JAMES WATT

CHAPTER ONE

The Evolution of the Engineer

" Since the late Rebellion, England hath abounded in

variety of Drinks (as it did lately in variety of

Religions) above any Nation in Europe.

EDWARD CHAMBERLAYNE.. 1669.

" Before or about the year 1760 a new era in all the

arts and sciences, learned and polite, commenced in

this country."

THE Society or CIVIL ENGINEERS.

The seventeenth century had been one of the

liveliest in English history. The Englishman of those

days, who was busy laying the foundations of the

modern state, was a very different figure from his

successor of two hundred years later who built the

superstructure and lived in it in peace and security.

He still lacked that sobriety and stability of character

for which he became famous in the days of Victoria,

and those familiar types which later generations

learned to regard as the props and pillars of the

social order had not yet been evolved. No stern

incorruptibles were going out to publish abroad the

blessings of British civilization and of the

unshakable British constitution, for the constitution

was being shaken like dice in a box and the social

system was in the melting-pot. The country squire,

hatched by the nouveau riche speculative landlord

out of the feudal princeling, was as yet barely

fledged, and was still trying his wings. The parson,

far from being a tower of strength in the village,

went anxiously about his work in constant terror lest

the hunter of to-day might be the quarry of to-

morrow in the giddy chase of the righteous after the

heretic and blasphemer. The future " nation of

shopkeepers " hardly knew what a shopkeeper was,

and the British workman had not been invented.

The seventeenth century therefore was a lively one,

and it was full of variety, not only in drinks and

religions, but also in political theories, constitutions,

sciences, inventions, patents, poetries and every kind

of ingenuity. The mind of the race was active,

flexible and resilient. It is true that when an

Englishman caught Puritanism he caught it badly,

but, though gloomy and unbeautiful, the Puritan

period was rich in constructive ideas, and once the

malady had run its course the nation bounded from

her bed in the robustest of health, without any

laborious interval of convalescence. There will

always be gloomy people as well as gay people, and

people with no ideas but their fathers' as well as

people with new and revolutionary ideas of their

own. But it is one of the blessings of providence that

the revolutionaries are generally gloomy while the

conservatives are often gay. Consequently,

whichever is in power, there will be life and

movement of one kind or the other.

In the period that lies between the date of the first

quotation at the head of this chapter and the date

referred to in the second, the stature of life dwindled

and its glamour faded. There was a reaction from the

violent experiments of the seventeenth century to a

more stable and less eventful kind of existence,

while the intellectual vivacity characteristic of

Elizabethan and Restoration society, becoming more

formal, more artificial, was frozen into a crystalline

brilliance, leaving to the highspirited no resource but

the elaborate cult of physical pleasures. It was an age

of fast living and slow thinking. There were

individuals who pressed on into new worlds, but

they travelled alone. The mind and the tastes of the

people were as a clock that has stopped. The hands

still pointed at I690. England became less famous

for the variety of her drinks than for the quantity

consumed, and for the violence of its effects. The

habit of gin-drinking so utterly demoralised the

inhabitants of the metropolis that the City of

London sent up a petition imploring Parliament to

take severe measures to suppress the evil. Society

found a congenial form of excitement in the passion

for gambling, which culminated in the glorious

fatuity of the South Sea Bubble and the fraudulent

companies of I720. The coarseness of our manners

and the cruelty of our sports were widely denounced

by critics both English and foreign, and it is hardly

surprising to learn that it was in this generation that

journalism for the first time came into its own.

When vitality returned it brought a revival of all

those activities which had been characteristic of the

seventeenth century. Once more a fertility of

invention, both mechanical and artistic, enlivened

the industries of the country. The glass-ware of

England won so high a reputation in Europe that

French craftsmen paid it the flattery of imitation, the

English potters enjoyed an unquestioned pre-

eminence in their art, and the ingenuity of the

makers of scientific instruments was the admiration

of all visitors. "Inventing" became the fashionable

hobby of learned circles. Once more the nation was

stirred and tormented by an access of religious

fervour, and the Puritanism of the seventeenth

century found a parallel in the Methodism of the

eighteenth. John Wesley, who was at the height of

his power in I760~~ is said to have preached 800

sermons a year to audiences that often exceeded

I0000 in number. Like the Puritans before him, he

called on his hearers to renounce the thoughtless life

of vicious pleasure and make religion an inspiration

instead of, at best, a popular social function. It may

be that his teaching was narrow and intolerant, and

led as often to religious fanaticism as to religious

conviction, but it undoubtedly helped to shake the

middle classes of England out of their apathy. And

once they were roused they could not fail to see that

they held the future of their country in their hands.

Once more the accepted principles of government

and the traditional doctrines of political philosophy

were questioned and challenged by active minds

intent on change. Parliamentary reform was already

in the air when Tom Paine, inspired by the example

of France, denounced the whole structure of the

constitution and preached the virtues of

republicanism in a book whose already enormous

circulation was increased by the Government's

attempts to suppress it. William Blake walked the

streets of London wearing the red cap of Liberty,

but as he was the greatest genius of the age, he was

naturally regarded by most of his contemporaries as

a harmless lunatic. Later came Robert Owen,

teaching a theory of socialism and co-operation so

much in advance of the understanding of his time,

that it had to be unearthed a century later from the

litter of Marxian dogmas and researches under

which it had been buried. A writer, looking back

from the calm heights of the Victorian era, described

the reign of George III as an " age of excitement, of

which those who are now in the meridian of their

days can, from the repose which they have enjoyed,

form but a feeble idea."

It was in this " age of excitement " that James Watt

lived and worked. His genius was one of the

manifestations of the age's vigour and drew

nourishment from its extraordinary fertility. Watt

was a member of that band of builders who were

constructing the framework of our material

civilisation, setting the stage, as it were, for the

drama of modern life. In all these manifestations of

the movement of progress, the activity of the closing

years of the eighteenth century appears as the revival

of a spirit that had first shown itself a hundred or

more years earlier. The seed had then been sown,

and the first small crop reaped; there followed a spell

of inclement weather, and the plant withered. But it

did not die. The germ of life had been preserved in

the soil, and in due course it put forth a new crop

richer and stronger than the first. Other crops have

followed, and to-day we are still reaping the fruits of

that first sowing. The movement which was born in

the seventeenth century and grew to maturity in the

days of Watt has created the modern world.

Boswell relates how he once visited the works at

Soho where Boulton and Watt were manufacturing

their steam-engines. " I shall never forget," he writes,

" Mr. Boulton's expression to me when surveying

the works. ' I sell here, sir, what all the world desires

to have, Power."' But the power which Watt

invented and Boulton sold was not that which most

men lust for, the power to dominate their fellows; it

was the power to win the mastery over Nature, to

compel her to serve the ends of man, to extract

from her treasure-house whatever may add to his

comfort. It is to man's success in this struggle with

Nature that we owe our houses and our cities, our

roads and our railways, our food, our clothes and all

the luxuries and conveniences which we are pleased

to call the evidences of civilisation.

No one would suggest that this struggle began in the

seventeenth century. It is as old as history, and

might be traced back to the day when Adam and

Eve picked their figleaves. But it falls into well-

defined periods. The use of fire, the art of working

metals and of building with brick and stone, the

loom and the Lough, all these were discovered in

antiquity. During the Middle Ages the use of these

devices was elaborated, but little was added that was

absolutely new, and the only inventions that had a

palpable eject on the progress of civilisation were

those of the mariner's compass, gunpowder and the

printing press. The craftsmen, working generation

after generation along the same traditional lines,

developed a degree of skill that has never been

surpassed, but by I600 there was little room for

further advance without some more fundamental

change of method. And the change took place; for at

that moment there came into play two new forces,

which effected so complete a transformation that

the material civilisation of the modern world, when

compared with the medieval, seems to be a new

creation.

Those two forces were Science and Finance. If

Nature was to be compelled to render new services

she must first be persuaded to yield up her secrets.

Before he could advance any further, man had to

study the anatomy of the physical world, and as he

progressed in that study, which is Science, so

civilisation grew under his hands. Every feature that

makes the visible shell of our modern life unlike that

of the Middle Ages, from the engines in our

factories to the flowers in our gardens, is the

product of the invention of Science, translated into

matter at the bidding of Finance. Although Art and

Literature have changed from an impulse not

scientific, yet they would play much the same part in

our lives to-day as they did in those of our ancestors,

had not Science furnished means for the infinite

multiplication of the original work of the artist.

These twin powers invaded also the world of

thought. Everything is good, cries Finance, which

yields a profit. Nothing may be believed, says

Science, until it has been proved. Between them they

had nothing but contempt for the Middle Ages,

when men took their beliefs on trust, and were

ignorant of the first principles of sanitation. It is in

the seventeenth century that we shall find the gulf

between old and new, and the earliest signs that

these two parents of modernity have begun their

work. The first great age of science in England is

marked by the foundation of the Royal Society of

London in I662 and its early years were made

famous by the researches of Isaac Newton. Finance

can be represented by two types, the banker and the

dealer in stocks and shares. The history of modern

banking begins with the foundation of the Bank of

England in I694 and of the Bank of Scotland in the

following year. The greatest joint-stock enterprise

ever launched, the East India Company, received its

charter in I600~~ and the first independent Stock

Exchange was set up in 'Change Alley in I698.

There had been men of science in the ancient world

and in the Middle Ages. Roger Bacon, who died in I

292~~ touched the very essence of the scientific

outlook when he wrote, " There are two methods in

which we acquire knowledge, argument and

experiment." But he stood alone. Some three

hundred years later appeared the distinguished

pioneers of the coming age, contemporaries of

Galileo Galilei.

Gradually the Universities introduced scientific

subjects into their curricula, encouraged by the

foundation of Professorships in Natural Phil

osophy, Mathematics, Botany and so forth. Just

before the Civil War the point had been reached at

which scattered students began to regard themselves

as colleagues, a conscious spirit of co-operatlon

appeared, and isolated minds were welded into that

most elusive of intellectual phenomena, a

"movement." That this movement received its

embodiment in the Royal Society at the hands of

Charles II shows that influential circles, outside the

group of the scientists themselves, had recognised

the great value of the work and the eminence of the

workers. A Court that wished to rival in brilliance

that of Louis XIV must be a patron of the Sciences

as well as of the Arts.

The early members were a compact band of

enthusiasts. Though the field of study was wide, the

available knowledge in each branch was, as yet,

small, and a vigorous mind could keep in touch with

all that was being done in the world of science. They

would meet together of an evening to witness an

experiment carried out by one of their number, not

to demonstrate some new theory that he claimed to

have proved, but in the hope that the observations

of the assembled company might lead some one to

throw out an idea of value for discussion and

investigation.

Where all was new, progress was rapid; they were

tilling virgin soil and won rich returns for their

labour. The excitement was intense, for any day

news might come of some discovery that shattered

the tradition of centuries. At the same time a great

part, probably the main part, of their attention was

devoted to practical problems. Chemistry and

botany were studied in their relation to medicine,

astronomy and meteorology as aids to the science of

navigation, and a lively interest was taken in the

technical problems of industry and agriculture. This

connection between theory and the application of

theory, this cooperation between the men of science

and the men of business, between the professional

and the amateur, was destined to grow closer as time

went on, and bore precious fruit in the eighteenth

century.

Even the healthy young plant of English science

languished in the sunless days of the first two

Georges. When the revival came, the centre of life

was found to have shifted to the more bracing

climate north of the Tweed. The Universities of

Edinburgh and Glasgow were made famous by a

group of scientists who were working and teaching

in them during the last forty years of the eighteenth

century. More will have to be said of these men later,

for it was among them that Watt spent the most

crucial years of his early life. They and their

successors revolutionised the science of chemistry as

completely as Newton had revolutionised that of

physics. The story of their discoveries ran quickly

throughout Europe, and every learned Society was

agog with eagerness to hear the latest results of their

inquiries. Every step in advance made scientific work

more complex and the need for specialization

greater. The average man was no longer able to

spread himself over the whole field of knowledge.

The pure philosopher, who devoted himself to the

pursuit of principles, was inclined to leave to some

one else the application of those principles to useful

ends. This division of labour resulted in a closer and

more effective co-operation between science and

business, for new Societies were formed, less purely

scientific and more definitely industrial in character,

which acted as a connecting link. They were the field

of action of a type of man who believed that the true

road to economic progress lay in the application of

the exact methods of scientific experiment to the

problems of industrial technique. By his patronage

and his example he tried to turn the captain of

industry into a scientist and the craftsman into an

engineer. The first and most famous of these bodies

was the Royal Society of Arts, founded in 1754. Its

objects are made sufficiently plain in its full official

title, " The Society for the Encouragement of Arts,

Manufactures and Commerce." Its founders were

scientists, most of them Fellows of the Royal

Society, and it began its work by offering prizes for

discoveries and inventions which might prove

valuable to the economic life of the country. It had

been preceded by a similar association in Dublin and

was immediately followed by one in Edinburgh. The

members of these Societies were interested not only

in industry, but also in agriculture, and on this side

the movement was definitely international, having

branches in France, Switzerland and Denmark.

According to a contemporary writer the scientific

spirit had spread even to the Far East, and " the

Emperor of China rewards the husbandman who

makes the best and greatest improvements in his

land with the dignity of a Mandarin of the eighth

class."

Simultaneously there were stirrings at the other end

of the scale. The craftsmen were advancing along

the path of science to meet these scientists who were

invading the field of industry. Apart from the

blacksmith, there were only two mechanical crafts of

any importance in the seventeenth century, those of

the clockmaker and the wheelwright. The art of

clockmaking was taken up with enthusiasm in

England after the Restoration, and by I750 ;4 we

beat all Europe in Clocks and Watches of all sorts."

The work demanded the most perfect accuracy, and,

more significant still, machines were invented by the

clockmakers for cutting out the metal parts used in

the manufacture. This is probably the first example

of machinery being used to make machinery.

The trade through which this particular type of skill

was turned to scientific use was that of mathematical

instrument maker. He made the instruments used

for navigation and surveying. Naturally he was

employed by the best scientists of the day to make

the apparatus for their experiments. The latest

designs, the newest mechanical devices, all passed

through his hands, and from the study of these he

learned so much of the methods of science that he

often became a valued partner in the work of

invention. It was in this way that Watt received his

early training. A striking example is found in the

career of Laurence Earnshaw of Stockport. He got

his mechanical education as apprentice to a

clockmaker, but his ambitious nature carried him

beyond the confines of this narrow trade. He was " a

blacksmith, whitesmith, coppersmith, gunsmith,

bellfounder and coffin-maker; made and erected

sundials; mended fiddles; repaired, tuned and played

upon and taught the harpsichord and virginal But

this was all craftsman's work; he went further. " He

carried so far his theory and practice of clockwork,

as to be the inventor of a very curious astronomical

and geographical machine, containing a celestial and

terrestrial globe, to which different movements were

given, representing the diurnal and annual motions

of the earth, the position of the moon and stars, the

sun's place in the ecliptic, etc., all with the greatest

correctness." Finally, we are told, he invented " a

machine to spin and reel cotton at one operation,"

and " a simple and ingenious piece of mechanism for

raising water from a coal-mine," thus putting his

talents at the service of industry and becoming in the

fullest sense an " engineer." The variety of the list

might make us incredulous if it were not that we can

find an almost exact parallel in the achievements of

James Watt himself.

The wheelwright's business consisted in making and

repairing all the machinery in mills that were driven

by the power of water or of wind. He was generally a

man of little ingenuity, who worked by rule of

thumb and did exactly what he had been taught to

do by his father. But if he had intelligence and

curiosity it was always possible for him to discover

the mechanical principles on which his machines

were based, to master the theory as well as the

practice, and so to become, not merely a craftsman,

but an engineer, able to create as well as to copy.

The story is told of James Brindley, the engineer of

the first canal built in England, that when he was

apprentice to a wheelwright and was working with

his master on a paper-mill at Macclesfield, he

suddenly disappeared one Saturday afternoon and

was missing for two nights. On Monday morning he

was back at work. Being convinced that his master's

conservative treatment would never put the mill to

rights, he had set out for Manchester to visit the

Smedley Mill, twentyfive miles away. He spent

Sunday examining the machinery, and having got the

details well fixed in his mind, walked back to

Macclesfield next morning. His master was so

impressed by his story that he handed over to him

the control of the work, and Brindley, after changing

all the designs, produced a machine that included all

the best features of the Smedley Mill and several

new devices of his own invention.

The craftsman, in fact, was being educated. In one

way or another he was picking up fragments from

the store of knowledge that was being accumulated

by the scientists, absorbing, almost unconsciously,

the scientific atmosphere that emanated from the

centres of research. An unusually observant writer

noticed what was happening as early as I747. He

produced a book in which he gave a description of

every trade, craft or profession practised in London.

When he came to the engineer, he wrote: " By

Engineer I do not mean the Military Engineer, but

that Tradesman who is employed in making Engines

for raising of Water, etc. We have improved much

of late years in this useful Art, and have now

Engines moved both by Fire and Water, which our

Forefathers knew nothing of. This has been owing

to the labour of the Royal Society, and the progress

we have made in Experimental Philosophy." The

author goes on to explain that the engineer must

know the laws of mechanics, and adds, " He requires

a large Stock to set up with, and a considerable

Acquaintance among the Gentry. The business is at

present in few hands." It was, in fact, a new

profession, offspring of the union of science with

craftsmanship in which the members of the Royal

Society of Arts, and others like them, played the part

of Pandarus.

Two parents are generally considered to be enough

for any child, and, in the metaphors of the historian,

one is often made to suffice. The engineer had three.

The author just quoted referred to " Military

Engineers " as a familiar institution. The history of

the Engineers as a branch of the Army goes back

into the Middle Ages when they were concerned

with fortification, mining, the building of roads and

bridges and the whole province of artillery. When

the Artillery was split off and established as a

separate service in I7I6 it became evident that every

branch of military engineering had its counterpart in

civil life. Even in the seventeenth century engineers

had been employed to drain the Fens and to

construct the " New River " which gave London its

water-supply, but such men were scarce and did not

yet constitute a " trade." Only when the needs of

commerce called for the building of canals, bridges,

roads, docks, harbours and lighthouses, did the Civil

Engineers begin to be conscious of themselves as a

professional group. They also realised that their

trade was a highly scientific one and that most of its

technique had still to be invented. They felt keenly

the community of interest that linked them with the

engineers of a rather different type, who were

inventing and manufacturing scientific instruments

for use in surveying and engines for raising water or

driving it through canals. In order that they might

meet together to discuss the peculiar problems of

their trade and share the advantages of their

individual experiences they founded the Society of

Civil Engineers in I77I. The first list of members

reveals clearly the triple origin of the profession.

Joseph Priestley represented pure science. James

Watt stood for the craftsman whom science

converts into a mechanical engineer and inventor of

machines. Smeaton, the builder of the Forth and

Clyde Canal and the Eddystone Lighthouse, and

Rennie, who began as a millwright and afterwards

constructed Waterloo Bridge and the East India

Docks, won fame by the execution of great public

works, the technique for which, so far as it existed,

was inherited largely from the military engineers.

The Society united within itself every branch of the

trade as known in those days, and it was at once

accepted as a learned Society of high standing. Its

members shared the respect that was already being

paid to eminent scientists; they also won a "

considerable Acquaintance among the Gentry," and

so gained access, not only to their drawingrooms,

but, which was far more important, to their pockets.

The process of evolution was complete. The Age of

Engineering had begun.

CHAPTER TWO

Childhood and Education

"Because of a certain singing teakettle we now have

the puffing engine. Young Isaac Watts heard the

song. He figured that what made it sing would make

something go, if only it could be hitched up right."

Advt. in American Magazine (quoted in Punch, July

30th, 1924)

ON the southern bank of the River Clyde,not far

from the point where it turns south into the Firth

and about twenty-five miles west of Glasgow, lies

the port of Greenock. In the far back days when

men laid down their lives for the Covenant, the

eastern part of the present town was a separate

village known by the name of Cartsdyke, or

Crawfordsdyke. It was a prosperous little fishing

port and considered itself superior to its neighbour,

for Cartsdyke had a pier and Greenock had none.

Here, somewhere in the middle of the century,

settled Thomas Watt, the grandfather of the

engineer. He came, an orphan and a fugitive, from

Aberdeen, where his father had been killed, it is

thought, defending his home against the invading

forces of Montrose. He was by profession a teacher

of mathematics. It seems odd that in so small a town

it should have been possible for any one to confine

himself to such a trade and live. It is clear that

Thomas Watt not only lived, but throve, on his

earnings, for he bought house property in the

district and filled offices of trust in the town for

which, even in seventeenth century Scotland,

substance was probably as important a qualification

as virtue. A great part of his work, and one that must

have demanded almost superhuman patience,

consisted in teaching the elements of astronomy and

navigation to the local seamen. When he died in

I734 at the ripe age of ninety-two, thus setting an

example of longevity that was followed by his

descendants, it was as " Professor of the

Mathematicks " that he was commemorated on his

tombstone.

Thomas Watt had two sons, John and James. John

was educated as a mathematician and went off to

Glasgow to be a surveyor. One example of his work

survives. It is a survey of the Clyde which he made

in I734~ and which was afterwards revised by his

nephew James, the engineer, and published in I760.

This map shows that Greenock had by then

definitely gone ahead of Cartsdyke, for while the

latter was merely a jetty, the former had now

completed the excellent little harbour which had

been begun some thirty years before. It is quite likely

that John's reputation as a surveyor helped his

nephew to get work of the same kind when he was a

young man with his name still to make.

John's brother James, seeing the drift of business,

wisely moved to Greenock and set up as a builder,

contractor and general merchant. He was prepared

to do pretty well anything that came his way. He

stocked and sold every variety of store that a ship

could want; he manufactured every species of naval

gear; he would put in repair any of the instruments

used in navigation. When his father died and left

him part of his fortune, he bought a house and some

land backing on the harbour and there installed his

workshop. The trade of the Clyde was growing fast.

Tobacco ships from Virginia called at Greenock

harbour, and the sugar of the West Indies went up

the river to the refineries at Glasgow. James Watt

the elder prospered in his business, grew bolder in

his mercantile speculations and took shares in ships

engaged in trade to distant parts. As he prospered,

so he rose in the estimation of his fellow-citizens

and, like his father before him, he was elected to

hold public office as Town Councillor, Treasurer,

and finally " Bailie," or chief magistrate. He had a

wide circle of highly respectable acquaintances,

including the family of Mr. Shaw, the local minister.

Mr. Shaw had a daughter, Margaret, who was one of

the earliest and most constant friends of James Watt

the younger. Like so many who figure in this history,

she lived to be very old, but exactly how old it is

impossible to say, for " Miss Margaret, with

maidenly coyness, managed to her last hour to keep

her age a profound secret." However, shortly before

her death it was commonly whispered that the dear

lady would never see ninety again. James was also

very well connected through his wife. He had

married Agnes Muirhead, " a fine-looking woman,

with pleasing, graceful manners, a cultivated mind,

an excellent understanding, and an equal, cheerful

temper." Her family well remembered settling in

Clydesdale somewhere in the latter years of the

eleventh century, and had " never acknowledged any

superior." But the most glorious episode in its

history occurred when the Laird of Muirhead came

to the defence of his King at the battle of Flodden

Field, andÑ

" Twa hundred mair, of his ain name, Frae Torwood

and the Clyde, Sware they wad never gang to hame,

But a' die by his side."

But the existence of the virtuous Agnes two hundred

years later must be taken as evidence that the clan

was not entirely wiped out on that fatal day.

