![]() Although the device was not sufficiently practical to be commercially viable, the principle behind it was thoroughly sophisticated. This was followed in 1698 by a steam-powered device invented by British engineer Thomas Savery with the purpose of pumping groundwater out of mines. ![]() In 1690, Frenchman Denis Papin presented the first prototype of a steam engine, which worked using pistons and cylinders. However, the Scottish inventor was by no means the first person to investigate it. James Watt is often celebrated as the father of this technology. It took the invention of the steam engine to guarantee supplies of drive energy at any location on earth – energy so powerful that not even workhorses could compete with it. The more dependable water power isn’t always on hand where you need it to drive water wheels, pumps, millstones or saws. But the wind doesn’t blow everywhere, and ships and windmills lie idle whenever it dies away. Water power was used in turn to mill grain or saw wood. And mankind has never since ceased in its development of new ways of turning the elements to our advantage: With wind power, it became possible to mill grain into flour and to sail across the oceans to unknown shores. Our ancestors used it to drive off wild animals, convert raw clay into pots, turn indigestible roots into nutritious food and transform hostile places into homes. In the beginning, as we all know, there was fire. In our brief history of the steam engine, we relate how steam power was discovered, the risks that came with it, and how the steam boiler inspection associations, or DÜVs, set about protecting people from the technology. But lurking behind the new technological possibilities were some untold and unknown dangers. ![]() Even the mighty Industrial Revolution needed common-or-garden water - specifically in the form of steam, which was used to drive the pistons of engines, pumps and locomotives.
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