A Brief History of the Age of Steam: From the First Engine to the Boats and Railways

In 1710 an obscure Devon ironmonger Thomas Newcomen invented a machine with a pump driven by coal, used to extract water from mines. Over the next two hundred years the steam engine would be at the heart of the industrial revolution that changed the fortunes of nations. Passionately written and insightful, A Brief History of the Age of Steam reveals not just the lives of the great inventors such as Watts, Stephenson and Brunel but also tells a narrative that reaches from the US to the expansion of China, India, and South America and shows how the steam engine changed the world.

Thomas Crump used to teach Anthropology at Amsterdam University. He is the author of A Brief History of Science, The Anthropology of Numbers and Asia Pacific: A History of Empire and Conflict.