The New International Encyclopædia/Savery, Thomas

SA′VERY, Thomas (c.1650-1715). An English inventor, born in Shilstone, Devonshire. He became a military engineer, but devoted himself to mechanical inventions, devising a machine for polishing plate glass in 1696 and in the same year a pair of paddle-wheels worked by a capstan set between them on a boat, a scheme described in a pamphlet Navigation Improved (1698; reprinted in 1858 and in 1880). But his fame rests on the steam pumping engine which he patented in 1698, and which was the first to come into practical use, especially in the improved form it took after the association of Savery with Newcomen (q.v.). Savery wrote The Miner's Friend (1698), which contains a description of his engine.