Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The first steam engine to be applied industrially was the "fire-engine" or "Miner's Friend", designed by Thomas Savery in 1698. This was a pistonless steam pump, similar to the one developed by Worcester. Savery made two key contributions that greatly improved the practicality of the design.
Timeline of steam power. Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 17th century, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to Watt's improved steam engine designs in the late 18th century. It is these later designs, introduced just when the need ...
A steam locomotive from East Germany. This class of engine was built in 1942–1950 and operated until 1988. A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder.
Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine. The first practical mechanical steam engine was introduced by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen apparently conceived his machine independently of Savery, but as the latter had taken out a wide-ranging patent, Newcomen and his associates were obliged to come to an arrangement with him, marketing the engine until 1733 under a joint patent. [2]
Invented. 1884 (140 years ago) (1884) A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. [1][2] Fabrication of a modern steam turbine involves advanced metalwork to form high-grade steel ...
Electric generator. U.S. NRC image of a modern steam turbine generator (STG). In electricity generation, a generator[1] is a device that converts motion-based power (potential and kinetic energy) or fuel-based power (chemical energy) into electric power for use in an external circuit. Sources of mechanical energy include steam turbines, gas ...
A steam-electric power station is a power station in which the electric generator is steam -driven: water is heated, evaporates, and spins a steam turbine which drives an electric generator. After it passes through the turbine, the steam is condensed in a condenser. The greatest variation in the design of steam-electric power plants is due to ...
A Corliss steam engine – the valve gear is on the right of the cylinder block, on the left of the picture. A Corliss steam engine (or Corliss engine) is a steam engine, fitted with rotary valves and with variable valve timing patented in 1849, invented by and named after the US engineer George Henry Corliss of Providence, Rhode Island.