A Short History of the Steam Engine

A highly readable history of the stationary steam engine, intelligible to the non-specialist reader and engineer alike.

Henry Winram Dickinson (Author)

9781108012287, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 February 2011

300 pages, 87 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

A Short History of the Steam Engine, first published in 1939, remains one of the most readable and clear explanations of the topic for the non-specialist. H. W. Dickinson limits himself to stationary engines and boilers, and only touches on the beginnings of locomotive and marine engines. He puts the stages of development in their context, showing how economic and social factors were involved in the evolution of the steam engine. The illustrations are plentiful and the text, while technical, never becomes impenetrable. The successive improvements to the simple engines of the seventeenth century, as new materials or purposes arose, are developed chapter by chapter to the twentieth century. Each engineer was building on the work of his predecessors, rather than there being any single inventor of genius. Dickinson also wrote biographies of key figures of the Industrial Revolution, which are being reissued in this series.

Preface
Part I. The Reciprocating Engine: 1. Introductory
2. Savery and his fire engine
3. Newcomen and his vacuum engine
4. The atmospheric engine in the period between Newcomen and Watt
5. Watt and his separate condenser engine
6. Low-pressure and high-pressure engines, 1801–1850
7. Land boilers up to 1850
8. From heyday to recession, 1851 to the present day
9. Land boilers, 1851 to 1900
10. Philosophy of the steam engine
Part II. The Steam Turbine: 11. Kinetic energy of steam and pioneers of its use
12. Other turbine pioneers
13. General development from 1900 to the present time
14. Development in boilers, 1901 to the present time
Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Automatic control engineering [TJFM]