C61 



WATT, JAMES. 



WATT, JAMES. 



62 



tained, in or about the years 1779 and 1780, by persons named Was- 

 brough arid Pickard, for obtaining rotatory motion from a steam- 

 engine, the plan proposed by Pickard being tho simple crank and 

 fly-wheel. Since it appears probable that the idea was obtained 

 through a workman employed by Watt, it is likely that this patent 

 luight.have been overturned ; but as Watt did not think fit to contest 

 it, he used, during the continuance of Pickard's patent, his own beauti- 

 ful contrivance known as the sun-and-planet wheel. It has however 

 been stated, in the ' Enclyclopsedia Britannica/ that Watt did actually 

 use the crank, in defiance of Pickard's patent, whenever it suited his 

 purpose, and that he was never molested for so doing. Few points in 

 tho history of machinery are more curious than the rivalry which 

 existed on this subject, and the complicated contrivances proposed for 

 doing that which is so simply and efficiently done by the crank ; and 

 many well-informed persons, among whom was Smeaton, doubted the 

 possibility of obaining a perfect circular motion, like that produced 

 by the efflux of water in turning a water-wheel, from the reciprocating 

 lever of a steam-engine. Perhaps no improvement could be named of 

 equal importance in rendering the steam-engine available as a prime- 

 mover of machinery, as that by which the action of the steam was 

 enabled, by a new arrangement of valves, to impel the piston upwards 

 as well as downwards, thereby doing away with the necessity for 

 balance-weights or any similar contrivance ; an arrangement which 

 Watt described and explained by a drawing during his application to 

 parliament for an extension of his patent, although he did not actually 

 patent it until 1782, prior to which time he is said to have privately 

 constructed one or more engines on this, which is known as the 

 double-acting principle. The adoption of this construction involved 

 several other important changes in the machine, among which was the 

 exquisitely beautiful arrangement called, the parallel motion, from 

 the working of which Watt himself stated that he derived all the 

 pleasure of novelty which he could have experienced in examining the 

 invention of another. Our space however will not admit of any detail 

 of the improvements introduced under the sucessive patents of 1781, 

 1782, 1784, and 1785, admirable as many of them are. Even at the 

 present time, notwithstanding all the light thrown upon the subject 

 by succeeding engineers, we are perhaps not in a position fully to 

 realise the advantages of one of his beautiful inventions, that of work- 

 ing steam expansively, or cutting off the access of steam when the 

 piston has performed bvit a part of its stroke, and leaving ifc to be 

 impelled through the remainder of its course by the expansive force 

 of the steam already admitted. He is said to have tried this mode of 

 working at Soho as early as 1776, although it was not made public till 

 two years after that time. Suffice it to say, in concluding this brief 

 sketch of the series of improvements by which Watt raised the steam- 

 engine to its present state of efficiency, that, as expressed by Lord 

 Jeffrey in the eulogium originally published in the 'Scotsman' news- 

 paper a few days after his death, as to all that is admirable in the 

 structure of the machine, or vast in its utility, Watt should rather be 

 described as its inventor than as its improver. "It was by his 

 inventions," observes the writer alluded to, "that its action was so 

 regulated as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most 

 delicate manufactures, and its power so increased as to set weight and 

 solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivances it has become a 

 thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious 

 power which it can exert, and the ease and precision and ductility 

 with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of 

 an elephant that can pick up a pin or rend an oak is as nothing to it. 

 It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like wax 

 before it, draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer ; 

 and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider 

 muslin and forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded 

 vessels against the fury of the winds and waves." Nor, while we 

 admire the ingenuity and power of the stupendous machine, should 

 we forget that its contrivance involved very much beyond the range of 

 a mere practical mechanic, however great. With the generosity of a 

 kindred spirit, the late Sir Humphry Davy observed, at a meeting for 

 erecting the Watt monument, that Watt " was equally distinguished 

 as a natural philosopher and a chemist," and that "his inventions 

 demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that pecu- 

 liar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical applica- 

 tion;" and showed that, in the prosecution of his great object, Watt 

 " had to investigate the cause of the cold produced by evaporation, of 

 the heat occasioned by the condensation of steam to determine the 

 source of the air appearing when water was acted upon by an exhaust- 

 ing power; the ratio of the volume of steam to its generating water, 

 and the law by which the elasticity of steam increased with the tem- 

 perature : labour, time, numerous and difficult experiments, were 

 required for the ultimate result; and when his principle was obtained, 

 the application of it to produce the movement of machinery demanded 

 a new species of intellectual and experimental labour. He engaged 

 in this with all the ardour that success inspires, and was obliged to 

 bring all the mechanical powers into play, and all the resources of his 

 own fertile mind into exertion; he had to convert rectilineal into 

 rotatory motion, and to invent parallel motion. After years of 

 intense labour, he obtained what he wished for ; and at last, by the 

 regulating centrifugal force of the governor, placed the machine 

 entirely under the power of the mechanic, and gave perfection to a 



BIOQ. DIV. VOL. VI. 



series of combinations unrivalled for the genius and sagacity displayed 

 in their invention, and for the new power they have given to civilised 

 man." 



