3 VIDEO. Factory and Marketplace Revolution & Credit Where It s Due. From the series The Day the Universe Changed with James Burke. 50 min.

Transcription

1 3 VIDEO. Factory and Marketplace Revolution & Credit Where It s Due. From the series The Day the Universe Changed with James Burke. 50 min. (OH009) This video describes the society into which the Industrial Revolution was born. It stresses the exploitative nature of the English economy at the time, and the tremendous market awaiting new products by the mid 18th century. The technological problems are not described in any detail, and the tone is one of business opportunities. It is the role of the dissenters 1 in all of this which is to be inferred from the title. 4. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: A TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY BY TECHNOLOGY People, and Events The next several lectures will deal with a selection of key events and interesting people involved in that transformation of society by technology known as the Industrial Revolution. (OH010) Exactly which events and people to choose for a short exposure such as this is clearly subjective. Historians would probably choose differently, but I looked for those things and people that are interesting from an engineering education point of view, and which I hope will also interest you 2. The criteria for my choices have more to do with interest than making a complete historical overview. NEWCOMEN S FIRE ENGINE (1712) THE STEAM ENGINE AND JAMES WATT (1765) ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL ( ) A Suspension Bridge on the Avon Gorge The Great Western Railway. Atmospheric Railway. Three Ships THE ELECTRIC AGE. Ørsted: electric currents and magnetic fields (1819) Michael Faraday: electromagnetic induction (1831) James Clark Maxwell: Maxwell s equations(1873)

2 Marconi: wireless (1901) Edison: dc electric lighting (1882) Tesla: ac power (1890) In looking at these "technological turning points", (to use Cardwell's terminology) I think we should ask ourselves at least the following questions: [OH011]. The answers to these questions are intended to clarify the nature of technological innovation. 4.1 QUESTIONS FOR AN INNOVATION (examples here?) What problem was being solved? Even when the problem is clearly defined, the results of its solution can sometimes go far beyond the original scope. For example, as we shall see, the development of the original elementary steam engines was driven by the need to get water out of mines. Their application to motive power for transportation was probably never imagined at the time. Did the demand exist, or was it developed? Demand for an innovation depends on many people recognizing the need for a technical solution. Most inventors totally underestimate the frequent apathy of their potential market to the innovation. What new science did it depend on? Perhaps there was very little, for example, the development of steam technology essentially preceded the science of thermodynamics. In other cases, science led. For example, the development of electric motors was not possible before Faraday and others had advanced the science of electricity and magnetism. Was the scientific and/or engineering establishment supportive? There are lots of cases where innovation is resisted by the establishment, even by so-called experts. Was this incremental, or a new concept? A lot of the advances in technology are due to small improvements rather than the big jump. Both types of engineering innovation are important. One of the interesting features is that

3 incremental innovation is much easier to sell, and market pull is more likely to exist. The big change, or paradigm shift is likely to require some technology push. What science and or technology followed? Scientific advances often follow an innovation, which sometimes comes about with a lot of intuition, trial and error, and determination. Once something is seen to work, science is motivated to explain why it does. Manned flight is a excellent example. Lots of professors said that heavier-than-air machines were impossible. An interesting example of technology leading science can be observed in an ancient device which Cardwell regards as one of the world's most important inventions. This is the weight - driven clock, which appeared in the 13th century, hundreds of years before the industrial revolution. Apparently no one knows who invented it. [OH012, from Cardwell, p 39]. (Explain mechanism and operation). This device is using the natural frequency of the rotating mass system to regulate the clock. The theories of resonance and a natural frequency are hundreds of years into the future. It is a great example of technology coming before the science. We will notice this in many cases, and I draw your attention to it because there is a very common misconception about technological progress that first there must be a scientific discovery, then the applications follow. Sometimes it actually does happen that way, but frequently the inventor follows intuition and trial and error to innovate, and the science follows later. 4.2 NEWCOMEN S FIRE ENGINE. We start our look at "turning points" in the Industrial Revolution era with Thomas Newcomen s ( ) great invention. [OH013 Dudley Castle picture]. Cardwell compares its importance to the printing press of Gutenberg,( ) and the weight-driven clock, discussed above. The fire engine of Newcomen was not a machine to put out fires, as we generally know the term today, but a machine that used fire to do things other than to smelt iron, heat homes and cook food. Hence the name. First let us set a little of the background, so that the problem that Newcomen was trying to solve can be identified.

