1650?-1715

English Engineer

Thomas Savery was a military engineer who is known for the invention of the Savery pump. This machine was designed to use steam in order to pump floodwaters from coal mines. While not a steam engine in the modern sense, the Savery pump was the first machine that used steam to provide mechanical power.

Savery was interested in devising mechanisms for practical applications. His significance lies in the extent to which his work serves as a transition from the laboratory-centered experiments of figures such as German physicist Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) and Irish chemist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) to the large-scale mechanical applications that precipitated the Industrial Revolution. Guericke and Boyle developed air pumps and were interested in the properties of gases and the specifics of atomic theory. The enduring image of two teams of horses straining to pull apart Guericke's vacuum-sealed metal hemispheres...