The industrial Revolution:Steam power:

Steam power:
The stationary steam engine had great influence on the progress of the Industrial Revolution, but for the period of the Industrial Revolution many industries still relied on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.
The steam engine was first used for draining mines or for driving mills by pumping water back to a reservoir that had passed through a water wheel. James Watt's invention of rotary motion in the 1780 enabled a steam engine to drive a factory or mill directly.
Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam engine, which was built within a stone or brick engine-house but after then various patterns of portable (ie readily removable engines, not on wheels) were developed, such as the table engine. The development of machine tools such as the planing and shaping machine enabled all the metal parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut. Engines could be made in varying sizes and patterns to suit various requirements, such as for locomotives and steam boats.

Just a note of interest:

The first recorded Steam Engine in history dated back the first century AD in Alexandria, but was only used as a toy.

In the 1600 Edward Somerset designed a steam engine that might have actually been applied at the time, but it is unclear to anything other than he designed it on paper.

In 1680 a French physicist Denis Papin with the help of an associate Gottfried Leibniz designed the worlds first Steam cooker. Not in the conventional use. And through perfecting this he came up with the idea of the piston and cylinder engine. Papin drew up plans in 1690 for the invention but never actually built it. It wasn't until later that one Thomas Savery used this exact design to build the first operational Steam Engine.

Thomas Savery designed a number of steam engines after this including the fireengine in 1698, but it was Thomas Newcomen in 1712 that designed the "Atmospheric-engine" which was the first to demonstrate a practical use for an industrial world.

It was in a joint effort between Thomas Savory and Newcomen that they developed the "Beam Engine," which operated on the basic principles of a vacuum.

The first use of this device was to pump water out of deep mineshafts.

This is only a brief summary of the steam engine. More can be found here

http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/

hope it helps =]