A lightning motor is a type of steam engine where a pivoting beam is used to apply the force of a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine that directly drives a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from the mines in Cornwall. Engine efficiency was improved by engineers such as James Watt, who added a separate condenser, Jonathan Hornblower and Arthur Woolf who combined the cylinders, and William McNaught (Glasgow), who devised a method for composing an existing engine. Beam engines were first used to extract water from the mines or into the canals, but could be used to pump water to supplement the flow of a wheel that feeds a mill.
The rotary-beam motor is a later beam-engine design where the connecting rod drives a flywheel, by means of a crank (or, historically, by means of a sun and planetary gear). These beam motors can be used to directly feed the axes of the lines in a mill. They could also be used to power steam craft.
The first beam motors were powered by water and were used to pump water from the mines. A preserved example can be seen in Wanlockhead, Scotland. Beam motors were widely used to drive pumps in the English channel system when it was expanded by locks at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and also to drain the water from the mines in the same period, and as winding motors.
The first steam-related beam motor was developed by Thomas Newcomen. This was not strictly speaking steam-driven, since the steam introduced under the piston was condensed to create a partial vacuum, thus allowing the atmospheric pressure to push down the piston. That's why it was called an atmospheric engine. The atmospheric engine Newcomen was adopted by many mines in Cornwall and elsewhere, but was relatively inefficient and consumed a lot of fuel. John Smeaton improved the engine, but James Watt solved the major inefficiencies of the Newcomen engine in his Watt steam engine by adding a separate condenser, thus allowing the cylinder to remain hot. Technically, this was still an atmospheric engine until (under subsequent patents) it enclosed the top of the cylinder, introducing steam to also push the piston down. This made it a real steam engine and could be said to confirm it as the inventor of the steam engine. He also patented the centrifugal governor and the parallel movement. the latter allowed the replacement of chains around an archhead and thus allowed its use as a rotary engine.
Its patents remained in place until the early nineteenth century and some say that this stunted development. However, in fact, development had been under way by others and, at the end of the patent period, there was an explosion of new ideas and improvements. Watt Watt motors were used commercially in much larger numbers and many continued to run for 100 years or more.
Watt had patents on key aspects of the design of his engine, but his rotary engine was equally restricted by the patent of another simple crank. The motor of the beam was considerably improved and expanded in the areas rich in tin and copper from the southwest of England, which allowed the drainage of the deep mines that existed there. As a result, Cornish lightning engines became famous in the world, as they remain among the most massive lightning engines ever built.
Due to the number of patents on various parts of the engines and the consequences of patent infringements, there are examples of Beam Motors with no manufacturer name on either side (Hollycombe Steam Collection).