James Watt
James Watt (Greenock, Scotland, January 19Jul./ January 30, 1736greg.-Handsworth, Birmingham, England, August 25, 1819) was a Scottish mechanical engineer, inventor, and chemist. The improvements that he made to the Newcomen machine gave rise to what is known as the steam engine, which would be fundamental in the development of the first Industrial Revolution, both in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the world.
While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in steam engine technology and realized that contemporary designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and heating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design improvement, the separate condenser, which prevented energy loss and radically improved the power, efficiency, and profitability of steam engines. He eventually adapted this motor to produce rotary motion, greatly expanding its use beyond simply pumping water.
Watt attempted to commercialize his invention, but encountered many financial difficulties until he entered into a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The new firm Boulton & Watt became very successful and they both became rich. In retirement, Watt continued to invent, but none of his later creations were as prominent as his improved steam engine. Watt also developed the concept of horsepower, while the SI unit of power, the watt (symbol W) was named in his honor.
Biography
Born in Greenock, near the city of Glasgow, his father was a naval inventor and contractor, while his mother, Agnes Muirhead, came from a distinguished family and was well educated. Both practiced Presbyterianism and were active members of the Covenanter movement. His grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a professor of mathematics and a magistrate of the barony of Cartsburn.
James' delicate state of health during childhood prevented him from attending school regularly, being educated mainly by his mother, although he later attended Greenock Grammar School. He displayed great manual dexterity and aptitude for mathematics, while Latin and Greek were uninteresting.
When he was eighteen, his mother died and his father began to have health problems. Watt traveled to London and was apprenticed to an instrument maker for a year (1755/1756). He then returned to Scotland and settled in the important market city of Glasgow with the intention of starting his own instrument-making business. He made and repaired reflective brass dials, parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes and barometers, among other things. As he had not worked as an apprentice for a minimum of seven years, the Glasgow Blacksmiths Guild (with jurisdiction over any craftsman who used hammers) blocked his application, despite the fact that there were no other makers of mathematical instruments in Scotland.
Watt was saved from this impasse with the arrival from Jamaica of astronomical instruments bequeathed by Alexander Macfarlane to the University of Glasgow, which required the attention of experts. Watt restored them for his commissioning and was paid for it. These instruments were eventually installed at the Macfarlane Observatory. Subsequently, three professors offered him the opportunity to create a small workshop within the university. It was started in 1757 and two of the professors, the physicist and chemist Joseph Black and the famous Adam Smith, became friends of Watt.
He initially worked maintaining and repairing scientific instruments used at the university, assisting in demonstrations, and expanding the production of dials. In 1759, he formed a partnership with John Craig, an architect and businessman, to manufacture and sell a line of products that included musical instruments and toys. The partnership continued for the next six years and employed up to sixteen workers. Craig died in 1765. Eventually an employee, Alex Gardner, took over the business, which continued into the 20th century.
In 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret (Peggy) Miller, with whom he had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood: James Jr. (1769–1848) and Margaret (1767–1796). His wife died in childbirth in 1772. In 1777, he remarried Ann MacGregor, daughter of a Glasgow dye manufacturer, with whom he had two sons: Gregory (1777–1804), who became a geologist and mineralogist, and Janet (1779–1794). Ann died in 1832. Between 1777 and 1790, he lived in Regent's Place, Birmingham.
He was a key member of the Birmingham Lunar Society. Many of his writings are preserved in the Birmingham Library. He died on August 25, 1819 at Heathfield, at his home in Handsworth, England, at the age of 83.
Achievements as an engineer
My method to reduce the consumption of steam, and therefore of fuel in the fire pumps, rests on the following principles: 1o The steam chamber must, during the operation of the machine, be kept constantly at the same temperature as the steam that comes to fill it. (...) In machines that must be put into motion by steam condensation, this condensation will be made in closed containers, other than steam chambers, although in communication with them. These containers, to which I call capacitors, should, when the machine is running, be kept, constantly at a temperature as low as at least the ambient air.Watt Patent (1769)
Watt invented the parallel movement to convert the circular movement to an almost rectilinear movement, of which he was very proud, and the steam pressure gauge in the cylinder throughout the entire work cycle of the machine, thus showing your efficiency and helping you perfect it.
