History of energy from 1700 to 1800

Summary: In the 18th century, developments such as the steam engine and various scientific discoveries paved the way for the industrial age and created an increased demand for coal and other energy sources.

Throughout the 18th century, the sources of energy used by most individuals for heating, cooking, transportation, illumination, and other applications remained mostly unchanged from those used in earlier times. However, many scientific discoveries were made during this century that radically altered the ways that individuals and nations thought about energy, especially the growing need for fuels to power the various devices that creative minds devised for transportation, illumination, and other needs. In particular, the advent of the steam engine created a dramatic new demand for a reliable and inexpensive energy source to power it and the many devices for which it was adapted.

Transportation

In 1700, almost all transportation was the result of wind, horse, or foot. Although improvements had been made in the technology related to sailing vessels, the 18th century saw the technology used to build ships develop significantly; these vessels became larger, faster, and more capable of distant voyages. Schooners, for example, were a type of vessel that employed two or more masts and made use of fore and aft sails. First introduced by the Dutch during the 17th century, schooners were favored by those who required speed and windward ability, including slave traders, smugglers, and pirates or privateers. Especially popular in North America, schooners were also used extensively in northern Europe. To take advantage of weak winds, schooners utilized a forward mast that was shorter than the rear mast or masts. Although most small schooners had only two or three masts, some larger vessels carried as many as six. Schooners increased the speed of sea travel, but even with advanced ability to take advantage of low winds, they could not move in complete calm.

Travel by land during the 18th century focused chiefly on improving methods that had been used for hundreds of years. Many travelers walked to their destinations, and horses provided the wealthy with a faster option. The very wealthy and the growing mercantile class also increasingly began to travel by coach. Coach travel consisted of a horse-drawn enclosed area or cabin on wheels in which passengers could sit, protected from the elements, with luggage and additional passengers stowed outside. During the 18th century, springs were used to provide passengers with a smoother ride than previous methods of suspension, which had often consisted of leather straps. Commercial coaches provided transport for a fee to many passengers in France, England, and other parts of Europe.

Although efforts were made to improve the quality of the roads that coaches used, most roads remained primitive, unpaved and unmaintained, which decreased the speed and comfort of travel regardless of the quality of the coach. As early as the 16th century, German miners laboring near Keswick, England, introduced what were known as wagonways, which used tracks to permit a horse-drawn vehicle a speedier and smoother ride over a set of tracks that covered a frequently used route. Wagonways were especially useful for moving coal, as this commodity had to be transmitted away from the mine after it was extracted from the ground.

Waterwheels

Using mechanical devices to augment human labor began approximately 2,000 years ago, as evidenced by the ancient Romans’ use of waterwheels to grind grain. Waterwheels were later applied to other uses as well: driving pumps and sawmills, powering the bellows action for forges and furnaces, driving trip-hammers for forging iron, and supplying mechanical power for textile mills. Waterwheels provided the primary means of mechanical power production, serving in this role until the invention of the steam engine.

Horizontal shaft waterwheels use water that enters below the center of the wheel and is guided by a millrace and chute. The waterwheel is connected at a right angle to a gear drive, which powers a vertical shaft driving the wheel. Early waterwheels, about 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter, produced about 3 horsepower of energy and were built entirely of wood. Waterwheel performance was first analyzed by John Smeaton, an English engineer, in 1759. Smeaton found that the maximum efficiency he could receive from a wheel suspended in a stream and powered when water entered the wheel (an undershot wheel) was 22 percent, whereas when he devised an apparatus that permitted water to enter the wheel from above (an overshot wheel), this efficiency increased to 63 percent. Smeaton next produced a cast-iron waterwheel, which was installed at the London Bridge Waterworks. As demands for energy increased during the 18th century, waterwheels became increasingly popular, especially in rural England, and Smeaton’s designs were highly influential both there and throughout Europe and North America. Until the invention of the steam engine, waterwheels remained the leading source of power generation.

The Steam Engine

Although the ancient Greeks had explored steam engines during the 1st century c.e., it was not until French physicistDenis Papin created his steam digester in 1679 that the development of machinery that was not driven by human or animal muscular power began to be considered. Papin’s device, which separated fat from bones, was more similar to a pressure cooker than a steam engine. Papin’s steam digester, however, used a steam release valve that served as inspiration for later developments. Noting that the device’s lid was raised by steam it generated, Papin conceived the idea of using steam to power a piston-and-cylinder engine. In 1698, Thomas Savery of England built the first steam-powered vacuum pump, which saw some use to drain water from mines, although it was prone to boiler explosions. Savery’s device contained a boiler, a water-filled reservoir, and a system of valves. When steam was introduced into the reservoir, pressure from the steam forced the water out through an outlet valve until the container was empty. Water was then sprayed on the container’s surface, which condensed the steam and created a vacuum that drew up more water from a valve below. Deficiencies with the vacuum permitted water to be drawn up only to a limited height, but Savery’s device did enjoy some limited success, as it permitted colliers to withdraw water from mines more easily than by using other methods then extant.

