Fire Machine

The year 1787 was not marked by any significant events in European history. In May Mozart's father died in Salzburg, a month before Louis XIV, king of France dismissed his minister of finance on the grounds of disloyalty...

What is important to us, is that in the same year a group of representatives of one of the Upper Silesian mines went to England in order to visit a town of Soho near Birmingham, where James Watt together with a partner had already been making steam engines for twelve years.

The visitors had a serious problem to solve - draining the water coming into the mine. So far, horse-pulled treadmills had been used, with hundreds of horses in service. However, when the miners reached new ore deposits and the production rates grew rapidly, more and more water flooded the workings. The management made an important decision to invest in the very latest technology - a steam engine. Following negotiations, the parties signed a contract worth 15 thousand thalers, and one of the first steam engines ever sold by the firm of Watt-Boulton overseas, was to be installed in Tarnowskie Góry.

The task of transporting the steam engine from England to Tarnowskie Góry was na extremely difficult one, as can be deduced from an enormous shipment fee: 1471 thalers, i.e. almost 10% of the contract value. The engine was transported by sea to the port of Szczecin, where it was trans-shipped onto 3 barges, and then up the Odra river. On 19th January 1788 the machine was finally launched in the "Fryderyk" mine. At that time, Tarnowskie Góry was the administrative centre of theUpper Silesian mining industry, a town twice the size of Gliwice, so it should not come as a surprise that the ultra-modern piece of equipment found its place here.

The decision to import the machine proved profitable. The engine was able to raise almost 1.5 cubic metres of water by 7 meters in just one minute. The cylinder was 83 centimetres in diameter and 3 meters in height. The piston was sealed with hemp hurds and its motion was transfered onto the pump by means of a rocking lever. All the pump components weighed around 30 tons and needed a special building to be erected which would hold the whole assembly together. Thanks to the steam engine, the work in the mine became easier and safer. The use of modern technology promoted the development of silver and lead ore mining in Tarnowskie Góry.

A few years later it turned out that one steam engine is not enough to pump the water out of the local mines. By the year 1806, five more had been launched. The first engine was scrapped after 69 years of service, but the historic significance of steam driven machines was never forgotten in Tarnowskie Góry. Next to the Historic Mine, there is an open-air museum of steam engines. There, among those old machines, it is easy to go back in time and reflect on the people thanks to whom, many centuries later, Tarnowskie Góry was called the cradle of the Upper Silesian mining industry.

Zbigniew Markowski

translation: Rafał Drewniak - Szkoła Języka Angielskiego Golden Gate