1601-1667

British inventor and Army officer who designed one of the earliest known steam engines, a steam-operated pump for raising water. Somerset was granted a patent for the device in 1663, the same year he published a book written in 1655 entitled A Century of the Names and Scantlings of Such Inventions as at Present I Can Call to Mind to have Tried and Perfected, which included a description of his steam pump as "an admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire."