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NEWCOMEN AND THE ENGINES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD


by Jonathan Turner Illustrated through the award-winning David Hulse Model Collection and steam power on the Dart


Above: the David Hulse Collection


D


artmouth, it can be argued, is the birthplace of the industrial revolution. This is because the


atmospheric steam engine was invented here, by one of Dartmouth’s most significant but least well known sons: Thomas Newcomen, born in Fosse Street in 1664. Unfortunately, no portrait of Thomas survives, nor any of his drawings or models; all that we have apart from his engine, is his cane, and one of his letters, written to his wife, both of which are on display in Dartmouth Museum. Now a new exhibition, Newcomen and the engines that changed the world, opens at the Museum to help us better understand Newcomen the man, his atmospheric steam engine (he called it a “fire engine”), and the way it changed Dartmouth and the world. Thomas Newcomen came from a respected


Dartmouth family that had moved South to Devon from Leicestershire in 1594, and his father was a prominent Dartmouth merchant, shipowner, and parliamentarian in the Civil War. Thomas lived and worked in the town all his life, mainly in a house with a workshop


adjacent, in Lower Street. In 1678 he was apprenticed to an ironmonger in Exeter and subsequently returned to Dartmouth where he built up a successful business supplying the Devon and Cornish tin mines with iron forged tools and equipment. At some stage, Thomas became obsessed with how the inherent power of steam under pressure could be harnessed to solve the problems he saw in his customers’ tin mines. As the miners dug deeper, the mines used to flood and needed to drain off the water, relying on expensive horsepower to do this; if a better and cheaper way could be found, even greater riches might be uncovered. As Thomas was a Baptist, he was excluded


from academic training at university. However, his practical expertise and natural intelligence enabled him to develop a solution that could be built safely and economically and was distinctive in its approach. For over 10 years, together with his partner the Dartmouth glazier John Cawley, he experimented and applied his thinking, probably in West Country mines. There he gained the confidence to sell his idea to Lord Dudley, and he installed


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