William Symington

William Symington (1764–1831) was a Scottish engineer and inventor, and the builder of the first practical steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas.

Symington was born in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, to a family he described as being "respectable but not wealthy." His father worked as a practical mechanic at the Leadhills mines.

Although his parents intended for him to enter the ministry, he intended to use his good education to make a career as an engineer. So, in 1785, he joined his brother George in his attempts to build a steam engine at Wanlockhead, Dumfriesshire. While there, he impressed the manager of a local mining company, Gilbert Meason, so much that he was sent to the University of Edinburgh in 1786 to spend a few months attending science lectures.

By the time William joined his brother, George had already succeeded in building the second engine using James Watt's design to be built in Scotland.

William Symington quickly saw a way to marry the efficiency of the Watt engine with the simplicity of that devised by Thomas Newcomen. Encouraged by Gilbert Meason, Symington demonstrated the practicality of his idea and his improved atmospheric engine was patented in 1787. When Watt sent someone to make a sketch of how this new engine worked, he discovered that the steam was condensed under a second piston and this was then pushed down when fresh steam entered the cylinder, forcing out the condensate. The power piston worked by the atmospheric pressure acting on the vacuum created by the condensing steam.

After its completion, Symington drew up a prospectus outlining the advantages of his invention, and this was circulated by Meason and his influential friends.

The banker Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, just north of Dumfries, had experimented with double hulled pleasure boats propelled by cranked paddle-wheels placed between the hulls, and he got Symington to build the patent steam engine with its drive into a pleasure boat built in 1785 which was successfully tried out on Dalswinton Loch near Miller's house on 14 October 1788. The trial was said to have been a success.

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