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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 6 (October 1, 1929)

Bicentenary of Newcomen's Death

Bicentenary of Newcomen's Death.

The Devonshire Association and the Newcomen Society recently celebrated at Dartmouth, England, the bicentenary of the death of Thomas Newcomen, the inventor of the steam-engine. Engineer-Captain E. C. Smith, R.N., in an address on the occasion, spoke of the four great landmarks in the history of the steam-engine, the first of which was the introduction of the atmospheric steam-engine by Newcomen; the second, the discoveries by James Watt; the third, the adoption of the marine compound engine; and the fourth, the invention of the turbine. Newcomen's invention was the first successful application of science in the development of the motive-power engine. Little honour had been paid to him in the past, but in 1921 a memorial was erected at Dartmouth, and the Newcomen Society, founded a few years ago for the study of the history of engineering and technology, hoped to obtain permission to place another memorial on the walls of Bunhill Fields, London, where he was buried in 1729, in a grave the site of which was now not known.

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