The Rise of Steam

 

The Rise of Steam—The Steam Rises

Steam engines were used in various machines.  Here a fire wagon is pulled by a horse but the water is pumped by a steam engine. 

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  A steam powered loom made large textile factories possible. 

The theory of using steam to run an engine was more than 100 years old by the time it came into widespread use. The theory is simple; water is heated to create high pressure steam injected into a cylinder, pushing a piston up and down or back and forth. The piston is connected to a shaft, which then moves to turn a propeller, a wheel on a locomotive, or some useful machine motion. Much more efficient engines could have been designed much earlier, however, metal fabrication and machining technology had not advanced far enough to have built better designs.  

As metal working skills improved, designs for boiler shapes, piston connections, and even how the steam engine was positioned, quickly improved. By 1848, steam technology moved forward so quickly, riverboats and locomotives were replaced every three to five years. It simply was not worth repairing them compared to technology improvements.

Early steam engines burned wood. Demand for coal rose steeply as steam engines became more widespread, used to run everything from printing presses and looms to ships and trains. Pound for pound, coal burned hotter and quicker and was  easier to obtain and store than wood.  Coal was soon to be found crucial to another nascent aspect of technology—the Bessemer steel process. Today, the terms “iron” and “steel” are used interchangeably. Then, it was not so. Steel is much more difficult to make than wrought iron, which I’ll explain in a different section of this history. 

The fortuitous geology placing iron ore and coal fields close to each other spurred the pre and post-Civil War industrial boom around Pittsburgh.

Widespread coal mining and transportation founded large companies and with them, large new fortunes. Corporate law specialists--among them, a young lawyer named Abe Lincoln-started to define issues of corporate liability and stock holders’ rights.

(Much as (IP) Intellectual Property lawyers have proliferated in the age of the internet.)

Poor training, corporate greed, sloppy maintenance, and inexperienced or careless engineers combined with the relatively poor strength of wrought iron compared to steel, to produce frequent deadly boiler explosions.

In the ironic poor timing department: the New Orleans Picayune reported a young engineer had developed a steam engine safer, and less expensive to operate. In an early version of Shark Tank, he showed his invention to potential investors. The newspaper commented, that while safety was important, it was likely businessmen were more attracted to the design’s lower operating costs. The only problem? The inventor showed his potential investors the prototype in December 1860, the month when South Carolina seceded.