Thomas Savery

In the late 17th century England...with an expanding population the coal industry needed to grow. However producing more coal meant digging deeper coal mines, which increased the likelihood of mines flooding. Suddenly there was an urgent need for new methods of keeping mines from flooding.

Thomas Savery was born to relative privilege at the manor house of Shilstone, Devon in around 1650. He received an excellent education and

grew up to be a military engineer. He was especially interested in math and mechanics, with a penchant for invention, including building a clock for the Savery family. Another of his early inventions was an array of paddlewheels to propel sea vessels. Despite a successful demonstration with a small paddleboat on the Thames River, the British Navy declined to adopt the invention for its own vessels. It was a haughty Navy surveyor named Edmund Dummer who sank the young inventor’s hopes, asking why it is that “interloping people, that have no concern with us, pretend to contrive or invent things for us?”

In 1698, Savery filed a patent for his first design for a “fire engine” on July 2, 1698, and soon after presented a working model to the Royal Society of London. After exhibiting his engine at Hampton Court for King William III, he was granted his patent for “a new invention for raising of water, and occasional motion to all sorts of mill works, by the important force of fire, which will be of great use for draining of mines … ” That original 14-year patent received a 21-year extension by British Parliament in 1699 as part of the “Fire Engine Act.”

An elated Savery printed up a prospectus in 1702, entitled The Miners Friend, and sent it to managers of mines across England, expecting an influx of new customers, but while his steam-pump was useful for supplying water to estates and country houses, it was not embraced by the mining industry. A few pumps were tried in mines, an unsuccessful attempt being made to use one to clear water from a pool called Broad Waters in Wednesbury (then in Staffordshire) and nearby coal mines. The mine had been hit by a sudden eruption of water some years before. However the pump could not be 'brought to answer'. The quantity of steam raised was so great as to 'rent the whole machine to pieces'. The steam-pump was laid aside, and the scheme for raising water was dropped as impracticable. This may have been in about 1705.

Still, Savery’s design pointed the way for other engineers to develop and improve his design. Hot on his heels were Thomas Newcomen, James

Watt and Richard Trevithick, others would follow ... by the late 1700s the power of steam would transform the world.

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