Russian inventor of the steam engine. Inventor of the twin-cylinder steam engine. Mining and universal engine

Polzunov Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov Ivan Ivanovich

(1728-1766), Russian heating engineer. In 1763 he developed a project for a universal steam engine, the world's first continuous two-cylinder machine, which he failed to implement. In 1765, according to another project, he built the first steam power plant in Russia for factory needs, which worked for 43 days; died a week before her trial run.

POLZUNOV Ivan Ivanovich

POLZUNOV Ivan Ivanovich (1728, Yekaterinburg - May 16 (27), 1766, Barnaul), an outstanding Russian heat engineer. In 1763 he developed a project for a universal steam engine, the world's first continuous two-cylinder machine, which he failed to implement. In 1765, according to another project, he built the first steam power plant in Russia for factory needs, which worked for 43 days; a week before her test launch, Polzunov died.
* * *
Childhood, study
Polzunov was born far from the capital, near Yekaterinburg, his father is a soldier, but not military service, and state construction works. Polzunov's father was illiterate, but he sent his son to a verbal school. From September 1738, Polzunov studied at an arithmetic school and graduated from it very early in those days, at the age of 14. In 1742 he was assigned as a student to master N. Bakhorev. Mechanic Bakhorev studied at the St. Petersburg Naval Academy, studied engineering in Sweden, then at the Krasnoselsky Copper Plant. Polzunov went through a full cycle of student work: mechanics, calculations, drawings, acquaintance with the work of factory machines and metallurgical production.
Applying for a job
At the end of 1747, Polzunov was appointed to the Barnaul copper smelter as a gittenschreiber - superintendent and accountant at smelting furnaces. Polzunov turned out to be a good organizer and a capable manager. Therefore, in addition to the main work, the factory authorities in every possible way loaded him with various organizational concerns of the plant. This greatly hindered him: even when Polzunov was promoted to the officer rank of Schichtmeister (1759) after fulfilling the most important state assignment - escorting a convoy with gold and silver to St. Petersburg, he had extremely limited opportunities for improving education, which he passionately aspired to.
Self-education from books
Books remained a source of education for him. But in the Barnaul library one could find only the "Course of Mathematics" in 1739 and "Mechanics with Drawings", though in 8 volumes, but on German, which Polzunov did not own. One might think that he could easily read blueprints at that time. Only in 1760 in St. Petersburg was I. Schlatter's book Comprehensive Instructions on Mining Business published in Russian, with drawings of many steam engines, including the Newcomen type. Apparently, at this time, the Crawlers had thoughts about improving labor in the ore fields with the help of machines that act not with the power of water, as it was in Altai, but with fire.
Project "fire engine"
In April 1763, Polzunov sent a draft of his invention to the Kolyvan-Voskresensky office, which described the world's first two-cylinder engine with the combination of cylinders on one common shaft. It was the result of a long labor carried out in fits and starts. The project was sent to St. Petersburg to the Cabinet of Her Majesty with a request to encourage the inventor - rewarding the rank of mechanic and money in excess of an annual salary of up to 200 rubles. Polzunov's papers did not go to an ordinary Russian official, but to a European-educated specialist, President of the Berg College Schlatter (cm. SHLATTER Ivan Andreevich), who praised Polzunov's invention: "this invention of his should be honored for a new invention ...". Having received a letter of appreciation from Schlatter, the Chancellery ordered "to build such a machine and put it into operation."
Highly gifted personality
Throughout the bureaucratic correspondence, Polzunov appears to the reader as a highly gifted person, focused on the needs of industry and the public good. He is encouraged, promoted, he even receives an officer's rank, but he is not given serious help in his most important business. The objective reasons for this (apart from the "cultural" context Russian society of that era) - the cheap labor force of the serfs and the abundance in Altai, where everything happened, of the water energy of fast rivers.
Machine building
To carry out the work, according to Polzunov's calculations, 76 people were needed, including 19 highly skilled workers, whom he intended to invite from the Ural factories. The office ordered in its own way: it was allowed to take only three, and students. The construction of the installation (completely made of iron, in a house over 20 m high), begun in January 1764 at the Barnaul plant, proceeded in difficult conditions. Polzunov had to simultaneously act as a designer, designer, technologist, builder and educator of personnel.
The death of the inventor, the fate of the installation
Excessive stress undermined Polzunov's health. In the spring of 1766, he fell ill with transient consumption and died on May 16 (27). In June, already without him, a successful test was carried out " fiery machine”, and in August it was put into operation. But in November it was stopped due to a boiler leak. Despite the obvious efficiency (profit of 12,418 rubles for 43 days of work), it was abandoned and destroyed in 1780. The model of the installation, transferred to the Academy of Sciences, disappeared without a trace.
Significance of the invention
In England, since the invention of the same (two-cylinder) steam engine, made a little later by J. Watt (cm. WATT James), started industrial Revolution which then spread to Europe. Where our brilliant compatriot Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov is buried, no one can say. His portrait has not been found.


encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .

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The talented inventor Ivan Polzunov was born in 1728 in Yekaterinburg in the family of a retired soldier. He began his studies at the arithmetic school, which was founded by Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev.

After leaving school, in 1742, Polzunov was sent to one of the Ural factories as an apprentice to the master Nikita Bakhorev.

After training, at the age of 20, he was transferred to the Kolyvano-Voskresensky Altai factories. Precious metals were mined at these factories for the state treasury. Polzunov's duty was to prepare progress reports.

Polzunov was actively engaged in self-education all the time, studied books on metallurgy and mineralogy. As a result, Ivan Ivanovich became one of the most technically competent specialists at the plant. An important task for himself, he posed questions of facilitating the work of working people. There were many witty interesting projects, but they all gathered dust in the archives.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a great authority in science for Ivan Ivanovich. Polzunov thoroughly studied his works in the field of chemistry, physics, mining and smelting of ores. The works of the Russian scientist I. A. Schlatter did not go unnoticed for him either: they described English and Hungarian steam engines, which were increasingly being introduced into the industry of Europe.

At that time, Russian mining processes were completely dependent on the water wheel. Polzunov set himself the goal of replacing water processes and already in 1763 presented the project of a “fiery machine” to the plant management.

The Russian car was different from those used abroad. She had two cylinders and could supply blast in furnaces and pump out water. In the future, Polzunov was going to improve it, planned to use it for other needs.

This project was presented to Catherine II. The Empress appreciated the work and, by her order, promoted Ivan Polzunov to "mechanic with the rank and rank of engineer captain-lieutenant." The inventor received four hundred rubles as a reward, it was also recommended to send him to study at the Academy of Sciences.

In 1764, with the approval of the Chancellery, Ivan Polzunov began to manufacture a new machine - 15 times more powerful than the previous one. It took the engineer 13 months to assemble the approved unit. Its height was 18.5 meters, some parts weighed up to 2,720 kilograms. I had to create new related tools, including a special lathe.

The manufacture of a new machine demanded from the designer the maximum stress of mental and physical strength and weakened his health. Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov fell ill with consumption and died, literally a week before the trial run of the unit he created.

On August 7, 1766, the steam engine started working, and it worked until November. Per a short time the invention justified all the hopes of its creator. As a result, for a short period of work, the machine not only fully paid off all the costs of construction, but also brought significant profit.

Nevertheless, when the boiler burned out, it was decided not to restore the car. It was taken apart, and Ivan Polzunov was forgotten for a long time.

Today the Altai State Museum bears his name. Technical University, next to it is a monument to the inventor Polzunov.

Two sources, the first is very short, the second is detailed.
The universal thermal piston engine was created by the Russian inventor Polzunov. This machine could be used for any work. Polzunov began the construction of a huge, tall
from a three-story house, a working machine for servicing a blower for ten melting furnaces

