A short history of the steam engine

Dickinson, H. W.

Babcock & Wilcox

James Watt and the steam engine: The memorial volume prepared for the Committee of the Watt Centenary Commemoration at Birmingham 1919

Moorland

This 1936 book, published to celebrate the bicentenary of Watt's birth, examines his career as a craftsman and engineer, rather than offering a purely narrative biography. Watt began his life as a maker of mathematical instruments, and throughout his working life enjoyed the challenge of such skilled work. Watt's inventions did much to power the Industrial Revolution and its economic and social consequences. However, he owed much of his commercial success to his long partnership with Matthew Boulton, a far more astute businessman, and a considerable portion of the book is devoted to the achievements of this period. An engineer by profession, H. W. Dickinson researched widely, and published highly readable works on the steam engine, Watt, Boulton and Trevithick. He succeeds in producing a work which appeals to the scientist, the historian and the general reader, without feeling obliged to over-simplify the technical details.

James Watt: Craftsman and Engineer (Cambridge Library Collection - Technology)

Engineering & Transportation

Engineering

Cambridge University Press

This 1939 work gives deserved recognition to the achievements of the engineer and businessman Matthew Boulton. Boulton's importance has generally been overshadowed by that of his partner James Watt, but he was a significant figure in his own right, particularly in relation to the Soho Foundry and his production of coins and medals. He belonged to a network of highly significant men of the period, including Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin and Benjamin Franklin, and was a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. An engineer by profession, H. W. Dickinson researched widely, and published highly readable works on the history of the steam engine, Watt, and Trevithick, also reissued in this series. He succeeds in producing a work which appeals to the scientist, the historian and the general reader, without feeling obliged to over-simplify the technical details.

Matthew Boulton (Cambridge Library Collection - Technology)

Arts & Photography

To mark the centenary of Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) H. W Dickinson and Arthur Titley published a fascinating book on the engineer and his work. They succeed in producing a work which appeals to the scientist, the historian and the general reader, without feeling obliged to over-simplify the technical details. Today best remembered for his early railway locomotive, Trevithick worked on a wide range of projects, including mines, mills, dredging machinery, a tunnel under the Thames, military engineering, and prospecting in South America. The book and other centenary activities helped to restore Trevithick's rather neglected reputation as a pioneering engineer of the Industrial Revolution, although his difficult personality and financial failures caused him to be overshadowed by his contemporaries such as Robert Stephenson and James Watt. The book places his achievements in their historical context, and contains many illustrations of his inventions.

Richard Trevithick: The Engineer and the Man (Cambridge Library Collection - Technology)

Titley, Arthur

A Short History of the Steam Engine (Routledge Revivals)

History

Routledge

<p>First published in 1938, this volume details the steam engine as the most dynamic factor in the Industrial Revolution, freeing humanity from their age-long dependence upon the power of water, wind, and animals, or of their own muscles. Itself the offspring of coal and iron, it made possible the sinking of deeper mines and the casting and forging of greater quantities of iron, from which machines were constructed to be powered by steam in the factories of the rapidly growing industrial areas. Soon the mass-produced goods from these mills were transported by steam locomotives and steamships all over the world. This was the Age of Steam. Even today, steam turbines still drive the dynamos of our electric power stations, whether fuelled by coal, oil or nuclear energy.<br />
Much has been written about the steam engine, but this book, first produced by the late Dr. H.W. Dickinson just before the second World War, is still the best short account. It describes developments from the pioneering efforts of Savery and Newcomen, through the achievements of Watt and Trevethick, down to Parsons and modern times.</p>

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