James Watt

 EARLY LIFE 

James Watt was born on January 19, 1736 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland.

James Watt by John Partridge, after Sir William Beechey (1806)

James was the eldest of the five surviving children of James Watt (1698–1782) and Agnes Muirhead (1703–1755).

James Watt Snr was a merchant and ballie who ran a successful ship and house building business.

Young James was a delicate child, who was bullied by his classmates.

It is said James originally got the idea for a steam engine while still a boy watching steam lift the lid off his mother’s tea kettle.

James was educated at home by his mother, later going on to attend Greenock Grammar School.

Labelled dull and inept by his teachers James only began to develop intellectually when he got into geometry at the age of 13.

EARLY CAREER 

After leaving school Watt worked in the workshops of his father's businesses. After his father lost his inheritance due to commercial disasters Watt left Greenock to seek employment in Glasgow as a mathematical instrument maker.

When he was 18 Watt's mother died and his father's health began to fail. He travelled to London and was apprenticed to John Morgan as an instrument maker for a year. He worked for long hours continuously in the cold workshop, during which his health declined.

In 1757 three professors offered Watt the opportunity to set up a small workshop Glasgow University. Watt was made responsible for the maintenance of the university's physics equipment. Two of the professors, the physicist and chemist Joseph Black who discovered carbon dioxide and the famed Adam Smith, became Watt's friends.

THE STEAM ENGINE 

In 1763 a professor brought Watt's attention to a Newcomen steam engine that was not working properly. Whilst repairing it, Watt noticed the engine had a major weakness. However hard he concentrated he couldn't think it through. The Scottish engineer decided to take a peaceful, relaxed Sunday afternoon walk in Glasgow Green, one of Glasgow's many parks. When he'd reached the golf house an idea popped into his head, which led him to develop his improved steam engine.

James Eckford Lauder: James Watt and the Steam Engine: 1855

In 1768, Watt entered into a partnership with John Roebuck, the founder of Carron Iron Works near Falkirk. The following year Watt took out the famous patent for "A New Invented Method of Lessening the Consumption of Steam and Fuel in Fire Engines."

Iron workers in the 1760s were more like blacksmiths than modern machinists, and were unable to machine the piston and cylinder for Watt's steam engine with sufficient precision. Watt and Roebuck were as a consequence unable to make much money out of the Scottish engineer's invention. Watt was forced to take up employment—first as a surveyor, then as a civil engineer—for eight years. During this period he surveyed and planned the Coatbridge-Glasgow canal.

The partnership was a failure and Roebuck was forced to sell his share in Watt's engine to Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton in return for cancellation of a £1,200 debt.

After the failure of partnership with Roebuck, Watt's partnership with Boulton was more successful. Boulton supplied the drive and business acumen Watt needed and soon his new steam engine replaced Newcomen’s. Their partnership lasted until Boulton's death in 1809.

Watt continued to experiment and in 1781 he produced a steam engine, which incorporated a series of radical improvements, notably the closing off of the upper part of the cylinder, thereby making the low-pressure steam drive the top of the piston instead of the atmosphere. Whereas his earlier machine, with its up-and-down pumping action, was ideal for draining mines, this new rotary-motion steam engine could be used to drive many different types of machinery including paper and flour mills and spinning and weaving machines.

Engraving of a 1784 steam engine designed by Boulton and Watt.

In 1788 Watt made a further improvement when he patented a throttle valve to control the power of the engine, and a centrifugal governor to keep it from "running away". These improvements taken together produced an engine which was up to five times as efficient in its use of fuel as the Newcomen engine.

It wasn't until 1790s it became apparent in how many varied situations steam could be used and by 1800 it had replaced water as the main source of power of engines.

Steam was the first form of energy not reliant on wind or man's strength.

The Watt steam engine is credited for driving the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The oldest working engine in the world is the Smethwick Engine, a Watt steam engine made by Boulton and Watt, which was brought into service in May 1779. It is now at Thinktank in Birmingham (formerly at Birmingham's Museum of Science and Industry).

Smethwick Engine - world's oldest engine still in working order. By IMechE1

LATER CAREER 

In discussing animal power and particularly horse power, Watt estimated that a horse could do work equivalent to 33,000 ft⋅lbf/minone foot per minute. Because people used horses to pull carts in Watt's day, it was an amount of energy that could be understood by most people at that time and it was adopted as the standard power measurement by which engines are rated.

Boulton and Watt seized upon William Murdoch's invention of gas lighting. Their parliamentary lobbying resulted in gas street and domestic lighting.

Watt invented a mechanized method of copying manuscripts, the copying press. It became a commercial success and was widely used in offices even into the twentieth century.

By 1800 Watt had earned enough money to enable him to retire to his estate near Birmingham.

RELATIONSHIPS 

In 1764, Watts married his cousin Margaret Miller, with whom he had five children, but only two of them Gregory and Janet, reached their teens. His wife died in childbirth in 1772.

In 1777, Watts got married for a second time to Ann Macgregor, daughter of a Glasgow dye-maker. She bore him two more children who both also died at young ages.

Though at times Watts could be gloomy and cantankerous, he was a much sought-after conversationalist and companion, always interested in expanding his horizons. His personal relationships with his friends and partners were always congenial and long-lasting.

BELIEFS 

Watt was more interested in discussing scientific and philosophical questions than matters of religion. He belonged to the Lunar Society of Birmingham which met monthly to discuss scientific and philosophical questions. It was called thus because they would meet on the night of the full moon as the extra light made the journey home easier and safer in the absence of street lighting.

Other members of the group included Watt's business partner Matthew Boulton, the potter Joshua Wedgwood, the chemist Joseph Priestley and the freethinking poet, Erasmus Darwin. Venues included Erasmus Darwin's home in Lichfield and Matthew Boulton's residence, Soho House.

Watt was liberal in his political views.

PERSONAL LIFE 

In 1790, Matthew Boulton recommended to Watt his friend, the architect Samuel Wyatt, who had designed Boulton's home, Soho House. Watt commissioned Wyatt to design Heathfield Hall in Handsworth, Staffordshire.

Watt's workroom at Heathfield, painted in 1889 by Jonathon Pratt

In his later years Watt purchased an estate in mid-Wales at Doldowlod House, one mile south of Llanwrthwl, which he much improved.

Watt heated his study with a steam pipe connected to a boiler, and Matthew Boulton installed steam heating in a friend's Birmingham house.

Watt was devoted to and skilled in music. He once built an organ.

HEALTH, LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

A lifelong migraine sufferer, James Watt was a dreadful hypochondriac who was constantly complaining about every ailment under the sun.

Portrait of James Watt by Carl Frederik von Breda

After his retirement in 1800, Watt traveled to France and Germany with his second wife. He also revisited his hometown of Greenock in 1816.

James Watt passed peacefully away at Heathfield Hall on August 25, 1819 at the age of 83.

He was buried on September 2, 1819 in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Handsworth.

Watt left over £60,000 (£81,000,000 in today's money) in his will to his family.

The metric unit of power, the Watt, is named after him despite Watt having nothing to do with electricity.

Source Famouspeople