Britain’s unique and easy access to coal fuelled both the need for steam engines, and the engines themselves. Coal mines were dangerous places and vulnerable to floods. Not surprisingly, mine owners — not just of coal but also of valuable tin and copper — sought a way of solving this problem.
In 1698, the Devonshire-born army engineer, Thomas Savery, with his gaze locked on Cornwall’s rich metal mines, marketed his engine as ‘the miner’s friend’. However, it was another Devonshire man, Thomas Newcomen, an ironmonger from Dartmouth, who successfully produced an atmospheric engine in 1712 that provided the first real solution.
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