The surviving working drawings and documents speak of the structure and operation of this steam engine. Polzunov's engine - two-cylinder, continuous action, could supply blast in furnaces, pump out water. The continuity of action was achieved by the fact that two cylinders seemed to work in turn in the machine. When one was idling, the other was working. The water was warming up
in a cauldron riveted from copper sheets. Steam entered through special distribution devices into two vertical three-meter cylinders, the pistons of which acted on the rocker arms.
These rockers were connected with bellows for blowing ore-smelting furnaces, as well as with water pumps - distributors and other additional equipment necessary to power the boiler and to maintain the continuous operation of the machine.
The steam engine project was presented in royal office Petersburg, it was reported to Empress Catherine II. She ordered that I.I. Polzunov be promoted to “mechanic with the rank and rank of engineer captain-lieutenant”, rewarded with 400 rubles and, if possible, sent to study in St. Petersburg. By May 1766, construction was largely completed. But on May 27, a couple of months before the start of the machine, the inventor died, torn by overwork and need. The car started working without him. For 43 days it worked properly. However, there was no one to correct the shortcomings that arose during the tests, and the car finally got up due to a boiler leak. The indifferent authorities did not take care of repairing the car. She was abandoned. Later, according to the instructions of the managers of the Altai factories, the Polzunov machine was broken, and the factory where the machine worked was broken. The remaining ruins have retained the popular name "Polzunovskaya Ashes".
Russian serf mechanic Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov created a steam engine, moreover,
unlike Watt, making it from scratch and not having working samples in front of his eyes.

Other source
In April 1763, he put an unexpected and daring project of a "fiery" machine on the table of the head of the plant. I.I. Polzunov intended it to actuate blower bellows; and in the future he dreamed of adapting “according to our will, what would need to be corrected,” but did not have time to do this. At that time, there was not a single steam engine in Russia and the world. The only source, from which he became aware that there is such a thing in the world, was the book by I.V. Schlatter "A detailed instruction to mining", published in St. Petersburg in 1760. But in the book there was only a diagram and the principle of operation of a single-cylinder Newcomen machine, but not a word about the technology of its manufacture.


I.I. Polzunov

Polzunov borrowed from I.V. Schlatter only the idea of ​​a steam-atmospheric engine, he thought of everything else himself. The necessary knowledge about the nature of heat, the properties of water, air, steam, he drew from the works of M.V. Lomonosov. Soberly assessing the difficulties of carrying out a completely new business in Russia, Polzunov proposed to build at first, as an experiment, one small machine of a design he developed for servicing a blower installation (consisting of two wedge-shaped bellows) with one melting furnace.


Fragment of a steam engine - boiler and cylinders

In the drawing attached to the note, in the explanatory text, the installation, according to Polzunov's first project, included: a boiler - in general, of the same design that was used in Newcomen's machines; a steam-atmospheric machine, consisting of two cylinders with alternate movement of pistons ("emvols") in them in opposite directions, equipped with steam and water distribution systems; tanks, pumps and pipes for supplying the plant with water; a transmission mechanism in the form of a system of pulleys with chains (Polzunov refused a balancer), which sets the blower furs in motion. Water vapor from the boiler entered the piston of one of the working cylinders. This equalized the air pressure. The vapor pressure was only slightly higher than the pressure of atmospheric air. The pistons in the cylinder were connected by chains, and when one of the pistons was raised, the second one fell. When the piston reached its upper position, steam access was automatically terminated, and water was sprayed into the cylinder cold water. The steam condensed and a vacuum formed under the piston (rarefied space). By the force of atmospheric pressure, the piston descended to the lower position and pulled the piston behind it in the second working cylinder, where steam from the same boiler was let in to equalize the pressure by an automatic machine acting from the engine transmission mechanism. The fact that the pistons with the motion transmission system were connected by chains shows that when the pistons were lifted up the chain, motions could not be transmitted (the chain was not tensioned). All parts of the engine worked due to the energy of the descending piston. those. the piston, which moved under the influence of atmospheric pressure. Steam did not produce useful work in the engine. The value of this work depended on the consumption of thermal energy throughout the entire cycle. The amount of thermal energy expended expressed the magnitude of the potential energy of each of the pistons. This is a dual atmospheric cycle. Polzunov clearly represented the principle of operation of a heat engine. This can be seen in the examples with which he characterized the conditions best work the engine he invented. He determined the dependence of engine operation on the temperature of the water condensing the steam in the following words: “the action of the emvols and their ascents and descents will become higher, the colder the water in the fantals, and even more so from the one that reaches the freezing point, but does not yet thicken and from that, in the whole movement, ability will give a lot.


