Given the paucity of online information on the Savery pump I never figured out how he delt with the high pressure steam needed to push the water out. Wikipedia says that the steam was at 8-10 atmospheres which was a pressure beyond of what they could deal with at the time but still some Savary pumps were allegedly actually used.
Your amazing series on the steam engine has started to make me think that Watt is a bit overrated. He perfected Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine but they were soon replaced by high pressure engines like the ones of Trevithick. A sort of Zeppelin situation.
Good question. I ought to look into that at some point. Fun fact: many of the pipes for Savery engines were made of wood!
In the meantime, if you'd like to dig a bit yourself, I'd recommend checking out the collected lectures published in the 1740s of John Theophilus Desaguliers. Plenty of info in there on the early steam engines that may help answer the question. It's the first place I'd look.
Watt's on my to-do list actually. It's an interesting case where I think he's over-rated for the application to rotary motion, but under-rated for the gigantic efficiency improvement from the separate condenser. That said, there are a few rival claimants to the breakthrough, and I still haven't quite been able to work out how he arrived at it - Watt's ideas on chemistry were very idiosyncratic in the 1760s, and he was adamant that Black's theory of latent heat had nothing to do with it (which I believe, as I can't see how they'd have helped). I still need to look some more into the story of how high pressure was developed. One curious feature missing from the story is that heat was also being transformed into lift by the Montgolfiers!
Given the paucity of online information on the Savery pump I never figured out how he delt with the high pressure steam needed to push the water out. Wikipedia says that the steam was at 8-10 atmospheres which was a pressure beyond of what they could deal with at the time but still some Savary pumps were allegedly actually used.
Your amazing series on the steam engine has started to make me think that Watt is a bit overrated. He perfected Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine but they were soon replaced by high pressure engines like the ones of Trevithick. A sort of Zeppelin situation.
Good question. I ought to look into that at some point. Fun fact: many of the pipes for Savery engines were made of wood!
In the meantime, if you'd like to dig a bit yourself, I'd recommend checking out the collected lectures published in the 1740s of John Theophilus Desaguliers. Plenty of info in there on the early steam engines that may help answer the question. It's the first place I'd look.
Watt's on my to-do list actually. It's an interesting case where I think he's over-rated for the application to rotary motion, but under-rated for the gigantic efficiency improvement from the separate condenser. That said, there are a few rival claimants to the breakthrough, and I still haven't quite been able to work out how he arrived at it - Watt's ideas on chemistry were very idiosyncratic in the 1760s, and he was adamant that Black's theory of latent heat had nothing to do with it (which I believe, as I can't see how they'd have helped). I still need to look some more into the story of how high pressure was developed. One curious feature missing from the story is that heat was also being transformed into lift by the Montgolfiers!