Thomas Newcomen was an English inventor of an early atmospheric steam engine (c.1712). Consequently, he can be regarded as a forefather of the Industrial Revolution. His engine was an improvement over an earlier engine patented in 1698 by Thomas Savery, who shared the later patent with Newcomen. The engine was used for pumping water out of mines in Newcomen's native southwest England, particularly in Cornwall. Further engines were installed by Newcomen himself in mines in the Midlands, north Wales and Cumbria, with over 100 built before the patent expired in 1733. James Watt later improved the design. The engine is called an "atmospheric" engine because the greatest steam pressure used is near atmospheric pressure. His first working engine had a cylinder 21 inches in diameter and nearly eight feet long, and it worked at twelve strokes a minute, raising ten gallons of water from a depth of 156 feet; approximately 5.5 horse power. The engines were rugged and reliable and worked day and night but were less than one per cent efficient, used a lot of coal, and consequently were first installed in coalmines. Newcomen's design would later be improved by James Watt.

The engine Thomas Savery had devised was a so-called 'fire engine', a kind of thermic syphon, in which steam was admitted to an empty container and then condensed. The vacuum thus created was used to suck water from the sump at the bottom of the mine. The 'fire engine' was not very effective and could not work beyond a limited depth of around thirty feet. Newcomen replaced the receiving vessel (where the steam was condensed) with a cylinder containing a piston. Instead of the vacuum drawing in water, it drew down the piston. This was used to work a beam engine, in which a large wooden beam rocked upon a central fulcrum. On the other side of the beam was a chain attached to a pump at the base of the mine. As the steam cylinder was refilled with steam, readying it for the next power stroke, water was drawn into the pump cylinder and expelled into a pipe to the surface by the weight of the machinery. 

Sources

• Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Peter Saundry (Topic Editor). 2008. "Newcomen, Thomas." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth March 19, 2007; Last revised August 22, 2008; Retrieved September 2, 2009]. 
• Wikipedia Contributors, Thomas Newcomen, Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, Accessed 2 September 2009.