| Year
| Event
| Commentary
|
|---|
| 1736
| James is born on January 19th, in Greenock (near Glasgow);
father is James Watt, a carpenter and shipwright, and treasurer
and magistrate of Greenock; mother is Agnes Muirhead; a delicate
child, James is taught until age eleven or so by his mother; he
does not shine as student until grammar school, when under
competent tutelage he excels at mathematics; he is not precocious,
except in drawing; perhaps his most important experiences are in
his fathers shop, where the younger James is set up with his own
equipment and proves quite capable — the workmen saying that
"Jamie has a fortune in his fingers' ends".
| There are numerous aspects of James' early life worth noting,
including the following:
- First, he is a sickly child, a common trait of creative
geniuses (see Ochse, ch. 4) — presumably this makes a life of
isolation and intellectual achievement more likely.
- Second, we see the common pattern of indifference or
mediocrity when it comes to formal education; James had most of
his education at home, did not even complete grammar school, and
learned many of his most important lessons in his father shop,
where he made models (e.g., of cranes and barrel organs);
nevertheless, his parents are a high-achieving, middle-class
couple (see Ochse, ch. 4, and Simonton, ch. 4).
- Third, James early on shows a natural talent for his areas of
later achievement, demonstrating exceptional talent in the
areas of logical-mathematical, spatial, and mechanical ability
(see Ochse, ch. 8).
|
| 1753
| His mother dies, when Jame is 17; James decides to become a
mathematical instrument maker, and leaves for Glasgow, where he
obtains an apprenticeship, but knows more that the man he works for.
| Once again we see the familiar pattern where parental bereavement is
associated with creative genius, although in this case involving a
mother instead of a father (see Ochse, ch. 4, and Simonton, ch. 4).
|
| 1755
| James leaves for London, where after some difficulty he is
finally apprenticed to an instrument maker; he lasted only one
year before his health began to fail him, due to his long hours
and fragile constitution; nevertheless, James learned "more in one
year than most journeymen in four".
| James' professional life was affected directly by two gulfs
between professions:
- The first of these was between science
(chemistry) and practice (engineering) —
much of Watt's success derived from the fact that he was able to
bridge this gap, applying scientific principles (many of which
were learned from his friend Joseph Black) to engineering
problems;
- The second of these was between instrument making,
which a highly refined craft, and iron working, which was very
crude — the crudeness of the latter was a major obstacle to
Watt implementing his ideas, represented in instrument-like
models, for practical use, which required the use of iron.
|
| 1757
| Returning to Glasgow, he soon earned, through his friends, a
position as "Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University".
|
|
| 1759
| Because the university work was not enough to sustain him, he
— in partnership with James Craig — opened a shop in
Saltmarket to make all sorts of instruments, including toys.
|
|
| 1764
| A momentous year in James' life: He marries his cousin
Margaret Miller, who, before she dies nine year later, bears him
six children; and in one of those serendipitous twists of human
affairs, the university acquires a non-working model of a Newcomen
engine, and Watt is asked to repair it.
| It is often thought that Watt invented the steam engine, this
is not true: Thomas Newcomen had built at Staffordshire, England,
a working steam engine in 1712 — Watt's genius was to make a
steam engine of sufficient power, efficiency, and flexibility that
it could drive the industrial revolution.
|
| 1765
| Watt immediately sees the limitations of the Newcomen engine,
and in May of 1765 comes up with his first and greatest invention,
the idea of a separate condenser (to learn more about this, check
out the web sites or the materials in your notebook).
| Two things are noteworthy about this remarkable event:
- First, James Watt may have been the first person to apply a
scientific principle (Joseph Black's concept of latent heat) to an
engineering problem; this fact is remarkable, from a creativity
standpoint, for at least two reasons: (a) it shows the importance
of shared knowledge and communication to creative genius (see
Ochse, ch. 3, and Simonton, ch. 6), and (b) it illustrates a
common aspect of scientific creativity, namely that creative
insights are often sparked by cross-disciplinary fertilization.
- Second, Watt's own description of this event clearly
illustrates the role of incubation in problem solving and creative
insight, in other words, the so-called "bed-bus-bath syndrome"
(see Ochse, ch. 9 and Simonton, ch. 2).
|
| 1766–74
| Watt works as a land surveyor on Britain's new canals; he is
only able to work sporadically on his steam engine designs.
|
|
| 1768
| James enters into a partnership with John Roebuck to make a
prototype of Watt's improved steam engine.
|
|
| 1769
| Watt takes out his famous patent for "A New Invented Method of
Lessening the Consumption of Steam and Fuel in Fire Engines".
|
|
| 1772
| Roebuck goes bankrupt, freeing Watt from their earlier agreement.
|
|
| 1775
| Watt forms a partnership with Matthew Boulton, a partnership
which will last 25 years; they are the ideal pair — Watt, the
technically-gifted hypochondriac and genius, and Boulton, the
wealthy, insightful, and opportunistic industrialist.
| Also about this time begins the monthly meetings of the Lunar
Society, an extremely influential, yet informal, group of
industrialists and scientists, which included among its dozen or so
members not only Watt and Boulton, but Joseph Priestley, Erasmus
Darwin, William Small, and Benjamin Franklin as a corresponding
member.
|
| 1776
| Watt and Boulton build their first two engines at Boulton's
Soho Iron Works in Cornwall; Watt remarries, his second wife, Ann
MacGregor, bears him two children.
|
|
| 1781
| At Boulton's urging, Watt invents a rotary motion device for
his steam engine, called a sun-and-planet gear, that adapts their
steam engine for use in corn, malt, and cotton mills.
|
James Watt
|
| 1782
| Watt's father dies; James, at the height of his inventive
powers, patents the double-acting engine, in which the piston
pushes as well as pulls.
|
|
| 1784
| Watt improves the steam engine by inventing a parallel motion
device for connecting the piston to the beam.
|
|
| 1785
| Watt and Boulton are elected members of the Royal Society of
London (members of the Lunar Society revitalized the Royal
Society, which had become a social rather than a literary club).
|
|
| 1788
| Watt invents, at Boulton's suggestion, the centrifugal
governor for automatic control of the engine's speed.
|
|
| 1790
| Watt invents a pressure gauge to monitor and regulate the
internal steam pressure of the engine; this last modification
takes the Watt engine about as far as it can go.
| By this time Watt is a wealthy man, based on royalties from
his patents.
|
| 1794–5
| Watt purchases a country estate at Doldowlod, Radnorshire, and
begins to retire from business; Watt and Boulton establish the new
firm of Boulton & Watt, which they turn over to their sons, James
and Matthew.
|
|
| 1806
| James is made a doctor of laws of the University of Glasgow
(and made a foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences in
1816).
|
|
| 1819
| James dies, at Heathfield Hall, near Birmingham.
|
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You will also find the following websites useful introductions to
James Watt and the steam engine, including some interesting
biographies (old) and virtual labs (new):
