James Watt

Powered the Industrial Revolution

If you have ever handled a lightbulb, you would have noticed that there is a number marked on its top with the word 'Watt'.

This word, which refers to the unit of electrical power, is named after James Watt, a Scottish inventor and engineer who had made a significant contribution to the Industrial Revolution. He's best known as the man who made vast improvements to the steam engine, but that by no means was his only contribution to the world of science and engineering.

Watt was born on January 19, 1736 in Greenock, to a well-to-do family. His school career was irregular due to him being in poor health, but his well-educated mother provided him a sound education at home. He was good with his hands, had an aptitude for mathematics, but wasn't very good at Latin or Greek.

At the age of 17, Watt's mother died and his father fell sick. Watt went to London where he studied instrument-making for a year, and returned to Scotland to set up his own instrument-making business. After encountering some initial problems, he set up this workshop at the University of Glasgow in 1758, with the help of three professors there.

One of these professors, the physicist and chemist Joseph Black, later became Watt's friend and mentor.

In 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret Miller, with whom he had five children; only two survived into adulthood. Margaret died in childbirth in 1772. In 1777, he married Ann MacGregor, who survived Watt and died in 1832.

Breakthrough

The concept for his experiments was implanted in him by Prof. John Anderson in 1763 when he asked Watt to repair an early steam engine he had acquired. This model, known as a Newcomen engine, was very inefficient, and also wasted a lot of time and fuel. Watt's breakthrough finally came in 1765 when he was able to develop a working model.

By 1776, the first engines were installed and were working on a commercial basis. They started receiving massive orders for these engines, and the next five years kept Watt very busy, installing more engines.

Over the next six years, Watt made a number of improvements and modifications to the steam engine, while also widening its applications. He received many patents for these inventions.

In 1794 Watt started a partnership with businessman Matthew Boulton to manufacture steam engines, which eventually became a large enterprise.

By 1824, the company had produced 1164 steam engines with a total nominal horsepower of about 26,000. The venture proved successful and both partners made fortunes. Watt retired from his ventures in 1800, but continued with his inventions.

Watt's other ideas and inventions included solving the problem about converting the up-and-down piston movement to rotary movement, creating the term "horsepower", a machine for copying sculpture and a letter copying press (one of the earliest photocopiers), a new method of measuring distances by telescope, improvements in the oil lamp and a steam mangle (machine for rolling clothes etc to remove water).

His enthusiasm for inventions and his imagination had even disrupted his work at times, because he was always seeing "just one more improvement" in his inventions. Despite these successes, it's said that Watt was an extremely insecure and jealous man, who discouraged novel and innovative ideas in others.

When one of his employees, William Murdoch, experimented with high pressure steam engines, Watt is thought to have discouraged him from patenting and continuing his work.

However, he was a respected scientist and gentleman, and was also an important member of the Lunar Society. He had been much loved among his friends as well. He died in his home in Staffordshire on August 19, 1819 at the age of 83 and was buried at St. Mary's Church, Handsworth, in Birmingham.

Honours

* Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of London. Member of the Batavian Society, and one of only eight Foreign Associates of the French Academy of Sciences.

* In 1882, the British Association named the SI unit of electrical power as Watt.

* Numerous streets, buildings and educational departments are named after him, while many statues have been erected in his honour.

* Watt was ranked first, along with Edison, among 229 significant figures in the history of technology in Charles Murray's Human Accomplishments. He was ranked 22nd in Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.