The first commercially viable steam engine was created by Thomas Newcomen, who in 1710 invented the atmospheric engine, which used a steam-driven cylinder and piston to run an entirely mechanical pump. Although not very efficient, Newcomen’s invention paved the way for the industrial age. A broad patent obtained by Savery in 1698 prevented Newcomen from obtaining a patent for his work and forced him to enter into a partnership and share profits with Savery. Together, Savery and Newcomen built a piston-operated steam pump in 1712, the first of its kind. Savery and Newcomen’s device converted only 1 percent of the thermal energy present in the steam into mechanical energy, which made it highly inefficient. Because their steam pump was a great improvement over alternatives for pumping water out of mines, however, they had no real rivals in the market for more than five decades.

James Watt, who developed his steam engine between 1763 and 1775, improved upon Newcomen’s steam engine in that Watt used a separate condensation chamber to allow steam to power the pistons without a loss of heat. This meant that while the engine was operating, the cylinder and piston stayed at steam temperature, reducing fuel costs for the operation to about 25 percent of what it took to operate Savery and Newcomen’s machine. Watt’s early steam engines were also used to pump water from collieries, but others soon saw its potential to drive other devices. Watt’s partnership with Matthew Boulton, an outstanding salesman and entrepreneur, made Watt’s steam engine highly successful. Boulton persuaded Watt to modify his engine so that it rotated a shaft instead of simply providing an up-and-down motion. This modification was assisted by the use of a flywheel, which smoothed out variations in the engine shaft and permitted conversion of the movement of the beam into a circular motion. This modification, although difficult and time-consuming to achieve, proved hugely significant, as it opened Watt’s steam engine to new fields of application, namely, the operation of rotary machines in cotton mills and factories. Throughout the 18th century, Boulton and Watt sold more than 500 steam engines, of which slightly more than 60 percent were for use in factories and mills. This change greatly increased the demand for energy sources, usually coal, required to operate the steam engines rapidly being installed across Britain.

Coal

Although wood was still used as a fuel source during the 18th century, coal increasingly came into use, both for heating and to power the new steam engines being developed. Although coal was mined in Great Britain as early as 1000 c.e., it was not until the 13th century that it became actively traded. Coal was highly desired by blacksmiths and others, who valued its ability to generate great heat. Initially, coal used in Britain was often found on the shore, where it had come to rest after having fallen from exposed seams aboveground or washed to the coastline from underwater croppings. By the 14th century, however, most of these easily accessible sources had been exhausted, and the practice of developing underground mines began. Without coal, Britain would not have been able to develop its industrial infrastructure nearly so quickly, as the forests that supplied wood had already been extensively depleted by the 18th century.

Demand for coal began early in the 18th century, when Abraham Darby of England developed methods of using coke made from coal in blast furnaces to produce pig iron. Coke, which is developed from baking coal in airless ovens at very high temperatures, is preferred for many manufacturing processes because it produces much less smoke than coal itself. Coal was also used in the American colonies, although until the time of the American Revolution most coal was imported from Great Britain. Shortages caused by the Revolutionary War caused the birth of the American coal-mining industry, which originally centered on known deposits, such as those near Richmond, Virginia. Although later generations would decry coal’s negative effects on the environment, during the 18th century coal was viewed as an incredibly useful and efficient product.

Other Developments

The 18th century also saw many scientific developments that, although they did not provide practical benefits at the time, profoundly affected later energy research and development. Indeed, during the 18th century the term vis viva, or “living force,” was commonly used to refer to what we term energy, nomenclature that did not change until the following century.

In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli, a Dutch-Swiss mathematician, published Hydrodynamica, which initiated the kinetic theory. Bernoulli described as gas a large number of small particles—atoms or molecules—all of which are in continual, random motion. Joseph Black, a French and Scottish physician, discovered after 1761 such concepts as latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide, all of which were crucial to the development of the steam engine. In 1772, Black’s student Daniel Rutherford, the Scottish chemist, discovered nitrogen, which helped to explain the phlogiston theory, an early attempt to elucidate combustion and the rusting of metals (today known as oxidation). Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1777 distinguished thermal radiation’s heat transfer from that by convection and conduction. Together with the work of Smeaton and Watt, these discoveries permitted the creation of the internal combustion engine during the 19th century, which created a never-ending quest for energy that continues to the present day.

Bibliography

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Postman, N. Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

Ruddiman, W. F. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of the Climate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.