Cross section of the first factory steam engine invented by I. I. Polzunov in 1763 and built in 1764-1765 - Central Historical State Museum in Leningrad

This proposition, now known in thermodynamics as a particular case of one of its fundamental laws, had not yet been formulated before Polzunov. Today, this means that the work of a heat engine will be the greater, the lower the temperature of the water condensing the steam, and especially when it reaches the point of solidification of water - 0 degrees Celsius.

Polzunov's engine in his project of 1763 was intended to supply air to melting furnaces with blower bellows. If desired, the engine could easily perform rotational movements using a crank mechanism widely known in Russia. Polzunov's project was considered by the office of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky factories and was highly appreciated by the head of the factories A.I. Poroshin. Poroshin pointed out that if Polzunov undertakes to make a machine suitable for servicing several furnaces at once, if he builds a machine suitable for pouring water from mines, then the Chancellery will willingly support his plans. The final decision on this issue remained with the Cabinet and the mistress of the factories - Catherine II. The project was sent to St. Petersburg, but the response of the Cabinet was received in Barnaul only a year later.

By decree of the Cabinet of November 19, 1763, the Empress granted the inventor to the “mechanicus” with the rank and rank of engineer captain-lieutenant. This meant that Polzunov was now provided with a salary of 240 rubles per annum, with the addition of two orderlies and the maintenance of horses, he received 314 rubles. He was promised a reward of 400 rubles. All this is a great mercy. She once again testifies that Empress Catherine II loved to maintain her fame as the patroness of sciences and arts. But the size of the encouragement confirms that the significance of Polzunov's invention was not understood in St. Petersburg.

Monument to I.I. Polzunov

End of life

While the Cabinet was considering the engine project, Polzunov wasted no time working on the project for the second stage. He designed a powerful heat engine for 15 melting furnaces. It was already a real heat power station. Polzunov did not just increase the scale of the engine, but made a number of significant changes to it. After the project of a powerful engine was completed, Polzunov became aware that the Cabinet, having familiarized himself with his first project, awarded him the title of mechanic and decided to give 400 rubles as a reward, but did not take any decision on the merits of the issue.

Despite this position of the Cabinet, the head of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky plants, A.I. Poroshin, allowed Polzunov to begin the implementation of the first stage of the project. In March 1764, I.I. Polzunov proposed to start building a large heat engine. Poroshin agreed with this proposal. Thus, the construction of the world's first universal thermal power plant began at the Barnaul plant.

It was a serious decision, if only because the car would cost no less than building a new factory. Polzunov was required to apply for labor and materials. Before starting the construction of the machine, the inventor encountered a difficulty: the lack of people capable of realizing his ideas and the tools and mechanisms necessary for the construction. It was necessary to build the first steam engine in Russia, but there were neither specialists capable of leading the construction, nor skilled workers familiar with the construction of such engines. Polzunov himself, who assumed the duties of the general manager of the work, to some extent solved the problem of technical management, but precisely, “to some extent”, because it was not possible for one person to manage such a new and complex technical enterprise.

No less difficult was the problem of selecting workers. Experienced modellers, foundry workers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, carpenters, roasters, specialists in copper and soldering were required. According to Polzunov's calculations, 76 people, including 19 highly qualified craftsmen, were to be directly involved in the construction of the engine. It was impossible to get such specialists on the spot. stayed the only way out; call specialists from the Urals - the forge of technical personnel.

Difficulties in acquiring building tools and machinery proved to be even more insurmountable. According to the inventor's plan, "the whole machine must be made of metal", which inevitably required the presence of special metal-working equipment, which Russia almost did not have. The matter was aggravated by the fact that the engine was built in Altai, and this was an area with developed copper and silver smelting production, but backward foundry, forging and metalworking equipment. Premonitions did not deceive the inventor. The Office has only fully approved considerations for the quantity of materials required. Not wanting to spend money on calling experienced craftsmen from the distant Urals, the factory authorities allocated Polzunov four students whom he knew and asked to be assigned to him, two retired artisans and four soldiers to guard the construction site. The rest of the artisans (over 60 people) the Office decided to appoint at the disposal of Polzunov as needed, “how much, when he, Polzunov, will have work to happen” ...

