James Watt was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1781. It was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.
Background
Watt was born on January 19, 1736, in Greenock, Scotland. His mother, Agnes Muirhead (or Muireheid), was descended from a family that had at one time been prominent in Scottish life. His father was a small merchant there, who lost his trade and fortune by unsuccessful speculation, and James was early thrown on his own resources. Of four children born of the marriage, two died in infancy; another was James, who succeeded his father in business; the fourth was a daughter who lived to maturity, but died early, leaving two children.
Education
Watt did not attend school regularly; initially he was mostly schooled at home by his mother but later he attended Greenock Grammar School. The important part of his education was the workshop of his father where he got an opportunity to use tools, forge and bench, he made models of barrel organs and cranes, and thus he became familiar with the ship instruments.
Having a taste for mechanics he made his way to London, at the age of nineteen, to learn the business of a philosophical-instrument maker, and became apprenticed to one John Morgan, in whose service he remained for twelve months. In 1806 he was conferred the honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Glasgow.
Career
Watt came in 1756 to Glasgow as an instrument maker. He worked within the university workshop and made musical instruments and his business grew. In 1758, he opened a new shop and his reputation grew that by 1763 he had apprentices.
In the meantime, Watt had become engaged in his first studies on the steam engine. He found that a volume of steam three or four times the volume of the piston cylinder was required to make the piston move to the end of the cylinder. The solution Watt provided was to keep the piston at the temperature of the steam (by means of a jacket heated by steam) and to condense the steam in a separate vessel rather than in the piston.
In 1765 Roebuck and Watt entered into a partnership. He was now able to work full time on his invention. In 1775 Boulton accepted two orders to erect Watt's steam engine; the two engines were set up in 1776 and their success led to many other orders. The patent for Watt's second engine was taken out in 1781. The firm touched bottom in 1781, but by 1783 the tide had turned and the partnership became prosperous.
In 1785 Watt patented a design for a new type of furnace to effect a saving in fuel. These changes combined to make as great an advance over his original engine as the latter was over the Newcomen engine. Having devised a new rotary machine, the partners had next to determine the cost of constructing it. These rotary steam engines replaced animal power, and it was only natural that the new engine should be measured in terms of the number of horses it replaced. By using measurements that millwrights, who set up horse gins (animal-driven wheels), had determined, Watt found the value of one "horse power" to be equal to 33, 000 pounds lifted one foot high per minute, a value which is still that of the standard American and English horsepower. The charge of erecting the new type of steam engine was accordingly based upon its horsepower.
Watt's interests in applied chemistry led him to introduce chlorine bleaching into Great Britain and to devise a famous iron cement. In theoretical chemistry, he was one of the first to argue that water was not an element but a compound. Watt also invented copying-ink, first proposed the use of the screw propeller, and analyzed the composition of water. The partnership with Boulton had its vicissitudes as well as its triumphs. In 1794 Watt and Boulton turned over their flourishing business to their sons.
Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired. He continued to invent other things before and during his semi-retirement. Within his home in Handsworth, Staffordshire, Watt made use of a garret room as a workshop, and it was here that he worked on many of his inventions. Among other things, he invented and constructed several machines for copying sculptures and medallions which worked very well, but which he never patented.
In 1816 he took a trip on the paddle-steamer Comet, a product of his inventions, to revisit his home town of Greenock. He died on 25 August 1819 at his home "Heathfield" in Handsworth, Staffordshire (now part of Birmingham) at the age of 83. He was buried on 2 September in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Handsworth. The church has since been extended and his grave is now inside the church.
Watt is known as the inventor and improver of the steam-engine. He perfected a rotary engine and defined one horse power. The electrical unit of power, the "watt," is named after him. Besides being an inventor and mechanical engineer, he was also a civil engineer and made various surveys of canal routes.
Watt was also the first to propose that water comprised of hydrogen combined with oxygen; and discovered independently the scientific concept of latent heat. Watt was the one who invented the first copying machine as a photocopier and this helped in making books pages, correspondence copies and pictures.
Religion
Watts’s parents were Presbyterians and so called Covenanters. But despite being raised by religious parents, he later on became a deist.
Views
Quotations:
"I have started a new hare," he writes to Boulton in June of that year; "I have got a glimpse of a method of causing a piston-rod to move up and down perpendicularly by only fixing it to a piece of iron upon the beam, without chains or perpendicular guides or untowardly frictions, arch-heads, or other pieces of clumsiness.
I think it a very probable thing to succeed, and one of the most ingenious simple pieces of mechanism I have contrived."
Writing to Joseph Priestley in April 1783, with reference to some of Priestley's experiments, he suggests the theory that" water is composed of dephlogisticated air and phlogiston deprived of part of their latent or elementary heat."
I am not enterprising, "he writes; "I would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain; in short, I find myself out of my sphere when I have anything to do with mankind."
Membership
Watt was much honoured in his own time. In 1784 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was elected as a member of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy, of Rotterdam in 1787. In 1789 he was elected to the elite group, the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. The French Academy elected him a Corresponding Member and he was made a Foreign Associate in 1814.
Personality
Watt was a man of warm friendships, and has left a personal memorial of the greatest interest in his numerous letters. He was a very shy person at the beginning of his career. Even after discovering his innovation would work at the age of 29 he still had to work on it to make it successful and it took him 11 long years to complete. This shows his patience and willingness to hardwork.
Watt combined science knowledge and applied it practically. He distinguished himself as a chemist, a natural philosopher and his inventions demonstrated his knowledge in sciences and also proved that he was a genius in practical application.
Connections
In 1764, Watt married Margaret Peggy Miller, his cousin and had five children. Two of his children were James Jr. and Margaret, who lived to adulthood. Watt lost his wife in 1772, during childbirth. In the year 1777, he married Ann MacGregor again; a daughter of a dye maker in Glasgow and with her he had two children: Gregory and Janet. However, he lost his second wife Ann as well as she died in 1832.
Father:
James Watt
Mother:
Agnes Muirhead
Spouse:
Margaret Peggy Miller
Spouse:
Ann MacGregor
Spouse:
Ann MacGregor
Son:
James Watt, Jr.
Daughter:
Margaret Watt
Son:
Gregory Watt
Daughter:
Janet Watt
colleague:
Matthew Boulton
He was an English manufacturer and business partner.
