‘The power of the steam-engine and its inconceivable importance as an agent of civilization, has always been a favorite theme with philosophers and historians as well as poets. As Religion has always been, and still is, the great moral agent in the civilizing world, and as Science is the great intellectual promoter of civilization, so the Steam-Engine is, in modern times, the most important physical agent in that great work.’ This was the position which R. H. Thurston ascribed to the steam engine in 1878. In its many forms, the steam engine became the major source of power in the nineteenth century, both in manufacturing industry and in transport whether on land or at sea. This book seeks to trace the technical development of the steam engine as applied in industry and centred on the cotton textile industry in the Lancashire region.

I have aimed to set the technical developments against a background of the scientific discoveries which led to a true understanding of the nature of heat and how best steam should be used in these engines. ‘W. S. Jevons wrote in 1865, “The whole question of the steam engine is one of economy” – its development consisted in nothing but the quest for greater efficiency – and indeed, he thought, the material achievement of our civilization could be summed up as “the economy of power”’. The story is traced through more efficient ways of developing power until the original reciprocating engines were replaced by steam turbines both in the textile mills themselves and in electricity generating stations.