Ivan Polzunov was born on March 14, 1728 in Yekaterinburg in the family of a soldier of state construction work, a native of the peasants of the Turin district of the Tobolsk province, Ivan Alekseevich Polzunov and his wife Daria Abramovna. In 1738-1742, Ivan studied arithmetic and literature at the Gornozavodsk School at the Yekaterinburg Metallurgical Plant, after which he was assigned as a student to the chief mechanic of the Ural factories N. Bakharev. With him, Polzunov went through a full cycle of student work: mechanics, calculations, drawings, acquaintance with the work of factory machines and metallurgical production.

Moving to Barnaul and the beginning of a career

In 1747, the chief commander of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky factories Andreas Beer, on his way to the place of his new service in Barnaul, stopped in Yekaterinburg. Here, using the right granted to him, he selected a large group of mining specialists for the tsar's factories, among which was 18-year-old Ivan Polzunov.

At the Barnaul copper smelter, Ivan received the position of gittenschreiber - caretaker and accountant at smelting furnaces. Here he shows good results and talent, studies the features of the metal smelting process, delves into the details and subtleties, studies the works of M. V. Lomonosov in the factory library. The management of the plant, seeing Polzunov's abilities, often, in addition to his main job, loads him with various organizational concerns. On April 11, 1750, at the suggestion of one of the leaders, Johann Christiani, Polzunov was promoted to the junior rank of shipmaster with an increase in salary to 36 rubles. in year.

On June 26, 1750, Polzunov was given the task of checking whether the place for the pier on the Charysh River was chosen correctly, as well as measuring and describing the road to the Zmeinogorsky mine. Ivan examined the place for the pier, and then walked with a measuring chain to the very mine, measuring 85 versts 400 sazhens, marked the entire route with stakes, indicated places for spending the night wagons with ore. The length of the future road turned out to be 2 times shorter than the current ore-carrying one. After this assignment, Ivan Polzunov went to the Krasnoyarsk pier, where until 1751 he was engaged in the construction of an ore shed, a guard hut, the acceptance and shipment of ore along the Charysh and Ob to the Barnaul plant.

In November 1753, Polzunov received new appointments - first as a superintendent of the work of the smelters, and then a secondment to the Zmeinogorsky mine. Here he takes part in the construction of a new sawmill near the dam. This sawmill was the first serious factory building erected under the direction of Polzunov. It was the following mechanism: from a rotating water wheel, a transfer was made to two sawmill frames, on which logs moved. The transmission mechanism was a complex set of moving parts, which included: cam gear, gear, shafts, cranks, connecting rods, ratchet wheels and rope gates.

In November 1754, on behalf of Johann Christiani, Polzunov was assigned to the plant to organize the work of the artisans, as well as control the execution of work. However, already in 1755 he was given a new assignment - to search for the reasons for the marriage of products of a new glass factory in the upper reaches of the Barnaul pond. The dishes made there had many signs of marriage and had low transparency. Ivan stayed at the plant for about a month, studied the technology of glass melting and found the cause of the defect - the glass masters cooled the dishes incorrectly.

Trip to Petersburg

In January 1758, Unterschichtmeister Polzunov, as one of the most capable employees at the Barnaul plant, was entrusted with escorting a caravan with precious metals to St. Petersburg. A cargo of 3400 kg of silver and 24 kg of gold was supposed to be handed over to the Mint personally to its director Ivan Schlatter. Also, Ivan Polzunov was handed a package with documents and a large amount of money for the purchase of goods needed by the plant for transfer to the Cabinet.

Having spent 64 days on the road, and having visited his native Yekaterinburg, Ivan safely arrived with the cargo in St. Petersburg. After that, he spent another 3 months in Moscow, acquiring the necessary goods - linen, paper, fabrics, books, harness for horses, small utensils, etc.

Promotion

In 1759, Ivan Polzunov was promoted to an officer's position and became a shipmaster. At the same time, he was appointed commissioner of the Kolyvansky plant, in charge of the economic part of the plant's activities.

