Matthew Murray was an English steam engine and machine tool manufacturer, who designed and built the first commercially viable steam locomotive, the twin-cylinder Salamanca in 1812. He was an innovative designer in many fields, including steam engines, machine tools and machinery for the textile industry.
Matthew Murray
Technical drawing of a 4hp steam engine by Fenton, Murray & Wood, 1802. "Applied to a mill for grinding bark", by Joseph Wilson Lowry, after John Farey
The Collier, aquatint by Robert Havell after George Walker, published in 1814, from Costumes of Yorkshire, showing Blenkinsop's rack locomotive Salamanca on the Middleton Railway. The image features the earliest known representation of a steam train.
A memorial to Matthew Murray in Holbeck, Leeds
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is most commonly applied to reciprocating engines as just described, although some authorities have also referred to the steam turbine and devices such as Hero's aeolipile as "steam engines". The essential feature of steam engines is that they are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term steam engine can refer to either complete steam plants, such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine.
A model of a beam engine featuring James Watt's parallel linkage for double action
A mill engine from Stott Park Bobbin Mill, Cumbria, England
A steam locomotive from East Germany. This class of engine was built in 1942–1950 and operated until 1988.
A steam ploughing engine by Kemna