James and Agnes had five children. The three eldest

died in infancy, the youngest was drowned on a

voyage to America at the age of twenty-four. The

fourth son, James, the subject of this memoir, was

born on the 19th of January 1736. He was from the

first a sickly boy, and showed signs even then of the

chronic illhealth that was going to torment him

through the greater part of his life. His mother was

devoted to him, and, rather than send him to a

school where he might not be properly looked after,

she kept him for a time under her own care at home

and gave him his first lessons herself. It was

probably fortunate for him that this was so. Had he

gone very early to school his sensitive nature might

have been bruised, and his tastes forced into the

narrow channel of things accepted by schoolboy

public opinion. As it was, by the time he was let out

of the family circle into a wider world, his

individuality and originality were already well

developed, and he never showed any tendency to

adapt himself to the type that was most admired by

his schoolfellows. He went his own way and took

the consequences. And they must have been severe.

This poor, weakly child, fresh from his mother's

knee, with his comic air of thoughtful gravity, was a

gift from heaven to the other boys. He was ob

viously made to be ragged. If he had beaten them all

at their work they might have respected him and

forgiven him for being a " mother's darling." But he

did not. He was slow and awkward, and fell below

the ordinary standard demanded by the common

routine of school lessons. But, when he had got used

to his new surroundings and found work that was

congenial to him, his genius peeped through the veil

of his childishness. " He was thought rather dull at

his lessons. His abilities began to appear when he

wasÑ about thirteen or fourteen years oldÑput into

a mathematical class, where he made rapid

progress." This seems to be the most reliable of the

pictures handed down to us of Watt's schooldays.

Of course there are sensational stories of Watt's

infantile precocity. This is an attention that no

genius can escape. The chief source in this case is

Watt's cousin, Mrs. Marion Campbell, who dictated

her reminiscences in I798~~ some fifty years after

the events with which we are concerned. On the

whole the document seems to be a faithful one, but

memory plays strange tricks. The first story runs as

follows. When young James was six years old a

visitor noticed him scribbling on the hearth with a

piece of chalk. " Mr. Watt," said he, " you ought to

send that boy to a public school, and not allow him

to trifle away his time at home." " Look how my

child is occupied before you condemn him," replied

the father. The boy was, in fact, drawing geometrical

figures and marking down the results of his

calculations. The visitor questioned him and found

his answers quick and intelligent. " Forgive me," he

said, this boy's education has not been neglected: he

is no common child." Of the two biographers who

give most attention to Watt's childhood, one accepts

this story, the other rejects it. What are we to say ?

Where evidence is lacking, it is wisest to play for

safety. It is certain that Watt was an ingenious child

with a natural taste for mathematics, and if we add a

year or two to the age quoted, make allowances for a

father's pride and a visitor's politeness, and suppose

that the boy had already begun his lessons with his

mother, we can pass the story without an excessive

strain on the historical conscience.

Then comes the inevitable kettle that haunts all

youthful engineers. " James Watt," said his stern

aunt, Mrs. Muirhead, one evening, " I never saw

such an idle boy; for the last hour you have not

spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that kettle

and put it on again, holding now a cup and now a

silver spoon over the steam, watching how it rises

from the spout, and catching and connecting the

drops it falls into. Are you not ashamed of spending

your time in this way! "Now this tale is very

attractive; but it is also very suspicious. Apart from

the improbability of any stern aunt upbraiding her

nephew for finding something to keep him quiet in

the drawing-room after tea, the words she claims to

have used are unnaturally appropriate. She noticed,

apparently, that young Watt was experimenting on

the condensation of steam, and we know, as Mrs.

Muirhead did not, that his great invention was to be

related, not to the force of steamÑits most obvious

propertyÑbut precisely to this fact of condensation.

If it is mere coincidence that this particular event

should have been recorded in a form so tellingÑ and

recorded, be it remembered, through the remark of a

woman who could not have understood its

significanceÑHeaven must indeed be on the side of

the historians. Suppose she had merely said, as she

well might, " James, you idle boy, leave that kettle

alone at once ! " How tantalising that would have

been for all future biographers!

But the truth or falsehood of this story is a trivial

matter. Even if it were true it could have no real

importance, and to attribute some deep significance

to it, to imagine that the kettle might have inspired

Watt's great invention, is a serious blunder. In the

first place Watt's . . . . . inquiries Into the nature of

steam, which led to his work on the engine, did not

begin until at least ten years after the date given to

this incident. We have a full narrative of those

inquiries when they did begin, and the parentage of

his great idea is satisfactorily accounted for without

the aid of the kettle. In the second place the main

principles governing the use of steam for power

were already well known, and were not awaiting

discovery by the genius of a child still in the nursery.

Steam-engines of a kind had long been a familiar

feature of the industrial world. Watt's improvements

were based on accurate measurement and ingenuity

in mechanical detail, and no kettle could help him

there. Inventions are not the children of chance.

They are more often the result of hard work and

clear thinking than of a dazzling inspiration.

Watt lived at home till he was eighteen, occasionally

paying visits to his mother's relations in Glasgow.

The atmosphere was favourable to the development

of his scientific instincts. In his father's workshop he

could find a complete outfit of carpenter's tools, and

could watch the manufacture of the mechanical

parts of ship's tackle or examine and play with the

collection of nautical instruments. He amused

himself by copying what he saw, and became highly

skilled at making models. By good fortune examples

of his work were found and described by a workman

who was apprenticed in his father's shop. They

included models of pulleys, pumps, capstans, a

barrel-organ and a crane, probably copied from the

first crane ever seen in Greenock, which had been

made by his father to unload the Virginia tobacco

ships. Watt seemed to be attracted by every science

in turn. Geometry and mechanics were his first

loves, but he passed on to geology, botany and

astronomy. At one time anatomy fascinated him,

and he was caught coming home carrying under his

coat the head of a child that had died of some

unusual disease. He wanted to dissect it. Often he

would go down on to the quay that jutted out into

the harbour at the foot of the garden to fish; often

he would wander off in the evening to a great clump

of elms and beeches south of the town, and there he

lay on his back with a telescope borrowed from his

father's store and watched the slow procession of

the stars through the network of branches above

him. Whenever his health was bad or his headaches

worse than usual, and he knew that he was getting

sullen and ill-tempered, he slunk away into the

solitude of the moors and walked for hours by

himself until the breath of the hillside had purged his

bitter mood. He was a nervous boy and full of

fancies. He read voraciously whatever came his way,

and stocked his mind with vivid images that came

pouring out when he talked. A friend of his mother,

with whom he was staying when a boy of about

fourteen, said to her, " You must take your boy,

James, home; I cannot stand the state of excitement

he keeps me in; I am worn out with want of sleep.

Every evening before ten o'clock, our usual hour of

retiring to rest, he contrives to engage me in

conversation, then begins some striking tale, and,

whether humorous or pathetic, the interest is so

overpowering, that all the family listen to him with

breathless attention; hour after hour strikes

unheeded. In vain his brother John scolds and pulls

him by the arm; ' Come to bed, James. You are

inventing story after story to keep us with you till

after midnight, because you love company, and your

severe fits of toothache prevent your sleeping at an

earlier hour."' It is an excellent picture of the boy,

highlystrung and imaginative, with a mind so

restlessly active that he himself feared it and sought

refuge from it in company.

When he had finished his schooling Watt worked

for a time about his father's shop. In I753 his

mother died. He was then seventeen. It was

probably his mother's devotion to him that had kept

him so long at home when other boys of his age

were away earning their living. Her death broke up

the family life at Greenock. In June of the following

year he was sent to Glasgow to learn the craft of a

mathematical instrument maker. It was a natural

choice. It was a profession closely allied to those of

his father and his grandfather, and it gave more

scope to his mechanical dexterity than he would

have got by following either of their trades Its

prospects, too, were good. It was described at this

date as " a very ingenious and profitable Business,"

and was by no means overstocked with labour. But

when he got to Glasgow he found there was no one

who could teach him. He spent a year there, working

under a nondescript mechanic who called himself an

" optician," until he attracted the attention of Dr.

Dick, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the

University. Dick realised that here was first-class

talent running to waste, and strongly advised him to

go to London and get the best training that was to

be had. Watt asked his father's permission to go, and

it was given. It was a momentous decision. This

must have been the first time in its history that any

member of the Watt family had proposed to cross

the border, and London seems a long way from

Glasgow if you have to get there on horseback.

There was also the expense to be considered.

Apparently Watt's father had either overreached

himself in his speculations or had suffered losses at

sea; for, although he had once been quite wellto-do,

he was now obliged to leave his son to make his

own way in the world, giving him only the most

meagre of allowances while he was getting his

training. In spite of all difficulties the adventure was

accepted, and on 7th June, I755 Watt mounted his

horse to ride to London, with a letter of

introduction from Dr. Dick in his pocket.

CHAPTER THREE

James Watt, Mathematical Instrument Maker

" Item, it is ordained, that no Freeman of the said

Company using the said Trade, Art, or Mystery, do

keep in his service . . . any foreigners, alien or

English, not being free of the said Company of

Clockmakers, or bound as an apprentice

thereunto."-ordinances OF THE CLOCKMAKERS

COMPANY OF LONDON. 1632.

IT took Watt twelve days to reach London, and at

once his difficulties began. The city was still clinging

to its ancient customs and privileges, chief among

which was the right to keep all its trade in the hands

of the native- born townsmen, and to forbid any "

foreigner " from another town to settle down within

its walls to earn his living. The time was long past

when any town could preserve this monopoly intact,

or indeed wanted to, but the right remained in

theory, and could be used discreetly to get rid of

undesirables. The vagrant, who seemed likely to

become a pauper, and the skilled craftsman, who

might prove a dangerous competitor for the custom

of the townspeople, were refused admission; the

wealthy merchant and the honest, unenterprising

labourer were unmolested.

The initiative in these matters came generally from

the Gilds and Companies which controlled the

various trades carried on in the City. They were

always afraid of competition, and anxious to keep

down the number of tradesmen among whom the

available custom had to be divided. The chief

principles which the Gilds had inherited from the

Middle Ages were the following. All regulations

affecting the trade were made by the Masters who

ruled the Gild. No person might set up in business

on his own unless he was a Master and had been

admitted as such into the Gild, and the normal way

of becoming a Master was by serving an

apprenticeship of seven years under a Gildsman, and

then paying the fees for admission to the rank and

privileges of Mastership. In this way the trade was

protected against an influx of inferior and

irresponsible labour which might lower the standard

of work, and, by competing for employment in the

restricted market of the town, drag down the level of

the earnings of the craftsman.

Now society in the reign of George II was anything

but medieval. Little was left of the elaborate system

of industry based on the Gild. At the top of the

industrial scale was a class of wealthy men,

merchants or employers of labour, who had no

patience with rules of this kind. They ran their

businesses as they thought best, advanced boldly

into any field that looked profitable, respecting

nobody's preserves, and had no intention of teaching

the secrets of their trade to any one except their own

sons. At the other end of the scale were the

labourers in common trades where the degree of

skill required was small. Such men were not likely to

go through a long period of apprenticeship when

they could learn their job well enough without it,

and nothing awaited them at the end of it but a fight

for existence in an overstocked labour market in

which they had no special advantage. But between

these two classes came the highly skilled handicrafts,

and there conditions were often different. As a long

training was essential, apprenticeship had some

meaning, and when it was over the craftsman was

ready to start business on his own. The Masters in a

trade of this kind were in a commanding position.

They had no employers over them with power to

dictate terms; they had nothing to fear from the

competition of upstart unqualified workmen; and

they had a monopoly in training recruits to the craft.

Whenever there were enough of them in a town to

have an organisation of their own they made strict

rules for the training of novices and their admission

to the status of Master, and no one who had not

qualified according to these rules was permitted to

open shop within the town.

The Clockmakers of London were a trade of this

kind. The Company was not medieval in origin; it

had been founded in I63I. But it was by nature

suited to the medieval type of organisation. The

mathematical instrument makers were a branch of

the Company of Clockmakers and had the same

rules. Watt, apparently, had not thought of this

difficulty. His case was exactly that for which

apprenticeship rules were designed. He wanted to

get trained in order to become a Master and start

business on his own. His only proper course was to

bind himself by a legal contract as apprentice to a

member of the trade. But he was in no position to

conform to the ordinary regulations. In the first

place he was too old; in the second place he was a "

foreigner " and had no right to work in the City at

all; in the third place he could not possibly afford to

undertake to serve the full term of seven years. He

must find a Master who was prepared to break the

rules. The fact that he was a " foreigner " who had

no intention of setting up shop in London was a

point in his favour, for London was not afraid of

possible rivals in Glasgow. To teach such a man the

mysteries of the craft was a breach of the letter of

the law only, not of the spirit.

Even so it was nearly three weeks before Watt found

the man he was looking for. Then he discovered Mr.

John Morgan of Cornhill. Morgan was willing to

take him for a year and teach him all he wanted to

learn. During that time he was to give his labour

free, and as the engagement was quite irregular, he

had to pay the large fee of twenty guineas to

compensate his master for the violence he was doing

to conscience.

Watt settled down to do seven years' work in a year.

On five days in the week he put in ten hours a day.

But it was difficult to avoid wasting time. Each

workman in the shop was a specialist on some

particular instrument; Watt wanted to learn to make

them all, and so worked with each in turn. But if the

man he wanted happened to be busy or away for a

time, he got interrupted in his course of progress. In

six weeks he had outstripped a fellow-apprentice

who had been in the shop for two years; in nine

months he was as skilful as a fully trained and

experienced workman, and could cover a wider field.

All this time he hardly ever went out. When he got

off in the evening he was much too tired to think of

amusements, and anyhow he could not afford them.

But he had another reason for staying indoors.

England was enjoying a short interval of peace,

recovering from the strain of fighting with Austria

against Prussia, before she embarked on a new war

with Prussia against Austria. She had tasted the

sweets of Empire and was persuading herself that

God made the sea for the English. Some fifteen

years before, to the strains of the popular new song,

" Rule Britannia ! " the British fleet had sailed out to

defend our precious monopoly in the slave trade.

Now, while the people of London were still

proclaiming that " Britons never, never, never will be

slaves," the officers of the Press-gang were lurking

round the corner ready to pounce on any young

Englishman who had so touching a faith in the

freedom of his country as to walk about the streets

of the capital after dark. This was a serious danger to

Watt, for, as he was a stranger with no rights in the

City, he could not claim the protection of the civil

authorities. In the spring of I756 the Press became

very active. A fleet had to be manned in a hurry for

Admiral Byng to take out, to disgrace itself at

Minorca. A thousand men were taken in one night. "

They now press anybody they can get," wrote Watt

to his father, " landsmen as well as seamen, except it

be in the Liberties of the City, where they are

obliged to carry them before my Lord Mayor first;

and unless one be either a Prentice or a creditable

tradesman, there is scarce any getting off again. And

if I was carried before my Lord Mayor, I durst not

avow that I wrought in the City, it being against their

laws for any unfreeman to work, even as a

journeyman, within the Liberties." Fortunately he

escaped.

All this time Watt was working much too hard and

not getting enough to eat. He cut his expenditure on

food down to eight shillings a week, and could get it

no lower without " pinching his belly." The strain

was too much for his fragile constitution. When his

year was up his health gave way, and he suffered

from violent attacks of rheumatism. He longed to

get back to the fresh air of the Scotch countryside.

In August he screwed up his courage to face the

weary journey into the north, and, mounting his

horse, he turned his back on London. After a short

stay at Greenock that restored his spirits and his

health, he went on to Glasgow, with the outfit of

tools that he had bought in London, to offer his

newly-won skill to the world.

Glasgow at the beginning of the eighteenth century

was a small seaport lying on the north bank of the

Clyde only, with from ten to fifteen thousand

inhabitants. When Defoe visited it about I724 he

found it a " city of business," and the only town in

Scotland that was developing both its foreign and

domestic trade. Its growing prosperity was based on

the commerce with the colonies in the New World.

From the time that the first Glasgow ship crossed

the Atlantic in I7I67 an ever-increasing proportion

of the sugar of the West Indies and the tobacco of

Virginia found its way up the Clyde, to the great

indignation of the old-established English ports,

which accused the Glasgow merchants of defrauding

the Customs. Perhaps they did; but the charge could

not be proved, and Glasgow grew rapidly richer.

When the American Colonies revolted in I775 this

trade was annihilated, but by that time the prosperity

of the city was built on wider and firmer foundations

and it quickly recovered.

In the last quarter of the century the face of the

town was changed. An upstart race of vigorous,

pushing manufacturers began to lick the old place

into shape. The merchant, as he watched his ship sail

out of the harbour, knew that before she returned

with her cargo from the West some new hive of

industry would rear itself within sight of his

warehouse, and every hour that he waited patiently

for the wind to do his work, behind its walls men

and machines were ceaselessly toiling under the eye

of a master who was building with their labour the

edifice of his unchallengeable power. One by one

the signs of the new age appeared. First the stone

bridge across the Clyde founded in I 768; then the

Forth and Clyde Canal, linking Glasgow with the

Eastern seas; then, gauntly prominent among the

mellowed houses of the old town, new buildings in

the clean, square style of the period sprang up like

temples offered by the city for the worship of its

own greatness, while the rambling villages on the

south bank of the river were replaced by neat

suburbs " upon a regular plan, and laid out into a

number of right-lined streets "; there followed the

Trades Hall, the Royal Infirmary, the Assembly

Rooms, the Grammar School, the Bridewell, the

Theatre, the Courts of Justice with pillared hall and

Doric frieze, and, to crown the work, a magnificent

domed Lunatic Asylum to house one hundred and

twenty patients, erected " by public contribution to

restore the use of reason."

When Watt arrived this transformation had hardly

begun. The city, proud of its accumulated wealth,

was preparing to throw itself into the task of

winning the respect and admiration of the modern

world by success in those pursuits which the modern

world then most valued. But in the eyes of many the

renown it was already enjoying, when seized by

restless ambition for something greater, was more

worth than any it has since achieved. The University

was at the height of its fame. The impulse given to

the study of Science by the Royal Society had

worked itself out, and a new inspiration was needed.

It came from a group of men in Glasgow who, while

laboriously creating a school of Science for their

own students, dazzled Europe by the brilliance of

their discoveries. The greatest of these, Joseph

Black, was now lecturing in the University and, as if

that were not lustre enough Adam Smith was

Professor of Moral Philosophy.

Watt met with much the same difficulties in

Glasgow as he had in London. Here, too, he was a "

foreigner," and a dangerous " foreigner," because he

did not wish humbly to study the craft in the shop

of a Master, but had every intention of setting up

shop for himself. His trade came under the

jurisdiction of the Incorporation of Hammermen,

and this precious collection of industrial autocrats,

worthy men, no doubt, but intellectually hammers

indeed as compared with Watt's gimlet, refused him

permission to work within the town in any capacity

whatever, in spite of the fact that there was not one

of them who pretended to understand the rudiments

of his particular craft. Watt was saved by one of

those odd coincidences that crop up from time to

time in the pages of history. Within a month of his

arrival in Glasgow, the University received a present

of a case of astronomical instruments from a rich

and eccentric merchant in Jamaica, of the name of

Alexander Macfarlane. Classes in physical astronomy

had recently been started, and the gift was most

opportune, but the sea voyage had thrown these

delicate instruments out of gear, and they needed

overhauling by an expert. Dr. Dick, in whose charge

they were placed, remembered his young friend and

asked him to undertake the work. Watt was

delighted to have this chance of proving his skill,

and had soon put the whole collection into perfect

order, for which service the University voted him

the sum of five pounds. When, shortly afterwards, it

was heard that he had been refused leave to have a

workshop in the town, the University took him

under its protection and gave him a room within the

walls of the College, where the writ of the

Hammermen did not run.

This was the turning-point in his life. Watt was

already a brilliant mechanic, but he would never

have won fame as an engineer if he had not also

become a brilliant scientist. That side of his genius

had hitherto been starved. In the University he

found himself for the first time in the society of men

who were his equals in intellect and his superiors in

scientific experience. And these men, being pioneers

in an unconquered territory, had none of the pride

that makes the professional refuse to associate with

the amateur, nor did they, like some jealous

guardians of accumulated knowledge, feel

proprietary about their science and resentful against

trespassers.

It was as " Mathematical instrument maker to the

University " that Watt gained admission to the

precincts of the College in the summer of I757> but

as soon as his remarkable gifts were recognised, he

was treated by both Professors and students as a

friend and colleague rather than as an employee. The

initial steps were made easy for him by the fact that

he was already known personally to some of the

University staff. Professor Muirhead, a relative of his

mother, who had first introduced him to Dr. Dick

was still there; and when Dick died, early in I7577

his successor as Professor of Natural Philosophy

was Anderson, the brother of one of Watt's school

friends. Anderson was a young man, not more than

eight years senior to Watt, and provided an excellent

channel of approach to the keener scientists both of

the older and the younger generation. Watt's

workshop was in the inner court of the College and

communicated with the premises occupied by the

Natural Philosophy department. Teachers and

students would look in as they were coming away

from their work, to consult him about some piece of

apparatus or to give him an instrument to repair. His

friends dropped in to chat with him and brought

their friends. Before long they were discussing with

him not only the intricacies of apparatus but the

scientific problems on which they were engaged in

research. His shop became the regular meeting-place

for those who were doing original work and who

liked to put up for criticism the tentative theories

suggested to them by the results of their

experiments. More than once a Professor got a

valuable hint from some swift thought hatched in

the brain of the young craftsman and flung over his

shoulder as he worked at his bench.

Of all the friends he made at this time the two who

most deeply influenced his future were Joseph Black

and John Robison. Black was a scientific genius of

the first order. He had that rare gift of imaginative

insight that is not afraid to leap into a new world of

speculation, finding, as it were by inspiration, a fresh

significance in facts that have long been known to

all. But he was not a wild guesser. " No man," said

Adam Smith, who knew him well, " has less

nonsense in his head than Dr. Black," and he

combined this freedom of vision with an unrivalled

lucidity of exposition and accuracy of experiment.

Lord Brougham had heard him lecture and wrote of

him, " I have heard the greatest understandings of

the age giving forth their efforts in its most eloquent

tongues, but I should, without hesitation, prefer, for

mere intellectual gratification, to be once more

allowed the privilege which I in those days enjoyed

of being present while the first philosopher of his

age was the historian of his own discoveries."

Black had come across Watt when he was at work

on Macfarlane's instruments. He would come and

stand in the shop toying with a quadrant and

whistling softly to himself. But it was not till later,

when he got him to make some apparatus for his

experiments, that he became aware of Watt's genius.

" I found him," he says, " to be a young man

possessing most uncommon talents for mechanical

knowledge and practice, with an originality,

readiness and copiousness of invention which often

surprised and delighted me in our frequent

conversations together." The two men became close

friends, and Black's affection for Watt lasted to the

end of his life. When he was an old man a friend

brought him news of Watt's triumph at law over an

infringer of his patent. The old scientist, weakened

by years of illness, wept with joy; and then

apologised. " It is very foolish, but I can't help it,

when I hear of anything good to Jamie Watt." Watt

profited immeasurably from his contact with this

inspiring mind, and was also kept in touch with the

most advanced scientific thought of the day. He

realised his debt to Black. " To him I owe," he said,

" in great measure my being what I am; he taught me

to reason and experiment in natural philosophy, and

was always at true friend and adviser."

