• first for home fireplaces, instead of wood
• coal was used for glass and pottery furnaces and brick for building
• to use coal for brewing beer you needed coal without impurities
• partially burned coal=coke
  
• If your sources of energy are only agriculture and forestry then it is hard to keep increasing production because land is limited.  If your source of energy is coal then it is much easier

Smelting iron with coal:

• in the 17th century iron production in England was limited because iron was smelted with charcoal and England was running out of wood
  
• another invention key to the beginning of the industrial revolution: 1709 Abraham Darby was the first to smelt iron with coal
• The brewing industry had already started to experiment with coke (partially burned coal)
• like brewing, ironmaking requires a very pure carbon fuel because contaminants make the iron brittle (or make the beer taste bad)
  
• Abraham Darby was a Quaker, part of a community where people shared technological expertise
  
• Darby was making large cast iron cooking pots, which didn't require the highest quality iron
  
• the iron industry took off after 1760 since iron ore and coal were both very plentiful in England

• 1779  Iron Bridge over the Severn Gorge in Shropshire, England (photo,  detail)

Growing use of coal required improved transportation on limited routes, justifying more investment in transportation

• improved roads built in large numbers 1750-1815 (about 1000 miles), reduced transportation costs 20-30%

• Canals
• The Duke of Bridgewater's Canal started in 1759--7 miles but had to cross a river valley.  People thought this was a wild dream, but built (link has map) in 5 years.  Very profitable--halved the cost of coal in Manchester
• canal building boom 1750-1800--by 1830 England had 3875 miles of navigable water (though only 1/3 of that was canals).  The Oxford canal paid a 30% return for 30 years.
• provided much cheaper transportation of bulky goods

• The first need for steam engines was to pump water out of mines
• Thomas Savery built the first workable engine, using an odd design without a cylinder and piston--using the steam directly to pull up the water
  
• Newcomen Engine (about 1712) filled a cylinder with steam and then condensed it to draw the piston down.  1/2% efficient, but widely used to pump water out of coal mines.  video and Burke (starting at about 2:30)
• some scientific knowledge about atmospheric pressure/vacuum was necessary, but it was only one part of building an engine
• Watt Engine (1774) had had a separate condenser, making the engine much more efficient
• 
  
• James Watt later added:
• sun and planet gear converted reciprocating (up and down) motion into rotary motion to power machines
• automatic control mechanism--flyball governor--to keep the engine running at a fairly constant speed
• double-acting engine made for much smoother power--close the cylinder above the piston and put steam into the top part of the cylinder while condensing steam in the bottom part and then vice versa
• more efficient engine using a separate condenser

• Watt's improved engines could be used to run factory machines--efficient enough and motion was smooth enough

• high pressure engines developed after 1800 were needed for transportation applications (the Watt engine was too heavy)
•  significance of steam power
• a whole new science was invented by scientists trying to understand how steam engines worked