Samuel Morland

Sir Samuel Morland, 1st Baronet (1625 to 1695) was an English academic, diplomat, spy, inventor and mathematician of the 17th century, a polymath credited with early developments in computing, hydraulics and steam power. After the Restoration he was created a baronet in 1660, and his main income came from applying mathematics and hydraulics to build and maintain machines. His water-engines and plunger pump were developed for wells, draining ponds or mines and fire fighting. He experimented with using gunpowder to make a vacuum that would suck in water, and his calculation of the volume of steam, about two thousand times that of water, mattered for the later working steam engine.