What 1769 patent by the Scottish engineer James Watt transformed industrial steam power?
Watt's separate condenser, patented 5 January 1769, kept the steam cylinder hot at all times and dramatically improved the efficiency of the Newcomen atmospheric engine. The improvement made steam power economically viable outside coal-mining applications and was the central technological enabler of the first Industrial Revolution. Watt later developed rotary motion (1781), the centrifugal governor (1788), and the double-acting engine (1782).
Read the full facts →The Industrial Revolution was the transition from agrarian and handicraft economies to industrial and machine manufacturing that began in Britain in the late 18th century and spread across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia over the following 150 years. It is the most consequential economic transformation in human history since the Neolithic adoption of agriculture.
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