Birmingham, England. Inventor James Watt and investor Matthew Boulton give a public demonstration of their new steam engine at the Boomfield coal mine. The idea of using steam was not new, and a steam engine already existed, developed by Englishman Thomas Newcomen, but it consumed more than double the energy (and therefore coal) and was therefore uneconomical. Watt’s engine, however, changed everything and would soon be used in a myriad of other applications, beyond pumping water out of mines, for which it was originally designed.
