Author here. The beam engine created power from steam, and was a key part of the early Industrial Revolution. The article is a deep dive into the engine: how it works, the history behind it, and the engineering tradeoffs the builders faced. There are quite a few interactive figures that I hope make the concepts easier to see.
Cool! If you're in New Zealand, there is a massive, two story Double Woolf beam engine at MOTAT museum in Auckland, along with an array of other steam driven engines that they run from time to time.
This reminds me a lot of https://ciechanow.ski, down to the body typeface. (IBM Plex Sans?) Also, the SI units everywhere here make me beam. Thank you :)
100% - his articles were a major inspiration, and first line in the credits:
- Thanks to Bartosz Ciechanowski, whose exceptionally well written and designed articles inspired this one.
Awesome! It's pretty amazing all the concepts that need to come together for even these very old engines. I found I built a better understanding of what was going on as I built out the animations as well.
RE: units - Good catch - there is almost certainly a better way to phrase this one. I always tried to give physical examples to make things more concrete. But who knows, maybe the bathtub will take off as a unit :).
Ever hear the phrase "Balls out" when referring to pushing something to the max? Comes form the balls of the centrifugal engine governor. At maximum speed the balls extended all the way outward giving us the term "Running balls out."
edit: I once said this phrase at a work meeting and someone objected to my use of a crude term which I then explained much to everyone's surprise. They thought it had something to do with testicles.
Example, throttle controls on a Dogulas DC3. All engine controls forward is the typical convention for full power. (At sea level, neglecting the altitude effect on required engine fuel/air mixture.)
Definitely a fun note :). I think I heard it first from a Jay Leno youtube video where he was showing his amazing collection of steam powered machinery.
This is from the article, but governors also played a role in kicking off modern control theory!
"""
In 1868, James Clerk Maxwell studied when these oscillations grow or die away in his paper “On Governors”[https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gold/pdfs/teaching/old_lite...]. This became one of the beginnings of modern control theory.
"""
Fred Dibnah's BBC series "Age of Steam" is a fine overview of the development of steam engine technology and the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom.
Quinn (Blondihacks) on youtube is a model engineer machinist and has, IMO, the most outsider-watchable content on building boilers and steam engines like this.
One more: a little engine I'd never encountered before called a wobbler is, apparently, the hello world of machining model engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHDrIms7-0
One of the unexpected pleasures of having a 3 year old has been learning far more than I ever planned to about steam locomotives. It turns out steam engineering is fascinating, this article emphasized it for me even more. It really amazes me how much ingenuity there is in just connecting the right shapes and joints up so that the right thing happens at the right time, creating perfect cycles, regulators, etc. Seeing it explained in an iterative way like this is fantastic because you can understand what problem is solved by each part. I would love to see a piece like this strictly about locomotives.
Thank you! I have a few ideas for the next article. Locomotives are up there on the list, but they are the final challenge of steam engineering, there is so much to cover.
Also considering the origins of precision - the intertwined evolution of machining tools and measuring systems that allowed these machines to be built.
RE: 3 year old - yes, mechanical systems are wonderful for children (and adults). There is something incredibly satisfying about watching them in motion doing work.
One nit: All three animations that show the governor and the flywheel have the governor turning the wrong way, causing the gears that join them to do physically impossible things.
Oh my. Yes, you are totally right. This was tricky because I needed to merge two different animations (the governor moves independently from the rotation of the wheel), and I seem to have messed that up.
It was a mix of techniques, this article has been in progress for quite a while :). The first part was modeling all the relationships for an accurate beam engine in onshape (great cad tool). Then, I built a custom exporter to cleanly export it to three.js. This ensured physical realism for the hero of the article. All of these are linked from the article.
For the figures, I had prototyped some by hand, and it was slow going. Fable was the first LLM I found that was actually able to understand and model mechanical linkages correctly enough to be useful. I built a style guide, and iterated many times on each figure and animation until we arrived at something useful. There are also quite a few backing tests to ensure physical correctness of the animations (as far as reasonably possible :).
Ancient Greeks had a steam engine. They called it a Hero's engine. They used it as a toy.
They couldn't use it as anything else than a toy. The reason they couldn't because they didn't have the metallurgy and the machining to create pistons, valves, etc.
There's an important lesson that can be applied to every technology, I think: technological progress is always iterated, never revolutionized. If your novelty - a programming language, a framework, a methodology, whatever - doesn't stand on the shoulders of the giants, then you have simply nothing to apply this novelty to.
[OP] glinscott | a day ago
monkmartinez | a day ago
[OP] glinscott | a day ago
For other animations I put together a style guide and worked together with Fable to build them.
spartanatreyu | an hour ago
Not just in terms of presentation, but also quality.
Amazing!
[OP] glinscott | 50 minutes ago
And 100% inspired by Bartosz's articles - he is the first line in the credits section.
frereubu | 3 hours ago
constantlm | 3 hours ago
delta_p_delta_x | 3 hours ago
[OP] glinscott | 3 hours ago
Glad you enjoyed the units :).
a_shovel | 3 hours ago
[OP] glinscott | 3 hours ago
bullfightonmars | 3 hours ago
This is sending me :)
> One cup of water becomes roughly 400 litres of steam, enough to fill two bathtubs
Three units of measurement in one sentence, my favorite unit is bathtubs.
[OP] glinscott | 2 hours ago
RE: units - Good catch - there is almost certainly a better way to phrase this one. I always tried to give physical examples to make things more concrete. But who knows, maybe the bathtub will take off as a unit :).
LoganDark | 2 hours ago
jscott817 | 2 hours ago
One of my favorites. Good read.
MisterTea | 2 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor
edit: I once said this phrase at a work meeting and someone objected to my use of a crude term which I then explained much to everyone's surprise. They thought it had something to do with testicles.
jscott817 | 2 hours ago
CalRobert | 2 hours ago
taneq | an hour ago
buildsjets | 2 hours ago
https://www.douglasdc3.com/dc3throt/dc3throt.htm
conartist6 | 2 hours ago
dijksterhuis | 2 hours ago
[OP] glinscott | 2 hours ago
This is from the article, but governors also played a role in kicking off modern control theory! """ In 1868, James Clerk Maxwell studied when these oscillations grow or die away in his paper “On Governors”[https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gold/pdfs/teaching/old_lite...]. This became one of the beginnings of modern control theory. """
goodmythical | 2 hours ago
dghlsakjg | 2 hours ago
Going balls to the wall means pushing the throttle and mixture all the way in to the firewall/instrument panel for maximum power.
teachrdan | an hour ago
taneq | an hour ago
The choice of wording makes me suspect that they intended both entendres. ;)
icase | 50 minutes ago
buildsjets | 2 hours ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl_UA36ouzM&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wl...
tingletech | 2 hours ago
eleventen | 2 hours ago
Highly recommend this primer titled "The Model Engineering Learning Curve" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps_BQJEMnGA
She's been building a model locomotive for years now, there are over 100 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLY67-4BrEae-xhrvZX33gPk4...
One more: a little engine I'd never encountered before called a wobbler is, apparently, the hello world of machining model engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHDrIms7-0
[OP] glinscott | an hour ago
It's a great hobby. Manual machining is totally different from writing code, but you get into a similar state of flow.
pfdietz | 29 minutes ago
https://www.youtube.com/@Wreck2Restored
hmokiguess | 2 hours ago
radarsat1 | an hour ago
[OP] glinscott | an hour ago
Also considering the origins of precision - the intertwined evolution of machining tools and measuring systems that allowed these machines to be built.
RE: 3 year old - yes, mechanical systems are wonderful for children (and adults). There is something incredibly satisfying about watching them in motion doing work.
diggernet | an hour ago
One nit: All three animations that show the governor and the flywheel have the governor turning the wrong way, causing the gears that join them to do physically impossible things.
[OP] glinscott | an hour ago
Fix shall be deployed shortly!
[OP] glinscott | an hour ago
Evidlo | an hour ago
[OP] glinscott | an hour ago
For the figures, I had prototyped some by hand, and it was slow going. Fable was the first LLM I found that was actually able to understand and model mechanical linkages correctly enough to be useful. I built a style guide, and iterated many times on each figure and animation until we arrived at something useful. There are also quite a few backing tests to ensure physical correctness of the animations (as far as reasonably possible :).
AndriyKunitsyn | an hour ago
They couldn't use it as anything else than a toy. The reason they couldn't because they didn't have the metallurgy and the machining to create pistons, valves, etc.
There's an important lesson that can be applied to every technology, I think: technological progress is always iterated, never revolutionized. If your novelty - a programming language, a framework, a methodology, whatever - doesn't stand on the shoulders of the giants, then you have simply nothing to apply this novelty to.
brcmthrowaway | 34 minutes ago