I’m not really convinced by this argument. Yes, Newcomen’s specific design needed precise manufacturing capability. But I would expect that, if there had been demand for steam engines earlier, someone would have found a design which could work with lower-precision manufacturing. Newcomen just used what was available.
Also, I intended Newcomen as an example of an early steam engine which failed to catch on, because it wasn’t very profitable yet.
The problem that Newcomen’s steam engine solved was pumping water out of mines and according to Wikipedia it caught on in the sense that there were hundreds produced. It seems to me like it was a reasonable solution at the time for the problem of pumping water out of mines for those mines that needed a lot of water pumping.
The problem of pumping water out of mines also doesn’t seem to me new, given that mines existed for a long time.
I’m not really convinced by this argument. Yes, Newcomen’s specific design needed precise manufacturing capability. But I would expect that, if there had been demand for steam engines earlier, someone would have found a design which could work with lower-precision manufacturing. Newcomen just used what was available.
Also, I intended Newcomen as an example of an early steam engine which failed to catch on, because it wasn’t very profitable yet.
The problem that Newcomen’s steam engine solved was pumping water out of mines and according to Wikipedia it caught on in the sense that there were hundreds produced. It seems to me like it was a reasonable solution at the time for the problem of pumping water out of mines for those mines that needed a lot of water pumping.
The problem of pumping water out of mines also doesn’t seem to me new, given that mines existed for a long time.