4 Finding fuel for manufacturing, heating and cooking was becoming a problem in Britain. Wood was the traditional domestic fuel, but the forests were being rapidly used up. Very significantly, wood was being used to provide materials for the British Navy (2000 full-grown oaks per ship (Clark) - which, no doubt, would have been seen to be far more important to the government than mere domestic heat for the people. Even more demanding was the flourishing iron industry, (which we will hear more about in our next video) from about the middle of the 16th century. 3 Fortunately, as we heard from James Burke in the last video, England was an island built on coal, and the coal mining business was booming. But the miners (of coal and other minerals, such as tin) had a very serious problem, and that was to find a way to keep water out of the mines. Newcomen was not the first person to try to solve this problem of getting water out of the mines. In 1699 Captain Thomas Savery, ( ) FRS, patented a fire engine. This was not even an engine in our sense of the word, since it had no moving parts. [Rolt p23]. An old drawing of Savery s engine does exist. (OH014 from H W Dickinson A Short History of the Steam Engine, p22, Frank Cass and Co, See ref 7.) From the description, I think its principle of operation was somewhat as follows. (Overhead 98-14) (See sketch - which is a schematic only, based on the description) It consisted of two closed vessels connected to a boiler by pipes and valves. Steam was let into one, which was then cooled, condensing the steam and creating a vacuum, which drew water from the mine into a reservoir. Steam was then admitted again, and the pressure forced the water out through a pipe. Note that it is the pressure of the atmosphere which is doing the work of lifting the water. The device is therefore properly called an atmospheric engine, not a steam engine, although the pressure of steam was used to blow the water out of the exhaust pipe. It apparently did not work automatically, but required continuous manual tending to the valves. Cardwell doubts that it ever worked properly, and was apparently not a big success in the mines. Without a piston to multiply atmospheric pressure to get a force, it was limited to raising water to about 10 metres, even in theory. The practical limit was less. Presumably for mines of any substantial depth, multiple installations were necessary.

5 Show picture again But entrepreneurship has been around for a long time, and Savery promoted his fire engine vigorously. He called his engine the Miner s Friend and here is his advertisement (OH016) [Rolt p25]. Captain Savery s Engines which raise water by the force of fire in any reasonable quantities and to any height being now brought to perfection and ready for public use. These are to give notice to all Proprietors of Mines and Collieries which are encumbered with water, that they may be furnished with Engines to drain the same, at his Workhouse in Salisbury Court, London, where it may be seen working on Wednesdays and Saturdays in every week from 3 to 6 in the afternoon, where they may be satisfied of the performance Thereof, with less expense than any other force of Horse or Hands, and less subject to repair. Cardwell points out that the value of promotion should not be underestimated. When Thomas Newcomen ( ) came along with his first practical version, around 1712, the idea had begun to take hold. For one thing, Savery had a higher standing in society than Newcomen. He was a military engineer, and well established. He was also a member of the Royal Society (for Improving Natural Knowledge, founded 1662). Newcomen was an ironmonger (blacksmith) and a dissenter. But Savery also had a sound concept, and what was even more important, he had the patent. Unfortunately for Newcomen, the patent granted was in terms of all means of raising water by fire, and thus so broad that it stood in the way of Newcomen s much more functional machine, which was the real engineering innovation. Rolt (p25) describes the situation this way: (overhead EP97OH11) It has happened repeatedly in the history of invention that scientists and men of high education have mastered important new principles but have totally lacked the practical skill and common sense to apply them to any useful purpose. It would appear that successful practical application calls for human qualities of a different order; for

