Talk:Steam engine

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Steam engine article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 365 days

This  level-3 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Technology This article is within the scope of WikiProject Technology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TechnologyWikipedia:WikiProject TechnologyTemplate:WikiProject TechnologyTechnology articles Engineering High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Engineering, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of engineering on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EngineeringWikipedia:WikiProject EngineeringTemplate:WikiProject EngineeringEngineering articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. History High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Energy High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Energy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Energy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnergyWikipedia:WikiProject EnergyTemplate:WikiProject Energyenergy articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

The article should either explain how these two are related or delete all reference to duty. (I'd delete duty - it's entirely obsolete in that formulation, and belongs only in a 'James Watt (etc.)' article. Efficiency is easy to understand).

86.181.114.173 (talk) 23:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, duty is mostly what was reported in the early years. This is primarily due to the engine's use in pumping. As I explained in Engine efficiency#steam engine, this measures the combined efficiency of the engine, pump and boiler. Duty was published monthly for the larger Cornish mines starting 1811, with a competition of sorts to see who had the most efficient engine leading to the superior efficiency of those engines at the time. Duty lingered on with steam pumping engines through the end of the 19th century. Pounds of coal per horsepower hour and pounds of steam per horsepower hour were also used, especially for mill engines. With the latter we also need to know the steam pressure and temperature or amount of superheat.Phmoreno (talk) 21:34, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted the implication that burning fuel was the only source of heat and the "citation needed" from an explanation of process. Embarwhen (talk) 17:07, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

<

The historical measure of a steam engine's energy efficiency was its "duty". The concept of duty was first introduced by Watt in order to illustrate how much more efficient his engines were over the earlier Newcomen designs

>

Smeaton, not Watt 2A00:23C7:D280:D301:89A0:D360:5D9E:E847 (talk) 02:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have some pity on the poor reader, who wants to be draw in by the smooth flow of our Brilliant Prose ( Wiki TM) and doesn't <clang> want <clang> a bell run in her ear for every sentence. We don't footnote the whole world of knowledge in every article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You've got 1764 here, but 1765 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt#Early_experiments_with_steam (Watt's critical insight, arrived at in May 1765) for Watt's (design) invention. MBG02 (talk) 03:25, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]