WHY is it that everybody has heard of James Watt, watching a kettle boiling on the hob and thereby inventing the steam engine? A complete fabrication. He didn't invent the steam engine nor was Stevenson's Rocket the first steam train.
Nobody knows who had the first idea of steam power but it was a Dartmouth blacksmith Thomas Newcomen who developed the steam engine into something useful, a machine for pumping water out of mines. Thereby allowing ores and coal to be dug more deeply, to about 150ft.
A devout Baptist, he was not interested in making money, only in making life better for the miners and he was exploited by merchants. In 1710 his pumps were installed in Greevor mine, 1712 in Dudley in the Midlands, and by 1726 over 70 were in use in mines. They were also used to pump water uphill to steelworks during drought.
The Newcomen engine was really the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. But as a humble ironworker scientists belittled him and his name is almost unknown.
A working copy of one of his engines has been built at the Black Country Museum in Dudley. Unfortunately, it was not operating when I visited the museum a few years ago but it was in full flow when Adam Hart-Davis was there to make a programme for TV so I was able to see it in action.
Cornishman Richard Trevithick developed a more efficient high-pressure model to use pumping out mines. Wherever it was installed it was known as the Cornish engine. He tried mounting the engine on road wheels and even better on rails then being laid for the trams. In 1804 his locomotive pulled 20 tons along the Pen-y-Darren tramway near Merthyr. But he failed to convince others of the worth of his ideas; he gave up on locomotives and emigrated to Peru to install mine pumps. He died penniless.
And Stevenson gained all the kudos for the beginning of the railways.
Why is it that these brilliant West Country inventors and innovators have been ignored for so long? They began the industrialisation of Britain. And only now is their contribution being recognised.
Jan Robinson
Gunnislake