{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01644736842105263, 'fraction_numerical': 0.018092105263157895, 'mean_word_length': 4.850961538461538, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The First and Third Engines

2012 marked the tercentenary of the installation of the first Newcomen engine at Coneygree near Dudley, illustrated by Thomas Barney in 1719 and celebrated at the Black Country Living Museum, under a mile from the original site, where a working replica now stands. The Newcomen Society has already published significant research on the events leading up to this event, especially J.S. Allen’s 1970 monograph in this journal, Bromsgrove and the Newcomen Engine. Following Newcomen and Calley’s success in Cornwall, there is unanimity among historians that their next engine, and the first to generate publicity, was installed in the area of southern Staffordshire later known as the Black Country. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evidence in a dispute of some 70 years standing over the site of the first public Newcomen engine. This paper concludes with a reconstruction of events during 1711 and 1712 and a resolution of the question of how, in the words of three apparently contradictary eyewitness accounts, Coneygree could be at once the site of the first and the third engines in England, and how Stow Heath was where the first engine that ever drew water was built.