42 HEROES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



to the hand of a child ; — its aliment is coal, wood, charcoal, or 

 other combustible, — it consumes none while idle, — it never 

 tires, and wants no sleep ; — it is not subject to malady when 

 originally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out 

 with age ; it is equally active in all climates, and will do work 

 of any kind ; — it is a water-pump, a miner, a sailor, a cotton- 

 spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith, a miller, &c, &c. ; and a small 

 engine, in the character of a steam pony, may be seen dragging 

 after it on a railroad a hundred tons of merchandise, or a regi- 

 ment of soldiers, with greater speed than that of our fleetest 

 coaches. It is the king of machines, and a permanent 

 realisation of the Genii of Eastern fable, whose supernatural 

 powers were occasionally at the command of man." 



In addition to those difficulties which his unrivalled mechan- 

 ical ingenuity enabled him to surmount. Watt, notwithstanding 

 the merit of his inventions, had to contend for some time with 

 others of a different nature, in his attempts to reduce them to 

 practice. He had no pecuniary resources of his own, and was 

 at first without any friend willing to run the risk of the outlay 

 necessary for an experiment on a sufficiently large scale. At 

 last he applied to Dr. Roebuck, an ingenious and spirited 

 speculator, who had just established the Carron iron-works, not 

 far from Glasgow, and held also at this time a lease of the 

 extensive coal-works at Kinneal, the property of the Duke of 

 Hamilton. Dr. Roebuck agreed to advance the requisite funds 

 on having two-thirds of the profits made over to him; and 

 upon this Mr. Watt took out his first patent in the beginning of 

 the year 1769. An engine with a cylinder of eighteen inches 

 diameter was soon after erected at Kinneal ; and although, as 

 a first experiment, it was necessarily in some respects of defect- 

 ive construction, its working completely demonstrated the great 



