Heat engine

Ivan Polzunov set himself the task for that time of unprecedented courage - heat engine should replace manual labor and a water engine. He developed the drawings of a two-cylinder steam engine.

Polzunov Ivan Ivanovich (1728-1766) - a brilliant Russian inventor-self-taught, one of the creators of heat engine and the first steam engine in Russia. A soldier's son, he graduated from the first Russian mining school in Yekaterinburg in 1742, after which he was a "mechanical student" from the chief mechanic of the Ural plants. How active, inquisitive and talented Ivan was is the fact that a 20-year-old boy was sent to the Kolyvan-Resurrection factories of Altai, where precious metals were mined for the tsarist treasury, among the specialists of the mining business.

I had to I.I. Polzunov simultaneously build a steam engine and create tools and lathes "on the water stroke" for metal processing, learn yourself, teach the craftsmen. The fact is that since 1748 he worked in Barnaul as a technician in the accounting of smelting metal. At that time heavy manual labor dominated the factories. Only blowing furs and hammers for forging metal were driven by the force of water. Therefore, factories were built on the banks of rivers and production depended on the vagaries of the weather. It was necessary to reduce the factory pond - and production stopped.

Details of the steam engine were produced in just 13 months. Some weighed up to 170 poods (2720 kg!). The steam engine was assembled. The project was sent to Catherine II, and she rewarded I.I. Polzunov with 400 rubles and raised in rank two steps (to the captain-lieutenant). President of the Berg-Collegium IA Schlatter, at the same time, evaluated the project with the words: "For a new invention, honor should be". But he did not have to see it in the work of I. I. Polzunov - he died, broken by excessive labor and illness, on May 27, 1766, and his steam engine was put into operation on August 7.

In just 2 months, the steam engine not only fully paid for itself, but also made a big profit. The hosts were barbarous with the steam engine. In November, by neglect, the cauldron blew. Instead of carrying out uncomplicated repairs, the steam engine was stopped, and a few years later it was dismantled completely. The case of Polzunov was for decades forgotten.