![]() "I love to design stuff, and I saw a need here, so I thought why not design a Newcomen steam engine that we can demonstrate," Noble said. With the rise of digital photography, those labs disappeared, and Noble retired about 10 years ago, but his passion for engineering continues to burn bright. The lack of design details did little to discourage Noble, who enjoyed a long career as a design engineer with his own company, Enterprise Design, which made special instruments used in photo labs. "These were my plans," Noble said as he gestured toward an illustration showing a large structure surrounded by brick walls. "That's the only known engraving of the world's first steam engine, and so you don't have much to go on." ![]() Instead, Noble worked off of the only picture he could find of an etching of Newcomen's invention.īuilding the Newcomen's engine with little to go on There were no detailed plans or instructions for its construction. Noble collaborated with the New Zealand group to do research and put together his plans for the replica. You could have an engine anywhere you wanted to build it. Up until that point, you needed power, it was muscle power from an animal or yourself, wind or water, and now you had fire. ![]() "I said, 'Hey, that needs to be changed.' You need to be able to see the one thing that started all the rest of it. You can go to a museum and see first airplane, first car, first locomotive and so on, but there's nowhere you can go in the western hemisphere to see a replica of the first steam engine," Noble said. "That was another thing that drove me to this. It was through this search that he came across a group of individuals who shared his interest and enthusiasm for steam engines in Aukland, New Zealand, one of few places in the world that has a replica of Newcomen's machine. Noble sought out replicas of Newcomen's engine but found they were few and far between. Not a Newcomen's engine to be found in the western hemisphere "He didn't know it at the time, but he changed the direction of the world, because now mankind could have power wherever he wanted it." "It took them 14 years, he and his partner, but this is a representation, a replica, of what their first steam engine looked like, and it was a success. "They were using horses to pull out big cauldrons of water, and it was hard to keep up, so he and his partner started to try to figure out how they could take the force of fire, as they called it, and make it do work," Noble explained. Newcomen was working as a blacksmith in coal mines in the English town of Dartmouth when he realized a need for a more effective method of removing water from the mines. But just because he didn't have a formal education didn't mean he didn't understand the laws of physics." "One of the things working against him was he didn't have a formal education, so people thought he couldn't build anything like this. "The sad story is, they don't even know where this man (Newcomen) was buried," Noble said. Watts was a mechanical engineer and chemist who developed the Watt steam engine, which largely consisted of an improved upon version of Newcomen's engine, six years into the Industrial Revolution. ![]() He wasn't born for another 27 years after this man was pumping water out of coal mines." "When you read your history books, most of them will lead you to believe that James Watts invented the steam engine. "I started researching beam engines, and that led back to Newcomen, Thomas Newcomen, 1712," Noble said. ![]() Thomas Newcomen's engine, not James Watts "What got this started was discussions here in the power house that we don't have a beam engine," Noble said Tuesday while standing alongside his replica in the Old Threshers Museum A.īeam engines are a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod, just like Newcomen's. Without Newcomen's invention, the Industrial Revolution would not have been possible. It was about two years ago that Mount Pleasant native Haven Noble sought out to build a replica of the atmospheric steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. MOUNT PLEASANT - For all but one of the past 71 years, the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion has been a celebration of human invention and innovation, but absent from the event has been representation of the one engine that started it all - until now. ![]()
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