• Notes & Queries: What were the earliest post-1800 steam engines in London?

    Encouraging Early Engines Research The Early Engines site is keen to encourage an open, collaborative community of researchers, sharing knowledge and information sources, to advance Early Engines Research. As part of this, a regular series of Notes & Queries for researcher queries will be added over time. Our first query (and note) comes from Dr John Kanefsky, who recently shared his extensive work on pre-1800 early engines in the form of the Early Engine Database. We relay his research query, and invite responses and comments below. Request for information Dr Kanefsky writes: As part of a paper I am researching on steam engine building in London (one of the areas…

  • New publication: Order book of Rogers & Co. of Bristol, boilermakers

    The International Early Engines Conference is always keen to encourage the publication and diffusion of studies and original materials relating to the development of engine and associated engineering, so we are pleased to announce the release of a new title from Folly Books; a limited print run high-quality facsimile edition of an order book (1830-1866) with introductory notes: ROGERS & Co Boilermakers of Bristol, Order Book 1830-1866 (edited by Steve Grudgings), Folly Books, 2020 Information concerning the construction of boilers for early steam engines is few and far between and detailed drawings even rarer. This limited print run will be of especial interest to those interested in early steam power…

  • The Art of Researching Engines…

    Three delightful images of a pair of Griff Colliery’s pumping engines near Nuneaton as they appeared in the mid Twentieth Century: pen and ink, some colour, and a photographic source of inspiration. Taken together they provide the historian, industrial archaeologist, early engine enthusiast, or just the artistically inclined alike, some food for thought. Cornish pumps in Bermuda? Bermuda? Yes, not exactly. Not *that* Bermuda. In the 1890s the expansion of the Griff Clara Colliery undertaking led to the establishment of small pit village; what is now Bermuda village, a suburb of Nuneaton and named as a nod to Sir Edward Newdigate Newdegate (1825–1902) of Astley Castle and Harbury Hall who…