ABSTRACT
The heat engine, undoubtedly the most powerful agent in bringing about the material well-being that everyone shares, or ought to share, to-day, is comparatively a recent comer into the world, being in fact, little more than two and a quarter centuries old. This is such a short time as compared with the eight to twelve thousand years of human civilization that curiosity is aroused, so sophisticated are we to-day, to find an explanation why it was the heat engine did not arrive on the scene earlier. In no domain was the outcome of the Renaissance more fruitful than in that of science and technology. This chapter focuses on what practical men were doing to solve the ever-arising problem of raising water, the outcome of which was the invention of the steam engine. In evolution the quickest way may be the longest way round, and so it was in the case of the steam engine.
