Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Exploration Age

Steam digester and atmospheric piston — Denis Papin

1679 AD · Transmission: Silenced
TechnologyInventionFrench

Denis Papin (Chitenay, 1647 – London, c.1713), a French physicist and Huguenot refugee who collaborated with Huygens and Boyle, builds in 1679 the steam digester — a pressure cooker with a safety valve — and in 1690 publishes in Acta Eruditorum his description of a cylinder with a piston that rises through steam expansion and falls when the steam condenses, generating a partial vacuum. It is the first published description of the piston-cylinder-condensation cycle that structures all subsequent steam engines in the chain. Papin also designs in 1704 a paddle steamboat powered by his engine, but dies in poverty without having built a practical steam engine at scale. Newcomen incorporates Papin's atmospheric-piston principle without citing him.

InstitutionRoyal Society, London; Philipps-Universität Marburg
Historical regionFrance (Tours) / United Kingdom (London) / Germany (Marburg)
Primary sourcePapin, D. — "Nova methodus ad vires motrices validissimas levi pretio comparandas" (Acta Eruditorum, 1690); Papin, D. — A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones (1681, London)
Secondary sourceDickinson, H.W. — A Short History of the Steam Engine (Cambridge University Press, 1939); MacTutor — Papin biography (St Andrews)
Original languageLatin / French / English
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