Robison was a younger man, who had just graduated

when Watt arrived in the University. Though an able

scientist, good enough to be elected Professor both

in Glasgow and Edinburgh, he was not the same

calibre as Black. But he had great vitality and

enthusiasm, qualities which made him an ideal

companion for Watt when his bouts of ill-health

made him talk of giving up work altogether Robison

quickly recognised that Watt was his superior, and

always generously admitted it. He has described his

first conversation with Watt in his workshop in the

College: " I saw a workman, and expected no more;

but was surprised to find a philosopher, as young as

myself, and always ready to instruct me. I had the

vanity to think myself a pretty good proficient in my

favourite study, and was rather mortified at finding

Mr. Watt so much my superior." They became

friends, but Robison's adventurous tastes carried

him away to sea very soon afterwards. He was

attached to Admiral Knowles and was one of those

who heard Wolfe recite Gray's " Elegy " as he went

his rounds on the eve of the attack on the heights of

Abraham. Four years later he returned, and renewed

his friendship. He found that, thanks to his more

systematic training, he could help Watt by testing

and analysing " the random suggestions of his

inquisitive and inventive mind." But Watt was the

leader, and "was continually striking into untrodden

paths, where I was always obliged to be a follower."

Watt had by this time a wide reputation. The young

enthusiasts clustered round him. " Whenever any

puzzle came in the way of any of us, we went to Mr.

Watt. He needed only to be prompted; everything

became to him the beginning of a new and serious

study; everything became science in his hands."

Meanwhile Watt's business was growing. The

University, when granting him quarters, had not

stipulated that he should work only for them. On

the contrary, he was provided with a room fronting

the street, where he could offer for sale to the public

the instruments he made in his workshop. In order

to develop this side of the business he went into

partnership, in I759 with a man named Craig, who

undertook to provide most of the capital needed for

expansion, and to do all the commercial

transactions, which Watt, then as ever afterwards,

detested. They started with a stock and cash worth

£200, and about five years later were making gross

sales up to £600 a year, and kept a staff of sixteen

men at work. It was Watt's reputation as a universal

mechanical expert that brought so much custom to

his shop. When anything had to be done and there

was no one in Glasgow who knew how to do itÑ

which was oftenÑit was taken round to Watt. He

was always ready to try. If the instrument to be

repaired was one that he had never seen before, he

set to work to master its principles with what help

he could get from the library, and was not satisfied

until he had put it to rights. And what he learned he

never forgot. In this way he repaired and afterwards

made, fiddles, guitars and flutes, although he could

not tell one note of music from another. When a

Masonic Lodge in Glasgow wanted an organ, the

officers went to Watt. " We imagined that Mr. Watt

could do anything; he was asked if he could build

this organ. He said 'Yes."' He sat down to study the

theory of music, thoroughly examined the

mechanism of the best organ he could find, and

devised an exact method by which he could tune the

pipes by observing "the beats of imperfect

consonances." By the time the work was completed

Watt had made substantial contributions, not only to

the mechanics of organ design, but also to the

theory of sound. Soon after he formed his -

partnership with Craig, Watt had opened a shop in

the town, though still living in the College. In I763

he became engaged to be married to his cousin,

Margaret Miller, and so took a house, into which he

moved in the following year. In I765 he was

married, and in the same year his partner died. But

before this he had begun his experiments on the

steam-engine, and in order that their nature and

value may be made clear, we must pause in the

narrative to consider the point the steam-engine had

reached in its evolution when Watt turned his

attention to it.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Great Invention and its Predecessors

"As the Births of Living Creatures, at first, are ill-

shapen, 80 are all Innovations, which are the births

of Time."ÑBACON.

MAN has always been observant, inquisitive, and

lazy; and he has,through life, a child's passion for

toys. Consequently, when the Creator set man, fire,

and water in the world together, it was evident that

ultimately the steamengine would have its place

among the births of Time. The first steps towards its

invention are blurred and unrecognisable, for there

are no periods in the infancy of thought. That

benefactor of humanity who first boiled water in a

vessel remains unknown. We must hurry down the

ages to a point where time has measurable length,

and the features of history take shape before us, as

the sleepers between the rails detach themselves into

an expanding series as the eye travels home along

the track from the farthest limit of vision to the

ground at our feet. Man is beginning to play with

this new element. He has discovered that it has force

and that with its help he can make toys that work.

Heat water in the hollow hub of a wheel, and the

steam, driven along the radiating tubes that are the

spokes, will issue violently from the nozzles of those

spouts, all bent one way, and drive it spinning as a

catherine-wheel is driven. Or make a hollow doll of

brass, with a hole for his mouth, fill him with water

and set him by the fire. As the water boils, the steam

will issue in a strong, steady blast from his mouth,

and he will seem to blow the fire that heats him.

From 200 B.C. to A.D. I600 steam was little more

than a toy; then the laziness of man prompted him

to use this force to ease his labour. It is said that a

Spaniard drove a boat by steam in I543~~ but, as

nobody knows how he did it, we pass on to

Solomon De Caus. He was an engineer and architect

to Louis XIII of France, who came to England in

I6I2 and was employed by the Prince of Wales to

embellish his gardens at Richmond. He invented

means for raising water above the height of its

source and so constructing ornamental falls and

fountains. One method was by the use of fire. He

took a metal globe and partly filled it with water

through a cock, which was then closed. Through the

top of the globe he inserted a vertical pipe, the lower

end of which came down nearly to the bottom of his

globe and was therefore under the water. Then he

applied the fire. The heated air and steam pressed on

the surface of the water in the vessel and forced it to

escape by the only way open to it, namely, up the

pipe and out as a jet from the top. The result was a

toy fountain. It was of no practical use, and could

hardly be called an engine, but it is worth describing

as being the simplest example of one of the methods

of raising water with the aid of fire.

The next claimant to a place on the roll of inventors

is Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester. He was

altogether a fantastic character. Having acted as

Charles I's agent in some of his wildest schemes

during the Civil War, he escaped to France. But he

got tired of life abroad, and, although he had been

condemned to death in his absence, he returned to

England. Whether it was the calm assurance of the

man, or the memory of his reputation for fabulous

wealth, or some irresistible magnetism in his

personality, it is impossible to say, but instead of

being immediately put to death he was sent to the

Tower, and after two years released with a pension.

It was at this time that he wrote his amazing book,

entitled X Century of the Names and Scantlings of

the Marquis of Worcester's Inventions, which he

published after the Restoration with an effusive

dedication to Charles II, in which he offered it to his

King as an indication of the ways in which he might

still be of service to him.

At the first glance it appears to be the work of a

lunatic. Closer study shows that the Marquis had

simply collected every ingenious device he had ever

met with in life, literature or legend, and boldly

claimed that he possessed the secret of each without

venturing to explain what that secret was. This type

of invention is impressive without being difficult.

There are several shorthand alphabets and codes,

several portable fortifications and repeating pistols, a

watch that goes for ever, a perpetual motion, a

torpedo, an " artificial bird," " a most conceited

tinder box," and an automatic horse that a man may

ride " using the decent posture with bon grace."

King Charles is told by this unemployed commander

of royalist armies and negotiator of secret treaties

how he may make a head of brass or stone, which, if

he whispers a question in its ear, " will presently

open its mouth, and resolve the question in French,

Latin, Welsh, Irish or English, in good terms

uttering it out of his mouth, and then shutting it

until the next question be asked." Among these

marvels are some machines for raising water, mostly

by buckets working over wheels and pulleys. Two of

these are interesting, Number 68 called " A Fire

WaterWork," and Number I00 modestly described

by its author as " the most stupendious work in the

whole world." Number 68 was clearly a steamengine

on the principle of De Caus, only differing from his

in that it had a separate boiler for generating the

steam. Number I00 is not clearly enough described

to be reconstructed, but it seems to have been some

kind of water-wheel worked by a man whose

strength was multiplied by a system of weights and

pulleys. Now it is known that a water-engine was set

up by the Marquis at Vauxhall; several people report

having seen it. Was it Number 68? If so, the Marquis

had turned De Caus's toy into a fullsized steam-

engine of practical value. Unfortunately none of

those who saw it make any mention of the use of

fire; their descriptions suggest that it was not a

steamengine at all, but the quite unoriginal and

unimportant Number I00. This last of the century,

though the least ingenious of the collection, was the

inventor's chief pride, the darling of his heart. Was

this because it was the only one of the hundred that

ever materialised ? It seems highly probable; and the

Marquis of Worcester must be classed among those

brilliant charlatans who never lack a train of devoted

disciples.

Real progress began with the work of Dionysius

Papin. He was a French doctor who fled from his

country in I68I to escape the persecution of

Protestants, settled in London, and became a Fellow

of the Royal Society. Shortly before this a line of

inquiry started by Galileo, and pursued by his pupils

in Italy, had led to a very important discovery. It

used to be said that " Nature abhors a vacuum."

This peculiarly unscientific and almost mystic

statement of the case had proved very misleading.

The Italians now discovered that it was nonsense to

talk as if there were special laws of nature relating to

a vacuum it was simply a question of the pressure of

the atmosphere. The air is exerting a continuous

pressure in all directions. As it is in all directions it

normally has no effect on the objects it surrounds,

for the pressure is perfectly balanced. But if you can

withdraw the air from one side of a body there is

nothing to balance the pressure on the other. The

body is therefore propelled into the vacuum with a

force equal to the pressure of the atmosphere. Here

was a universal, everpresent force provided by

nature free of charge, constant where wind and

water are fickle, and not liable, like steam, to become

unruly and burst the vessels intended to contain it.

And this admirable force had not yet been pressed

into the service of man.

The chief obstacle to the use of atmospheric

pressure to drive a machine was the difficulty of

producing the vacuum. To Papin belongs the credit

for having thought of employing steam to do this.

He took a cylinder, open at the top like a shellcase

that has been converted into a flowervase, and fitted

it with a piston. He put a little water in the bottom

of the cylinder, lowered the piston till it rested on

the surface, and set it over a fire. As the water

boiled, the piston was raised to the top, while the

cylinder filled with steam. There it was locked with a

catch, and the fire was removed. As the cylinder

cooled, the steam was condensed and became once

more a layer of water on the bottom, leaving a

vacuum under the piston. When the catch was

released the piston made a powerful stroke, driven

down by the pressure of the atmosphere which now

had no resistance to overcome. He then replaced the

fire and started again. Such was Papin's engine,

clumsy and desperately slow in working, but rich in

suggestions for future engineers.

The scene now shifts to Devonshire. Thomas Savery

was born in a village not far from Plymouth about

the year I650. He was a military engineer and also a

clever clockmaker. Whereas De Caus and Papin had

started their investigations as scientists trying to

fathom the mysteries of nature, Savery began from

the other end. He had often travelled about in

Cornwall, and had seen for himself the difficulties

the tin miners were having in keeping their mines

clear of water. The workings had reached a depth at

which the old pumps ceased to function, and there

was pressing need for something more powerful.

Savery tackled this problem as a practical man and

an engineer, and he invented an engine, patented in

I698~~ which was actually introduced into some of

the mines.

His method was as follows.

He filled a vessel with steam, and then, by pouring

cold water over it, condensed the steam and created

a vacuum. So far he wasfollowing Papin, except that

he generated the steam in a separate boiler which he

could keep constantly hot, whereas Papin boiled his

water in the cylinder in which he condensed it, and

so had to keep taking the fire away and putting it

back again. That alone was a big saving. But Savery

did not use a piston Having got the vacuum, he

opened a pipe that communicated directly with the

water to be raised, and up it rushed into his vessel.

In this way he could get the water up about 30 feet.

That was not enough, so he now applied De Caus's

system to force it higher. He turned on the steam

again, at high pressure, and it acted on the water in

the vessel and drove it up and out through an

ejection pipe. The remarkable thing about this

engine was that it sometimes worked. Sometimes,

not always. For the utmost skill of the blacksmith of

those days was not equal to constructing a boiler

that could be relied on to contain itself when tickled

by high-pressure steam. Bursts and leakages were

common, and the engineman led a perilous

existence.

The fact that a steam-engine had actually been used,

with some measure of success, to drain a mine was a

great stimulus to further efforts, and they were

quickly forthcoming. Thomas New comen, a

Dartmouth blacksmith, knew what Savery was

doing; he may even have been employed by him as a

mechanic on his engines. He also had, with the help

of Dr. Hooke of the Royal Society, studied the

experiments of Papin. He either got from Hooke, or

himself conceived, the idea of combining the

advantages of both. Savery's machine was in itself a

pump. It sucked the water up into its own bowels.

Newcomen proposed to build an engine that would

simply provide the power, and then to use it to drive

an ordinary suction pump which would raise the

water. This had been Papin's intention, but he had

left the work unfinished. He airily remarked that the

manner of using his engine to " dis charge iron

bullets to a great distance, to propel ships against the

wind," and so forth, " would be too long here to

detail; but each individual must select the

construction of machinery appro priate to his

purpose." This is what Newcomen did. He took

Papin's piston and cylinder and made it pull down

one end of a beam, pivoted in the centre, to the

other end of which was attached the rod of a

common pump. But at the same time he applied

Savery's improvement by generating the steam in a

separate boiler, and leading the steam from it to the

cylinder, where it was condensed by a douche of

cold water. Savery complained that this was an

infringement of his patent, but was pacified by being

taken into partnership. The first successful model

was completed in I705 and the first engine was set

up at Wolverhampton in I 7 I 2.

We must now return to James Watt at Glasgow. It

was in the year I759 that he first turned his attention

to steam-engines. The suggestion came from

Robison. He knew that steamengines were being

used to pump mines and was not thinking about

ways of improving them, but of possible new uses

for steam. Might it not be used to drive carriages on

wheels? Why not invent a steam locomotive ? Savery

had had the same idea, but nobody had yet

succeeded in carrying it out. It will be remembered

that Robison said of Watt, " He needed only to be

prompted; everything became to him the beginning

of a new and serious studyÑ everything became

science in his hands." Well, he had now been

prompted. And Robison. was quite right. He did not

play with the idea, he worked at it. He first tried, as

any one would, to drive his engine by the pressure of

steam itself. This seems so obvious, that people

often wonder why engineers at first preferred the far

more complicated and round-about way of using

steam only as a means for making a vacuum, and so

bringing the pressure of the atmosphere into play.

The explanation is simple. If atmospheric resistance

is not removed by means of a vacuum, it must be

overcome by the driving. force of the steam. The

steam must be used at high pressure. Now in the

eighteenth century mechanical technique was not

good enough either to produce a steady supply of

high-pressure steam, or to contain or control it if

produced. Watt, therefore, like his predecessors,

soon gave up his attempt to devise a high-pressure

engine, because he was " sensible it would be liable

to some of the objections against Savery's engine,

viz. the danger of bursting the boiler, and the

difficulty of making the joints tight."

In later years Watt would never have begun to

experiment on a problem until he had studied and

mastered everything that had been done or written

on the subject by any one before him. Even now he

soon checked his hasty enthusiasm and sat down to

complete his education. He read a few standard

works. Then he wanted to see an example of the

latest type of engine in use. He discovered that the

University possessed a model of a Newcomen

engine, but that it was at the moment in London,

undergoing repairs. It was probably at Watt's

suggestion that Professor Anderson recovered this

model from London and handed it over to him to

be put into working order. This was in the winter of

I763. At first he was not thinking of theories. " I set

about repairing it," he says, " as a mere

mechanician." But when he had finished, although

the model was mechanically as perfect as any

fullsized engine, it would only make two or three

strokes at a time, and then expired. Here was a

puzzle of a new kind. It led him away from the

purely mechanical aspects of the problem; it "

became science in his hands." He saw that heat was

being wasted. In the big engines the cylinder was

made of castiron; in the model it was of brass, a

better conductor of heat. Therefore energy was

going astray, as it were, in heating the cylinder. He

saw that the toy cylinder " exposed a greater surface

to condense the steam in proportion to its content "

than a big cylinder. Therefore, when the cold

cylinder was being filled with steam, a great deal was

uselessly turned to water. From this he saw that the

model was more wasteful than a real engine. But he

also saw, and this is much more important, that even

in a full-sized engine with a perfectly proportioned

cylinder of the most suitable material known to exist

there would still be waste of energy and loss of

power, arising from the very principle on which the

machine worked. He determined to find out what

that waste amounted to. In doing this he was led

into a series of elaborate scientific experiments on

the nature of heat and the properties of steam.

Three aspects of the problem occupied him. It had

already been shown by experiment that, when

subjected to a pressure lower than that of the

atmosphere, water would boil at a temperature lower

than the ordinary boilingpoint. Watt carefully

worked out a scale showing at what temperature

water will boil at every pressure from nil upwards. In

his neat, precise way, he reduced a general theory to

an exact, quantitative form. Then he went on to

discover the relation between the volume of a given

quantity of water and the volume of steam, at the

temperature of boiling water, into which it could be

converted. Others had tried to do this before, but

Watt's researches proved that their conclusions were

at fault. His scientific mind, aided by his mechanical

genius for experiment, enabled him to get results

that far surpassed in accuracy anything that had been

done before. Finally he was struck by the

extraordinary heating-power of steam. On devising

some experiments he came to the surprising

conclusion that water converted into steam can heat

six times its own weight of cold water up to the

boilingpoint. Thinking that he must have blundered

somewhere, he consulted Black. He then learned

that he had stumbled on the fact, the discovery and

explanation of which had made Black famous,

namely, the phenomenon of Latent! Heat. When

water is boiling, however much you go on heating it,

it will get no hotter. The steam receives the heat

without raising its own temperature and holds it in

store. This heat is described as " latent." If the steam

is driven through a volume of cold water it naturally

condenses, and in so doing it releases its store of

latent heat, which all goes to raise the temperature of

the water. In other words, the heating power of a

certain quantity of water at a temperature of 2I2¡ is

trifling compared with the heating power of the

same quantity of water converted into steam also at

a sensible temperature of 2I2¡.

In order to appreciate the way in which Watt applied

these scientific observations to the problem of

perfecting the steam-engine, it is essential to

understand exactly how the Newcomen engine of

the day worked. With the aid of a diagram that

should not be difficult. The figure on page 7 I

represents an engine of this type reduced to the

simplest terms. A is a furnace, and B is a boiler in

which steam is generated. The boiler communicates

by a pipe in which is a cock, a, with the cylinder, C,

in which works a piston, D. It will be noticed that

the cylinder is open at the top. The rod of the piston

is attached to a beam, EE, pivoted at the centre, to

the other end of which is fastened the rod of a

pump, G. and on this rod is a weight, F. H is a

cistern of cold water with a pipe running down into

the bottom of the cylinder in such a way that,

whenever the cock, h, is opened, a jet of water IS

injected into the cylinder. Imagine the beam EE

horizontal. The cock b is opened, letting steam into

the cylinder. This balances the pressure of the

atmosphere on the piston, and the weight F. finding

no resistance at the other end of the beam, sinks

down to the position shown in the diagram, drawing

the piston to the top of the cylinder. The cylinder is

now full of steam. When the cock b is shut, the cock

h is opened, letting a jet of cold water enter the

cylinder, which at once condenses the steam and

creates a vacuum. The piston then makes its stroke,

driven by atmospheric pressure, and so raises the

pump rod. But there is now some water in the

cylinder, partly condensed steam, partly the water

that formed the jet. When, therefore, cock b is

opened again, cock c is also opened, and this water

is drained away down the pipe that enters the

bottom of the cylinder on the left in the diagram. In

this way the pump is kept working .the stroke of the

piston sucking the water up into it, and the fall of

the weight driving it out again.

Watt, equipped with new knowledge, turned again to

his model. He could now calculate what volume of

steam was being generated for each stroke of the

piston. He compared this with the volume needed to

fill the cylinder, and found that it was three or four

times as great. In fact, as much as three-quarters of

the steam was being wasted. His precise, orderly

mind was shocked by this discovery. And the defect

was not due to some detail in the machine; it was

fundamental. To condense the steam and create a

vacuum, the cylinder had to be cooled. When fresh

steam was admitted for the next stroke it went on

condensing, uselessly, until it had heated the cylinder

up to its own temperature. There lay the waste. It

had been worse still in the first Newcomen engines,

where the cylinder was cooled by being douched

with cold water outside. The internal jet condensed

the steam without making the walls of the cylinder

so cold. That was why it had been adopted. But the

waste of steam, though reduced, was still enormous.

The obvious lesson to be learned from this was that

the jet must be as small as possible in order to cool

the cylinder as little as possible. His observations on

Latent Heat taught that when the steam in the

cylinder was being condensed it gave out its

immense store of heat, which went to raise the

temperature of the water that had been injected.

There was a danger that, instead of the cold water

condensing the steam, the steam would vaporise the

water. If this happened at all, the vacuum would be

incomplete, and there would be some steam left in

the cylinder to resist the descent of the piston. His

first series of experiments had shown him that, as

the water was in a vacuum, it did not need to be

heated to boiling point, namely 212¡~~ before it

turned to vapour; it would boil at the much lower

temperature of I00¡. The conclusion was that the

machine was, in fact, always being clogged by

vapour under the piston, and the only way to reduce

this defect was to inject a lot of cold water, too

much for the steam to heat to I00¡; the jet must be

as large as possible.

He seemed to be stuck. If the oracle of science,

when consulted by its most accomplished high

priest, replies that the jet must be as small as

possible, but, on the other hand, it must be as large

as possible, the inquirer can only curse the oracle

and make a jet of medium size. This was precisely

what the engineers had done. But Watt was not

satisfied. An engine that was so wasteful offended

his sense of mechanical beauty. He refused to

confess himself beaten. " Nature," he used to say, "

has a weak side, if we can only find it out." He put

his case to himself in a new way. The cylinder must

never be at a temperature of less than 2I2¡ otherwise

steam will be prematurely condensed and wasted.

The cylinder must always be at a temperature of less

than I00¡otherwise the water that is injected will turn

to vapour and obstruct the action of the Pi machine.

Was that any more helpful ? It hardly seemed so.

For days he walked about torturing his brain in the

effort to achieve the impossible. Then quite

suddenly the simple and obvious solution dawned

on him. It all happened on a Sunday afternoon walk.

There must be two different temperatures. Very

well; then there must be two separate vessels. Keep

the cylinder always hot, and condense the steam

somewhere else. Make a separate condenser,

communicating with the cylinder, and keep that

always cold. Not a particle of heat will be wasted.

Start with both the cylinder and the condenser full

of steam. Condense the steam in the condenser and

make a vacuum there. In will rush the steam from

the cylinderÑfor steam is elasticÑmaking a vacuum

there, at second hand, as it were. Down will come

the piston. The thing is done. " I had not walked

farther than the Golf House when the whole thing

was arranged in my mind."

When the substance of Watt's great invention is put

down in black and white it hardly seems to provide a

sufficient excuse for writing a biography of the

inventor. It merely carried the improvements of

Savery and Newcomen one step farther. Papin had

one vessel only, which served as boiler, cylinder and

condenser. Newcomen, in order to reduce the waste

of heat, adopted Savery's idea and had two separate

vessels, a boiler and a cylinder- condenser. Watt, in

order to reduce the waste still further, had three.

But technically Watt's claim to the title of inventor

of the steam- engine is indisputable. Newcomen's

machine made use of steam, but it was driven by the

force of the atmosphere, and was often, with ~

greater accuracy, called an " atmospheric engine."

The nature of Watt's improvement led him to cut

out the air altogether. He wanted to keep the

cylinder hot, and contact with the air was bound to

cool it. There must, however, be some kind of "

atmosphere " to press on the piston and drive it into

the vacuum. Watt set the cylinder, just as it was, in

an air-tight case filled with steam. As steam is elastic

and expansive, it pressed on the piston in exactly the

same way as the atmosphere in Newcomen's engine.

