who invented the first steam engine
The first recorded steam device, the aeolipile, was invented by Hero of Alexandria (sometimes Heron) in the 1st century AD, but used only as a toy.[1] In 1663, Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester published designs for, and may have installed, a steam-powered engine for pumping water at Vauxhall House.[2] Denis Papin’s design for a piston-and-cylinder engine, 1690. Denis Papin’s design for a piston-and-cylinder engine, 1690. In about 1680 the French physicist Denis Papin, with the help of Gottfried Leibniz, built a steam digester for softening bones, i.e. he invented the world’s first pressure cooker. Later designs implemented a steam-release valve to keep the device from exploding. By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and cylinder engine. Papin wrote up the designs for such a device (as pictured adjacent), however he never built an actual steam engine. The English engineer Thomas Savery later used Papin’s designs to build th
