Alleng Debus News Today

It is evident that congruent quests unfolded in tandem in ancient India, China, and Egypt thousands of years ...

You’re reading Age of Invention, my newsletter on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation. This edition went out to over 12,200 subscribers. If you’ve just been forwarded this, you can sign up here: Previously, on

As I noted in Part I, the general idea of using heat and steam for mechanical work had a long and continuous history back to ancient times. But when we talk of the breakthrough “steam engine” in the eighteenth-century sense, we don’t mean a machine that exploits steam’s expansive, or pushing force. We actually mean a machine that does the exact opposite, exploiting the apparent sucking power that occurs when hot steam is rapidly condensed with a spray of cold water. It’s the relative w...