Here, then, was an engine driven by the pressure of

steam alone, the first real " steamengine." But it did

not require that dangerous and expensive article,

highpressure steam. It was satisfied with the safe,

familiar, low-pressure steam, assisted in its action by

a vacuum that eliminated resistance.

Watt's invention led directly to a further

improvement of equal importance. Up till now

engines had only one driving stroke, the downward

one. The piston was drawn up by a weight on the far

end of the beam. This was still the case in Watt's

first engines. It could not be otherwise, since he

used an open cylinder sitting in an atmosphere of

steam. Very soon, however, he abandoned this in

favour of a closed cylinder communicating at both

ends with the boiler.l Now, when the piston was at

the bottom, the steam above it was in an enclosed

space in which a vacuum could be created by

condensation, exactly as for the downward stroke.

This would give the engine two driving strokes

instead of one.

Naturally this point did not escape Watt, but he did

not introduce it into his patented designs till I782.

The reason was this. The " doubleacting " engine

required a very complicated mechanism to connect

the cylinder twice over both with the boiler and with

the condenser, and to provide for the automatic

opening and shutting of the various taps at the right

moment. The single engine already overtaxed the

intelligence of the average engineer; Watt trembled

to think what might happen if he introduced him to

the double. He was only waiting till the simpler

machine had proved its worth and been accepted by

the industrial world; then he offered them the

creations of his riper genius.

But Watt's claim is not a technical one only.

Newcomen's engine was a rarity, and was bound to

remain a rarity, because it was uneconomical; there

were few industries in which it could pay its way.

Watt's engine, owing to its superiority in efficiency

and economy, was able to spread from the mines to

the iron foundries, from the iron foundries to the

corn mills, from the corn mills to the cotton

factories, until the industry of the nation had been

transformed. Nor was his success due simply to the

fact that his invention came at the crucial moment,

and put the finishing touch to work done by others,

for which others deserve the credit. Watt's

contributions demanded higher qualities than were

possessed by any of his predecessors. Papin was a

clever scientist; Newcomenwas an ingenious

mechanic. But Watt was a greater scientist than

Papin and a greater mechanic than Newcomen. His

invention was not just a happy inspiration. It was the

fruit of months of hard work which no one without

his genius could have accomplished. The solution

seems simple, because he had thoroughly analysed

every factor in the problem and reduced it to its

simplest form. That was the most diflicult part of his

task, demanding the brain of a scientist guided by

the instincts of a mechanic. Newcomen had never

realised what the problem was; Papin could never

have solved it in practice. Watt saw it, explored it,

and pressed on to its solution by a process of

irresistible logic.

But that was not the end. There followed years of

hard work, demanding the supreme skill of the

mechanic guided by the brain of the scientist. The

invention was made in I765 and patented in I769 but

it was ten years before he had produced an engine

that satisfied him.

All that time he was toiling away at the mechanical

details, trying various forms of condenser,

experimenting in devices for keeping the piston tight

in the cylinder, and going over all the valves, cocks

and connecting mechanism to make sure that

everywhere there was perfect accuracy and perfect

economy. When he had finished, the engine was, so

far as the craftsmanship of the day allowed, a work

of art. It was as different from its predecessors as

the modern bicycle is from the velocipede of the

'eighties. In creating the steam-engine Watt created

the science of mechanical engineering.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Partnership of Watt and Roebuck

" I know Mammon too; Banks-of-England, Credit-

systems, world-wide possibilities of work and traffic;

and applaud and admire them. Mammon is like Fire;

the usefullest of all servants, if the frightfullest of all

masters."ÑCARLYLE.

WATT came home jubilant from his Sunday

afternoon walk on the Green, and sat down to think

out all the implications of his new idea. For two days

he enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of building engines

in the world of his imagination, watching the parts

fly to their places the instant they were conceived,

with never a leaky joint nor a broken screw. Swiftly

the perfect engine of his dreams took shape in his

mind. Then he turned from his arm-chair to his

laboratory bench. An apparatus was set up to test

the principles underlying the invention. The results

pleased him. He was convinced he was on the right

track. At the end of April, I765~ he wrote to a

friend a letter full of confidence. He had calculated

the capacities of his engine as compared with those

of the old type, " and if there is not some devil in the

hedge, mine ought to raise water to 44 feet with the

same quantity of steam that theirs does to 32.... In

short, I can think of nothing else but this machine. I

hope to have the decisive trial before I see you."

Shortly after this Robison, who had been away and

knew nothing of the invention, came back, and went

round to have a chat with him. He found Watt in his

room contemplating a little tin cistern which seemed

to absorb all his thoughts. Robison began talking

steam-engine " shop," telling Watt of some new

ideas that had occurred to him while he was away,

and might be of value for their work; for he always

regarded himself as a sort of partner in Watt's

researches. This time he was hopelessly out of date,

and the slightly lecturing tone jarred on Watt's

excited nerves. " You need not fash yourself any

more about that, man," he exclaimed sharply; " I

have now made an engine that shall not waste a

particle of steam. It shall all be boiling hotÑaye, and

hot water injected if I please." And he pushed the

little cistern out of sight under the table, and refused

to answer a single question.

He was proud of his secret then, and, strong in the

sense of his own power, he wanted nobody's help.

He was weary and heartbroken, ready to cling to any

one who had strength to support his weakness,

before the first of his engines was at work; and long

after that too.

His difficulties began when he started to makea

working model. A hundred tiresome problems of

detail were revealed which had not existed in the

immaterial world of his imagination. The piston

must fit tightly in the cylinder, but with as little

friction as possible. It was quite certain that no

craftsman then alive could make the metal parts so

accurately that they fulfilled these conditions without

other help. Newcomen had solved this problem by

having water lying on the top of the piston to

prevent the passage of air through the cracks. But

Watt's cylinder must be absolutely dry. He tried

every kind of padding: cork, tallow, horse-dung,

collars of cloth treated with varnish, or pasteboard

soaked in linseed oil. The exact form of the

condenser was another source of trouble. Many

patterns were tried and rejected before he was

satisfied. Then the condenser had to be drained of

the water that formed in it. By this time he was

getting irritable and impatient. When the faithful

Robison meekly suggested some special kind of

education pipe for this purpose, he burst out, " Oh,

man, do you imagine me so dull as not to have

thought on that long ago P " His mind was working

faster than it had ever worked before; every nerve

was strained for speed. He was like a hound in full

cry called back to inspect a rabbit hole.

The most maddening part of it was that he, who was

accustomed to work with apapparatus fashioned

with all the delicacy of his own exquisite skill, was

now, when practising " mechanics in great," as he

called it, compelled to accept the clumsy

approximations of the local blacksmith. He fumed

and fretted at the leisurely methods of the British

workman, and the moment the parts arrived, off he

darted to make the trial for which he had been

waiting impatiently for weeks, only to find that the

cylinder was untrue, or the pipes leaked, and he must

go home again, with his work at a standstill. At the

crucial moment his " old white-iron man," who

made the condensers, died, and he had to face the

exasperating task of training another to take his

place.

Nor did he make things any easier for his men. He

was a very exacting master, and nothing short of

perfection would satisfy him. The engine was his

noblest artistic creation, and he loved it as a child.

He could not bear to see its beauty marred by

clumsy hands. And his creative faculties never

rested; they were part of his vitality, and could not

be turned off like a tap while the mechanics were at

work. Consequently he was always making little

changes and revising the designs while the engine

was being built, greatly to the distress of the

builders. The confusion that resulted was often as

much his fault as theirs. The more he was worried,

the more inventive he became, for, said he, "

Thinking on these things is a kind of relief amidst

my vexations."

His next difficulties were financial. He was quite

convinced that his invention had a high commercial

value. It would be very profitable to somebody. But

in the meantime he wanted a few thousand pounds

to complete his experiments, build a factory, and

manufacture the engines that should persuade the

world that he was right. The profits would eventually

cover this outlay, but he wanted to spend those

profits in advance. Here enters the credit system.

The penniless inventor is at the mercy of Mammon.

His idea is barren and cannot give birth to wealth

until it has been fertilised by wealth. If Science is the

mother of invention, Finance is its father. To-day

the efforts of a highly organised matrimonial agency

keep up the birthrate. The commercial world bristles

with devices for bringing the two parents together.

There is a host of rich captains of industry on the

look out for new ideas, and behind these conduits

through which flows the money that irrigates the

fields of trade, are the reservoirs of the banks.

Behind them too is the sea of the money-making

public, ready to be enticed by the company

promoter to invest its savings in any venture that

promises high profits on the authority of high

personages. This feature of modern civilisation, like

nearly every other, dates, I as we have seen, from the

seventeenth century. In that fascinating and fertile

age banks and jointstock companies established

themselves as parts of the economic system, and up

and down the years heavily sported that quaint

monstrosity, that genius presiding at the birth of

speculation, the Projector. " Necessity, which is

allowed to be the Mother of Invention," wrote

Defoe, as he watched the old century dying, "has so

violently agitated the wits of men at this time, that it

seems not at all improper, by way of distinction, to

call it the Projecting Age."

The Projector, ancestor of the company promoter of

to-day, was dabbling in the mysteries of credit. He

muttered his spells, and the spirits of industry flew

to do his bidding. Even to him who spoke the word

it was a miracle, beyond the understanding of man.

There seemed to be no limit to this new-won power,

nothing that it could not accomplish. " Credit makes

the soldier fight without pay, the armies march

without provisions, and it makes tradesmen keep

open shop without stock. The force of credit is not

to be described by words; he that has credit is

invulnerable, whether he has money or no; nay, it

will make money." But if the magic lamp is rubbed

too often, the genie gets out of temper and out of

control. So it was with credit in the hands of these

ignorant miracle-workers. Adventures went amiss,

the bubble was pricked, and credit itself lost its

credit. The tragi-comic fiasco of the South Sea

Bubble struck a blow at Finance from which it was

slow to recover. Government, afraid lest it might do

more damage, put obstacles in the way of its

expansion. No joint-stock company might be

founded without sanction of an Act of Parliament.

Brokers must be licensed and must only do such

business as the authorities considered respectable,

and joint-stock banking was a monopoly in the

hands of the Bank of England.

As the eighteenth century wore on, the activities of

Finance revived. The Stock Exchange did a brisk

business, small private banks sprang up all over the

country, while brokers and jobbers never lacked

either customers or victims. Nevertheless in Watt's

day the financing of a new enterprise was a very

difficult operation. The banks were mostly small

affairs without substantial resources, and, as has

always been the practice in England, were not

prepared to take any of the risks of business. The

only type of company that could be floated without

a special Act of Parliament was an association which

the law treated as a partnership, and which did not

enjoy the privilege of limited liability. As the

ordinary investor is not prepared to shoulder the

risks and responsibilities of partnership or to stake

his entire property on a speculative venture, such

bodies did not find it easy to draw on the savings of

the general public. The investor's only chance, with

no bank to help him and no Projector to turn him

into a company, was to discover among the few

existing rich capitalists one who would go shares in

his idea for ready money. And even then he knew

that his partner would have to embark on the

perilous seas of financial speculation, trusting to the

crazy ship of an imperfect credit system which might

go to the bottom, carrying his invention with it.

Watt's best friend in these times of trial was Joseph

Black. He followed every step of his work with the

keenest interest, was always ready with precious

advice and stimulating suggestions, and he lent him

money. But Black knew well enough that the burden

of financing so big an enterprise was too heavy for

him to bear; knew, too, that in spite of his help, Watt

was already running heavily into debt. He began to

look for some one to take his place. The choice was

not wide. The sinking of large sums in this invention

was bound to be attended by risks. The engine had

not yet been proved a success; it could not be

proved successful until much money had been spent

on further experiments. Even if it passed all tests,

skill would be needed to find a market. There was an

active demand for it in the mines, but only on

condition that it was cheaper and more economical

than the engines already in use. Its introduction into

many other industries 87 depended on those

industries being remodelled so as to receive it. The

class of industrial capitalists, owners of big

workshops and factories, was a small one. The

wealth of the country was for the most part in the

hands either of landed gentry, who, if they had any

enterprise, found scope enough for it in those

agricultural pursuits which were just becoming

fashionable, or of merchants, who lived by trade,

both foreign and domestic, or by providing

employment to large numbers of scattered

craftsmen. To such men the invention of the steam-

engine was just a little commotion under the surface

in a remote and unfamiliar corner of the world of

industry. It was of no use to them; they could not

estimate its possible value to others. Support had to

be found in that section of the economic world

which the engine was designed immediately to serve.

The man who at once occurred to Black was his

friend Dr. Roebuck. Roebuck was a Birmingham

physician who had taken up the study of chemistry

and its application to the processes of industry. His

first commercial success was a factory for the

manufacture of sulphuric acid established at

Prestonpans. From this he passed on to iron. The

iron trade had been revolutionised earlier in the

century by the discovery of a method of smelting

with coke instead of charcoal as fuel. The process

needed a big plant, and the use of mechanical means

for getting a powerful blast. The trade now offered

great scope for individual enterprise both in

organisation and in technical development, especially

as the processes subsequent to smelting had hardly

been touched by the earlier invention. Roebuck

chose as his site the banks of the river Carron in

Stirlingshire, not far from Falkirk. The Carron

Ironworks, planned on an imposing scale and built

with the aid of the engineer Smeaton, were formally

opened on the 1st of January, I760.

Roebuck seemed to be the ideal man for the

purpose. He was extremely wealthy, and had a

natural sympathy with any bold enterprise. He was a

scientist, and could be expected to appreciate, even

from an imperfect model, the possibilities of the

engine. He himself stood to gain by the invention,

since the chief obstacle to progress in his industry

was the limit to the efficiency of water-power as a

means to work the bellows that drove the air into

the blastfurnaces. Finally, his establishment could

easily be adapted to the manufacture of engines on a

large scale. Black, therefore, introduced the two

men, and in the summer of I765 they entered into

correspondence with one another.

The character of this early correspondence was

ominous. Roebuck was much attracted by Watt, but

he was full of caution. Before he com mitted himself

he wished to make certain that the invention was

sound; he bombarded Watt with questions and

irritated him with worthless criticism. Watt was by

this time satisfied with the performances of his first

model and ready to start on a larger and more

perfect one. For Roebuck's sake he had to go over

all the ground again and explain to him the nature

and results of his original scientific experiments.

And Roebuck was a somewhat sceptical pupil. He

even questioned the necessity for a separate

condenser, the basic idea of the invention, and much

valuable time was wasted in trying alternatives which

Watt knew well were useless. There were

disadvantages in having a partner who professed to

be a scientist as well as a financier. It was a further

disappointment to Watt to find that, when he sent

drawings of a piston and cylinder to be cast at

Carron for use in a big-scale model, the cylinder

"was very illbored, and thereby useless, though the

best Carron could make." The least he had expected

to get out of the connection with Roebuck was

access to first-rate workmanship.

After more than a year's careful consideration,

Roebuck decided to take the risk and entered into an

agreement with Watt. He undertook to pay his

outstanding debt of £I000 and to bear all future cost

of experiments and of securing a patent. In return

for this he was to have two-thirds of the property of

the invention. It really seemed as if all worries of

finance and business management had been lifted

off Watt's shoulders, leaving him free to devote

himself uninterruptedly to the experimental side of

the work. And there still remained much to be done.

The partners were not yet ready to apply for a

patent. At the beginning of I 768 Watt was busy

with a model which was to be the last before they

embarked on a full-sized engine. He felt he was

making great progress. " I am going to be at home,

God willing, for some time," he wrote to his friend

Lind on 5th January. " I am going to try some things

I am persuaded you would like to see (perpetual

mobiles, the elixir magicum, and some other trifles

of that kind). Seriously, it would give me great

pleasure if you could spend a few weeks with me. I

think I could entertain you. What I knew about the

steamengine before you went away [December,

I765] was but a trifle to what I know now."

Evidently he was in high spirits. The future seemed

brighter now that he had Roebuck behind him. But,

in reality, he was just entering on the greatest crisis

of his life, the time when he came nearest to

throwing up the whole thing in despair.

His troubles began in April, and are related in a

series of letters to Roebuck. " I have been close

working at the engine since I wrote you, he writes on

April 1st, " but have not got it perfectly tight yet,

though it is much better.... I would write you

oftener, but my health is but indifferent, and I have

had no good news lately." Four days later he reports

that some mercury from the gaugepipe got into the

cylinder " and has played the devil with the solder.

This throws us back at least three days, and is very

vexatious." Then some slight defect led him to make

considerable changes in the design, and on May Ioth

he wrote: " I have got the two new exhausting

cylinders cast, bored, and partly turned; also the new

condensers made: and expect to have it going again

by the end of the week." A fortnight later he made a

very favourable report, concluding with the words, "

I sincerely wish you joy of this successful result, and

hope it will make you some return for the

obligations I ever will remain under to you." But

time passed and the indefatigable inventor was still

pulling his model to pieces in order to introduce the

new devices that were constantly cropping up in his

fertile brain. When October came, and the

experiments still dragged on, Roebuck began to lose

patience. He was satisfied with the model as it was.

The specifications for the patent were being

prepared, and he was eager to begin manufacturing

for the market. " I want much effectually to try the

machine at large," he wrote. " You are letting the

most active part of your life insensibly glide away. A

day, a moment, ought not to be lost. And you

should not suffer your thoughts to be diverted by

any other object, or even improvement of this, but

only the speediest and most effectual manner of

executing one of a proper size, according to your

present ideas."

But Watt was incorrigible and unrepentant. It was

useless to tell him not to think of improvements, or

to ask him to proceed on the lines of his " present

ideas," for his ideas changed daily, or even hourly.

So, although a patent was applied for, and

securedÑit bore date January 5th, I769Ñand

although plans were concocted for erecting a full-

size trial engine in a shed at the back of the doctor's

house at Kinneil, Watt went on tinkering at his

beloved model. " I wrote you last night of my having

taken asunder the engine to add an external cylinder

and a thinner bottom," he writes cheerfully in

February. And ten days later, " I made an imperfect

trial to-day of an alteration in the condenser, with

which I am much pleased "; but by the end of May

he was expressing equal satisfaction with a new

condenser of an entirely different pattern. The

unhappy Roebuck must have felt that there was

nothing more trying to the patience than to have

dealings with a man of genius.

Watt's genius was a tormentor to him as well as to

his friends. Its ceaseless bounding energy rattled the

frail body that it inhabited, as the imprisoned steam

shook the fabric of one of his engines. When his

health was bad he shrank from every effort except

that of his work. He was afraid of the journey from

Glasgow to Kinneil, which might have refreshed

him, because, he said, " I am far from well, and the

fatigue of the ride would disable me from doing

anything for three or four days." But he remained

chained to his workshop, wearing himself out with

labour which racking headaches often rendered quite

fruitless. His strength flagged before he could put

his ideas into effect. " Much contrived, and little

executed," he lamented. " How much would health

and spirits be worth to me ! " " I have found my

engine much better of the alterations I mentioned in

my last. Still plagued with headaches, and sometimes

heartaches. I received Mr. Boulton's, to whom my

compliments." It was as if, as he sat at his work, the

pain grew and mounted in his brain, and, suffusing

his thoughts, distilled one pure drop of misery on to

the paper before him amidst the jargon of valves and

cisterns. Sometimes he felt he had not made one

inch of progress since the day that the idea of the

engine first came to him. " I am not near so capable

as I was once. I find that I am not the same person I

was four years ago, when I invented the fire-engine,

and foresaw, even before I made a model, almost

every circumstance that has since occurred.... The

necessary experience in great was wanting; in

acquiring it I have met with many disappointments. I

must have sunk under the burthen of them if I had

not been supported by the friendship of Dr.

Roebuck. I have now brought the engine near a

conclusion, yet I am not in idea nearer that rest I

wish for than I was four years ago. However, I am

resolved to do all I can to carry on this business, and

if it does not thrive with me, I will lay aside the

burthen I cannot carry. Of all things in life there is

nothing more foolish than inventing. "

During all this time, and during the years that

followed in which the trial engine was being built at

Kinneil, Watt had to find means to earn his living.

The engine was not now costing him anything, but it

brought him no income, and he had a wife and two

children to support. At first he kept his odd mixed

business going at his Glasgow shop, but it declined

after the death of his partner, John Craig. The orders

sent by his rather thoughtless friends distracted him

from more important work. One of the earliest

letters from Roebuck, after discussing the science of

heat, concludes with a postscript: " The microscope

is safe arrived, and affords fine amusement; but Mrs.

Roebuck desires me to remind you of the guitar."

The guitar, forsooth ! when he was already engaged

in experiments on the steam engine. About the same

time he invented an ingenious machine for drawing

in perspective for which he had several orders at

three guineas apiece. As his reputation as an

engineer grew he was offered surveying work, which,

though not well paid, brought in a more regular

income than the chance sales of his little shop. His

first undertaking of any size was a canal to connect

Glasgow with the collieries at Monkland. The survey

was completed in I769 and he was then asked to

supervise the work of construction. Rather against

his better judgment he accepted, for he knew that

the work would be hard and would occupy him for

three or four days a week, but he could not afford to

throw away a chance of earning £200 a year. To his

surprise he found the open-air life suited him. " The

vaguing about the country, and bodily fatigue, have

given me health and spirits beyond what I

commonly enjoy at this dreary season, though they

would still thole amends. Hire yourself to somebody

for a ploughman; it will cure ennui." That was in

January I770 and he was at it all that year and

through the following winter. The work brought its

worries. It was new to him, and he kept meeting

problems that taxed his ingenuity to the full. Of

course the money ran out before the work was

finished, and he had troublesome negotiations to

conduct with con tractors and workmen. There was

nothing he hated more. " Nothing is more contrary

to my disposition than bustling and bargaining with

mankind: yet that is the life I now constantly

lead."<./p>

He was occupied with the Monkland Canal for over

two years, and then more work of the same kind

came along. He executed surveys for a number of

canals, some of which were carried out, others not.

Among them was a survey and estimate for a canal

from Fort William to Inverness, following the line of

the famous Caledonian Canal afterwards built by

Telford. His report was put on one side at the time,

but Telford came across it long afterwards among

some Treasury papers. " I believe it is yours," he

wrote to Watt, " because it is just and masterly; and I

have introduced in my Report your general

description, plainly saying that it could not be so well

told in any other words." Watt became more and

more absorbed in his new occupation. Naturally he

applied his inventive faculties to the instruments

used by surveyors, and produced quadrants and

micrometers and a " dividingscrew " that would

divide an inch into a thousand equal parts. He built a

bridge over the Clyde, and improved the harbours of

Greenock and Port-Glasgow.

All this employment, together with the host of little

scientific problems that he explored at this time,

served to distract his mind from his unlucky steam-

engine. For things were going very badly at Kinneil.