6 intutitive genius rather than intellectual reasoning; for the craftsman s manual dexterity and resourcefulness rather than the savant s store of theoretical knowledge. So it was with Thomas Newcomen, the Devonian ironmonger and blacksmith, who succeeded where Huygens, Papin and Savery all failed. L. T. C. Rolt, Great Engineers, p25. But we have not yet described Newcomen s invention, which Cardwell describes as having major importance. As in the case of Savery s engine, it was an atmospheric engine, and not a steam engine, for it did not depend on steam pressure, but on the pressure of the atmosphere. The principle is straightforward. [See overhead (sketch).] The following description of this first engine, installed in 1712, comes from R. J. Law of the Science Museum, quoted in Clark. 4 Dudley Castle Newcomen Engine, A vertical cylinder, open at the top, was supplied by steam from a boiler underneath... The piston, packed with leather and sealed with a layer of water on top, was hung by a chain from the arch head of a rocking beam. From the other end of the beam the pump rods were suspended. When steam at slightly above atmospheric pressure was admitted into the cylinder, the piston was drawn up by the weight of the pump rods, and any air or condensate blown out of the cylinder through non-return valves. After the steam valve was closed, the steam in the engine was rapidly condensed by a jet of cold water. The unbalanced atmospheric pressure drove the piston down, raising the pump rods, and making the working stroke. The cycle was then repeated, the steam valve and injection valve being opened and closed by a plug rod hung from the beam. The Dudley Castle engine had a cylinder of 19 inches internal diameter, and made a stroke of about 6 feet. At each stroke it raised about 10 gallons of water 51 yards, and at 12 strokes per minute, developed about 5.5 horsepower. You may have noticed in the picture of the Newcomen engine at Dudley Castle that the artist labelled it as being invented by Capt Savery and Mr Newcomen. This is no doubt an indication

7 of the struggle around Savery s patent, and Newcomen ended up joining forces with Savery, and sharing the credit with him. Not only that, but he had to agree to give a royalty to Savery for every Newcomen engine built. Even worse, writers at the time insisted on calling his engines Savery engines. It was very difficult for a simple blacksmith to get credit for doing something better than a member of the establishment. It is also apparently due to this dispute that some 13 years elapsed between Savery s patent and the installation of the first successful engine. The great drawback of the Newcomen engine was cost and its enormous appetite for coal. This was not too bad in coal mining areas, but where coal had to be transported, such as in the tin mining regions of Cornwall, in the south of England, the resulting high cost was a problem. The most expensive part of the engine was the cylinder, which was initially cast in brass, and hand-finished on the inside. The improved processes for cast iron, and better boring equipment, made it possible to reduce the costs by 90 % in the next few years. Although it was a struggle in the beginning to get mine owners to buy the engine, by the end of the 18th century, 60 Newcomen engines were operating in Cornwall, and hundreds more in the rest of Britain and Europe. Some economics in 1727 (Ep0004) A 1727 account (p47-48 Dickenson) shows that for a Newcomen engine with a cylinder 29 inches diameter, the cost was about The same document shows that tradesmen were paid about 15 shillings per week, or is therefore equivalent to 1000/0.75 or 1333 weeks of tradesman s salary. If we assume that today such a tradesman would earn $30000 per year or about $600 per week, that 1000, corresponding to 1333 weeks of labour, is the equivalent of about 600*1333 or $800,000. That s a lot of money for perhaps a 10 hp (7.5 kw) engine. Now let us apply the innovation questions:[see OH011 again] to see what can be learned. What problem was being solved? The effort was directed at pumping water from mines. Other forms of power (eg waterwheels and windmills) were already in use for many other applications, such as grinding grain, but they had severe limitations. A river was not always in the right place, and the wind did not always

8 blow. Note that the Newcomen engine had to be built in place, and was not portable. It was not the invention which would later revolutionize transportation, for example. The solution to an identified problem might start with some innovation, but it certainly does not always end there. Did the demand exist, or was it developed? Operators of mines wanted the problem solved. But the solution had to be cost-effective, and there was a selling job to be done. The solution to a problem is often more evident to the inventor than it is to the person with the problem, and demand only develops as success is observed. What new science did it depend on? The knowledge that the atmosphere exerted a pressure was essential, but there was little else to draw on. (Torricelli died 1647) Was the scientific and/or engineering establishment supportive? Savery was accepted, (he was a member of the Royal Society) but Newcomen, a dissenter, was not given much credit. Was this incremental, or a new concept? New. Some credit must be given to Savery, but Newcomen invented the piston, and got the machine to work. He was a practical blacksmith. What science and or technology followed? Not much directly, but James Watt made a major advance on Newcomen s basic machine, as we shall see, and an immense amount of science (thermodynamics) then followed. 4.3 THE VIDEO OUT OF THE FIERY FURNACE (approx 40 min). The film was made by Robert Raymond, of Pennsylvania State University in the mid-eighties, and shown on PBS. The narrator is Michael Charlton. This video starts with the famous Newcomen engine, and covers several turning points in technology, on which we will dwell in more detail shortly. Names and places will be mentioned, so it might be useful to identify these. [Overhead 97-5] Names in the Video Out of the Fiery Furnace

