Will We Ever Move Beyond Steam Power?

The Industrial Revolution (IR) can be described as changing our society from a Needs based one to a Wants based society. Prior to the IR society was organised to meet our three basic needs – food, clothing and shelter. Other things were made such as, works of art, large buildings for entertainment or demonstrations of power, and weapons for war. After the IR society began moving towards satisfying the wants of individuals. This took time and required the invention of a couple of key technologies – electricity and probably photography (as a way to stimulate the drive for want).

What was key to the development of the IR was access to increasing levels of power, first from water then from steam. Today’s wants society is also driven by abundant supplies of energy this time in the form of electricity. Every mass-produced consumer good or modern appliance requires electricity in some part of its production or use. Its first widespread use was the provision of light. From there it has become integral in the production of metals to the operation of computers, camera’s, automobiles, hoovers etc.

Photography’s role in this has been in advertising and marketing all these things we are told we need and therefore want. Would we want as much if we were not constantly told how much we should have? Photography is not all bad, pre the IR entertainment might be viewed as our 4th basic need and photography has spawned a huge entertainment industry. It is also integral to other important modern developments such as medical imaging technologies, road safety, scientific research eg astronomy, microscopy etc.

What is really interesting is what drove the IR is fundamental to the production of electricity – steam power. Steam power was basically a means to create rotational movement that could then be used to drive machines. That is exactly the process in the production of electricity. It is created by rotating a coil of wire in a magnetic field (see diagram above). The coil is attached to a shaft and the shaft is connected to turbine blades (modern equivalent of a water wheel - see photograph below) and the blades are made to turn by high pressure steam being fed through them and the starting point is the production of steam in a boiler. There is no difference whether it is a gas fired, coal fired, oil fired or nuclear power station. The only difference between them is the source of heat for the boiler. The first three use combustion and the later uses the process of nuclear fission (splitting the atom), even nuclear fusion (joining nuclei together) if we ever get it to commercial scale will simply be a source of heat to produce steam.

Turbine Blades of an Electricity Producing Steam Turbine

The simple act of boiling water to create steam has been a major driver behind climate change. In 1750 the UK produced around 5 million tonnes of coal, by 1913 this had risen to 292 million tonnes and the US produced even more at around 350 million tonnes. At that time world production was just short of 1 billion tonnes per annum. In 2022 production was 8.4 billion tonnes with almost 6 billion used in the production of electricity (– boiling water!!). By comparison in 2022 UK production had fallen below the 1750 level. Metallurgical uses of coal and its use in the production of cement account for a large part of the remaining 2.4 billion tonnes. It is thought coal production will continue to increase until at least 2025 increasing yet further the release of vast quantities of CO2.

Does the invention of the steam engine by Newcomen and Watt make them  hero’s or villains?

Of course renewable energy sources use other methods to rotate the coil in a magnetic field (apart from solar which produces electricity directly via the photovoltaic effect first discovered in 1839). Does that mean that eventually we won’t need these thermal power stations and we will eventually move beyond steam power. Perhaps, but not before there are some crucial further developments that I won’t bore you with. But if we ever do manage to get fusion commercial, we may never leave steam power behind but could at last (along with renewables) get CO2 emissions under control.