Power from Steam in the Industrial Revolution This is a beam engine. It produced about fifteen horsepower continuously, roughly as much power as 150 people. Engines like this turned steam into the power that drove the Industrial Revolution. This article builds the engine up from first principles, using interactive figures to explore each idea (try rotating the engine above with two fingers, or pinching to zoom in dragging the engine above, or zooming with ⌘/Ctrl + scroll ). Let's start our journey through the engine with steam. Steam Below, we have a pot filled with water and a fire underneath. As the fire heats the water, some of it begins to boil and turns into steam. Steam undergoes an amazing transformation: it expands to 1,700 times the volume of the original water. One cup of water becomes roughly 400 litres of steam, enough to fill two bathtubs. If the steam doesn't have enough room to expand it will push on all the walls of the container.…