It is painful to turn from the record of the meeting at which Davy 

 thus joined with others among the most eminent men of his time in 

 doing honour to the memory of the great engineer, to the narration 

 of the disgraceful measures by which, not many years before, it was 

 attempted to deprive him of his well-earned emoluments. Even among 

 the Cornish miners, who were deriving the greatest advantages from his 

 machinery, and would in many cases have been compelled to abandon 

 their works but for its giant aid, there were men who grudged to pay 

 him tho stipulated third part of their savings, and who took advan- 

 tage of the pretences afforded by piratical infringers of hia patent, to 

 declare their engagements at an end. Thus compelled to call in the 

 law in defence of their rights, Messrs. Boulton and Watt became 

 involved in a most tedious, annoying, and vexatious series of processes, 

 during which they were generously and powerfully assisted, according 

 to Arago, by Colonel (afterwards General) Roy, Mylne, the engineer of 

 Blackfriars Bridge, Herschel, Deluc, Ramsden, Robison, Murdoch, 

 Rennie, Gumming, the author of a celebrated treatise on watch and 

 clock-work, More, secretary of the Society of Arts, and Southern, all 

 of whom gave evidence in their favour. Defeated on the ground of 

 want of originality, the opponents of Watt organised a fresh attack 

 upon the patent, upon the pretence that the written specification 

 given by Watt in 1769 was imperfect. In order to comprehend at 

 once the injustice and the plausibility of this plea, it should be con- 

 sidered that the specification was necessarily written with only thd 

 experience derived from the erection of the rude model at Kinneil, 

 and also that Watt never pretended to be the inventor of the steam- 

 engine, but simply of certain improvements upon it, which improve- 

 ments were of so clear and distinct a character as to be unaffected by 

 any change in the forms, proportions, or positions of the various 

 members of which a complete steam-engine is composed. It was thus 

 as unnecessary as it was impossible that the specification of 17(!9 

 should contain a complete description of the machine as made by 

 Boulton and Watt twenty years afterwards. The principal distin- 

 guishing features of the engines of Watt were the separate condenser 

 and the closed cylinder ; and these being retained.in all his machines, 

 gave him a virtual monopoly in various subsequent improvements 

 which were rather additions to than modifications of his original 

 design, but which were too intimately connected with the essential 

 features of his engines to be separated from them. Yet, as observed 

 by Stuart, " After a series of experiments, in which he had been 

 engaged for twenty years, to develope his ideas, the splendid result of 

 his genius and perseverance the. perfect machine was raised up in 

 judgment against him, to prove that between the years 1790 and 1800 

 the engines which were sent from Soho were more perfect than could 

 be fabricated from the description he gave of the one he erected in 

 1769!" At length, after a series of trials extending from 1792 

 to 1799, a unanimous and clear decision was given, fully vindi- 

 cating and establishing the rights of the patentees. On this last 

 occasion Mr. Rous, who acted as counsel for the patentees, delivered 

 a speech which was afterwards published in the form of a pamphlet, 

 and in which he at once keenly satirised and overthrew the argument 

 insisted on by the opposite party, that Watt had invented nothing 

 but ideas; asking whether it could be seriously contended that his 

 invention, which during the space of nearly thirty years had been 

 admired in all Europe as the greatest practical advance ever made in 

 the arts, was a mere abstract discovery in science ; and observing that 

 were those who thus pleaded to approach the untangible substance as 

 they were pleased to call it, with the same ignorance of its nature as 

 they thus affected, they would be crushed before it like flies, leaving 

 no trace of their existence. 



In 1794 the sons of Messrs. Boulton and Watt were admitted to the 

 partnership, and on the expiration of the extended term of his patent 

 in 1800, Watt resigned his share of the business to his two sons, and 

 retired into private life ; a step to which he was probably determined 

 in some degree by the harassing nature of the contests in which he 

 had been so long engaged. Down to that period the introduction of 

 the steam-engine into other than mining districts had been compara- 

 tively slow ; and it is stated that at the expiration of the patent the 

 aggregate power of the engines employed in London was not more 

 than 650 nominal horse-powers, in Manchester about 450 horse-powers, 

 and in Leeds about 300 horse-powers. Within the next five years the 

 number of engines used in the metropolis was doubled, and more 

 machines were supplied from the Soho works than during any equal 

 period before the expiration of the patent. 



As there were several scientific men residing about Birmingham who 

 were on terms of intimacy with Watt and his partner, an association 

 was formed under the title of the ' Lunar Society,' the members of 

 which, including Priestley, Darwin, Edgeworth, Keir, and Galton, met 

 monthly on the night of the full moon for the purpose of social con- 

 verse. At one of these meetings, according to Arago, a suggestion was 

 thrown out which led Watt to the invention of the useful little machine 

 known as the Copying Press, for which he obtained a patent, the speci- 

 fication of which was published some years afterwards in the first 

 volume of the 'Repertory of Arts.' It ia however stated in the 

 Encyclopcedia Britannica' that ho was induced to contrive it by the 



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