The steam engine
Coal is burned to make motion, and the limits of muscle and water are broken.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 69 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
Newcomen's atmospheric engine of 1712 pumps water out of mines — inefficient, but it works and it burns coal at the pithead where coal is nearly free. James Watt's separate condenser, patented in 1769, roughly quadruples efficiency and makes steam viable away from coalfields, and his later rotary motion applies it to machinery rather than just pumping. It is the decisive break from organic energy sources.