There was always something amiss with the trial

engine, and Watt's difficulties were increased by the

faultiness of the goods turned out by the Carron

works. The more distant success appeared, the more

readily Watt accepted other kinds of employment. "

I cannot," he wrote, " on an uncertainty, refuse every

piece of business that offers." He was constantly

away and tried to direct experiments by letter. To

make matters worse, Roebuck was in financial

difficulties. In order to get control of his raw

material he had taken a lease of the Duke of

Hamilton's coal-mines at Borrowston ness. The

speculation was a complete failure and crippled his

finances. He was no longer bearing the cost of the

experiments and had not even been able to pay the

expenses of the patent Watt had been forced to

borrow from Black again. He began to be haunted

by the expecta- tion of failure, and with it the ruin of

his life's work. " To-day I entered into the thirty-

fifth year of my life," he wrote in I770 ' and I think I

have hardly done thirty-five pence worth of good in

the world; but I cannot help it." Work on the engine

stopped for want of funds. He was out of pocket

more than the value of his share in the invention. He

even spoke of converting the " damned engine " into

a machine of thee old type and selling it for what it

would fetch. The trade depression and financial

crisis of 1772 finally smashed Roebuck. The

partnership had come to grief, and there was

nothing left to be done but try to save something

out of the wreck. The patent was worthless. The

engine at Kinneil was perishing. Watt had long been

prepared for the failure of his own projects, but he

could not endure the thought that he had helped to

bring ruin on his friend.

"My heart bleeds for his situation, and I can do

nothing to help him. I stuck by him till I have much

hurt myself; I can do so no longer; my family calls

for my care to provide for them."

This letter was written in July 1773. But his cup of

misery was not yet full. Within three months his wife

was dead.

CHAPTER SIX

Matthew Boulton of Soho

" I would not be understood as saying that there is

not what may be called a genius for business, an

extraordinary capacity for affairs, quickness and

comprehension united, an insight into character, an

acquaintance with a number of particular

circumstances, a variety of expedients, a tact for

finding out what will do."ÑHAZLITT.

WATT'S situation was not in reality as desperate as

might appear from the account that has just been

given. For when the crisis came he was not entirely

dependent on Roebuck for support. Among

Roebuck's friends in his Birmingham days was

Matthew Boulton the big hardware manufacturer.

Boulton was not merely a competent scientist and a

keen patron of the arts; he was, without doubt, the

greatest industrial organiser of the century. Roebuck

had tried to persuade him to join him in his

excursions into coal-mining, but Boulton was fully

occupied with his own factory at Birmingham and

had wisely declined. The two men continued good

friends, and when Roebuck heard of Watt's

invention he naturally told Boulton about it, for he

knew that he too had been doing some experiments

on " fire-engines " with a view to introducing them

into his own works. Boulton's interest was at once

aroused, and he invited Watt to come and see him.

In I767 Watt went, but Boulton was away, and it was

his friend, Dr. Small, who showed him over the

factory. Boulton had been for some five years

installed in his magnificent premises at Soho, two

miles north of Birmingham. The inspection of this

most up-to-date of modern factories made a great

impression on Watt. There was a quality about its

ordered efficiency that he had never met with

before. Roebuck and his works seemed crude and

feeble beside this creation of the organiser's genius.

And he was equally delighted with Dr. Small.

Small was a man after Watt's own heart. He t was an

ingenious scientist with a taste for mechanical

invention, and the agility of his mind and the

keenness of his perception enabled him to fathom

Watt's character, to follow, or even to anticipate, his

moods, and to appreciate the quality of his work. He

was quick to understand exactly how much progress

Watt had made, where he was certain and where he

was still guessing, and he was instantly at his side,

viewing the problem from the same angle, and never

needed to be brought laboriously up-to-date. He

fully shared that passion for perfection in design,

that acute sense of beauty in machinery which was

the cause of so much friction between Watt and

those of his colleagues who were out of sympathy

with this side of his character. There is more real

intimacy in his letters than in those of any other of

Watt's correspondents.

Watt came away from Soho with his eyes opened.

He had been given a glimpse of a world that was

new to him, and to which he instinctively felt that he

belonged. But already he was pledged to Roebuck.

He suffered all the torments of a young man who

marries in his own narrow circle and, on passing out

into a wider sphere, sees at once that he has married

too soon. At the same time he was absolutely loyal

to the partner he had chosen. Boulton and Small

were just as eager to capture him as he was to join

them, if he could do so without being unfair to

Roebuck. " Before I knew your connection with Dr.

R.," wrote Small, "my idea was, that you should

settle here, and that Boulton and I should assist you

as much as we could, which in any case we will most

certainly do." The most that Roebuck would

consider, when the case was put to him, was to allow

Boulton a limited share in the business, which would

have put him in the position of an inferior partner,

and would have prevented that close co-operation

between inventor and manufacturer which Boulton

regarded as essential. Boult on very rightly

mistrusted Roebuck's business ability, and, realising

that he was out of sympathy with Watt and did not

understand how to make things easy for him, he

wanted to get the unhappy engineer under his own

protection.

Watt talked over his troubles with his friend,

Professor Jardine, who then went to sound Roebuck

again. The letter in which he reported to Watt the

results of his interview is full of interest. " I waited

to find, without direct inquiry, if he had in any

respect consented to the proposal from the South;

but understand, that the more he is convinced of the

practicability of the scheme, the keener he is of

carrying it to practice yourselves for your mutual

advantage. . . . And, therefore, my opinion is, James,

that you will find it necessary, on account of your

intimate connection, to fall in with his senti

ments...." Then he touched on the point that hurt

Watt most of all. " The very nature of your

improvements is such that it is im possible it can fail

to succeed much to your interest, even though it

should not be carried to such perfection as might be

expected from the gentleman in the South's

assistance." But James was miserable at the prospect

of losing Boulton's help and with it the hope of

perfection, and he pressed Roebuck until he made a

definite offer. It was a very poor one} amounting

only to a share in the engine as regards the three

counties of Warwick, Stafford and Derby.

Boulton's reply to Watt is a masterpiece. The tone is

firm and decisive, suggesting the strong man of

business who knows his own mind and shrinks from

no responsibility, however great. His was the

strength that Watt was craving for to lift the burden

of anxiety from his shoulders. " It would not be

worth my while to make for three counties only; but

I find it very well worth my while to make for all the

world." And Watt knew that it was not an idle boast;

he could do it if he wanted to. At the same time he

showed a subtle appreciation of the causes of Watt's

distress. While professing to be giving his view of

the proper way of running the business, he painted a

picture which was the ideal of Watt's dreams. " My

idea was to settle a manufactory near to my own, by

the side of our canal, where I would erect all the

conveniences necessary for the completion of

engines, and from which manufactory we would

serve all the world with engines of all sizes. By these

means and your assistance we could engage and

instruct some excellent workmen, who . . . could

execute the invention 20 per cent. cheaper than it

would be otherwise executed, and with as great a

differ ence of accuracy as there is between the black

smith and the mathematical-instrument-maker." And

the letter concluded ambiguously, leaving a loophole

for fresh negotiations.

This brilliant piece of business diplomacy had its

effect. Watt never ceased to long for association

with these two men, the quick- witted scientist and

the strong and understanding man of business, who

perceived his wants even before he expressed them.

At the end of September, I769~~ Roebuck,

weakened by his own financial difficulties and Watt's

insistence, made Boulton a new offer. He proposed

to sell him one-third of the rights in the patent for a

sum of not less than a thousand pounds, to be fixed

later. Boulton was to have a year in which to decide

and complete the purchase. The formal proposal

was sent in writing on November 28th, and two days

later Small wrote to Watt, " I have only time to say

that Mr. Boulton and I have agreed with Dr.

Roebuck." To which Watt replied, " I shake hands

with you and Mr. Boulton on our connection, which

I hope will prove agreeable to us all." The immediate

result was that Watt sent drawings of an engine to

Boulton, which he at once began to put into

execution at Soho.

But the price had not been fixed nor the transaction

concluded, and before the year was out Roebuck's

financial distress was so evident that the whole

situation was changed. Boulton and Small had

accepted the offer of partnership, unsatisfactory

though it was, in order to help Watt. But now the

scheme was no longer merely unsatisfactory; it was

rapidly becoming dangerous. The price had been left

to Boulton. This put Watt in a very delicate position,

of which he was acutely sensible, for he could not

ask his friend Boulton to pay a high price for

something he was only buying to please him, nor

could he advise his friend and partner Roebuck,

considering his urgent need of money, to take a low

one. " I admire your delicacy," he wrote to Small, " I

have urged the Doctor to sell, and you to purchase,

perhaps further than I ought to have done. I have

had reasons which I cannot further explain by letter;

when you know them all, I suspect you will acquit

me of selfish designs in teasing you so much." There

was, in fact, so much delicacy on both sides, that no

progress could be made.

The commercial crisis that finally ruined Roebuck

also put Boulton into temporary difficulties, and all

hope of a conclusion vanished. But the solution

came another way. Roebuck went bankrupt, and his

affairs were put into the hands of trustees. This

Boulton had not expected, and at first he was not

certain how to deal with the situation. If Roebuck's

property in the engine had any value, all his creditors

had an equal right to share in it. Boulton was himself

a creditor to a considerable extent, and when he

found that the other creditors considered the engine

to be worthless, he was able, with their consent and

hearty approval, to take over the full property in the

patent in return for a complete renunciation of all

his claims on the estate. Nothing now stood in the

way of a new partner ship between Boulton and

Watt. In May, I774 Watt left Glasgow to join

Boulton at Soho.

Birmingham had been a town of some importance in

the Middle Ages, and was already famous for its

hardware when Leland drew up for his master,

Henry VIII, a full and picturesque account of the

resources, antiquities and curiosities of his kingdom.

In the seventeenth century specialisation went still

further, some branches of the hardware trade

moving to other centres. A traveller, writing in

I690's tells us that those " swords, heads of canes,

snuff-boxes and other fine works of steel," which

can be seen in such perfection in Milan, " can be had

better and cheaper at Birmingham." Its supremacy in

the production of all manner of metal trinkets and

plated goods won for it the name of " the toy shop

of Europe," and inspired a local poet to sing:

" See from the sooty toils what wonders rise !

Behold yon radiant family of toys ! Th' elastic buckle

casts a silver ray, And the gilt button emulates the

day; Here sparkling chains in bright confusion lie,

Chains not to fetter limbs, but grace the thigh."

The very rapid industrial development of

Birmingham was made possible by its freedom from

medieval restrictive customs. The great aim of new

and expanding industries in the early days of the

industrial revolution was to escape from " the

miserable little politics of corporate towns," for the

jealous spirit that had prevented Watt from setting

up his shop in Glasgow was an enemy to all progress

and innovation. But Birmingham had not been

incorporated, and it opened its doors to all. It had

no Gilds, prepared to see the nest empty rather than

run the risk of mothering a cuckoo, and no

champions of religious persecution, heroically

defending their city from the contamination of the

unorthodox. It was ready to welcome new blood

whether it ran in the veins of capitalists or

unapprenticed workmen, of Quakers or Dissenters.

Birmingham ardently embraced the doctrines of

modern commerce. By the middle of the eighteenth

century she enjoyed an unchallenged pre-eminence

in the fabrication of shoddy goods and gimcrack

vulgarities. She tickled the appetite of fashion for "

new- born gawds " and throve by the satisfaction of

its greed. For years she lived by buckles; buckles that

grew more dazzling and more monstrous every

season. But, in I790 the buckle was ousted by " the

effeminate shoe-string," and 20,000 good craftsmen

of Birmingham went hungry. It was an undignified

position for a great city, but she had only herself to

blame. She was suffering the same convulsion of

mind and body that afflicts the East when touched

by western civilisation. In changing her way of life

she rejected the old standards and could find none

to take their place. Quality was sacrificed for the

sake of quantity, and her products lost all permanent

value.

Matthew Boulton set himself steadfastly against the

degrading influences of the day, and he deserves

credit for having proved that quality may be

combined with quantity, and shares with Josiah

Wedgwood the almost unique distinction of having

made the factory the province of the artist. The

toymakers of Birmingham had many tricks to

deceive the inexpert eye of the purchaser, and

palmed off as articles of price much ill-made,

meretricious trash. Against these practices Boulton

never ceased to wage war. ." As I am an old

buttonmaker," he said, " allow me to advise my

brethren to make excellence rather than cheapness

their principle of rivalry." But the struggle still goes

on, and modern man now assumes, with affecting

modesty, that he has lost for ever the faculty,

possessed by his ancestors, of making articles that

are both sound and beautiful, and his ideal home is

fitted, indeed, with every modern convenience, but

beautifully furnished throughout with genuine

antiques.

Boulton inherited a comfortable fortune and a

prosperous business from his father, who died in

l759, but instead of retiring on the proceeds, he

devoted his life to the service of industry. Wishing

for larger premises, he selected a site at Soho, and

there built a factory to accommodate, it is said, over

a thousand workmen. Hither he migrated in I762

and, with no experience to guide him and no one to

turn to for advice, he created by his inventive genius

and his force of character an organisation that was

accepted as a model by all the aspiring captains of

industry of that generation and the next, including

even Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of Etruria. He

was soon one of the best known men in England. In

order to provide himself with designs to copy, he

borrowed the art treasures of the nobility, made

drawings of the exhibits in the British Museum, and

sent agents to ransack the curio shops of Italy. His

work in consequence became fashionable in high

society, and won a reputation throughout Europe.

He had long interviews with the King and Queen,

both of whom gave him several orders. " The king,"

he wrote to his wife, " hath bought a pair of

cassolets, a Titus, a Venus clock, and some other

things, and inquired this morning how yesterday's

sale went. I shall see him again, I believe. I was with

them, the Queen and all the children, between two

and three hours.... The Queen showed me her last

child, which is a beauty." A few years earlier he had

not been considered good enough to marry into one

of the county families. Soho became one of the

sights of the kingdom and was visited by the

crowned heads and nobility of Europe; Boulton won

recognition as the greatest living authority on

matters of industry and trade, and became the

trusted adviser of governments. But it was not only

on account of his business ability and his great

resources that Watt found in Boulton the ideal

associate. Watt needed a sympathetic friend as well

as a partner, and I Boulton's personality fitted him to

fulfil both functions. He was a profound judge of

character, I and understood Watt's longings and

anxieties better than he did himself. He had a deep I

affection for his colleague which increased with

time, and throughout the period of their partner ship

he sustained him with his unselfish devotion. Watt

was often petulant and irritable, chafing under

discomforts that were trivial compared with the

worries that Boulton had voluntarily taken upon

himself in order to relieve his friend's anxieties. But

Boulton's patience never failed, and he watched over

him and cared for him as a nurse watches over a

delicate, nervous child. Boulton was like a

comfortable arm-chair after a long day's walk. His

strength was always there to support you) his

gentleness and sympathy to receive you and protect

you from all the jarring roughnesses of the world.

His massive forehead, strong features, and firm

mouth inspired confid ence, and his eyes invited

confidences. In ingenuity of mind, Watt was his

superior, but Boulton has a place among the great

men of history.

When Watt came to Soho, work began at once. The

old Kinneil engine was brought over in pieces,

finished, and set to pump the water that drove the

water-wheels in the factory. It was familiarly known

as " Beelzebub." In December, I7742 Watt wrote to

his father: "The business I am here about has turned

out rather successful, that is to say, that the fire-

engine I have invented is now going, and answers

much better than any other that has yet been made;

and I expect that the invention will be very

beneficial to me." It was the first decisive success he

had been able to report since the birth of his idea,

nine years before. At the moment, too, the prospects

of finding a market for the engines were good. In

I77I Boulton had heard that four or five copper

mines in Cornwall were about to be abandoned

owing to the cost of the coal consumed by their old

pumping engines, and at the same time he had had

inquiries from a mining company in Derbyshire. But

already there were competitors in the field. Other

engineers were at work, both improving the old

atmospheric engine and producing new models of

their own, and one at least had stolen Watt's ideas.

Boulton realised that he had no sufficient guarantee

that, if he invested his capital in the engine, he

would be able to reap the profits that were his due.

The patent was for fourteen years, and six of these

had passed before he was in a position to execute a

single order. Boulton's first care was to discover how

he could obtain an extension of the period during

which he and Watt might enjoy a monopoly of

manufacture, and at the same time secure a public

confirmation of their rights which would strengthen

their hands in dealing with pirates. He sent Watt up

to London to prospect. Boulton favoured the plan

of surrendering the patent and getting a new one.

This would have allowed him to increase its

effectiveness by patching up any loopholes it might

contain. But Watt reported that every one advised

him to get the existing patent prolonged by Act of

Parliament.

This course was adopted, and a bill was introduced

in February I775; owing to considerable opposition

in the House, it was not passed till the following

May. It recited that, whereas James Watt had carried

out experiments along the lines indicated in his

patent, and whereas heavy expenses had been

incurred and would still have to be incurred before

the public could receive the full benefit of his

valuable invention, so that " the whole term granted

by the said Letters Patent may probably elapse

before the said James Watt can receive an advantage

adequate to his labour and invention," it was enacted

that the sole privilege of making and selling his

engines in Great Britain and her colonies should be

vested in him and his executors for a term of

twentyfive years. Boulton now felt that he could

safely embark on manufacture on an extensive scale.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Creation of the Engine Business at Soho

Behold yon mansion flank'd by crowding trees

Grace the green slope, and court the southern

breeze, Genius and worth with Boulton there reside,

Boulton, of arts the patron and the pride I

Commerce with rev'rence at thy name shall bow,

Thou fam'd creator of the fam'd Soho ! " J.

MORFITT.

WORK was started at once on two engines, one for

Bloomfield Colliery, some fourteen miles out of

Birmingham, and the other for John Wilkinson's

ironworks at Broseley, in the Wrekin district. On the

success of these engines depended the future of the

whole enter prise. The world of industry was

watching anxiously to see whether this new power

would show itself to be a sound investment. Re

membering how he had been hampered in his earlier

experiments by bad workmanship, Watt was in

terror lest some ill-executed part might ruin the

effect of the first public trials. He could trust

Boulton to see that all the more delicate pieces of

mechanism, the valves, controls, con denser and so

forth, which were manufactured at Soho, were made

accurately to his designs, but the heavy iron parts,

and especially the cylinder, had to be cast elsewhere.

When conducting his earlier experiments with Small,

Boulton had got his cylinders from Coalbrookdale,

the famous ironworks belonging to the Darby

family, the originators of the practice of smelting

with coke in place of charcoal. But they did no

better than Carron, and the castings were found to

be " unsound, and totally useless, and done over

with some stuff to conceal their defects."

The situation was saved by John Wilkinson, the

biggest figure in the history of the British iron

industry. Wilkinson, who had inherited his father's

works at Bersham, in Denbighshire, and then started

a new foundry at Broseley, next door to the Darby

works at Coalbrookdale, had a consuming passion

for iron. His vision of the future was a world in

which everything would be constructed of iron. He

made an iron pulpit for his parish church, iron

writing tablets for the village school children, in

which they wrote in sand with an iron pen, and

finally left directions that he was to be buried in an

iron coffin. Shortly before Watt joined Boulton at

Soho Wilkinson had invented a new way of boring

cylinders. In the old method the tools could not be

kept rigid and so, although the diameter of the

cylinder remained constant throughout, the bore did

not proceed from end to end along a straight line.

There was a subtle curve in the walls of the cylinder

which caused the piston to jam. Wilkinson remedied

this defect, and so contributed the last factor needed

to make the manufacture of steam-engines a

commercial possibility.

In these two first engines the small parts were made

at Soho, the big by Wilkinson, and the erection of

the engine was supervised by Watt. When he went to

Broseley, Boulton forbade him to let the engine

make a single stroke until he was certain it would

work without a hitch, " and then, in the name of

God, fall to and do your best." The whole beauty of

the machine must be revealed to the spectators in

one miraculous moment. The stratagem was entirely

successful and the impression created was profound.

The Bloomfield engine was " opened " with great

ceremony in March I776. The trial took place in the

presence of the proprietors of the colliery and, as the

Birmingham Gazette informs us, of " a Number of

Scientific Gentlemen whose Curiosity was excited to

see the first Movements of so singular and so

powerful a Machine; and whose Expectations were

fully gratified by the Excellence of its performance.

The Workmanship of the Whole did not pass

unnoticed, nor unadmired.... The liberal Spirit shown

by the Proprietors of Bloomfield in ordering this,

the first large engine of the Kind that hath ever been

made, and in rejecting a common one which they

had begun to erect, entitle them to the thanks of the

public; for by this Example the Doubts of the

Inexperienced are dispelled, and the Importance and

Usefulness of the Invention is finally decided."

There followed in the same year an engine for a

Warwickshire colliery and another for a distillery at

Stratford-le-Bow.

Watt had been away from Soho a good deal, first in

London about the Act of Parliament, then at

Broseley, setting up the engine, and finally in the

summer of I776 he went to Glasgow to get married.

Boulton corresponded with him regularly, and his

letters give a lively picture of life at the factory. At

first, in the absence of the master mind, progress

was slow. " The engine goes marvellously bad," he

wrote. " It made eight strokes per minute; but upon

Joseph's endeavouring to mend it, it stood still. Nor

do I at present see sufficient cause for its dulness."

Then follow full accounts of the subsequent, and

more successful, experiments. Meanwhile the factory

was growing. " The new forging-shop looks very

formidable; the roof is nearly put on, and the hearths

are both built." As the factory grew, so did his

ambitions. " I have fixed my mind upon making

from twelve to fifteen reciprocating, and fifty

rotative engines per annum. The Empress of Russia

is now at my house, and a charming woman she is."

Of Watt's second marriage we are told by his

biographer that, " having found that the burden of

domestic affairs and the care of his children

interfered seriously with his other pursuits, which

had now become vitally important, he, after having

remained for some years a widower, married a

second time." It sounds a calculating and

unromantic affair, and certainly Anne Macgregor,

who became the second Mrs. Watt, appears as an

obscure and somewhat sinister background, rather

than as a leading actress, in the scenes of his later

life. Her father consented to the match, but wished

to know the value of his son-in-law's share in the

engine business. Apparently no formal deed of

partnership had been drawn up, but, at Watt's

request, Boulton prepared a statement containing

the various points on which they had agreed, which

he " extracted from our mutual missives." It

amounted to this. Boulton held two-thirds of the

property in the patent, and undertook to pay all

expenses of past and future experiments, without

claiming interest on his money. He was to provide

all the capital for the business of manufacture, and

on this to receive lawful interest. The profits were to

be divided in the proportions of two-thirds to him

and onethird to Watt. Watt was to make all the

drawings and to give directions for the work of

construction.

During the next five years the attention of the firm

was almost entirely occupied with the demands of

the Cornish mines. This district seemed to offer the

most favourable conditions for expansion. Inquiries

from factories were usually for a " rotary " engine,

one that would drive a wheel; but Soho was at

present only producing " reciprocating "

enginesÑengines that worked a vertical rod up and

down, and were suitable for application to pumps

and bellows. Factory owners were therefore told that

the rotary engine was not yet perfected, and were

advised to use a water-wheel, supplying it with water

by means of a reciprocating engine and a pump. This

was naturally put out of court as an unsound

investment if a rotary engine was likely to be soon

on the market. So there was not much business to

be done in factories. The engine was effective for

blowing furnaces, but the majority of ironworks still

used charcoal, and therefore did not require a

powerful blast. There were one or two city

waterworks where an engine might be used, but this

demand was almost confined to the London area.

There remained only the pumping of mines. It might

be expected that the engine would be most useful in

the coalmines, since fuel was to be had on the spot

for nothing. In reality, that is precisely the reason

why the engines were not first introduced there. The

most obvious advantage of Watt's engine over

Newcomen's was its saving of coal. Where coal was

very cheap that saving was not enough to

compensate for the expense of in stalling the new

machine. In addition to this, the majority of the

coal-mines were not in urgent need of a more

powerful engine. The coal area was extensive, and

the immense increase in demand, produced largely

by the spread of the engine itself, which was to drive

the miners to burrow ever more deeply into the

bowels of the earth, had as yet hardly begun. An old-

fashioned atmospheric engine was good enough to

drain the shallower workings.

