The name of Mårten Triewald is known to all those who have studied the history of the steam engine, but very few have any acquaintance with his book on the subject. In the first place it is extremely rare, and, next, it is written in Swedish, a language that is not widely spread among students of the history of engineering. There are earlier descriptions of the Newcomen engine, as by Leupold, Switzer, and Weidler, but Triewald's book is the first publication devoted solely to the engine, and the author knew Newcomen and his partner Cawley, or Calley, personally; he had a practical knowledge of the engine and had put up more than one in this country. It is particularly appropriate that the Newcomen society should begin its series of extra publications with a work so closely connected with the man from who the Society takes its name. The translation has been made by Mr. Are Waerland, who has furnished bibliographical and other notes. Mr. Waerland, has also contributed to the Society a paper on "Mårten Triewald and the first steam engine in Sweden" (to be printed in the "Transactions," Vol. VII.), and upon it the following brief biographical sketch is based.Born in 1691, Mårten Triewald was the son of a smith, whom we may judge to have been successful in his business, for he was able to give Mårten a good education and to send to the University of Upsala his elder son Samuel, who later on rose to a high position in the State. At the end of his schooldays our Triewald entered into commerce, but with results disastrous to himself, so in 1716, at the age of 25, he came over to England. In London he got into a good circle of acquaintances, including Dr. Desaguliers, whose lectures he, no doubt, attended. Very soon, as he tells us in this little book, Nicholas Ridley of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who had known him from boyhood, invited him to come down and assist in the erection of a Newcomen engine that he was having set up to pump water from a coal pit. It was in this way that his acquaintance with the engine began. His stay in England extended to ten years and his time was devoted to work in connexion with the engines and in lecturing on physics and mechanics.
In 1726 he returned to Sweden. The erection of the engine at Dannemora soon followed; he founded a Diving and Salvage Company and was a partner in iron mines. In addition to these industrial occupations, he wrote, as will be seen in the bibliographic notes, on a great variety of subjects, such as the silk industry, the manufacture of soap, the cultivation of hops, and beekeeping, and he delivered courses of lecture on mechanics and the physical sciences. His collection of philosophical instruments is a treasured possession of the University of Lund. In recognition of his public services, Triewald was appointed "Director of Mechanics," with a pension, and later "Captain of Mechanics at the Royal Fortifications." He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Science of Sweden. Possibly he led too strenuous a life, for he died in 1747, at the comparatively early age of 56. The Dannemora engine was the only engine erected by him in Sweden. It was not a success (probably it was difficult to get men competent to work it and to effect repairs as necessity arose) and a few years after the book was published the mine-owners reverted to the use of horse whims for pumping, but it seems that the engine was not broken up until 1773.
Turning now to the book itself. The account of the manner in which Newcomen was led to direct his attention to the problem of raising water from mines--that is to say he often visited the mines in the capacity of a dealer in iron tools--is interesting and likely to be correct. Then it has long been known that royalties were exacted from users of the Newcomen engine by the Company that acquired Savery's patent, but there was nothing to show that Newcomen benefited by these royalties. Triewald makes the definite statement that Newcomen and Calley did join Savery to form a company; Triewald was in a position to be fully acquainted with the facts, so the statement carries some weight and it is consoling to think that Newcomen did have some share in the pecuniary rewards of his invention.
The story current in England as to the origin of the plan of injecting the condensing water into the cylinder is that it arose from a leak through the piston. Our author ascribes it to a hole, accidentally formed, in the cylinder wall, through which water rushed in from a water jacket formed by a lead case embracing the cylinder. This invention of the injection is one that impresses Triewald very forcibly; he can but think that it was only by a special act of providence that it could have occurred to ignorant folk who had never acquired a certificate at any University or Academy!
Triewald is silent about the story of Humphrey Potter and the valve gear, and a point that strikes the reader at once is the absence of any mention of Henry Beighton. About the same time as Triewald was engaged in the erection of the engine at Byker, on the north side of the Tyne, ten miles away to the south of the river Beighton was putting one up at Washington Fell. If they did not actually meet, they must have heard of each other, they were both on friendly terms with Desaguliers, and both Fellows of the Royal Society. It is possible that there may have been some feeling of jealousy. Of the men concerned in the erection of the Newcomen engines, they alone seem to have been really educated men. Beighton is credited with improvements in the engine and Triewald claimed have made improvements too, The nature of the latter we do not know, but it is conceivable that Beighton may have expressed an unfavourable opinion about them. Then, too, Beighton seems to have been a modest, unassuming man, a description which, judging from the book, would not be quite suitable for Triewald.