360 WATT. 



other imperfection was its loss of all direct benefit from 

 the expansive force of the steam itself. That element 

 was only used in creating a vacuum, and an air-pump 

 might have done as much had it been worked by water 

 or by horses. It was, in the strictest sense of the 

 word, an air and not a steam engine. 



When Mr. Watt was directed to repair the working 

 model for the Professor at Glasgow, he of course exa- 

 mined it attentively. He was at that time, 1763, in 

 his twenty-eighth year, having been born in 1736 at 

 Greenock, where his father was a magistrate, and had 

 learnt the business of a mathematical instrument 

 maker. He had been prevented by delicate health 

 from benefiting much by school instruction ; but he had 

 by himself studied both geometry and mechanics, hav- 

 ing from his childhood shown a marked taste for those 

 pursuits, in which his grandfather and uncle, teachers 

 of the mathematics, had been engaged. It is related 

 of him that a friend of his father's one day found the 

 child stretched on the floor drawing with chalk nume- 

 rous lines that intersected each other. He advised the 

 sending the young idler, as he supposed him, to school, 

 but the father said, " Perhaps you are mistaken ; exa- 

 mine first what he is about." They found he was try- 

 ing, at six years old, to solve a problem in geometry. 

 So his natural turn for mechanics was not long in 

 showing itself; and his father indulging it by putting 

 tools in his hands, he soon constructed a small elec- 

 trical machine, beside making many childish toys. 



He occasionally visited his mother's relations at 

 Glasgow, but never attended any lectures there, or 

 elsewhere. The ardour of his active mind was su- 