Watt contributed greatly to the development of the steam engine, turning it from a technological project into a viable and economical way of producing energy. Watt found that Newcomen's engine was expending nearly three-quarters of the power of steam heating the piston and cylinder. Watt developed a separate condensing chamber that significantly increased efficiency. So far, that was one of the best developments ever.
Together with Mathew Boulton he founded the Soho Foundry (in Smethwick, near Birmingham, England), opened in 1795, a foundry and factory dedicated to the manufacture of steam engines. Both his and Boulton's children continued the enterprise over the years.
Watt opposed the use of high-pressure steam, and is accused by some of having slowed down the development of the steam engine by other engineers, until his patents expired in the 1800s. Together with his partner Matthew Boulton He battled rival engineers such as Jonathan Hornblower, who tried to develop machines that did not fall within the extremely general scope of Watt's patents.
James Watt created the unit called horsepower to compare the power of different steam engines. It is still used, mostly on vehicles.
Personality
Watt combined theoretical knowledge of science with the ability to apply it in practice. Humphry Davy said of him, "Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very wrong idea of his character; he distinguished himself equally as a natural philosopher and as a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for his practical application."
He was highly respected by other leading men of the Industrial Revolution. He was an important member of the Lunar Society, and was an in-demand conversationalist and companion, always interested in broadening his horizons. His personal relationships with his friends and peers they were always nice and durable.
Watt was a prolific correspondent. During his years in Cornwall, he wrote long letters to Boulton several times a week. However, he was reluctant to publish his results in, for example, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and instead preferred to communicate his ideas in patents.He was an excellent draftsman.
As a businessman he was quite limited, and he especially hated haggling and negotiating terms with those who wanted to use the steam engine. In a letter to William Small in 1772, Watt confessed that "he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a score or make a bargain"; Until he retired, he always worried a lot about his financial affairs. His health was often poor and he suffered from frequent nervous headaches and depression. Around 1800 he was already much richer, enough to retire.
Timeline
- 1754: learns the functioning of the trade in mathematical and scientific instruments in London, before returning to Glasgow, where it opens its own business.
- 1756-1763: creator of mathematical instruments for the University of Glasgow.
- 1763-1764: Repairs a Newcomen machine, devised by Thomas Newcomen; from this moment on it begins to think about ways to improve that machine.
- 1765-1770: builds several Newcomen machines in Scotland.
- 1767: supervises the channel Forth and Clyde.
- 1769: patents the steam machine.
- 1774: He founded with Matthew Boulton a company in Soho, near Birmingham, the Soho Foundry, to build his improved steam machine.
- 1785: formally entered the Royal Society.
- 1800: Heathfield Hall is withdrawn near Birmingham.
Patents
Six patents are documented for which James Watt is listed as the sole inventor. They are the following:
- Patent 913. A method of lessening the consumption of steam in steam engines-the separate condenser. The request was accepted on January 5, 1769; registered on April 29, 1769, and extended to June 1800 by an act of the British Parliament in 1775. It is a patent for a separate steam capacitor, to save steam consumption.
- Patent 1,244. A new method of copying letters; The request was accepted on 14 February 1780 and registered on 31 May 1780. Patent for a portable card copier.
- Patent 1.306. New methods to produce a continued rotation motion – sun and planet. The application was accepted on 25 October 1781 and registered on 23 February 1782. Patent on a planetary type gear (of sun and planet).
- Patent 1.321. New improvements upon steam engines – expansive and double acting. Request of 14 March 1782. Registered as a patent on July 4, 1782.
- Patent 1.432. New improvements upon steam engines – three bar motion and steam carriage. Accepted request on April 28, 1782. Registered as a patent on August 25, 1782. It also contains the so-called Watt mechanism.
- Patent 1.485. Newly improved methods of constructing furnaces. Solitude accepted on 14 June 1785. Registered as a patent on July 9, 1785.
