had to use the Sun and Planet gears on his engines to avoid litigation with James Pickard.

With all the planning and the research completed, the construction time for this historical engine was 2,800 hours.

wpe6A.jpg (22321 bytes)

Top of Page | Home | Index | Lectures & Book Purchase