Scotlands History\|Scottish Enlightenment
Learn more about James Watt
'The people in London, Manchester and Birmingham are steam mill mad. I don’t mean to hurry you but I think … we should determine to take out a patent for certain methods of producing rotative motion from … the fire engine.’
Matthew Boulton to James Watt, 21 June 1781
James Watt (1736–1819) was born in Greenock, son of a local merchant, and began work in London as an instrument maker.
Aged 20 on his return to Glasgow, he was elected by the University to make and repair mathematical instruments.
In 1764 Watt was given a model of a Newcomen steam engine to repair. This was the world's first steam engine, invented in 1712, and was essentially a water pump without other potential applications.
Watt’s keen intellectual and technical know-how led him to his famous idea of keeping the cylinder hot and leading the spent steam into a separate condenser.
He established a successful partnership with manufacturer Matthew Boulton of Birmingham and his patent of 1769, adapted later for driving machines and for transport, set in motion a new age – with steam as a principal source of power.
The Industrial Revolution was born.
Impact of the Enlightenment - The power of steam
James Watt's work was the key to the Industrial Revolution; provoking rapid, startling and far-reaching changes to people's way of life, in Britain and the rest of the world.
Picture credits:
Portrait of James Watt, Carl Frederik von Breda, 1792. © National Portrait Gallery, London
James Watt's workshop in the Science Museum, London. Taken by Frankie Roberto and published on Flickr.
Boulton and Watt centrifugal governor, 1788, in the Science Museum, London. Taken by Andy Dingley and published on Wikimedia Commons.
Related links
Power
The story of steam power including Watt's inventions, with animations showing how they worked, on the Making the Modern World website.
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