A device that moves fluid against gravity or pressure — it drained the mines, watered the fields and cities, and its desperate struggle against floodwater in deep coal and tin mines directly triggered the invention of the steam engine, making the pump the problem that launched the Industrial Revolution.
Deep in an English tin mine around 1700, men worked with hand pumps running day and night to keep the tunnels from flooding. The pumps could not keep up. The mines went deeper than any suction pump could reach. A generation of experimenters had just found out why: a suction pump works by letting the weight of the air above push water up, and the air can only push so far. The limit was about ten meters. Below that, the water won. The men who solved this problem did not set out to invent the steam engine. They set out to build a better pump.