steam engine
an engine worked by steam, typically one in which a sliding piston in a cylinder is moved by the expansive action of the steam generated in a boiler.
Origin of steam engine
1Other words from steam engine
- steam-engine, adjective
Words Nearby steam engine
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use steam engine in a sentence
Instead, technology investments must be combined with even larger investments in new business processes, skills, and other types of intangible capital before breakthroughs as diverse as the steam engine or computers ultimately boost productivity.
The coming productivity boom | Erik Brynjolfsson, Georgios Petropoulos | June 10, 2021 | MIT Technology ReviewThe engineers of the 18th and 19th centuries did not wait until physicists had sorted out the laws of thermodynamics before they built steam engines.
Another significant counterfactual property of physical systems, central to thermodynamics, is that a steam engine is possible.
Our Little Life Is Rounded with Possibility - Issue 102: Hidden Truths | Chiara Marletto | June 9, 2021 | NautilusThe possibility of building a steam engine, which existed long before the first one was actually built, is a counterfactual.
Our Little Life Is Rounded with Possibility - Issue 102: Hidden Truths | Chiara Marletto | June 9, 2021 | NautilusFor example, the whole field of thermodynamics, and the idea of entropy, arose in part from trying to build better steam engines.
And the steam engine that powered the reciprocating motion of the sphere was located in a separate room from the patient.
'Hysteria' and the Long, Strange History of the Vibrator | Marlow Stern | April 27, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTMy guess is that the death of Paterno will pump that steam engine even more.
Joe Paterno’s Death Shouldn’t Turn Him Into Sandusky Case’s Martyr | Buzz Bissinger | January 22, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTHis letter of a few months before reveals the facility with which he moulded the steam-engine to his requirements.
Life of Richard Trevithick, Volume II (of 2) | Francis TrevithickI am very glad you have succeeded with your portable steam-engine, and am persuaded they will be more and more adopted.
Life of Richard Trevithick, Volume II (of 2) | Francis TrevithickThe economy of heat in smelting furnaces and in the arated steam-engine were bold means to large results.
Life of Richard Trevithick, Volume II (of 2) | Francis TrevithickThe drawing shows the simplicity of parts of this highly expansive steam-engine, beginning the up-stroke with steam of 100 lbs.
Life of Richard Trevithick, Volume II (of 2) | Francis TrevithickThis most simple steam-engine combined in the greatest degree the two elements of expansion and momentum.
Life of Richard Trevithick, Volume II (of 2) | Francis Trevithick
British Dictionary definitions for steam-engine
an engine that uses the thermal energy of steam to produce mechanical work, esp one in which steam from a boiler is expanded in a cylinder to drive a reciprocating piston
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for steam engine
An engine in which the energy of hot steam is converted into mechanical power, especially an engine in which the force of expanding steam is used to drive one or more pistons. The source of the steam is typically external to the part of the machine that converts the steam energy into mechanical energy. Compare internal-combustion engine.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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