Acknowledgments
Watt received numerous accolades in his own day. In 1784, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1787, he became a Fellow of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy in Rotterdam. In 1789, he was elected into an elite group, the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, the first association for civil engineers. In 1806, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Glasgow, and in 1814, he was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences and he was made a Foreign Associate.
In his honor, the unit of power, which in Spanish is called watt, was called watt, for his contributions to the development of the steam engine. This was adopted by the Second Congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1889 and by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960 as the unit of power incorporated into the International System of Units (or " YES).
In Birmingham, there are several memorials and statues in his honor. There is also a set of three statues depicting him along with Boulton and Murdoch and there is a school named after him.
Matthew Boulton's home is now a museum, Soho House, dedicated to the work of the two men.
In London there is a large statue of Watt by Francis Legatt Chantrey near St Paul's Cathedral and formerly in Westminster Abbey.
There are four university colleges named after Watt in Scotland. James Watt College in Kilwinning (North Ayrshire Campus) and Greenock (two in Greenock, the Finnart Campus and the Waterfront Campus) and an e Largs campus. Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh is also named after him. In Glasgow there is also a statue of Watt in George Square.
There are many streets and roads named after James Watt throughout the UK.
In Paris there is a street that bears his name since 1867 (in the 13th arrondissement). Also in Brussels there is a street named after him.
- He refused to accept a title of nobility that had been offered to him.
- The lunar crater Watt carries this name in his memory.
- The asteroid (11332) Jameswatt also commemorates its name.
Disputes
As with many important inventions, there is some discussion as to whether Watt was the original and sole inventor of some of the inventions he patented. However there is no dispute that he was the sole inventor of the most important of all, the separate condensing chamber. It was his custom (since the 1780s) to anticipate the ideas of others and he came to know of patent applications with the intention of attributing the invention to himself, and making sure that no one else could exploit it. As he states in a letter to *Boulton on August 17, 1784:
- "I have made so many descriptions of wheeled carriage engines as I could afford; but they are very defective and can only serve to prevent other people from making similar patents."
Banning his employee William Murdoch from working with high-pressure steam in his experiments with steam locomotives is said to have delayed development. Watt, with his partner Matthew Boulton, battled rival engineers such as Jonathan Hornblower who were trying to develop engines that would not infringe Watt's patents.
Watt patented the application of the epicyclic gear to steam in 1781 and a steam locomotive in 1784, both of which appear to have been invented by his employee William Murdoch. Watt himself described the origin of the invention of the sun and planet gear in a letter to Boulton dated January 5, 1782:
- "I have tried a model of one of my old plans of rotary engines that has rekindled and executed in W. M[urdock] and that deserves to be included in the specification as the fifth method..."
Murdoch never contested the patent, remaining an employee of Boulton & Watt most of his life; the company continued to use sun and planet gearing in its rotary motors, even after the lever's patent expired in 1974.
Watt opposed the use of high-pressure steam, and many inventors such as Richard Trevithick pioneered the development of engines of this type, though often including infringements of Watt's patent. More efficient steam engines displaced Watt's engines, leading to another industrial revolution with the development of the steam locomotive.
Legacy
James Watt's improvements to the steam engine transformed Newcomen's engine, which had hardly changed in fifty years, and launched a series of improvements in the generation and application of energy that transformed the world of work, were a key innovation for the Industrial Revolution. A key feature is that he took the engine out of the remote coal mines where it was used as a pump and into the factories, where many mechanics and engineers could see its strengths and limitations. It was a platform to improve for generations and inventors. It was clear to many that the higher pressures achievable in improved boilers would result in more efficient engines, and would lead to the revolution in transportation that soon followed the steam locomotive and steamship. He made possible the construction of new factories that, since they no longer depended on the power of water, could work all year round, and could be placed almost everywhere. The work left the houses, resulting in economies of scale. Capital could work more efficiently, and the productivity of factories increased enormously. He made possible new types of machine tools that could be used to create better machines.
About Watt, the English novelist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) wrote: "For us, the time 8:17 in the morning means something - a very important thing if it happens to be departure time for our daily train For our ancestors, any moment like this had no meaning - it didn't even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stephenson were part inventors of time."
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