Ivan Polzunov

Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov was a Russian mechanic, born March 14, 1728 in Yekaterinburg and died May 27, 1766 in Barnaul, credited with building the first steam engine in the Russian Empire and, in the design that followed it, the first two-cylinder steam engine in the world. After training at the Yekaterinburg mining school and working for years as a mechanic's apprentice at the Barnaul metallurgical works, he proposed in 1763 a steam engine of about 1.8 horsepower driving two cylinders from a single shaft, a design that let it run continuously without depending on a water wheel to reset its pistons the way earlier machines did; Empress Catherine the Great rewarded him with 400 rubles and a promotion. In 1765 he designed a larger 32 horsepower version intended to power the air pumps that supplied blast air to steel furnaces; the machine was assembled in 1766, but Polzunov died just three days before it was completed. A working model of his engine is preserved in a museum in Barnaul, and a lunar crater and a minor planet have since been named for him.