Along with fellow Scot
Andrew Carnegie, one of the most influential characters in the Industrial
Revolution is Scottish Engineer James Watt. Born 1736 to a carpenter in
Greenock, Scotland, Watt was originally trained as an instrument maker in
London, England. Watt eventually returned to Scotland and was appointed
instrument maker at the University of Glasgow. During his time there he
met Chemist Joseph Black who was studying the heat properties of steam at
the time.
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Also during that time,
Watt was asked to repair the University's model Newcomen steam engine.
During the repair however, Watt found many areas of the engine's design
that he believed could be improved upon, specifically the amount of energy
it wasted. Under the Newcomen design, a jet of cold water was used to
condense the steam in the engine, unfortunately this also had the effect
of cooling other parts of the engine, which then had to be re-heated. Watt
believed this to be an inefficient use of energy that could be corrected.
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Over the next several
years, Watt improved the design of the Newcomen engine, adding a separate
condensing chamber in which the steam could be condensed without cooling
the rest of the engine. This new design was nearly 75% more efficient than
its predecessor, as well has having several other smaller improvements. He
patented the condensing chamber in 1769 and in 1774 he went into business
with Matthew Boulton to produce the improved steam engines. The first
of these were used in collieries and iron works, and by 1783 Watt's
engines had almost entirely replaced the Newcomen models.
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The more efficient (and therefore more cost-effective) new device made it possible for
smaller "cottage" industries, such as cotton spinning, to become large
factory industries, helping to make the Industrial Revolution possible.
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Even though the steam
engine hasn't been used industrially for many years now, Watt's legacy has
endured. Eight years after his retirement in 1800, he founded the Watt
Prize at Glasgow University, which also named an engineering laboratory
after him. And of course, there is the energy measurement unit called a
"watt", a unit of energy equal to one joule per second (a joule being
about the amount of energy it takes a person to lift a golf ball one
meter, or the power dissipated by a current of 1 ampere flowing across a
resistance of 1 oh, for all you physics types).
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James Watt died at Hatfield in 1819 at
the age of 83 and was buried in Handsworth Church. A book about him titled
"James Watt", written by Andrew Carnegie, was published in 1905.
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