Boulton and Watt knew that their steam engines, and those that preceded them, were vital for coal extraction, but history has forgotten just how important. Everyone agrees – then and now – that coal was essential in the early stages of what came to be called the Industrial Revolution. By the mid eighteenth century, even foreign observers sensed the growing importance of coal in Britain. In the 1750s French ministers charged with the task of overseeing industry and commerce devoted time and personal energy to assessing the state of manufacturing in both England and France. After seeing for themselves what was happening in England, they reported nervously on the great usage of coal in dyeing, cooking, and heating. Owners of mines can exploit the mines freely; indeed, the French ministers claimed that both owners and workers enjoy a greater freedom in Britain.

How did the British come to tap into the locked-up energy of coal? To answer the question we need look no further than the coal fields of Northumberland. When reading the records of early eighteenth-century mines there, it is routine to find computations made by viewers, as coal engineers were known, explaining how much coal cannot be accessed: “Both these seams in an acre, (to take half and leave half) will yield … 87000 tons at 12 s ten pence rent [and] will amount to £52,000. Little can be expected from a second working, because of fire & the water that lies above which will be let down by working the walls.” Again, the mine of Bowers and Rogers in Northumberland “has in it low and bad top coal, main coal must be won by a pumping Engine & ¾ of coal not worth working … main coal being cast down 7 or 8 fathoms & therefore cannot be wrought without drawing water.” In the same vicinity the viewer reported that “the seam at Monkcaton is 5 quarters & the coal exceeding good and clear, but not winnable, without a fire engine.” In 1749 an eighty-five-year-old miner recalled how it was not possible to get down to the coal in a mine “on account of the water which there was then no other way of drawing but by horses and coals not being so valuable then as now.” Another old-timer recalled “there being no way then for drawing it but by horses which would have been too great a charge.”