Thomas Newcomen

Thomas Newcomen was an English ironmonger and inventor who built the first practical steam engine, the atmospheric engine, put into commercial use in 1712 to pump floodwater out of coal mines in the English Midlands. His engine used steam to create a vacuum that atmospheric pressure then drove a piston into, a comparatively crude but reliable design that for the first time replaced animal or water power with a machine burning fuel to do continuous mechanical work. Newcomen engines were installed at mines across Britain and later continental Europe over the following decades, making deeper mining possible by keeping shafts clear of water, and remained in widespread use for over half a century before James Watts improvements displaced them. His atmospheric engine is generally regarded as the starting point of the industrial use of steam power, the technology that would drive the Industrial Revolution.