Short pipes were deployed to minimise steam and heat loss. Gears with belts were used to harness the power of the machines for as many work stations as possible, and these belts could not be over a certain length. Installing boilers in factories would often translate this risk into devastating accidents. This was because overheating the boiler walls could cause them to crack, leading to the abrupt vaporisation of the water in the boiler – and the sudden release of pressure would result in a huge explosion. Alongside inadequate maintenance, design flaws and excessive steam pressure, overheating through lack of water was one of the most common causes of boiler explosions. According to early statistics, in the German Empire alone in the years 1877 to 1890, there were more than 200 steam boiler explosions, which left nearly 200 people dead and over 100 seriously injured. Devastating accidents like this became commonplace. A steam boiler exploded in a local wagon factory, killing seven workers instantly and badly injuring many more. On 27 January 1855, the city of Hanover witnessed a catastrophic event. And because a new technology needs a unit of measurement that everyone can relate to, James Watt placed the power of a horse in mathematical relation to the work carried out by it and came up with the idea of horsepower - or HP for short. This doesn’t sound like much from today's perspective, but it represented a six-fold increase in output from Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine. As a result, the machine achieved an efficiency of almost three percent. It was “double-acting” because the cylinder was filled with steam alternately from both sides. A problem that was resolved by James Watt with his double-acting steam engine, which he patented in 1769. Although this was a great deal more efficient than Savery’s machine, it still required a lot of energy because the pistons and cylinders needed to be heated up and cooled down for every single work cycle. Engineer Thomas Newcomen perfected the process in 1712 and developed the atmospheric steam engine. Although the device was not sufficiently practical to be commercially viable, the principle behind it was thoroughly sophisticated. This was followed in 1698 by a steam-powered device invented by British engineer Thomas Savery with the purpose of pumping groundwater out of mines. In 1690, Frenchman Denis Papin presented the first prototype of a steam engine, which worked using pistons and cylinders. However, the Scottish inventor was by no means the first person to investigate it. James Watt is often celebrated as the father of this technology. It took the invention of the steam engine to guarantee supplies of drive energy at any location on earth – energy so powerful that not even workhorses could compete with it. The more dependable water power isn’t always on hand where you need it to drive water wheels, pumps, millstones or saws. But the wind doesn’t blow everywhere, and ships and windmills lie idle whenever it dies away. Water power was used in turn to mill grain or saw wood. And mankind has never since ceased in its development of new ways of turning the elements to our advantage: With wind power, it became possible to mill grain into flour and to sail across the oceans to unknown shores. Our ancestors used it to drive off wild animals, convert raw clay into pots, turn indigestible roots into nutritious food and transform hostile places into homes. In the beginning, as we all know, there was fire. In our brief history of the steam engine, we relate how steam power was discovered, the risks that came with it, and how the steam boiler inspection associations, or DÜVs, set about protecting people from the technology. But lurking behind the new technological possibilities were some untold and unknown dangers. Even the mighty Industrial Revolution needed common-or-garden water - specifically in the form of steam, which was used to drive the pistons of engines, pumps and locomotives.
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