THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



he is said to have put a clause in the lease of his house, 

 providing that no steam carriage should under any 

 pretext be allowed to approach it. 



These incidents have importance as showing as we 

 bhall see illustrated again and again in other fields 

 the disastrous influence in retarding progress that may 

 be exercised by even the greatest of scientific discoverers, 

 when authority well earned in earlier years is exercised 

 in an unfortunate direction later in life. But such in- 

 cidents as these are inconsequential in determining the 

 position among the world's workers of the man who 

 was almost solely responsible for the transformation of 

 the steam engine from an expensive and relatively 

 ineffective pumping apparatus, to the great central 

 power that has ever since moved the major part of the 

 world's machinery. 



THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF WATT 



It is speaking well within bounds to say that no other 

 invention within historical times has had so important 

 an influence upon the production of property which, 

 as we have seen, is the gauge of the world's work as 

 this invention of the steam engine. We have followed the 

 history of that invention in some detail, because of its 

 supreme importance. To the reader who was not 

 previously familiar with that history, it may seem 

 surprising that after a lapse of a little over a century 

 one name and one alone should be popularly remem- 

 bered in connection with the invention; whereas in 

 point of fact various workers had a share in the achieve- 



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