9 Thomas Newcomen ( ). English dissenter. Ironmonger and inventor. James Watt ( ) Scottish instrument maker, Univ of Glasgow. Also a dissenter. John Wesley ( ) English Clergyman. Gustave Doré ( ) French Artist. Isambard Kingdom Brunel ( ) English Engineer. Benjamin Huntsman ( ) English steelmaker. Crucible process Henry Bessamer ( ) English inventor of a process to make mild steel. There are also many English place names, so a sketch map of Great Britian might be useful. [Overhead 023]. PLACE NAMES IN VIDEO OUT OF THE FIERY FURNACE Coalbrookdale (in present day Telford, near Birmingham) River Severn (Flows out near Bristol) Stockton - Darlington Railway (North Yorkshire - North of England) Bristol Sheffield (Near Manchester) Kew (Near London, famous botanical gardens) 4.4 THE STEAM ENGINE AND JAMES WATT. (OH024) Almost everyone has heard of James Watt, ( ) usually in one s early acquaintance with science in school. His name lives on in the SI unit for power, an indication of the importance of his contribution to technology. He was born in Scotland and trained in London as an instrument maker. He returned to Glasgow, and set up an instrument shop at Glasgow University in James Burke (in the video) said he had connections we do know that like Newcomen, he was a dissenter. At the University, he would have been what we now know as a technician, i.e. assisting professors and students, but not generally teaching. The usual story of how he got his world-changing idea is that he was sitting by the fire watching the kettle boil, and conceived the notion that the pressure of the whistling steam could do work. In fact, the portrait shown of him in the film (Out of the Fiery Furnace) we recently saw had a

10 kettle steaming away near him; maybe this is the reason the story is so well known. Historians of technology apparently do not give this popular story much credit. The British historian Rolt (p28) has this to say: (OH025).. in neither case (he was speaking also of the application of the picturesque fiction to Newcomen) is there a grain of truth in the story. There was no occasion for Newcomen or Watt to discover a power already well known, while it was the power of the atmosphere and not the power of steam they harnessed in their inventions. In fact, Watt s engine was, like Newcomen s, an atmospheric engine, in that steam was only used - at least in the early models - to produce a partial vacuum under the piston, by condensation. Watt s big contribution was to remove the condensation process from the cylinder to a separate vessel, (called a condenser) connected to the cylinder. This was a brilliant idea, and was arrived at only after careful analysis of the problem. We will now spend a little time to gain an understanding of how this idea developed. The historians tell us that Watt s involvement began in 1763 when he was asked to repair a piece of university lab equipment - a small working model of Newcomen s engine. Note that Watt s initial problem was simply to repair the model, he was not dealing with mine pumping, factory power sources or anything like the great applications in which his steam engine would be involved. But in the process of finding out exactly what the problem was with the model, he made an innovation which greatly increased the efficiency of the Newcomen engine, (and thus reduced its coal consumption) and paved the way for all the other advances. This was in the 1760's, and Newcomen ( ) was long gone. As mentioned above, the first documented Newcomen engine was installed in 1712, 24 years before Watt was born. He soon found that the problem with the model was that there was not enough steam from the boiler for the engine to run continuously. Yet the boiler should have been big enough, judging from the scale of the model. Watt knew something of the thermodynamics involved, and was working with Professor Black at Glasgow University who was mentioned in the Burke video. A sketch will help us understand his analysis. (Sketch OH018, Basic Newcomen Engine). Watt calculated the amounts of steam which should have been sufficient, and discovered that the boiler was supplying far more than it needed in order to fill the space below the piston. Remember that the basic function of steam in the atmospheric engine was to force air out from

