Lost Chapters
The Steam Engine: Gold Item
The first truly successful steam engine was built by Thomas Newcomen in England in 1712 to pump water out of mines. James Watt greatly improved it with a separate condenser, and in the United States steam soon drove steamboats, starting in 1807, and locomotives, starting around 1830.
- Cost
- 6 crystals
- Type
- Item · Vehicle
- Color
- Gold (Inventors & Industry)
- Rarity
- Uncommon
- Set
- Liberty & Lightning (Set 1)
Equip: +3/+3. Refresh the equipped character.
Whenever you play another Item, refresh the equipped character.
Revolutionary technology that taught humanity water could do more than just make tea: it could fuel an entire revolution.
The real history
In 1698 Thomas Savery patented "The Miner's Friend," a steam pump that only worked for modest lifts. Around 1712 Thomas Newcomen and his assistant John Calley built something far better near Dudley Castle in England. Steam filled a cylinder, a spray of cold water turned it back into liquid, and the vacuum let air pressure push the piston down. A rocking beam linked the piston to a pump in the mine. Newcomen's engines spread through British coal mines, and about 600 were built by 1776.
Newcomen's design wasted a lot of heat because the cylinder was heated and cooled again and again. In 1765 James Watt invented a separate condenser that let the cylinder stay hot. It took years to build well, and Watt's engines were running by 1776. Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton later made the piston double-acting, so steam pushed in both directions, and engines could power mills and factories as well as pumps.
The first engine in the American colonies was a Newcomen engine. Its parts reached New York in September 1753, and it was set up at a copper mine in what is now North Arlington, New Jersey.
In 1807 Robert Fulton launched the first commercially successful steamboat, and steamboats soon filled American rivers. They were risky: 272 were destroyed between 1830 and 1839. On land, Peter Cooper's small locomotive Tom Thumb ran on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad around 1830, and the Mohawk and Hudson ran the first steam passenger railroad in America in the 1830s.
Sources
- The Newcomen Memorial Engine, American Society of Mechanical Engineers
- Steam Engine History, Michigan State University College of Engineering
- Steamboats: Transportation During the Cherokee Removal 1837-1839, National Park Service
- Ride the Rails, Library of Congress
How the card plays
The Steam Engine costs 6 crystals and is an Un-common Gold Item (Vehicle). Its card text is Equip: +3/+3. Refresh the equipped character. Whenever you play another Item, refresh the equipped character.
Attack with the equipped character, then play cheap Items to refresh it so it is up and ready to block. Every Item you play after the Engine does it again, so keep a few 1 and 2 crystal Items in your deck. John Henry, Master of Machine John Henry builds an extra Steel Golem Token when the Steam Engine is equipped to him. The Lightbulb The Lightbulb is a 1-crystal Item that triggers the refresh. Kite and Key Kite and Key triggers it too and deals 3 damage at the same time.
- Playable in decks led by Nikola Tesla, and by any Traveler Leader whose colors include Gold.
- In the Tesla starter deck (1 copy). Deck code:
LC2-BV8BYAFhAWICYwFkAWUCZgFnAWgBaQFqAWsCbAFtAm4BbwFwAXEBcgFzAnQBdQF2AXcBeAJ5AnoBewF8AX0BfgF_AXiK - A deck holds up to 3 copies of this card.
Questions about The Steam Engine
Did James Watt invent the steam engine?
No. Newcomen's engine came first, in 1712, and earlier steam pumps existed. Watt's separate condenser made steam engines far more efficient and useful.
Related cards
Free in your browser. No download.
Play The Steam Engine free