The first two-cylinder vacuum steam engine in Russia was designed by the mechanic I. I. Polzunov in 1763 and built in 1764 to drive blower bellows at the Barnaul Kolyvano-Voskresensky factories.

Memory

The name of I. I. Polzunov is the Altai State Technical University, opposite the main building of which there is a monument to the inventor. In Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Barnaul, Tula and Voronezh, as well as in Kyiv, streets are named after Polzunov.

First educational institution Yekaterinburg - mining school - is now called the Ural State College named after I. I. Polzunov. On June 6, 2011, a monument to I. I. Polzunov, the creator of the first steam engine and the world's first two-cylinder steam engine, was unveiled in Veliky Novgorod. The research and production association "CKTI" (Central Boiler and Turbine Institute) in St. Petersburg is named after him.

Polzunov Ivan Ivanovich - Russian inventor, creator of the first steam engine in Russia and the world's first two-cylinder engine. I. I. Polzunov was born in the city of Yekaterinburg in 1729 in the family of a soldier. After graduating from the Mining School in Yekaterinburg in 1742, he was a "mechanical student" of the chief mechanic of the Ural factories N. Bakharev. By that time, he had studied for 6 years in a verbal, and then in an arithmetic school at the Yekaterinburg Metallurgical Plant, which at that time was quite a lot. In Barnaul, young Polzunov received the position of gittenschreiber, that is, a melting clerk. In 1750 he passed the exams and was promoted to the pre-officer rank of Unterschichtmeister. II Polzunov was a generalist. It was used for the design and re-equipment of a copper smelter, for debugging the technology of a glass factory, for the construction of a sawmill and a gold washing factory in the Zmeinogorsky mine; long time led an ore-carrying flotilla, designed roads, built piers, ore-carrying ships, studied the fairway of the Charysh and Ob rivers, created their maps; participated in the design of new factories, in the repair and reconstruction of the Kabanova and Biysk fortresses, established a route and the main crossing over the Chumysh River near Ust-Talmenka.

He is actively engaged in invention and rationalization, and this passion did not leave him until the end of his life. For example, using the experience of working on the piers, he proposed an ingenious and economical way of putting cargo ships into winter storage. The innovation was as follows: wooden decks were installed at the bottom of the river, on which ships could be launched “without lifting”. When the water subsided, the ships were on dry land. Everything that Polzunov invented had one goal - to facilitate the work of people.

At that time, mining production processes in Russia were completely dependent on the water wheel - the main source of energy. In April 1763, he put an unexpected project of a "fiery" machine on the table of the head of the plant. I.I. Polzunov intended it to actuate blower bellows. Polzunov proposed to first build, as an experiment, one small machine of a design developed by him for servicing a blower installation (consisting of two wedge-shaped bellows) with one melting furnace.

Catherine II was informed about the project submitted to the Tsar's Cabinet. By her order, she promoted Ivan Polzunov to a "mechanic with the rank and rank of an engineering captain-lieutenant", decided to give him an award of "four hundred rubles" and, if possible, send him to study at the Academy of Sciences. Since March 1764, the Office of the Mining District released Polzunov from all other official duties and approved him only as a designer and builder of a new machine on a solid government salary. So I. I. Polzunov became the first specialist in Russia, a designer-inventor! The machine was created for a very short term, in December 1765, blank tests were carried out, the commission was convinced of its readiness for action.

A huge overstrain of forces and work in an unheated room until the very night, when the cold metal parts of the machines burned their hands with frost, undermined Polzunov's health. May 16, 1766 at six o'clock in the evening in Barnaul, I.I. Polzunov died.

On August 7, the machine gave the first blast and worked with short breaks until November, during which time it managed not only to recoup all the costs of construction, but also to make a huge profit. Polzunov's machine worked a little more three months, and after a breakdown was stopped. The broken unit was disassembled into parts.

Polzunov's car was soon forgotten, and the first engine was talked about after its new version was designed by the famous Scottish inventor James Watt in 1774, that is, much later than Polzunov did. Indeed, the Watt machine found wide application in practice and played an important role in the transition to machine production. However, the first steam engine, after all, was created by Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov in Altai.

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