The steam engine familiarly explained and illustrated; with an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain maxims for railway speculators. By the Rev. Dionysius Lardner ... With additions and notes by James Renwick ...

50 THE STEAM ENGINE.
for raising watei by suction into a vacuum produced by the
condensation of steam.
Savery appears to have been ignorant of the publication
of Papin, in 1695, and states that his discovery of the
condensing principle arises from the following circumstance:
Having drunk a flask of Florence at a tavern, and flung
the empty flask on the fire, he called for a basin of water to
wash his hands. A small quantity which remained in the
flask began to boil, and steam issued from its mouth. It
occurred to him to try what effect would be produced by inverting the flask, and plunging its mouth in the cold water.
Putting on a thick glove to defend his hand from the heat,
he seized the flask, and the moment he plunged its mouth
in the water, the liquid immediately rushed up into the flask
and filled it. (21.)
Savery stated that this circumstance immediately suggested to him the possibility of giving effect to the atmospheric
pressure by creating a vacuum in this manner. He thought
that if, instead of exhausting the barrel of a pump by the
usual laborious method of a piston and sucker, it was exhausted by first filling it with steam and then condensing the
same steam, the atmospheric pressure would force the water
from the well into the pump-barrel, and into any vessel connected with it, provided that vessel were not more than about
34 feet above the elevation of the water in the well. He
perceived, also, that, having lifted the water to this height,
he might use the elastic force of steam in the manner described by the Marquis of Worcester to raise the same water
to a still greater elevation, and that the same steam which
accomplished this mechanical effect would serve, by its subsequent condensation, to repeat the vacuum, and draw up
more water. It was on this principle that Savery construct.
ed the first engine in which steam was ever brought into
practical operation.