Coal missing from High-Tech?

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Newcomen was from southwest England. Bit of a shortage of coal mines down there. Tin mines, on the other hand, were a major local industry.

Darn, for a number of reasons, not the least of being that I misspelled Newcomen's name.

Being Antipodean, I have a lack of primary sources, on which to draw. However, I will naively claim that Wikipedia is right when it claims that he installed steam engines in a number of mines across England (See 2nd paragraph)

But this is a tangent from the real reason of this thread. IIRC, the cutting down of timber for creating charcoal was a major limit for steel production in England. When coal mining supplimented this, surely there should be a commensurate increase in steel production. But then I could be wrong.