Andrew Carnegie

According to David Billington’s The Innovators, the steam engine made it possible for Andrew Carngie to build his large steal mills, and at the same time Carnegie made the railroads even more important and let them grow further, which led to Carnegie being important in the building of what is thought of today as industry. Carnegie had four basic needs for his company to succeed which were capital, a site for his mills, a group of lieutenants, and a management plan. In his company, Carnegie had two essential functions, which were watchdog over the production and being the salesman to ensure full production. Carnegie could not have succeeded if it wasn’t for the steam engine. Thanks to the steam engine, Carnegie could get his raw materials and transport his product all over the North East. Without the steam engine, neither the arrival of raw materials or the departure of steel could have take place. Between 1875 and 1883, Carnegie transformed the steel industry, made millions of dollars and transformed the US economy by helping make the change form an agricultural society to an industrial society.

Steam Engine Today Ruben Jaffe

Even today, people are thinking of new ways to use water and steam for energy. Internal combustion is a very important invention to today’s society. This is discussed in the article “The Power of the Past” by Jean Thilmany which reviews many reasons that the steam engine is still big and hip. One example of the current steam engine is Pappy, a steam powered Case tractor. Case is a tractor company that is really pushing to the future. This tractor could really not only help the farmers afford gas prices, but it will help the planet by decreasing harmful fumes. In total, today’s culture led to Pappy because of our societies need for farming effectively, and a steam powered tractor could help farmers a lot of expenses.

For my capstone project, I decided to study the steam engine. To determine which technology to study, I researched many different options on EBSCO host. While researching this database, I found a very interesting article, “The Power of the Past” by Jean Thilmany, which was published in the Sept 2009 edition of Mechanical Engineering Magazine. In this article, Thilmany discusses how even though most people think of it as old and out of date, the steam engine is still being studied and improved upon. The article also talks about how lost to time or neglect exist only in inventors' notebooks. Gould said, “We're not trying to create new objects. Mostly, we're taking systems already designed and proven 150 years ago, and beautifying them a little." The fact that this technology has been around for so long and is still being improved upon is what made me choose the steam engine for my project.