Two centuries of clacking

Timeline

1. 1772Whitehurst's "pulsation engine"John Whitehurst of Derby builds the first ram-like device at Oulton, Cheshire, raising water 4.9 m (16 ft). It is manually operated — someone opens and closes the valve — and he never patents it. He publishes an account in Philosophical Transactions in 1775.
2. 1783An installation in IrelandWhitehurst fits a second pulsation engine in Ireland. Details are sparse, but it is known to have used an air vessel — the cushion is already understood.
3. 1796Montgolfier makes it self-actingJoseph-Michel Montgolfier — co-inventor of the hot-air balloon — devises an automatic water-raising machine for his family's paper mill at Voiron, France: the bélier hydraulique. A valve now operates itself on flow and recoil; the modern ram is born.
4. 1797Boulton patents it in BritainMatthew Boulton — of Boulton & Watt steam fame — takes out a British patent on Montgolfier's behalf (dated 13 December 1797). The device spreads through the industrial network of the day.
5. 1809First US patentJoseph Cerneau and Stephen Hallet receive the first American ram patent; Robert Fulton writes to Thomas Jefferson in 1810 about his own design. American manufacture follows from the 1840s.
6. 1816The next Montgolfier generationMontgolfier's sons patent an improved version in Britain.
7. 1820Easton entersSomerset-born engineer Josiah Easton acquires the Montgolfier sons' patent together with Whitehurst's design — beginning the ram's most famous commercial dynasty.
8. 19th c.The golden ageEaston's firm (works at Erith, Kent, under his son James) supplies rams to country houses, farms and villages worldwide. US interest surges from the 1840s. Thousands of rams clack across Europe and North America.
9. 1890Priestly's ram, IdahoAn independently devised ram lifts water 34 m (110 ft) for irrigation; it survives to this day and is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places.
10. late 1800sThe grid arrivesElectric motors and engine-driven pumps become cheap and fashionable. The ram — noisy, slow, unglamorous — begins its long fade in industrialised countries.
11. 1909–29The business passes onThe Easton firm closes in 1909; the ram business continues under James R. Easton until Green & Carter of Winchester, Hampshire acquire it in 1929, building Vulcan and Vacher rams.
12. ~1958Lights out at East DundryMains water reaches the hamlet of East Dundry, south of Bristol, and its three rams — their "noisy thump" carrying across the valley night and day, serving the dairy farms — finally fall silent.
13. 1970s–80sThe appropriate-technology revivalVITA, ITDG (now Practical Action) and university development units republish ram manuals and field-test designs for the developing world, where grid power is absent but streams and hillsides are not.
14. 1996The venturi reinventionEnglish engineer Frederick Selwyn patents a compact ram whose concentric venturi waste valve improves efficiency and silence — commercialised as the "Papa Pump", with a large "Venturo" sibling.
15. 2007Recognition in the PhilippinesThe AID Foundation (AIDFI) of Bacolod wins an Ashden Award for ram pumps engineered for remote villages — locally manufactured, easily maintained, transformative at scale.
16. 2011Ramon Magsaysay AwardAIDFI receives Asia's premier honour for its ram-pump work, cementing the technology's place in modern international development.
17. NowThe maker renaissanceOpen plans, video tutorials and cheap plumbing fittings put rams in thousands of backyards — while heritage installs like Toller Whelme in Dorset keep clacking, some 250 years after Whitehurst's first slam.

The golden age

Through the 1800s the ram was the standard answer to a very common problem: a stream at the bottom of the land, and thirsty people, stock and machinery at the top. Country estates watered gardens and fountains with them; dairy farms filled troughs for their herds; railways and breweries kept tanks full. The ram asked nothing of its owners — no stoking, no oiling worth mentioning, no wages — and gave back a trickle that never stopped. An Easton brochure's promise was essentially true for a century: fit it, forget it.

Why they faded

The ram was not beaten by a better pump so much as by a cheaper wire. Rural electrification and small electric motors delivered more water, on demand, at the turn of a tap — with the fuel bill hidden in a monthly statement. Engine-driven pumps added convenience at the price of fuel logistics. By mid-century the ram's virtues — free energy, absurd longevity, near-zero maintenance — had been reframed as limitations: fixed output, site-specific, and audible from across the valley.

The revival

The 1970s "appropriate technology" movement looked again at the arithmetic: in exactly the places that lacked electricity — steep, rural, stream-rich — the ram was unbeatable per pound spent. Development agencies republished the old manuals, universities tested designs, and NGOs standardised robust, maintainable units. The Philippines' AIDFI proved the modern template: local workshops build the pumps, villagers are trained to maintain them, and hundreds of systems now serve upland communities. Meanwhile the maker movement rediscovered the DIY design, and a ram pump video is now a genre of its own.

Meet the machines themselves — Oulton, East Dundry, Idaho and Negros — in Case Studies, or trace the parts back to their source in Anatomy.