The first commercially successful steam engine begins pumping
Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine was erected at a coal working in the West Midlands and used to lift water from the workings. The traditional site is Dudley Castle; more recent research argues for the Coneygre coal works at Tipton, and the question is not settled. The engine's thermal efficiency was under one per cent, which was irrelevant at a pithead where the fuel was underfoot.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The Newcomen atmospheric engine · technology · United Kingdom · not located
- Coal · natural resource · United Kingdom · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
Supports the high-wage-economy explanation of why mechanisation was profitable in Britain first, the sequence of textile bottlenecks, and the dating and interpretation of the Engels pause. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session — outbound HTTP to research domains is blocked by the environment's egress proxy and the session's WebSearch budget was exhausted before this pack began. The book is a real and widely held title, but nothing attributed to it here was read from it.
Cambridge University Press · 2009 · Partly verified
Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (New Approaches to Economic and Social History)
Recorded on The Newcomen atmospheric engine
- The first commercially successful steam engine begins pumping
- The Bridgewater Canal opens from Worsley into Manchester
- The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens
- Women and young boys are barred from working underground
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.