Raising water by fire: The Steam Letters

Steam power was no stranger to anyone.

It hid in plain sight for thousands of years waiting patiently to be unleashed.

Raising Water by Fire tells the story of the inventors who struggled, cursed and loved their fantastical dreams of steam power and a wheel that turned seemingly under its own power.

Steam power began with a penniless French refugee and a stubborn Devon blacksmith. Later a restless Scot built engines more powerful than anything ever seen or imagined.

‘We are all from one living filament, possessing the faculty of improvement by our own inherent activity and of delivering down those improvements by generation to our posterity, world without end.’ Erasmus Darwin 1794.