Steam engine Watt's steam engine

James Watt (1737–1819) — Scottish inventor of the double-acting steam engine. Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of London, and the Paris Academy of Sciences.

In 1763 James Watt was commissioned to repair a working model of Newcomen's steam engine at the University of Glasgow. During the repair, he made changes to the design. In Watt's engine, the boiler is connected to the piston cylinder by a steam pipe, through which steam is periodically admitted into the upper cavity of the cylinder above the piston and into the lower cavity below it. These cavities are connected by a pipe to a condenser, where the exhaust steam is condensed with cold water and a vacuum is created.

James Watt registered a patent for his invention in 1769 However, the document stated that he had invented not a new steam engine, but an engine whose temperature was always equal to the temperature of the steam. In 1784 Watt received another patent for a steam engine with a rotating shaft and a condenser.

The efficiency of Watt's machine surpassed the successes of his contemporaries who built similar designs. Soon after the opening of the steam engine factory, these devices began to be used in a wide variety of industries. In 1820 in Great Britain, 320 Watt machines were in operation, and their number and power were constantly increasing.