Engines are used for helping to create energy to move things. People have been on earth for a long time. Trying to design engines for helping people to do things faster hasn't been easy.

In early days they used water wheels to create energy. The water's current turned a wheel that filled buckets with water. The water was dumped into a trough. The energy was used to turn a stone that would grind grain to make flour. If it rained too hard the water moved too fast and the buckets could be destroyed. If the stream dried up the water wheel would not work.

Another early engine was made using air. Windmills were made of wheels with gears on them. The wind would move the wheels and they used the power to help grind grain. If the wind didn't blow hard enough, the wheels wouldn't turn and it wouldn't grind the grain.

Two things made it possible to develop the steam engine. One was discovering that there is air pressure. The other was the piston and the valve. Air has weight. Every square inch of air has 15 pounds of air pressure. A piston moves up and down inside of a cylinder. The valve lets steam into the cylinder. When the valve closes, cold water is shot into the cylinder. This cools the steam and the air pressure inside the cylinder is gone. The air pressure on the outside of the cylinder pushes the piston down. When the piston is pushed down, the beam attached to the piston goes up. The steam engine was improved by James Watt. He figured out a way to put steam on the top and bottom of the piston so that it could work twice as hard.

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