But the work of these inventors was in itself but little more important than that of the Greek inventor of the steam aelopile, for each brought forward a machine which was, from a business point of view, utterly impracticable, and which, in each case, only served to show that a better device might prove useful and lead the way to its introduction.  The merit of the inventors of the eighteenth century was that they were able to lead the way, to point out the path to success, to furnish evidence of the value of the coming, crowning invention.  The “fire engines,” as they were then called, of these now famous men were merely contrivances by the use of which the pressure of confined steam of high tension could be brought to act on the surface of a mass of confined water, forcing it downward into pipes through which it was led off and upward to a higher level; and thus a mine could be drained, ineffectively and expensively to be sure, but vastly more satisfactorily than by the animal power of the time.  The machine of Savery was the best of all; but that was only a somewhat improved and manageable rearrangement of the engines of Papin and Worcester.  And, after all, Papin, the greatest man of science perhaps of his time, died in poverty; Worcester languished in prison his whole life, and the later efforts of his widow brought nothing by way of a return for his invention; nor did either they or their successor, Morland, make the introduction of the engine either general or remunerative.

Savery, coming on the stage at more nearly the right time to seize upon an opportunity, gained more than either of his predecessors; but we have no evidence that he ever acquired any large compensation or met with any remarkable business success in the introduction of the rude engine which bore his name; nor did Desaguliers, the great philosopher, or even Smeaton, the great engineer, of the later years of that century, make any great success of it.  It was reserved for Watt to reap the harvest.  But, though he so effectively reaped where his predecessors had sown, Watt is not the greatest of the inventors of the steam engine, if we rate his standing by the magnitude of the improvement which marked his reconstruction of the engine.

It was NEWCOMEN who made the modern steam engine.

When Newcomen came forward the labors of Worcester in Great Britain had sufficed to attract the attention of all intelligent men to the character of the problem to be solved, and to convince them of its importance and promise.  The work of Savery had shown the practicability of the solution of the problem, both in mechanics and finance.  He succeeded, though under great disadvantages and comparatively inefficiently.  Once the task had been performed, though ever so rudely, the rest came easily and promptly.  The defects of the Savery system were at once recognized; its great wastes of heat and of steam were noted, and the fact that they were inherent in the system itself