The story of Watt's invention of the steam engine Everyone on earth knows that the steam engine was undoubtedly invented by the British, and The United Kingdom was the most advanced country in the 17th-19th centuries, so it is generally believed that the production of machines represented by the steam engine promoted the completion of the industrial revolution in Britain.
However, more and more modern scholars believe that the contribution of the steam engine to British industry is not as great as later generations think, at least for nearly a hundred years, the steam engine has not spread to the entire industrial field.
The Watt steam engine was invented in 1765, and by around 1830, the combined power of the steam engine in England was 166,000 horsepower, accounting for only 1.5% of the total power of the country at that time. Moreover, the steam engine was mainly used in the cotton textile industry and the steel industry, and the industries that contributed the most to GDP in the United Kingdom at that time were agriculture and service industries, that is to say, the steam engine did not play a great role in the british economic development.
During the Opium War, the British expeditionary fleet that opened up to China was still dominated by sail warships, which was not fundamentally different from the Dutch and Portuguese warships at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but the ships were larger and more guns. Only some small boats are powered by steam engines to transport people and pass on information.
The reason why the steam engine is so unappreciated is actually not difficult to understand, because the efficiency of the steam engine is too low to be compared to hydraulic power, and it was not until the emergence of the turbine steam engine in 1850 that the steam engine became a powerful and cheap source of power.
To be precise, Watt improved the steam engine, and for every 1 horsepower produced by his previous steam engine, it needed to consume 30 pounds of coal, and the Watt steam engine raised this figure to 12.5 pounds, and the turbine steam engine further reduced it to 5 pounds.
For capitalists, the ratio of output to cost is the lifeline, and loss-making business can certainly not be done. The cost of generating 1 horsepower for a watt steam engine reached £33, which dropped to £20 after 30 years of improvement, and the turbo steam engine was only £4, finally surpassing other sources of power such as hydropower.
Before 1850, the steam engine, as a power, consumed more coal than it could pull, which was not economically cost-effective. After the invention of the new generation of turbo steam engines, the steam engine became a general-purpose power, widely used in railways, ships, industry and other fields.
Some people have done statistics that between 1760 and 1850, the output value of the steam engine accounted for only 0.1-0.5% of Britain's GDP, 1.2% between 1850 and 1870, and 2.2% between 1870 and 1910. At this time, the second industrial revolution represented by the internal combustion engine has begun, and the steam engine has just gradually entered a better situation, and it has encountered a stronger opponent.
From the perspective of the Qing Dynasty, although it was already behind Britain at the time of the Opium War in 1840, the gap was not very large. It was precisely between 1840 and 1880 that Britain and Europe completed the Industrial Revolution in an all-round way, leaving the Qing Dynasty completely behind. Unfortunately, after the Qing Dynasty was beaten, it did not open its eyes to the world in time, wasting the best twenty years of catching up with the West.