A table engine is a variety of stationary steam engine where the cylinder is placed on top of a table-shaped base, the legs of which stand on the baseplate which locates the crankshaft bearings. The piston rod protrudes from the top of the cylinder and has fixed to it a cross-head which runs in slides attached to, and rising from, the cylinder top. Long rods connect the crosshead to the crankshaft, on which is fixed the flywheel.
This pattern engine was first introduced by James Sadler in the Portsmouth Block Mills and was house-built in that its framing was fixed to the engine house.
Henry Maudslay patented an improved version of this a few years later, and other makers adopted the configuration.
It was supplied for low-speed, low-power applications around the first half of the nineteenth century.
