Re: Thomas Savery
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In reply to:
Thomas Savery
Christopher Savery 3/04/12
I have Thomas Savery, F.R.S., b.c.1650, d.15/5/1715, m.5/10/1697 at St. Bride's Church, London, Martha Davis, b.1654/5, d.4/1759, aged 104.
I have an uncertain brother to Thomas called Richard who married Mary and had Charles.
I have Thomas as son of Richard Savery by his wife Mary, Richard being 3rd son of Col. Christopher Savery of Shilston by his 1st wife, Johan(na) Gilbert or Gilberd, als. Webber.
I am pretty sure that making Thomas the son of Richard came from an old book I found at archive.org, but I am afraid I cannot point you at anything authoritative today.
The Oxford DNB articles says:
Savery [Savory], Thomas (1650?–1715), engineer, was born at Shilstone, a manor house near Modbury, Devon, one of two sons of Richard Savery and grandson of Christopher Savery of Totnes. He became a military engineer, and by 1696 had attained the rank of trench-master. He spent his spare time on mechanical experiments, and in 1696 he patented (no. 347) a machine to grind and polish plate glass, and a contrivance for rowing ships in a calm using two paddle-wheels worked by a capstan. William III thought highly of the second invention, but although Savery demonstrated its practicability by fitting it to a small yacht, official jealousy prevented its adoption in the navy. Undeterred, he published an account of his invention in a work entitled Navigation Improved (1698), and this contained a denunciation of his treatment in official circles.
Savery, who lived at Exeter for a time and whose youth was spent near a mining district, had often turned his attention to the difficulty of keeping the mines free from water. To remedy this he invented a machine for raising water, and on 25 July 1698 he obtained a patent (no. 356) for fourteen years, which was extended by an act of parliament passed on 25 April 1699 for a further twenty-one years. The patent contained no description of the machine, but this deficiency was supplied in a book which he published in 1702, entitled The Miner's Friend. A model of the machine, which raised water by utilizing steam pressure and the vacuum produced by the condensation of steam, was demonstrated to William III at Hampton Court, and in June 1699 shown to members of the Royal Society.
In 1702 Savery established a workshop at Salisbury Court, London, very close to St Bride's Church, where he had married Martha Davis (1654/5–1759) on 5 October 1697. At this workshop, mine and colliery owners could see the engine demonstrated before purchase. However, it is doubtful that any machines were actually sold for use in mines, although at least two were later installed for water-supply purposes in London, namely at Campden House, Kensington, and at the York Buildings waterworks in Villiers Street. The engine was satisfactory for raising water short distances, but the intense heat required to lift water from greater depths, as in mines, tended to melt the soldered joints of the machine, which lacked proper safety features and used energy inefficiently. The workshop closed about 1705 and Savery, therefore, was not as successful as he had anticipated, but later he became associated with Thomas Newcomen, who designed a greatly improved machine; and Savery's patent apparently covered all Newcomen's improvements. Savery has been accused of obtaining ideas from others, but even if he did know about another inventor's theory, he was the first to apply it to produce a practical working pump for sale. The principle was also later used in the pulsometer.
By 1702 Savery had become a captain in the engineers, and his translation of Coehoorn's The New Method of Fortification was published in 1705. The same year, through the patronage of Prince George of Denmark, he was appointed treasurer of the commission for sick and wounded seamen. In the following year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and also patented (no. 379) a double hand-bellows, which could melt any metal in an ordinary wood or coal fire. On 5 March 1707 an application was made by Savery for a patent for ‘a new sort of mill to perform all sorts of mill-work on vessells floating on the water’, but no patent seems to have been granted. In June 1713 his employment at the commission ended, and the following year, again through Prince George, he obtained the post of surveyor to the waterworks at Hampton Court. Within a few days of signing his will on 15 May 1715, Savery died at his home in Marsham Street, Westminster, and was buried at the church of St Giles, Camberwell, on 22 May 1715.
Savery was considered a passionate, self-willed, and parsimonious man, and it appears he had debts when he died. Although he bequeathed all his property and patent rights to his wife (from whom his engine patent, which expired in 1733, was acquired and managed by a committee), she seems never to have administered the will. As late as 1796 letters of administration, with the will annexed, were granted to Thomas Ladds, the executor of Charles Caesar, one of Savery's creditors.
E. I. Carlyle, rev. Christopher F. Lindsey
Sources
R. Jenkins, ‘Savery, Newcomen and the early history of the steam engine, pt I’, Transactions [Newcomen Society], 3 (1922–3), 96–130, esp. 96–118 · R. L. Hills, ‘A steam chimera: a review of the history of the Savery engine’, Transactions [Newcomen Society], 58 (1986–7), 27–44 · L. T. C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, ‘Thomas Savery and his pump’, The steam engine of Thomas Newcomen [rev. edn] (1977), 24–30 · J. S. P. Buckland, ‘Thomas Savery: his steam engine workshop of 1702’, Transactions [Newcomen Society], 56 (1984–5), 1–20 · A. Smith, ‘Steam and the city: the committee of proprietors of the invention for raising water by fire, 1715–1735’, Transactions [Newcomen Society], 49 (1977–8), 5–20 · ‘Savery's will’, The Engineer (30 May 1890), 442 · will, with letters of administration, 10 June 1796, PROB 11/546, fol. 170
Archives
BL, extracts from family papers, Add. MS 44058 · RS, MSS |BL, letters patent
Likenesses
W. Fry (after unknown artist), repro. in T. Savery, The miner's friend, repr. (1827)
Wealth at death
see will and administration, 10 June 1796, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/546, fol. 170
I note that "A Catalogue of all Graduates in Divinity, Law, Medicine, Arts and Music, who have regularly proceeded or been created in The Univeristy of Oxford, between 1659 and 1850" includes "Savery (Tho.) Exet. B.A. Oct. 16, 1671" - this could be the same Thomas.
I hope this helps and sorry not be more conclusive.
Many thanks,
Caspar
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