In Cornwall the case was different. The rich mining

district round Redruth had long been honeycombed

with diggings, and there was hardly an acre that had

not been tried for ore. " The spot we are at," wrote

Mrs. Watt, when staying with her husband at

Chacewater, " is the most disagreeable in the whole

county. The face of the earth is broken up in ten

thousand heaps of rubbish, and there is scarce a tree

to be seen." The surface deposits of tin had been

exhausted and copper was found only at a

considerable depth. If the industry was to expand, it

could only expand downwards. Deeper and deeper

worked the miners, fighting the water as they went.

At times the pits were drowned and had to be

abandoned. Then Newcomen's pumpingengine gave

them a new lease of life. But the water was getting

too strong for it, and more than once of late it had

failed to " fork " a flooded mine. Two engines might

succeed where one I20 failed, but the cost of

transporting coal by sea to Cornwall and then inland

to the mines was prohibitive. As trade declined and

profits fell, the miners clamoured for more power

and less expenditure of fuel. This was exactly what

the new engine professed to be able to give.

The first definite order came from Ting-Tang Mine

in November, I776 and it was at once followed by

another from Wheal Busy, near Chacewater. The

parts of the Chacewater engine were the first to be

ready, and Watt went down to Cornwall to see them

put together. He was not very well received. The

building and repairing of steam-engines had been a

regular business there for a long time, and there

were families which had been in the trade for two

generations. If the newcomer from Glasgow was

successful, their livelihood would be threatened. But

they were not very frightened. They found it hard to

believe that any one could know more about steam-

engines than they did, who had handled them all

their lives. The most prominent of them was

Jonathan Hornblower, son of Joseph who had come

to Cornwall to build engines fifty years ago. Watt

found him pleasant and honest enough, but entirely

sceptical about the value of the new invention. It

was Jonathan's son, Jabez (they all began with a J.

His brothers were called Jesse and Jethro), who was

destined to give so much trouble in after years.

There was also a clever mechanic called Bonze, who

absolutely refused to touch any work connected with

Watt's engine. Watt found the Cornishmen ill-

natured and treacherous. " Certainly," he said, " they

have the most ungracious manners of any people I

have ever yet been amongst." They tried to injure

him by spreading false rumours. " I have already

been accused of making several speeches at Wheal

Virgin, where, to the best of my memory, I have

only talked about eating, drinking, and the weather."

When the Chacewater engine was ready, great

crowds came to see it start, many of them hoping

for a fiasco. But the trial was an overwhelming

success. It did more work than a common engine,

and with one-third of the coal. " The velocity,

violence, magnitude, and horrible noise of the

engine," wrote Watt, "give universal satisfaction to

all beholders, believers or not. I have once or twice

trimmed the engine to end its stroke gently, and to

make less noise; but Mr. Wilson [the manager]

cannot sleep unless it seems quite furious, so I have

left it to the enginemen; and, by the by, the noise

seems to convey great ideas of its power to the

ignorant, who seem to be no more taken with

modest merit in an engine than in a man."

The Wheal Busy engine made as many converts as a

Methodist meeting and inspired them with as great a

fever of enthusiasm. Soho was hard put to it to keep

pace with the orders. In December I778Watt wrote

from Redruth to his old friend Black: " Our success

here has equalled our most sanguine expectations;

we have succeeded in saving three-fourths of the

fuel over the engines here, which are the best of the

old kind in the island.

"A universal confidence of the whole county in the

abilities of the engine is now fully established, and

we have executed agreements for several others, one

of which will pay us better still, and is also to do the

work of two other engines larger than itself. Several

mines, formerly abandoned, are likely to go to work

again through virtue of our engines; we have five

engines of various sizes actually going here now in

this county, and have eight more in contemplation,

so that our affairs wear a most smiling aspect to

human eyes.

" Our affairs in other parts of England go on very

well; but no part can or will pay us so well as

Cornwall, and we have luckily come among them

when they were almost at their wits' end how to go

deeper with their mines."

But Watt was, for a change, unduly optimistic. There

were still many obstacles in the path. Labour

continued to be a difficulty. The policy adopted at

Soho was one of specialisation. Each workman

confined himself to one process until he became an

expert at it. " We are systematising the business of

engine-making," wrote Boulton to Smeaton in

I778~~ as as we have done before in the button

manufactory; we are training up workmen, and

making tools and machines to form the different

parts of Mr. Watt's engines with more accuracy, and

at a cheaper rate than can possibly be done by the

ordinary methods of working. Our workshop and

apparatus will be of sufficient extent to execute all

the engines that are likely to be soon wanted in this

country." But it was a slow business, and rich in

disappointments. Some men were untrainable;

others, when trained, were enticed away by other

employers with offers of higher pay. Perfection of

workmanship was not achieved at once, and many

of the parts continued to be manufactured by other

firms.

When the parts were finished, the engine had to be

put together on the spot. This also required skilled

labour, and there was very little of it. Men could not

be kept in the employ of the firm for this type of

work; they had to be found when wanted. Watt

complained that it was not at all easy to discover "

operative engineers, who can put engines together

according to plan as clockmakers do clocks." On

another occasion he was searching for " forty pair of

Smiths " to set up the engine at Wheal Virgin, and

searching in vain, " for in all the mines where we are

concerned I find a scarcity of these animals."

Far scarcer still were men capable of superintending

the installation of an engine, teaching the local

engineers how to treat it, and setting it right when

their clumsy handling had upset its delicate

constitution. Watt had at first to do the bulk of this

work himself, and he had a hectic time flying

backwards and forwards from the factory to the

various centres where operations were in progress.

Soon Boulton provided him with a small staff of

men to relieve him of the strain, who acted under his

minute instructions. But they made mistakes. Watt

was the sort of man who could not forgive a

mistake, and he wrote fierce letters to Boulton

demanding their instant dismissal. Boulton quietly

shifted them on to other jobs till the air cleared, and

sent Joseph, the Soho foreman, down to Cornwall.

But even Joseph had his little weaknesses, and

another querulous letter arrived from Watt. " Joseph

has pursued his old practice of drinking in a

scandalous manner, until the very enginemen turned

him into ridicule.... I have not heard how he behaved

in the west; excepting that he gave the ale there a

bad character." But Joseph was a good workman and

much could be forgiven him. Besides, as Watt

reported, " A1though Joseph has attended to his

drinking, he has done much good at his leisure

hours," and he soon had the engines in proper

order.

Joseph had an even more remarkable successor in

William Murdock, who entered the service of the

firm in I777. He was a big brawny Scot, of immense

industry and dog-like devotion to his employers. He

was endowed with originality of mind as well as

dexterity of hand, and on his first appearance in

Cornwall in I779 he at once won his way to Watt's

heart. He then performed the more remarkable feat

of winning the affection of the Cornish miners.

Whenever anything went wrong with an engine the

miners asked for William, and were manifestly

disappointed if Watt came instead. The mineowners

offered him £Iooo a year if he would stay with

them, engineers asked him to go into partnership

with them, but he stuck to the firm in which he was

an employee at twenty shillings a week. He was the

maker of the first working model of a steam

locomotive ever seen in this country, he invented gas

lighting and made valuable contributions to the

design of the steam-engine. But he never allowed his

own researches to interfere with his duty to his

employers. He lived on terms of close friendship

with Boulton and Watt, but was not put on the

footing of a partner until the business had passed to

their sons.

In spite of the rapidity of the progress he was

making, Boulton's financial position was causing him

much anxiety. His outlay had been enormous, and

his income was very precarious. When the engines

were new and still had to prove their worth, he was

obliged to supply them on very easy terms. Very few

firms were sanguine enough, or rich enough, when

buying an engine, to pay down a sum that would

cover the cost of production, compensate for the

outlay on experiment and provide Watt with a fair

reward for his invention. Boulton therefore adopted

the following plan. Customers paid for the parts of

the engine, some of which were made at Soho others

elsewhere, and for the work of installation and the

patentees secured a return on the value of the

invention by charging a rent for the use of the

engine so long as the exclusive privileges of the

patent lasted. This scheme had occurred to him as

early as the spring of I775 and he had tentatively

suggested to the proprietors of the Cornish mines,

who were asking about terms, that he would

guarantee that his engines would save half the fuel

used by the old engines, provided that they paid him

a sum equal to the value of what it saved beyond

that half. The proposal to fix his rent according to

the economy in fuel was very ingenious. It was

distinctly favourable to purchasers, as, once they had

met the initial cost of manufacture, they were given a

guarantee that the engine would yield them an

annual profit. They could not possibly be out of

pocket by it. The risk was not on their shoulders.

And it was fairly satisfactory for Boulton. It enabled

him to sell more engines than he could in any other

way have done, and it gave him the best chance of

getting the money that was due to him. He obtained

a share in that increasing prosperity which he was

confident that his engines would bring to industry.

When business actually began, the form of

agreement adopted was slightly different from that

first sketched by Boulton. The engine was built and

erected at the expense of the purchasers, and they

then undertook to pay annually a sum equal to one-

third of the value of the fuel saved by the engine as

compared with a common engine. Watt invented an

ingenious meter, which was kept under lock and key,

and told him faithfully what that saving was. The

whole affair is so clearly described in a letter of

Boulton to the Carron Ironworks, when erecting an

engine there, that it is worth quoting at some length.

"We do not aim at profits in engine building," writes

Boulton, " but shall take our profits out of the

saving of fuel; so that if we save nothing we shall

take nothing. Our terms are as follows: we will make

all the necessary plans, sections and elevations for

the building, and for the engine with its

appurtenances, specifying all cast and forged

ironwork, and every other particular relative to the

engine. We will give all necessary directions to your

workmen, which they must implicitly obey. We will

execute, for a stipulated price, the valves, and all

other parts which may require exact execution, at

Soho; we will see that all the parts are put together,

and set to work properly."

Then follows the usual stipulation that the fuel

consumed is to be compared with that of any other

engine in Scotland, and one-third of the value of the

saving is to be paid to Boulton and Watt " in

recompense for our patent licence, our drawings,

etc." If the engine is sold, the new owner must

undertake to continue the payment of the dues

owing, " otherwise the engine which we make for

you at an expense of two thousand pounds may be

sold in Cornwall for ten thousand pounds."

The disadvantages of this system are evident. Like all

systems of payment by instalments it exposes the

seller to continuous risk. The purchaser may at any

time become unable or unwilling to pay what is

owing. In most cases of the kind, if the buyer gets in

default for any reason, the seller can at least recover

the goods. In Boulton's case that was not so. In the

first place, if a copper mine failed and had to close

down, the payments would stop; but there would be

no default. When the engine is not working it cannot

save coal, and no rent is due. In the second place,

even if there were deliberate default he had no easy

remedy, for the engine was the property of the mine;

it had been bought and paid for. Boulton could not

go down and take it away.

The longer an engine had been at work in a mine,

the more it was looked on by the mineowners as

their absolute property, and the more intolerable

appeared to them the burden of the annual dues.

They forgot that, apart from these, Boulton and

Watt had received nothing to reward them for their

risks, their original outlay, and for the invention

itself, and they came to regard the payment as an

iniquitous tax, levied on them for the use of their

own property in order to keep two grasping

monopolists in idleness. It was a toll taken by private

individuals on the mineral resources of the country.

Feeling ran high. It was augmented by the fact that

the monopoly, which normally only lasted for

fourteen years, had been extended by Act of

Parliament for twenty-five. The miners felt

convinced that somebody had sold them. They

proposed to petition Parliament to repeal the Act.

Watt was miserable. He had devoted his life to

benefit his fellow-men, and now he was denounced

as a heartless profiteer and an enemy of society. He

felt inclined to sell the whole business for what it

would fetch and retire to poverty and peace. But the

storm blew over.

The income from the engines, therefore, was bound

to be very precarious. It was difficult to extract, and

it depended entirely on the prosperity of the copper-

mining industry. Unfortunately that industry was

passing through a severe depression. The flooding of

the mines and the high cost of coal had nearly

ruined many of the companies, and, although there

was every reason to hope that the new engine would

retrieve their fortunes, the mine-owners were

extremely reluctant to put their hands in their

pockets until those pockets were once more

comfortably full. Boulton was inclined to be lenient,

and to accept orders without concluding any definite

agreement about future payments, but this infuriated

Watt. To him a bird in the hand was worth at least a

dozen in the bush; it was quite enough for his

modest tastes, and it saved worry. "Let our terms be

moderate," he wrote to Boulton, " and, if possible,

consolidated into money a priori, and it is certain we

shall get some money, enough to keep us out of

jailÑin continual apprehension of which I live at

present." Boulton did his best; but even when he

had concluded firm agreements he often had to

remit the dues for several months, because the

companies were too poor to pay.

Things came to such a pass that Boulton and his

friends had to take shares in several of the copper

mines in order to keep them going at all; he had to

finance his customers to enable them to pay for his

goods. This he could ill afford to do. He was himself

in debt. The hardware business, which was run as a

separate concern, was doing badly, chiefly owing to

the incompetence of his partner, Fothergill. He

could get no assistance there. In I778 Low, Vere &

Co., the bankers from whom he had been

borrowing, nearly came to grief, and they naturally

called on Boulton for repayment. He only saved

himself by borrowing another £7¡¡¡ from a Mr. Wiss,

pledging the profits of the engines to pay the

interest. Wiss insisted on Watt's name appearing in

the agreement, as, without him, the mortgage on the

engines was unsound. Watt was furious. The terms

of partnership had exempted him from all financial

responsibility. He practically accused Boulton of

breaking their agreement, forgetting that Boulton

had for four years been paying him a salary of £33 a

year, which was outside the bond.

Though driven almost to distraction, Boulton kept

his temper. He asked all who had dealings with the

firm to be gentle with Watt and remember that he

was a sick man. In truth, Watt was hardly

responsible for his actions. He had been reduced to

a state of moaning melancholy. His wife wrote to

Boulton begging him to forgive her husband's

complaining words, and imploring him to do

something to set his mind at rest. " Believe me," she

wrote, " there is not on earth a person who is dearer

to him than you are. It causes him pain to give you

trouble.... In his present state of weakness, every ill,

however trifling, appears of a gigantic size, while, on

the other hand, every good is diminished." But

Boulton was ill too, and at times bitter thoughts

crept into his mind and found expression in his

letters. He was writing to his bankers about the loan

to them. " I have received," he said, " so much pain

from Mr. Watt's repeated ungenerous behaviour to

me on that account, that I am determined as soon as

possible to wipe away all obligation to him." In a

moment of irritation he told Watt that, if he was

dissatisfied, he might take over the management of

the firm's accounts himself. This Watt foolishly

agreed to do.

Money and megrims came near to snapping the

strands of their friendship. But before disaster

overtook them the tide of misfortune turned. In I78I

there had not been " money to pay their Xmas

balances nor their workmen's wages." In the

following year Watt reported a clear income from

engines of over £3¡¡¡- In I783 Boulton had a balance,

and at once used it to release Watt from his debt to

the bankers. Two years later Watt no longer had to

draw an annual salary of £33¡; his share of the

profits had for the first time become a reality.

Twenty years had passed since Watt conceived the

idea of his engine, forty thousand pounds had been

invested by Boulton in the development of the

invention, and at last they were beginning to reap

the fruits of their labours.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Triumph of Boulton and Watt

" Pasta. The ships of the English swarm like flies;

their printed calicoes cover the whole earth, and by

the side of their swords the blades of Damascus are

blades of grass. All India is but an item in the

Ledger-books of the Merchants, whose lumber-

rooms are filled with ancient thrones ! whirr ! whirr I

all by wheels !Ñwhiz ! whiz I all by steam !

"ÑKINGLAXEX Eothen.

THERE could be no doubt left in the mind l of the

public by I780 as to the immense value of the new

steam-engine, at least in so far as the pumping of

water was concerned. With a healthy hum of

smooth-running machinery it sailed through tasks

before which the old engines would have collapsed

with a sob. A useful comparison can be made on the

basis of the proportion between the work done and

the fuel consumed. This can be measured by the

number of pounds weight raised one foot by the

consumption of a bushel of coal, and it is known as

the " duty " of the engine. Smeaton estimated that

the average duty of the atmospheric engines in the

Newcastle district in I769 was just over 5+ millions,

and the maximum then realised was Just under

Watt's first engines, of the I776 model, got up to 21

millions, and by I780 he had increased this to 26.

Boulton was not exaggerating when he claimed that

the efficiency of the steam-engine had been

increased fourfold since Watt took out his patent.

The reciprocating engine was now good enough to

satisfy even Watt's fastidious taste. It was time to

pass on to other problems. When Boulton first

contemplated the idea of manufacturing engines, it

was the rotary, or rotative, type that interested him

most. As the owner of a factory, he could appreciate

the possibilities of steampower for the driving of

factory machinery. Watt, on the contrary, having

started work on the reciprocating engine for

pumping water, had consistently refused to be

diverted on to other lines of experiment. The

engineer's love of mechanical perfection, and the

Scotsman's longing for a secure, if modest, income

combined to make him stick to his chosen task until

it was both a technical and commercial success.

When the bitter struggle was nearly over and the end

seemed to be in sight, his reluctance to embark on

new projects increased. He was in terror lest he

might have to face the same heart-breaking anxieties

all over again, and, by dividing his attention, might

even lose the advantages he had already gained.

Besides, he was distinctly sceptical about the

prospects of finding a market for rotatives. Up till

now he had been selling good engines to people who

were already using bad ones, and for whom the

change was an urgent necessity; with rotatives it

would be a matter of persuading people to buy who

had never used an engine before, and who were

getting on quite well without one.

It is easy to condemn Watt for lack of enterprise and

to criticise him for failing to realise the almost

unlimited scope for the application of steam-power

to the factory. But in Watt's days the factory was

itself a rarity. Soho was unique until Wedgwood built

Etruria in I770. There had, of course, been water-

mills for centuries for grinding corn, and, if you

knew where to look, you could find fullingmills, silk-

mills, and even paper-mills as well. Big distilleries

had been built to satisfy the abnormal passion of the

day for spirits, and there were a few big breweries,

sugar refineries and glass factories, some of which

were suited to the application of power. But Watt

did not anticipate getting anything very startling out

of them; and he was right. In the twenty-five years

of the partnership they only accounted for about

one-tenth of the engines sold.

Watt looked to mining and metallurgy for his

principal market, with some assistance from canals

and waterworks. The iron industry had been one of

the earliest customers. The first engine to start

working outside Soho was erected to blow the

furnaces at Broseley. And it was obvious that, since

the introduction of coal fuel, the iron industry was

making very rapid progress. A modern observer

might consider that any firm ought to be satisfied at

the prospect of enjoying a monopoly in the supply

of power to all the industries that work in iron and

steel. But before passing judgment, he must try to

imagine a world in which steel was counted among

the precious metals, in which all ships were built of

wood and all bridges of wood or stone; in which the

vision of an age when machines should be made of

iron by machines made of ironÑand so back to the

first Adam of machineryÑand all should be driven

by power, would have been reckoned not merely

among the Nightmares, but among the Revelations.

When Watt came to Soho, our total output of pig-

iron was only about 50,ooo tons a year. A century

later it was 7+ millions. The prophets of those days

were expecting rapid development; but even the

most sanguine prophets, when trying to estimate

human progress, hesitate to employ the I50 times

table. However, the outlook here and in the mining

areas was distinctly encouraging, and even though a

great part of the work could be done by

reciprocating engines, there would be a demand for

some rotatives to drive rolling and slitting mills,

polishing machines and tilt hammers, and to run the

winding gear at the pits.

What was in fact to be the scene of the greatest and

most immediate triumph of his engine Watt, in

I780} could not foresee. If any one had then told

him that, of the 325 engines destined to be produced

between I775 and I800~~ II4 would go to the

textile industries, and 92 of those into cotton mills,

he would have been entirely incredulous. For

centuries the manufacture of woollen cloth had been

carried on in the homes of the weavers and spinners.

Nobody could expect any sudden change there, for

habits strike deep roots in four hundred years. The

excitement about cotton seemed to be merely silly,

reminiscent, somewhat, of the activities of the

Projectors in the seventeenth century. It was well

known that for a long time cotton had been spun

into thread and mixed with linen, wool, or silk, to

make a variety of fabrics, and that this industry had

brought prosperity to a considerable district in

Lancashire. But nobody made pure cotton goods.

The use of printed cottons was prohibited early in

the eighteenth century, because they were all

imported from India, and they injured the native

woollen industry.

Then, in the very year in which Watt took out his

first patent, Arkwright patented his machine for

spinning with rollers. This was the first machine that

could spin thread strong enough to allow the

manufacture of fabrics of cotton only. The way was

opened to a new industry with the prospect of

fabulous profits for those first in the field. The

invention was important for another I38 reason.

Machines for roller-spinning can very easily, and

most advantageously, be driven by power. A horse

was the particular form of power Arkwright had in

mind, but he soon replaced it by a water-wheel. The

water-wheel brought the spinning- mill. But

Arkwright's machine alone did not transform the

cotton industry. The decisive step came still later

with the invention of the " Mule " and of its cousin,

the " Billy," which came into use about I780X and

these also were suited to the application of power.

Up till now Arkwright's iniquitous patent for a

process he had not really invented had cast rather a

shadow over the industry. No one was supposed to

use a spinning machine that contained rollers unless

they paid him for the privilege, and rollers were used

in the " Mule." But the remarkable success of

Arkwright himself, and of those to whom he sold a

licence to set up his machinery, proved too

tempting, and in the eighties his rights were

constantly being invaded. He tried to prosecute the

offenders, but action at law only revealed the

weakness of his case, and in I785 his patent was

finally quashed. This year marks the beginning of the

real boom in the cotton industry.

The cautious mind of Watt was scornfully distrustful

of this reckless behaviour. The bubble was being

over-inflated and would surely burst. He had no

intention of being involved in the calamity. He

wrote to Boulton, who had gone to Ireland on

patent business: " If you come home by way of

Manchester, please not to seek for orders for cotton-

mill engines, because I hear that there are so many

mills erecting on powerful streams in the north of

England, that the trade must soon be overdone, and

consequently our labour may be lost." How could

such a trade hope to have a future ? There was not

in history an example of an industry of first-rate

importance being established in a country which

could not produce a single ounce of the necessary

raw material. The thing was unthinkable. It is true

that in those days the raw cotton came from our

possessions in the West Indies; but if it had

continued to do so, and if we had been afraid to

become dependent on the supplies grown in the

United States, our manufacture of cottons would

never have rivalled in importance our manufacture

of woollens. Watt can be excused for looking

askance at this monstrosity. He was watching the

beginning of a new chapter in the economic history

of the world.

Watt had but little conception of the great future

that was in store for his invention. Even Boulton,

who was quicker to grasp the significance of the

movements of commerce, so far underestimated the

coming demand for steamengines, that he imagined

that the factory at Soho would be equal to satisfying,

for many years to come, the needs of the whole

world. But Boulton was fully alive to the importance

of getting a rotary engine put on the market as soon

as possible, even if its use were to be confined to

mills that were already employing water-power to

drive their machinery, and he persuaded Watt to

concentrate his attention on this problem.

Watt had only been deterred by his misguided ideas

as to what would be profitable; all his scientific

instincts urged him to explore every mechanical

variation of the steam-engine. He had from the very

first noted this in his mind as a problem that must

some day be solved, and the moment he went

seriously to work at it he became completely

absorbed. The work of invention was infinitely more

congenial to him than the duties of prospector and

commercial traveller which he was often called on to

perform.

