Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester

Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester (1602 or 1603 to 1667) was an English Catholic nobleman who took part in royalist politics during the English Civil War and who was also an inventor. In 1655 he wrote The Century of Inventions, which describes more than 100 inventions, among them a device that would have been one of the earliest steam engines. When the book was printed in 1663 it included his Water-commanding Engine, built from the barrel of a cannon, which was an obvious prototype of the later steam engine. Robert Hooke dismissed it as one of the perpetual motion fallacies, and the marquess asked that a model of the engine be buried with him.