Victorians going large
May 8, 2016 6:52 AM Subscribe
In a world where electric lightbulbs were still uncommon, Victorian engineers were building steam engines of breathtaking size and power.
Two that are still operational today are the beam engine at the Papplewick Pumping Station (beautiful pictures), and the River Don Engine (video) (recreated in Meccano).
My favorite thing about these massive fixed steam engines is the power distribution networks downstream. Ridiculous systems of pulleys and belts, some hundreds of feet long, to get the power from the one engine to the various spots that need the power to operate the pump or the drill or the sewing machine or whatever. We take power distribution mostly for granted in homes now; there's a plug in the wall or at worst you run an extension cord. In the old days there were these giant horsehair belts spinning noisly and free, ready to catch the sleeve of someone careless and rip their arm clean off.
In Hawai'i recently we toured the battleship Missouri, the special belowdecks tour crawling around the fire rooms. I had no idea the damn thing was steam powered! We were launching cruise missiles at Iraq in 1991 from the deck of a steam battleship. Nutty. But of course the Tomahawks were a late addition. The whole battleship is basically just a container for four steam engines and nine guns shooting out 2700lb bullets.
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
In Hawai'i recently we toured the battleship Missouri, the special belowdecks tour crawling around the fire rooms. I had no idea the damn thing was steam powered! We were launching cruise missiles at Iraq in 1991 from the deck of a steam battleship. Nutty. But of course the Tomahawks were a late addition. The whole battleship is basically just a container for four steam engines and nine guns shooting out 2700lb bullets.
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
Nelson, you might be further amazed to know that the US's top-of-the-line, Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers are also steam-powered. That is, the two reactors heat water to make steam which turns the turbines that spin the props. To the tune of up to 260,000bhp.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:20 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 8:20 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
Pretty much anything with a reactor attached is a steam engine.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:42 AM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:42 AM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
James Watt would be chuffed to bits, I'm sure.
(It's always amused me that in unleashing the power of the atom!!! the best way we could figure out to make said power do work was to let it heat up some water. And that this remains the case 70-something years later.)
posted by tobascodagama at 8:50 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
(It's always amused me that in unleashing the power of the atom!!! the best way we could figure out to make said power do work was to let it heat up some water. And that this remains the case 70-something years later.)
posted by tobascodagama at 8:50 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
A technological civilization wanted to be a moral civilization, and the whole of their history hinged at that moment. Papplewick is a monument of the intellectual decline which foreran the social, economic, and technological.
Evidently we need to put additional padlocks on Ms. Rand's coffin.
posted by praemunire at 9:05 AM on May 8, 2016 [8 favorites]
Evidently we need to put additional padlocks on Ms. Rand's coffin.
posted by praemunire at 9:05 AM on May 8, 2016 [8 favorites]
I absolutely love the aesthetics of cladding machinery in architectural grace. We are humans and many of us enjoy this thoughtfulness. Would that we still thought this way. , Heatherwick is the only current example I can think of. Come to think, it was also a way to represent the investment. Not last, don't forget that these achievements were tourist spectacles as well as pieces of infrastructure. Similiar machines were exhibited at fairs, and people frequently made stops to look at them while traveling, let alone the fact that they were so often viewed by other engineers looking to learn from them as they created other projects.
posted by Miko at 9:21 AM on May 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by Miko at 9:21 AM on May 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
I don't think there has ever been a battleship that wasn't steam powered. By the time the giant diesel engines that power large ships today came along we'd stopped building battleships. What an interesting thought! The big advances pioneered for battleships were the switch from coal to oil fuel and the switch from piston engines to turbines. Then airplanes and guided missles made them no longer viable.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:52 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:52 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's worth noting that since 1906 and HMS Dreadnought all those battleships have been powered by steam turbines, not steam-powered piston engines. The steam turbine was a huge leap forward in thermodynamic efficiency and power output; it took quite a while for diesel engines to catch up.
Diesel had the edge in startup time (before a steam turbine can produce power you need to build up a head of steam: diesels are almost instantaneous in comparison) but were initially less efficient and less powerful. Modern marine diesels, however, are remarkably efficient engines.
Modern warships tend to use a mixture of propulsion: typically a diesel engine for efficient but slow long-range power, and a gas turbine (a jet engine with a reduction gear, basically) for high speed fuel-guzzling dash -- CODAG propulsion. Gas turbines combine the efficiency of steam turbines with the rapid power output of a diesel, but they tend to be less fuel-efficient than diesel engines. Some modern warships dispense with the heavy mechanical gearbox and drive shafts by using an electric drive, and relegate the diesels and turbines to the role of generators. Again, it's a trade-off.
Carriers -- at the high end (the new British Queen Elizabeth class are an anomaly) prefer to use nuclear reactors and steam turbines because they need plenty of steam for the catapults that throw 20-40 ton jets off the edge of the flight deck at 90+ knots; the exception are STOVL carriers (no catapults) and the aforementioned QE class, which were originally going to have a catapult option but were built around gas turbines because Rolls Royce couldn't build big enough marine reactors to drive a supercarrier (the QEs are the world's largest warships after the USN's Nimitz class).
posted by cstross at 12:30 PM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Diesel had the edge in startup time (before a steam turbine can produce power you need to build up a head of steam: diesels are almost instantaneous in comparison) but were initially less efficient and less powerful. Modern marine diesels, however, are remarkably efficient engines.
Modern warships tend to use a mixture of propulsion: typically a diesel engine for efficient but slow long-range power, and a gas turbine (a jet engine with a reduction gear, basically) for high speed fuel-guzzling dash -- CODAG propulsion. Gas turbines combine the efficiency of steam turbines with the rapid power output of a diesel, but they tend to be less fuel-efficient than diesel engines. Some modern warships dispense with the heavy mechanical gearbox and drive shafts by using an electric drive, and relegate the diesels and turbines to the role of generators. Again, it's a trade-off.
Carriers -- at the high end (the new British Queen Elizabeth class are an anomaly) prefer to use nuclear reactors and steam turbines because they need plenty of steam for the catapults that throw 20-40 ton jets off the edge of the flight deck at 90+ knots; the exception are STOVL carriers (no catapults) and the aforementioned QE class, which were originally going to have a catapult option but were built around gas turbines because Rolls Royce couldn't build big enough marine reactors to drive a supercarrier (the QEs are the world's largest warships after the USN's Nimitz class).
posted by cstross at 12:30 PM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Dreadnaught by Robert K. Massie is a fantastic book about battleships (the out-of-contol military industial complex of their time) and the politics and personalities involved in the run up to the first World War.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:36 PM on May 8, 2016
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:36 PM on May 8, 2016
→ James Watt would be chuffed to bits
I think he'd be chuff- chuff- chuff- chuff- chuff- chuff- chuffed to bits
posted by scruss at 4:01 PM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think he'd be chuff- chuff- chuff- chuff- chuff- chuff- chuffed to bits
posted by scruss at 4:01 PM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
Papplewick came in 2% under budget so they used the extra to make it beautiful.
Could that ever happen today? Yet 100 years later, after the functionality is gone, the beauty that was a 2% afterthought remains. I suggest that 2% got the largest ROI.
posted by bystander at 9:51 PM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Could that ever happen today? Yet 100 years later, after the functionality is gone, the beauty that was a 2% afterthought remains. I suggest that 2% got the largest ROI.
posted by bystander at 9:51 PM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
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