In his original patent of I769 Watt had included a

device for obtaining a rotary motion which he

generally referred to as a " steam- wheel." The wheel

was hollow, and was driven round by the direct

action of the steam passing within it. Nothing much

had come of this idea, but both he and Boulton had

played with it at intervals ever since. While he was

thinking out the designs for his original steam-wheel,

Watt had seen at a colliery an engine, in which the

vertical motion of the rod attached to the beam was

converted by a system of cogs into a rotary motion

to drive a wheel. The engine was of the ordinary

reciprocating type, and as it was only the upward

stroke of the rod that had any driving force, the

motion given to the wheel was very irregular. The

machine was too clumsy to have any interest for

Watt.

Some years later he saw a very similar engine, built

by a certain Matthew Wasborough to drive a rolling-

mill at Birmingham, but it had been greatly

improved by the addition of a flywheel. Now

Wasborough was a quite inferior engineer, and the

spectacle of his apparent success wounded Watt's

vanity. He was convinced that he could make a

better rotary engine than Wasborough. He

determined to get the circular motion by means of

the common crank, and to make the motion regular

by constructing an engine with two cylinders acting

on two cranks attached to one axis. In this way,

whenever one crank was idle, the motion was being

communicated through the other. On these lines he

made a model, and, as he tells us, he " employed a

blackguard of the name of Cartwright (who was

afterwards hanged), about this model," who went off

and gave a full account of it to a large gathering in a

public inn. Whereupon one of his audience hurried

up to London, took out a patent for the use of the

crank to obtain a rotary motion, and concluded an

agreement with Wasborough for its application to

his engine.

Watt was infuriated by this piece of treachery. It had

never occurred to him that any one could claim to

patent the crank, for, as he said to his son, " the true

inventor of the crank rotative motion was the man

(who unfortunately has not been deified) that first

contrived the common foot-lathe." Defeat at the

hands of so contemptible a rival made him bitter. "

If the King should think Matt. Wasborough a better

engineer than me, I should scorn to undeceive him; I

should leave that to Matthew. The conviction would

be the stronger, as the evidence would be

undeniable! "

If he had challenged the patent, he could almost

certainly have overthrown it, but he was afraid to

create a precedent for the annihilation of patent

rights for fear that he himself might be the next

victim. He was forbidden to use the crank; very well,

he would do without it. He sat down and drew up

plans of five alternative ways of adapting a steam-

engine to drive a wheel, and sent them to Boulton. "

I send you enclosed," he wrote, " three yards of the

specification, and have about one yard more to send,

which is the explanation of the drawings.... I have

thought on some other methods by which rotative

motions may be made, but they are inferior to those

specified, and I feared the specification would have

grown four yards long."

He patented the lot in I78IX but only one of them

was ever used, and that only until the lapsing of his

rival's patent set him free to adopt the crank. It was

known as the " Sun and Planet " motion, and it has

been asserted that it was originally invented by

William Murdock; but Watt claimed it as an old idea

of his own, " revived and executed by Mr. M." One

cogwheel is fixed to the end of the driving-rod, and

works into another, attached to the axle of the wheel

to be driven, in such a way that it makes two

revolutions for every stroke of the engine.

Watt now got into his stride, and the flow of his

ideas inundated many more yards of specification

paper. It was at this point that he brought to

perfection and patented, in I782) the doubleacting

engine already described. It was especially suited to

rotative engines, as its double stroke, upwards and

downwards, solved the problem of continuous

motion that had baffled Wasborough. It was a

complicated machine, and therefore more liable to

accidents, but workmanship was improving, and so

also was the skill of the mechanics who were set to

tend the engines.

The double-acting engine in its turn gave rise to a

new problem. In all engines of this period, the rod

of the piston was attached to the end of a beam,

pivoted at its centre. The piston rod must move in a

vertical straight line. If it does not, it will strain the

joint where it enters the cylinder and let the steam

escape. But the end of the beam moves in a curve.

So long as the piston had only to pull on the beam,

it could be attached by a flexible chain. But in the

doubleacting engine it had to push as well. There

must be some rigid connection which would not

wrench the piston out of the straight.

Watt's solution of this tricky little problem by means

of the famous " Parallel Motion," which was

patented in I7842 iSX for his biographer, the most

tantalising event in his life. It is the most beautiful

and fascinating of his inventions, and is quite

indescribable on paper, even with the help of a

diagram. A parallelogram of jointed rods is fixed on

the under side of the beam, and one angle is

fastened to the head of the pistonrod. The whole

contraption is carried through the curve described

by the end of the beam, but, as it goes, its joints,

obedient to the mysterious laws of geometry,

perform a delicious, sinuous wriggle, and the angle

fastened to the rod beats boldly up and down along

a perfect vertical. Many tongues have sung the

praises of this " beautiful invention." His

contemporaries said that " Mr. Watt's Parallel

Motion alone will immortalise his name as a

mechanic." Its charm was universal, and the

following account by an eminent engineer seems to

have hit on the true explanation. " It is indeed

impossible," he writes, " even for an eye

unaccustomed to view mechanical combinations, to

behold the beam of a steamengine moving the

pistons, through the instrumentality of the parallel

motion, without an instinctive feeling of pleasure at

the unexpected fulfilment of an end by means

having so little apparent connection with it." It was,

in fact, as inexplicable, as inconsequent, as

spontaneous, as the works of Nature, and Watt felt a

thrill of pride as he watched this creation of his

genius moving in a mysterious way its wonders to

perform. " Though I am not over anxious after

fame," he wrote, " yet I am more proud of the

parallel motion than of any other mechanical

invention I have ever made."

The translation of these ideas from his brain to

paper, and their embodiment in matter, involved

much patient and often tiresome labour. The painful

contrast between the swiftness of the conception

and the slowness of the realisation brought on fresh

bouts of irritable depression. " These rotatives," he

said, " have taken up all my time and attention for

months, so that I can scarcely say that I have done

anything that can be called business. Our accounts

lie miserably confused." He employed a man named

Playfair to make the drawings, but they were so bad

that he could not use them. "Therefore I fear I must

draw the whole over myself, which, in my present

state of health, and hurried as I am, is dreadful to

me." He started to do it, but suffered such pain in

his head and back that he nearly gave up the task.

But his will to work overcame the temptation to

surrender, and ten days later he wrote, " I have got

one copy of the specification drawing finished in an

elegant manner upon vellum, being the neatest

drawing I ever made."

But while confident that he could solve the technical

problems of the rotative engine, he continued to

have doubts as to its commercial value. It is possible

to trace his gradual conversion. " I have a very mean

opinion of the rotative's profits," he wrote in

January I782~~ " and the trouble with each of them

must be at least double that of an engine that raises

water. Peace of mind, and delivery from Cornwall, is

my prayer." In November of the same year we find

him writing, " There is now no doubt but that fire-

engines will drive mills, but I entertain some doubts

whether anything is to be got by them." Two years

later his tone had changed. " Our rotative engines,"

he writes, " are certainly very applicable to the

driving of cotton mills, in every case where the

conveniency of placing the mill in a town, or ready-

built manufactory, will compensate for the expense

of coals and of our premium." By I 786. the designs

were completed, the double-acting rotary engine was

aproved success, and orders were pouring in so fast

that it was almost impossible to find men enough to

execute them.

The capacity of this new market for engines was

almost inexhaustible, and the partners knew that

henceforth they would receive as many orders for

machines as they chose to undertake. And their

customers were no longer, like the copper miners, a

crew of beaten, broken adventurers, searching

desperately for some means of checking the rot in

their fortunes; they were a company of healthy,

vigorous pioneers borne on the rising tide of a new

prosperity. In this prosperity Boulton and Watt

could claim a share. They were now at the height of

their fame. The industries of England competed for

the favour of their attention.

Watt had the honour of explaining one of his

engines to George III at Whitbread's brewery " His

Majesty," he says, " was much pleased with the

brew-house, which is immense." Shortly afterwards

he visited the King at Windsor, and was obliged to

answer the intelligent questions that royalty is

accustomed to ask about the activities of its subjects.

In I786 Boulton and Watt proceeded to Paris, at the

invitation of the French Government, to consider

the erection of a steam-engine to take the place of

the famous and prodigious machine of Marly, built

in I682 to raise water to supply the town and the

water- works of Versailles. Nothing came of the

proposal, but they thoroughly enjoyed their visit.

The official reception was magnificent. It was the

first time Watt had been treated as a " distinguished

foreigner," and he was much flattered. He was "

drunk from morning to night with Burgundy and

undeserved praise," or so at least he says. But most

gratifying of all was the welcome given him by the

leading scientists of France, who treated him as an

honoured colleague and flocked to hold conference

with him.

Even in this time of apparent triumph Watt's letters

are full of lamentation. It is not unnatural. Owing to

his constitution, work of any kind was a strain, and

always produced a nervous reaction; but whereas

work at his scientific experiments gave him a kind of

nervous exaltation, anything of the nature of

business worries or responsibilities brought on a

condition of nervous exhaustion. In I782 Boulton

had handed over to him the management of the

firm's accounts, and since that date Boulton had

been more and more in the habit of going off on his

own affairs, leaving the full responsibility for the

direction of the business on Watt's shoulders.

Expansion was at this time very rapid, and the

burden was more than Watt could bear. He groaned

under its weight, and sighed for the rest that only

retirement could bring.

" I should have written to you long ago," he writes

on July I8th, I786 but have really been in a worse

situation in some respects this spring than I have

ever been in my life. The illness I was seized with in

London, in the spring, greatly weakened me both in

body and mind.... The bodily disease has in great

measure subsided; but an unusual quantity of

business, which by Mr. Boulton's frequent and long

absences has fallen wholly on me, and several

vexations, with the consequent anxious thoughts,

have hitherto prevented my mind from recovering

its energy. I have been quite effete and listless,

neither daring to face business, nor capable of it; my

head and memory failing me much; my stable of

hobbyhorses pulled down, and the horses given to

the dogs for carrion. I have had serious thoughts of

throwing down the burthen I find myself unable to

carry, and perhaps, if other sentiments had not been

stronger, should have thought of throwing off the

mortal coil; but, if matters do not grow worse, I may

perhaps stagger on. Solomon said that in the

increase of knowledge there is increase of sorrow: if

he had substituted business for knowledge, it would

have been perfectly true.

Matters were made worse by the fact that, at this

moment, Boulton was facing a financial crisis,

perhaps the most serious of his life. The engine

business was doing well, Watt for the first time was

free from debt and had a comfort able balance at the

bank. But Boulton was deeply involved in other

speculations, some of them, like his investments in

the copper mines, indirectly connected with engines.

In I 787 trade was depressed. There had been

considerable over-production in the cotton industry,

and manufacturers had difficulty in disposing of

their stocks. Several big London firms of merchants

were involved, and in I788 there was a crop of

failures, including an old-established Manchester

bank. Boulton badly needed an extension of credit,

but it was extremely hard to get. He appealed to

Watt for assistance. But Watt, with characteristic

caution, had already safely invested his money, and

the appeal was made in vain. When it is remembered

that Boulton had, throughout the hard years of

struggle, taken all the financial risks and worries on

his own shoulders, that he had paid Watt a regular

salary when the business was not making a penny,

and had, out of pure generosity, allowed him half-

profits, instead of the stipulated one-third, when

profits began to come in, Watt's action at this crisis

appears mean and ungrateful. Money matters always

brought out the worst in him. His horror of the

jugglings of finance, his dread of instability of

income, amounted almost to a disease. To withdraw

money from a safe investment and throw it into a

speculative venture seemed to him not merely a pity,

but a crime, a kind of child-murder. It was a crime

that he could not bring himself to commit, even to

help a friend.

Boulton weathered the storm, and his prosperity was

never again in danger, but the strain had

permanently damaged his health. Both the partners

were beginning to look forward to the time when

they would be able to retire from all active share in

the business. Their two sons were being trained to

succeed them, and by I795 they were participating in

the work of management. The partnership and the

patent rights were both due to come to an end in

I800 But before this goal could be reached, there

was one more battle to be fought.

There had always been trouble from pirates Ñmen

who picked up some knowledge of the principle of

Watt's engines and made use of it without

recognising their debt to the inventor. As a rule the

machines they produced were so inefficient that it

was not worth while to stop them. They were either

like Hornblower's engine at Radstroke, which was "

obliged to stand still every ten minutes to snore and

snort," or like Evans's mill, which " was a

gentlemanly mill: it would go when it had nothing to

do, but refused to do any work." Occasionally

excitement was provided by the bursting of a boiler,

but the engines were rarely able to develop enough

energy to achieve this; for in all, as Watt quaintly

expressed it, " the bodily presence was weak."

In time, however, as the machines became more

familiar, and an ever-increasing number of men

passed through the Soho works and went out skilled

engineers, not scrupling to use their skill to defraud

their late masters, piracy became a more serious

matter. Firms ordered engines of Watt's design from

these men, and of course paid Watt no dues on

them. When the engines proved unsatisfactory, they

blamed Watt, and the credit of Soho suffered.

Others, who had Soho engines, refused to pay their

dues, because they saw that their neighbours were

using a similar machine free of charge.

In these circumstances Boulton and Watt decided to

put their rights to the test of law. It was not merely

the loss of revenue that disturbed theme In any case

the patent had only a few years to run. Their pride

was involved. If they submitted without protest, it

would amount to an admission that their business

was built on a fraud, that the invention was a sham,

and that all the payments they had been drawing

from their customers had been exacted on false

pretences. The idea was intolerable. They began to

prosecute the offenders. In I793 action was taken

against a man of the name of Bull, who had been

employed by the firm as a stoker. The case was

perfectly clear, and the jury quickly decided that the

patent had been infringed; they left it, however, to

be determined by a special case in the Court of

Common Pleas whether the patent was in itself good

and valid. This point came up for trial two years later

before the Lord Chief Justice and three judges.

These learned gentlemen had little to say about

steam-engines, but many profound thoughts that

they were burning to deliver on the subject of the

patent laws. Each in turn gave his display of

rhetorical Juggling, spun his argumentary hoops and

jumped through them. Was the subject of the patent

a process or only a principle? And if a process, and a

new process, was it based on an old principle ? Or

was it again a machine, or only part of a machine ?

And if a part, was it merely a new part of an old

machine? So profound was their knowledge of the

law, and so complete their ignorance of the

properties of steam and the history of invention,

that when they came to apply their general

conclusions to the particular case, the nature of the

issue was a matter of pure chance. On they pounded

round the circular track of their arguments, like

racers in a stadium, but there was no common goal

Each one carried his own winning-post in his

pocket, and erected it as soon as he began to feel

tired. It was the judges, rather than the case, that

were in the scales, and blind Justice secured

equilibrium by putting two into each.

This divided opinion on a matter of such

importance was most unsatisfactory, but it was

swept away by the decisive victory in the following

year in the case against Hornblower and Maberly. All

Watt's old friends, with Robison at their head, rallied

to his defence and routed the forces of Jabez, son of

Jonathan. But that was not the end. The case was

tried again on a writ of error, and it was not till I799

that Watt could write triumphantly to Boulton, " We

have WON THE CAUSE hollow. All the Judges

have given their opinions very fully in our favour."

Even after this the engine pirates continued their

operations, but, said Watt, " having become used to

them, we do not lay them so much to heart as

formerly." They caused him a loss of revenue and

heavy expense in legal proceedings, but the honour

of the firm had been vindicated, its prestige was

high, its reputation unchallenged.

When the century drew to its close, Watt was in his

sixty-fourth year. A chapter in his life was ending.

When, thirty-five years before, there had come to

him the first inspired vision of his new steam-

engine, all the labour that followed was but its

necessary sequel. The invention must be perfected,

manufactured, delivered to the public. Until this had

been achieved the process was incomplete. So on he

laboured, finding little joy in the work itself, and

forcing himself to endure much that was almost

intolerable, impelled still by that first desire to create

which would not let him lay aside his tools until the

task was done.

Now at last he had finished. His invention was as

perfect as he could make it, the business was

prosperous, his engines were at work in all the great

industries of the country. Quietly, with no regrets

but only profound satisfaction, he passed from the

scene of his now completed labours, not into

idleness, but to occupy himself with new thoughts

and new projects as fascinating and absorbing as

those of old.

CHAPTER NINE

Last Years

" Wind, sun and earth remain, the birds sing still,

When we are old, are old . . ." RUPERT BROOBE.

WHEN he retired from business, Watt followed the

fashion of the day and invested part of his earnings

in land. The ideal of every successful manufacturer

of that period was to become a country squire, a

member of the landed aristocracy of England. Watt

got to the point of buying an estate in Radnorshire,

but although he paid it occasional visits, he never

migrated to it. He remained true to Heathfield, his

home near Soho, where he had lived since 1789) and

settled down there to pass the remainder of his days

in the old surroundings, among his old friends. He

had no mind to vegetate in obscurity. He valued his

release from the cares that vex a man of business,

because it set him free to live as a man of science.

Many men suffer as they grow old from the

consciousness of the slow, relentless advance of

senility, the sense that physical strength and mental

power, once robust, are cracking and crumbling into

decrepitude. Watt's experience was exactly the

reverse. All his life he had suffered the torments of

ragged nerves and a sickly body, but, as old age

approached, these troubles passed away. His temper

became calm and serene, his health ceased to mar his

pleasure in life, and his mental powers remained as

keen as ever. Lord Brougham, who knew him in his

years of retirement, expressed the opinion that " he

never was more cheerful or enjoyed the pleasures of

society more heartily than during this period."

But even Watt was not entirely free from the

haunting fear that he was losing his grip of things.

He first became seriously alarmed at the age of

thirty-four when he fancied he was beginning to

show traces of the ravages of time. In the early fifties

he was sure of it. " Of all the evils of age," he wrote,

" the loss of the few mental faculties one possessed

in youth is the most grievous." P.S.Ñ" Steam is only

1800 times the bulk of water. Beighton knew

nothing of it." The snappy little postscript exempts

him from his own generalization. At the age of

seventy, or thereabouts, it is said that his doubts

became so insistent that he determined to test his

capacity for learning and remembering. He selected

Anglo-Saxon as a good subject for his purpose, and

was relieved to find that it presented no great

difficulties. His ingenuity and his passion to create

remained with him to the end, and he was actively

engaged in the perfection of a complicated invention

when he died.

This brief narrative, concerned, as it must be, chiefly

with his supreme achievement, has scarcely done

justice to the astonishing fertility of his mind and

variety of his occupations. From his earliest days he

showed an insatiable curiosity in every kind of art or

craft with which he came into contact. He was never

content not to understand. Everything must be

examined. And he brought to the study a keen

power of analysis and a wonderfully retentive

memory. The result was that there was hardly any

technique, even remotely connected with his

profession, of which he was not a master in theory.

When his advice was asked on any practical

problem, he always seemed able at once to explain

the best method yet devised for coping with it, and

would probably go on to produce from the

storehouse of his mind the roughly sketched plans

of an entirely new and superior method of his own.

When he entered into partnership with Boulton, he

found the task of keeping an orderly record of his

business correspondence a very burdensome one.

Any office under Boulton's control could be relied

on to be up-todate in every detail of its equipment;

but that did not satisfy Watt. He invented a " way of

copying writing chemically." It was not a

complicated machine, but he had taken great trouble

to discover the best kind of ink and paper for the

purpose, and to design the press, and he was proud

of it. He took out a patent in 1780 and then hawked

the machine round to business men, bankers and

Members of Parliament. The bankers at first

denounced it as a means to make forgery easy, but

their fears were set at rest, and it had an extensive

sale. For several years, while the engine was still

unable to earn him a penny, the copying machine

brought Watt in a steady and most welcome income.

A few years later we find him annoyed by " the

abominable smoke which attends fire engines," and

in particular by the furnace under the big boiler at

Soho " that used to poison Mr. B's garden so much."

Here was another problem on which to exercise his

ingenuity, and in a couple of months he is writing to

a friend, " I have accomplished the engine-fire

without smoke, and I hope soon to show you it in

practice." This, too, was patented. In the very same

letter this indefatigable inventor goes on, " I have

been turning some of my idle thoughts lately upon

an arithmetical machine . . . (it was to multiply and

divide figures of any magnitude) . . . I intend to

make an attempt to make it; I say an attempt, for

though the machine is exceedingly simple, yet I have

learnt by experience that in mechanics many things

fall out between the cup and the mouth." This

particular thing " fell out "; it was never created. On

another occ sion he was shown some lamps, devised

by a man named Keir, with some kind of apparatus

for keeping the wick constantly supplied with oil.

They did not win his admiration. " I am sure they are

clumsy, logger-headed things, topheavy, and liable to

be overset " (he was a merciless critic of the

inventions of others). But they did stimulate his

imagination. " I have four plans for making lamps

with the reservoir below, and the stem as tall as you

please." They were the most amazing lamps ever

seen, fitted with clock work, forcing-pumps " about

the size of a quill," pistons, springs and, finally, as a

crowning folly, a miniature propeller poised over the

chimney and spun by the rising heated air, which

worked an endless screw, which worked a crank,

which worked a piston, which acted in a pump. But

we must forgive him, for at that time he was piston-

mad and engine-haunted.

This by no means exhausts the list. It includes a

linen-drying machine, an artificial alabaster, a

waterproofing process, a specificgravity measure and

an " apparatus for extracting, washing and collecting

of poisonous and medicinal airs." His last invention

was a machine for copying sculpture. He had seen,

during his visit to France, immediately after his

withdrawal from business, an ingenious device for

reproducing medals and works in bas-relief. As

usually happened in his later years whenever he saw

a machine that he had not invented himself, it

appeared to him to be imperfect, a rough sketch that

was only waiting for his genius to turn it into a work

of art. He proposed to increase its accuracy and

enlarge its scope. As soon as he got home he started

his experiments, following the lines of his own

machine for drawing in perspective. The apparatus

was to be designed in such a way that when a blunt

point was passed over the surfaces of the model, a

drill cut identical surfaces in the block of material to

be carved, altering the scale as desired.

It was an ideal hobby for his old age. Without

occupation he would have been restless and

miserable. He had hit on one that absorbed all his

faculties and overtaxed none of them. The work was

neither too heavy nor too delicate for his tired

muscles. It brought no worries in the form of

incompetent or unmanageable workmen, or ill-

executed orders. He was his own workman and his

own contractor. It involved no financial

complications, and there was no one standing at his

elbow urging him to hurry up and put his invention

on the market. And yet it was not just an old man's

harmless toy, which his friends, to humour him,

pretended to admire; it was an elegant and ingenious

piece of mechanism that fascinated every artist or

engineer who visited it.

He had converted an attic over the kitchen at

Heathfield into a workshop, and there he spent

many happy hours absorbed in his mechanical

experiments, surrounded by a delicious profusion of

tools, screws, punches, compasses, scales, crucibles,

gallipots, and, to make him independent of the

household timetable, cooking utensils. In his garret

he was master, and no one dared disturb him or

question what he did, not even his wife. This was far

from being the case in the rest of the house. The

second Mrs. Watt was a tyrant with a relentless

passion for order and regularity. She taught her pugs

never to cross the hall without wiping their feet on

the mat. She made a window through which she

could spy on the servants in the kitchen. She

confiscated her husband's snuff-box if she caught

him taking a pinch, and she sternly rebuked him

whenever he appeared with dirty hands or wearing

his workman's apron. After she had retired to rest,

the old servant, by her orders, entered the room

where Watt was sitting, and, even if he had a guest

with him, firmly and without apology or argument

raked out the fire and removed the lights. " We must

go," said Watt, and meekly led his friend up to bed

in the dark. But the garret was outside Mrs. Watt's

jurisdiction, and there the old man found at last the

peace and leisure that he had longed for all his life.