11 below the piston, and then to be condensed into liquid to produce the partial vacuum. He soon saw the problem of why so much steam was required. In the Newcomen engines, as soon as steam was admitted, it was immediately being condensed by the cold brass cylinder. The cylinder was cold because the condensing phase, during which cold water sprayed into it, had just been completed. The newly admitted steam would condense at once, and be blown out as water (condensate), while steam continued to come in and the temperature of the metal cylinder slowly rose. Eventually the cylinder got hot, condensation would cease, and the cylinder space would again be full of steam to be condensed by another cold water spray. One imagines that a fair bit of trial and error was necessary to find out just how to adjust valves so that the steam supply was cut off at the correct time, the right amount of condensing water sprayed in at the right instant, etc. One obvious way to prevent this premature condensation would be not to make the cylinder so cold in the first place. He even made wooden cylinders, which would retain more heat, and less would be required to heat them up following the condensing phase. But that really didn t work, for reasons which he would only have been able to explain with his understanding of the very newly developing thermodynamic theory. [Cardwell, Turning Points p86]. If he did only this, the cylinder would then be operating at a higher temperature, and consequently there would be less vacuum when the condensation process ended. The basic thermodynamics here is that water boils (and water vapour condenses) at a lower temperature if the pressure is reduced. Putting it another way, if you want low pressure in the cylinder, which you obviously do, keep the temperature low - the nearer to 0 degrees C the better. To recap, the practical problem was that the cylinder had to be cooled to the maximum extent to produce the highest vacuum, and yet this cold cylinder caused a great waste of steam (and consequently, fuel) when it was again filled prior to the power stroke. He could see that he had a no-win situation. It made no sense to require the cylinder to be as cold as possible at the end of the condensation phase, and as warm as possible when steam was admitted, because these two points were at practically the same time in the process. It took two years for the inspiration to strike! Here is the way he described the moment in May 1765:[OH026]

12 Watt s Real Inspiration:.. it was in the Green of Glasgow, I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon... I was thinking upon the engine... the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication was made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it and would there be condensed without cooling the cylinder. (Clark, p73). In other words, while the two processes were contiguous in time, they could be separated in space. Thus the idea of a separate condenser was conceived, and implemented. (OH027 sketch from p87, Cardwell, Turning Points). Cardwell says that this innovation could only have been made by a person of unusual scientific and technological abilities i.e. one who was familiar with the applicable science of the time. If you were listening very carefully to the James Burke video, you will have heard that Watt s innovation was very much due to Professor Black s discovery of latent heat. Black was a professor at Glasgow university, and there is no doubt that Watt learned a lot from him. But Cardwell very firmly and convincingly rejects the legend that it was Professor Black s discovery of latent heat that led to these improvements. For an engineer, it is not enough to know what the problem is. He/she has to find a way to solve it. Latent heat was certainly involved in the condensation process, but that knowledge was not necessary, nor perhaps even directly useful, to make the innovative step to a separate condenser. Due to that improvement on Newcomen s engine, its efficiency was greatly increased. But James Watt did not stop there. He also added a pump to keep the condenser clear of air and water, insulated the cylinder to prevent heat loss, and then introduced steam above the piston (but still only at atmospheric pressure) to prevent cooling of the cylinder as the piston descended. The picture (Clark p75) shows several of the features Watt developed over the next few years, including the planet and sun gear, the centrifugal governor and the parallel linkage. (OH25A) In fact, his patent in 1769 pretty well sowed up the steam engine business for years to come. This legitimate protection of his invention had a predictable effect on innovation in the area - at least by other inventors. Watt s invention eventually so dominated the technology that there was a reluctance for users to accept new ones, for example the advantages of higher pressures,

13 although there were limitations due to materials and manufacturing technique in that area. But Watt did not get rich yet. The new machine was more efficient, and used about one-third of the coal of the old Newcomen, but was also more expensive. But he was a very poor salesman, and apparently was a poor manager of an enterprise. He did not like dealing with the people he had to interact with in order to make it work, or the business sharks of the time. 5 The pattern is not unfamiliar today. He found it hard to make a living at the invention business. So he put it all aside, and got work surveying for the network of canals that were now being built across the country. But in 1773 he formed a partnership with Matthew Boulton, a successful Birmingham businessman. Two engines of Watt s design were built at Boulton s factory in Birmingham, and installed for customers. They were an immense success, and the Boulton and Watt Company never looked back. Boulton boasted to a famous visitor to his factory (James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson, writer d 1784): I sell here what all the world desires - power (OH029 top) Notes and References: See Endnotes 1. Dissenters were people who would not conform to the established English church. They were denied certain rights, eg standing for parliament. 2. My main sources will be Donald Cardwell, Turning Points in Western Technology, Science History Publication, New York, 1972, and his Fontana History of Technology, Fontana Press, London, See L. T. C. Rolt, Great Engineers, G. Bell and Sons, 1962, for a description of this period, with the great ironmaster, Abraham Darby. 4. Ronald. W. Clark, Works of Man, Viking, New York, P Clark, p74.