Lecture IX

The steam engine was really not produced until the eighteenth century. What existed before that time constituted nothing more than impractical experiments. In other words, we may say that the enormously significant steam engine that is used universally today was first made applicable in 1719 by Newcomen[^4] and then later, in 1762, by Watt.[^5] We can speak of these two as the originators of it, at least in the sense in which today we speak of it and everything connected with it.