Under these conditions he made good progress with

his invention. In 1807 he was already getting models

from London to copy, " small busts of Socrates and

Aristotle, and a sleeping boy, sent by Turnerelli, the

sculptor." He was working in alabaster, wood and

ivory, and by 1812 he seemed to be very satisfied

with the results. There was " a little figure of a boy

lying down, and holding one arm, very successfully

done; and another boy, about six inches high, naked,

and holding out both his hands, his legs also being

separate." But he had ambitions to work in marble.

So on he went, making a little change here, trying a

new experiment there, exactly as he had done with

his first steam-engine, and in 18I4 he could report

success. But even then he was not satisfied. His

eightieth year found him still passing his days at

work in his attic, and the last drawings he made of

parts of the machine are dated April 1818 just

sixteen months before his death.

His chief cause of sorrow in these years was the

disappearance, one by one, of his old friends. Watt,

sickly in childhood, nervous and painridden in

middle life, outlived them all. Small had died long

before, in 1775. The death of Roebuck in 1794 did

not affect him deeply, as their friendship had never

been very close. One day in December 1799 Dr.

Black's servant came in and found his master sitting

in his chair, with his plate on his knees, apparently

asleep over his dinner. He crept quietly away and left

him. Some time later he returned. The attitude was

unchanged. He touched the hand that held the plate;

it was cold. Black had long been ill, and his death

was expected by his friends and wished for by

himself, but for Watt it snapped a link with those

early days of struggle and enthusiasm at Glasgow.

The principal friends of Watt's middle life are to be

found among the members of the Lunar Society of

Birmingham. Something has already been said of the

spirit of inquiry and exploration that invaded

intellectual circles in England in the last quarter of

the eighteenth century. Philosophical Societies

became as fashionable as Political Societies, and as

indefatigable in the search for truth. It was an age of

clubs and coteries. In these days, before the railways

had sapped the vigour of the " Provinces " by

drawing all talent to London, philosophers of the

first rank found their friends and their colleagues

among their neighbours, and the quality of the

discussions of a local club might be as high as that

found in the Royal Society itself. The Lunar Society

was the creation of Boulton and Small, and it

contained some of the most brilliant figures of the

day. When Watt came to Birmingham he was eagerly

welcomed as a valuable recruit, and before long he

was on terms of close friendship with several of the

members. The " Lunatics " met, when possible, once

a month, choosing the time when the moon, being

at the full, would light them on their way as they

rode home at night. They discussed all the mysteries

of nature and probed the secrets of earth, air and

water. They certainly did not suffer from timidity. "

If you are meek and humble," wrote Watt to

Erasmus Darwin, " perhaps you may be told what

light is made of, and also how to make it, and the

theory proved both by synthesis and analysis." To

which Dr. Darwin replied, that the " devil has played

me a slippery trick, and, I fear, prevented me from

coming to join the holy men at your house, by

sending the measles with peripneumony amongst

nine beautiful children of Lord Paget's.... As to

material philosophy, I can tell you some secrets in

return for yours; namely, that atmospheric air is

composed of light, and the earth of water (and

aqueous earth). That water is composed of aqueous

gas, which is displaced from its earth by oil of

vitriol."

Dr. Darwin, who was the grandfather of the famous

naturalist, was the hub of this social wheel. He had a

practice at Lichfield, and afterwards at Derby, and a

reputation that extended throughout the Midlands

and reached to London. He was a big, vigorous,

rough, genial and despotic man, with an adventurous

mind and a heart overflowing with kindness. He had

many of the qualities that endeared Dr. Johnson to

his contemporaries, but when the two met they

found that there was no single subject on which they

did not violently disagree, and they parted excellent

enemies. Darwin was keenly interested in Watt's

experiments, having himself indulged in speculation

on the subject of locomotives, and his enthusiasm

led him to give a place to the steam-engine in that "

Economy of Vegetation " presented to the world

under the title of " The Botanic Garden," in which

he celebrated the achievements of science in rhymed

couplets. The rhapsody ends with a prophetic vision

that does credit to his imagination, if not to his

poetic gifts:

" Soon shall thy arm, UNCONQUER D STEAM !

afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or

on wide-waving wings expanded bear The flying-

chariot through the fields of air. Fair crews

triumphant, leaning from above, Shall wave their

fluttering kerchiefs as they move; Or warrior-bands

alarm the gaping crowd, And armies shrink beneath

the shadowy cloud."

Priestley was a brilliant and original chemist, an

enthusiastic religious controversialist, and a

champion of political liberty. He had moved from

London to Birmingham in 1780 and he regarded this

as " the happiest event in my life," because it

brought him in touch with the group of scientists

and philosophers who clustered round Boulton and

Darwin, and of whom Watt was in his eyes the

greatest. He left Birmingham hastily in 179I. In that

year a mob attacked some friends of the French

Revolution who held a dinner to celebrate the

anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Priestley had

not been present, but he was generally regarded as

the spokesman of rebels, and his house was sacked

by the rioters. Three years later he left the country to

pass the remainder of his life in exile in America,

and the Lunar Society lost the most stimulating of its

members. After this the group dwindled rapidly, and

the vacant places were not filled by new recruits.

For Watt the first ten years of the new century

brought the heaviest losses. In 1802 Darwin died,

and Watt began to feel himself " as it were in danger

of being left alone in the world." " He was almost

my most ancient acquaintance and friend in

England," he wrote, " I having been intimate with

him for thirtyfour years.... It will be my pride, while I

live, that I have enjoyed the friendship of such a

man." Two years later he lost his younger son,

Gregory; " a splendid striplingÑliterally the most

beautiful youth I ever saw," said his friend Campbell,

the poet. After a short and dazzling career, in which

he showed something of his father's genius

combined with abundant vitality and a gift for

selfexpression, he developed consumption and

slowly faded away. " I cannot weep," wrote Watt, "

but I must ever lament his early fate." " He was a

noble fellow, and would have been a great man. Oh !

there was no reason for his dyingÑ he ought not to

have died," exclaimed his devoted friend, Humphry

Davy, in a letter of bitter, passionate sorrow. A few

months later Watt lost the last remaining friend of

his youth, John Robison, and in 1809 the ally of his

years of manhood, Matthew Boulton.

Yet he was not lonely. He did not rebel against the

decrees of time. He accepted old age, and he found

that it had its consolations. He was compensated for

the lost intimacy of his contemporaries by his

enjoyment of the admiration and respect paid him

by his successors in the field. He was the Grand Old

Man of British science, a revered master to those

about him, to others an almost legendary figure,

supreme among those giants of the past who had

forged the modern world. He loved to sit and talk to

a circle of enthusiastic young scientists, and to feel

that they still came to him as to a great authority,

hung on his lips and wondered at his amazing

erudition. He never lectured them on topics of his

own choice. He let them guide the discussion on to

the subjects that interested them most, and " allowed

his mind, like a great cyclopa dia. to be opened at

any letter his associates chose to turn up." He could

talk to the learned about their science, to the student

about his problems, to the child about its toys, and

fascinate them all alike. Walter Scott met him at a

distinguished party at Edinburgh in 18I4 and was

much impressed. " The alert, kind, benevolent old

man had his attention alive to every ones question,

his information at every one's command. His talents

and fancy overflowed on every subject. One

gentleman was a deep philologist; he talked with him

on the origin of the alphabet as if he had been

coeval with Cadmus; another, a celebrated

criticÑyou would have said the old man had studied

political economy and belles-lettres all his life; of

science it is unnecessary to speakÑit was his own

distinguished walk."

Naturally Watt was often consulted on engineering

problems, and young inventors laid their ideas

before him for his criticism. An engineer submitted

designs for rotative motions. Watt thanked him, but

remarked that none of them were " new to me, or

useful in their present form." One " is not

practicable as you have drawn it.... A more perfect

application of that principle is contained in the

specification of my patent in the year 1781" I do not

by what I have said mean to discourage you from

paying particular attention to the subject; your ideas

are ingenious, and by further experience you may

think upon better things." What could the poor man

do after that ! Even more withering was his reply to

Earl Stanhope, who had taken out a patent for

steamships. " His Lordship has also applied to us for

engines," wrote Watt, " but we believe we are not

likely to agree with him, as he lays too much stress

upon his own ingenuity."

There was, in fact, a trace of intellectual arrogance in

Watt's character, which increased with time. He

believed, and probably with truth, that he was at

least the equal of any engineer alive. He had stood

alone in his youth; he would admit no rivals in his

old age. But he had never shown a petty anxiety

about his reputation; he had never been secretive

about his ideas for fear that others might make

capital out of them. Robison said of him that " he

was without the smallest wish to appropriate

knowledge to himself; and one of his greatest

delights was to set others on the same road to

knowledge with himself. No man could be more

distant from the jealous concealment of a

tradesman." When he was shown the work of

others, he was merciless, but not unfair in his

criticism. If it was good he did not disparage it; he

merely remarked quietly that he had had the same

idea himself many years before, but had never

worked it out in detail. Often this was perfectly true.

Science is logical, and each new thought grows out

of its predecessors. But Watt knew better than most

that the man who " works it out in detail " is the true

inventor.

It is in his attitude towards the problem of steam

locomotion that he is most open to criticism. Watt

believed that where he had toiled and succeeded,

there was no room for improvement at the hands of

others. His engine must not be tampered with. Still

more obvious did it appear to him that where he had

tried and failed, there was little chance that others

would succeed. And he had studied the question of

locomotive engines and deliberately laid it aside as

incapable of satisfactory solution. That others

should be so bold as to tackle it afresh, was an insult

to his judgment.

To many of Watt's friends locomotion was the most

exciting of the possibilities of steampower, and they

constantly urged him to study it. This had been the

substance of Robison's suggestion which first drew

Watt's attention to the subject of engines. Dr. Small

cunningly incited him by reporting the supposed

successes of his rivals. "A linen-draper at London,

one Moore, has taken out a patent for moving

wheel-carriages by steam," he wrote in 1769. "This

comes of thy delays." To which Watt replied, " If

linendraper Moore does not use my engine to drive

chaises, he can't drive them by steam. If he does, I

will stop them. I suppose by the rapidity of his

progress and puffing, he is too volatile to be

dangerous. Let me know all you know of him.'

Anxious curiosity peeps through the arrogant

contempt of his language. But Moore was a quack

and Watt's anxiety subsided. Small had to administer

a few more pinpricks. In 1770 he wrote that he and

Boulton were very anxious to devise an engine to

drive canal boats, and an interesting correspondence

followed on Watt suggesting the use of a screw in

place of the usual paddle-wheels.

In his patent of 1784 Watt included the specification

of an engine to drive a wheelcarriage, but it was little

more than a preliminary sketch. In two long letters

to Boulton he carefully criticised his own invention,

and came to the conclusion that, unless things

turned out better than he expected, " the machine

will be clumsy and defective, and that it will cost

much time to bring it to any tolerable degree of

perfection; and that for me to interrupt the career of

our business to bestow my attention on it would be

imprudent. I even grudge the time I have taken to

write these comments on it." Now to take out a

patent that may block the path of other inventors

when you have no intention of pursuing the subject

yourself is a very questionable proceeding. And in

this case the rival he feared was his own foreman

and loyal friend, William Murdock, who was already

pressing Boulton and Watt to take him into

partnership for the manufacture of locomotives of

his own design. The proposal was rejected, and two

years later, hearing that Murdock wished to apply for

a patent on his own, Watt wrote angrily to Boulton,

asking him to make him give up his experiments. " I

am extremely sorry that W. M. still busies himself

with the steam-carriage. In one of my specifications

I have secured it as well as words could do it,

according to my ideas of it; . . . I have still the same

opinion concerning it that I had; but to prevent as

much as possible more fruitless argument about it, I

have one of some size under hand, and am resolved

to try if God will work a miracle in favour of these

carriages." There is more in the same strain. What he

says in effect is this: " I have reserved the field to

myself and will allow no trespassers. I shall probably

make some experiments, but I regard them as pure

waste of time, and have practically no hopes of

success." He was reluctant to embark on new

problems of such complexity, but he was even more

reluctant to allow any one else the chance of

anticipating him. The policy was not a creditable

one, and it failed. Before he died, the locomotive

was well advanced along the road to success, but he

had had no hand in its creation.

Watt's attitude towards steam navigation was similar,

but the issue was somewhat different. In 1785 two

Scotchmen, Patrick Miller and James Taylor, sat

down to consider whether any power, other than

man-power, could be used to drive paddle-wheels

attached to ships. After much hesitation they voted

for the steam-engine, and invited William Symington

to make them one. The experiment was on the

whole a success, and, anxious to enlarge the scope of

their operations, they made advances to Boulton and

Watt with a view to co-operation. Watt's attitude was

haughty and frigid. He said that he regarded

Symington's engines as an infringement of his

patent, " but as we thought them so defective in

mechanical contrivance as not to be likely to do us

immediate injury, we thought it best to leave them to

be judged by Dame Nature first, before we brought

them into an earthly court." But he was unjust, for it

was Symington who built the Charlotte Degas, the

first steam boat to do practical service on this side of

the l Atlantic. And yet, in a sense he was right For

Symington's work was imperfect, and when Fulton

built the Clermont in 18077 the next land mark in

the history of steam navigation, he equipped it with

an engine ordered from the Soho works, and from

that time onwards shipbuilders figured ever more

prominently among their customers.

Watt was perfectly right not to allow himself to be

distracted from his main work until he had brought

it to perfection. Locomotion presented special

problems of great difficulty. He thought that any

engine would be thrown out of action by the motion

of a boat in rough water. He was convinced that for

land transport a compact engine driven by high-

pressure steam was essential, and he doubted the

ability of the mechanics to make anything strong

enough. These difficulties were genuine, but they

proved not to be insurmountable. By the time work

at Soho was running smoothly, he was too tired of

business and all its worries to launch out into a new

enterprise. He would have had to face once again

the same old troublesÑtrials wrecked by faulty

workmanship, profits swallowed up in expenses,

patent rights invaded by piratesÑand he had no

mind to do it. He was a scientist by choice, and a

manufacturer only by necessity, and in his old age he

preferred to follow his inclinations. But he was

wrong to discourage the experiments of others and

to belittle their work. It is not surprising that he

lacked the vision to see the great future that was in

store for steam locomotion, but it is a pity that he

allowed his action even for a moment to suggest

comparisons with the dog in the manger.

But Watt's faults and failures were few as compared

with his virtues and successes, and so it appeared to

his contemporaries. His fame spread quickly among

scientists and philosophers in all countries. He was

elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1785. The

University of Glasgow honoured him with the

degree of LL.D. in 1806. Two years later the

Institute of France made him a corresponding

member, and in 1814 paid him the very high tribute

of choosing him as one of the eight Associes

Etrangers of the Academie des Sciences. English

society gradually awoke to the fact that it had been

harbouring a man of genius, and the news

penetrated finally even to the Government. He was

offered a baronetcy, which he politely declined.

In the world of industry the fame of the Soho

engines was widespread and unchallenged at the

beginning of the nineteenth century. But if we were

to measure the extent of the use of steampower in

the British Isles at the date of Watt's death by the

output of Soho, our conclusions would be very wide

of the mark indeed. Even before the patent expired

in 1800, engines were being produced outside

Boulton's factory. There were the makers of

Newcomen engines, there were others who, like

Watt himself, had introduced their own

improvements into the Newcomen model, and there

were the pirates who exploited Watt's ideas without

paying for them. After that date the field was thrown

open and new manufacturers quickly appeared.

More than this, Watt's model became in its turn an

object for improvement by the ingenuity of other

inventors, so that buyers could no longer feel certain

that they would obtain the most upto-date pattern

from Soho. Watt would have liked to believe that

the Spirit of Mechanical Creation, working through

his genius, made an engine, and saw that it was

good, and rested. But it was not so.

Yet this does but increase the tribute that is due to

Watt, by multiplying the value of his gift to the

world. Fot it remains true that the gift was his, and

he was not guilty of idle boasting when he wrote,

three years before his death: " I have spent a long

life in improving the arts and manufactures of the

nation; my inventions at present, or lately, giving

employment to the best part of a million of people,

and having added many millions to the national

riches, and therefore I have a natural right to rest in

my extreme age."

The industrial importance of the invention is too

obvious to require much comment. The new power

spread rapidly through the mines, the metal industry,

the waterworks, the cornmills, paper-mills and silk-

mills, the breweries and dis tilleries. By 1820 it had

captured the cotton industry, and it was clear that,

before long, it would capture the woollen and

worsted industries as well. The whole basis of our

economic prosperity was changed. Production

requires energy, and energy must be " fed." The first

essential for production is the " food " of energy. To

possess it in abundance gives security, to possess it

in superabundance gives power, for it is a universal

need. The " food " of energy produced by steam was

coal, and in coal England had at that time an

undoubted preeminence. The resulting superiority in

production gave her a bargaining power in the

markets of the world, which enabled her to view

with equanimity the prospect of becoming

dependent on foreign purchase for her food supply.

In the eighteenth century no country felt safe unless

it could produce enough food to satisfy the needs of

its population. A nation's capacity for greatness was

limited by its productivity in corn. And this was

unfortunate for England, for by 1800 the limit

appeared to have been reached, and there was no

room for expansion. As Malthus pointed out, it was

not easy even to stand still, since the growth of

population tended to drag down the level of

prosperity. The transformation of industry by the

introduction of steam-power gave England a new

lease of life. Her capacity for greatness seemed now

to be limited only by her productivity in coal, and in

consequence the road to economic prosperity was

almost too fatally easy for the Victorians. Watt and

his successors in the field of transport had laid the

Malthusian bogey and created the specialised

industrial State.

The social effects were equally striking, and almost

entirely beneficial. The steam-engine certainly

hastened the growth of capitalism, but it did not

create " wage slavery." Unscrupulous employers

were exploiting the labour of their workpeople in

cottages, workshops and watermills before a single

steam factory had been built. And they had more

scope for it. Waterpower is intermittent. In a hard

winter or a dry summer it might fail, the mills

stopped work, and men, women, and children were

reduced to destitution. To balance this risk the

owner of a mill would, when water was plentiful, run

his machinery continuously until the mill hands

dropped from fatigue, rather than let it stand idle

while his precious source of power flowed uselessly

away. Steam is more reliable, and coal does not

degenerate from disuse, therefore in the factories

there was some hope of regulating the hours of

work.

In a cotton-mill planted on some stream in the heart

of the country the employees, largely children, were

dependent on their employer not only for their

conditions of work, but also for their conditions of

life. They formed a little isolated colony of which he

was autocrat. Often the buildings had not been

designed as workshops. They were converted barns

and cartsheds, dirty, dangerous and unventilated.

The steam-engine brought the factories into the

towns, where the employees had some degree of

independence; it drew the wage-earners out of

obscurity into the factories where pressure of public

opinion and legislation could force the standard of

the most backward up to the level of the most

enlightened. For the engine and the heavy machinery

that it drove, special accommodation was required,

and new buildings were erected for the purpose

which offered far healthier conditions of work than

anything that had preceded them. The steamengine

diminished the risk of accident in the mines and the

suffering and loss of life at sea. It is true that new

problems appeared, but they were solved; and,

taking the general rate of social progress as our

standard, we must admit that they were quickly

solved. When the depression that followed the great

wars passed away, it was not in the factories that the

worst distress was found, but among the workers

outside them.

On August 19th, 1819, Watt passed peacefully away

at Heathfield, and was buried in Handsworth

Church. The honour that had been paid to him

during his life continued to be paid to his memory

after his death. In 1824, as a result of a public

meeting in London, a statue of him wasexecuted by

Chantrey and placed in Westminster Abbey. In 1882

his name was given a permanent place in the

vocabulary of science at the suggestion of C. W.

Siemens, who, in his Presidential Address to the

British Association, made the following proposal: "

The other unit I would suggest adding to the list is

that of power... It might be appropriately called a

Watt, in honour of that master mind in mechanical

science, James Watt." When the hundredth

anniversary of his death came round in 1919, the

Science Museum in South Kensington celebrated it

by holding a Centenary Exhibition. For this purpose

the Watt Collection which the Museum possesses

was supplemented by extensive loans of models,

drawings and letters. The permanent collection has

recently been enriched, and in particular by the gift

of the contents of the famous Heathfield garret, and

the curious will now be able to see an exact

reproduction of the retreat in which Watt spent the

last peaceful years of his long life of service to

science and to humanity.

Appendix

THE WATER CONTROVERSY

FOR centuries scientists believed that water was an

element and indivisible. Three men, Cavendish, Watt

and Lavoisier, have claimed the credit for the

important discovery that it is a compound of oxygen

and hydrogen. For about seventy years a controversy

raged over the merits of their respective claims. The

result may be briefly summarised.

It is necessary first to understand the terms then in

use. All gases were referred to as air. But the

properties of air varied. There was supposed to be

an invisible substance, called phlogiston, the

principle of fire, which was contained in all

inflammable bodies and was given off when they

burned. Air deprived of its phlogiston, "

dephlogisticated air," was what we know as oxygen.

" Inflammable air " covered all gases that will burn,

including hydrogen. The latter was sometimes

distinguished as " the inflammable air from metals."

In I776 two chemists, Warltire and Macquer,

independently observed that when inflammable air is

burnt in ordinary air, water is deposited. Priestley

repeated the experiment, but no use was made of the

observation. Cavendish heard of it, realised its

importance and, in the summer of I78I, conducted a

series of experiments in which he produced water by

exploding a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen in a

closed vessel. He reported these experiments to

Priestley, who tried to repeat them, and in turn

reported his efforts to Watt.

Watt jumped to the conclusion that water is a

compound, consisting of dephlogisticated air and

inflammable air, or phlogiston, and expressed this

theory in a letter written to Priestley on April List,

I783, which he asked him to send to the Royal

Society together with the account of his (Priestley's)

experiments. Watt's letter was not made public,

because Priestley threw doubt on the theory, and

Watt asked that it might be held back until he had

made further investigations. But several scientists,

including Cavendish, saw it. Meanwhile Cavendish

concluded his experiments and, on January 15th,

I784, read a paper to the Royal Society in which he

put forward a similar theory of the composition of

water, using the same terms and making no mention

of Watt.

Watt's guess that water is a compound was certainly

original, and it was a brilliant piece of intuition. But

it was based on the experiments of Cavendish,

reported to him via Priestley. His view of the nature

of the ingredients was false, for by " inflammable air,

or phlogiston " he meant, not hydrogen, but any

inflammable gas. Cavendish, on the other hand, was,

in a sense, right. For though he spoke vaguely of "

phlogiston," he had in his experiments always used

hydrogen and knew that no other gas would serve. It

remained for Lavoisier to complete the discovery by

showing that phlogiston was a myth, and that

hydrogen is a perfectly definite and distinct gas.

Watt thought that it was his letter that suggested to

Cavendish the idea that water is a compound. The

fact that Priestley was surprised when he heard

Watt's theory might be taken to indicate that he had

had no hint of anything similar from Cavendish,

with whom he was in close touch. But Priestley

often misunderstood what Cavendish was doing,

and blundered badly when he tried to imitate him, so

his evidence is unreliable. It is incredible that a man

of Cavendish's character should have repudiated so

great an obligation to a man whom he honoured as a

scientist and valued as a friend. We may assume,

therefore, that he understood the meaning of his

own experiments without the help of Watt.