CAPTIVE MOLECULES 



THE PERSONALITY OF JAMES WATT 



The man who occupies this all-important position in 

 the industrial world demands a few more words as to 

 his personality. His work we have sufficiently con- 

 sidered, but before we pass on to the work of his suc- 

 cessors, it will be worth our while to learn something 

 more of the estimate placed upon the man himself. Let 

 us quote, then, from some records written by men who 

 were of the same generation. 



"Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, 

 Mr. Watt was an extraordinary and in many respects a 

 wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age 

 possessed so much, or remembered what he had read 

 so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of ap- 

 prehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rec- 

 tifying and methodizing power of understanding which 

 extracted something precious out of all that was pre- 

 sented to it. His stores o"f miscellaneous knowledge 

 were immense, and yet less astonishing than the com- 

 mand he had at all times over them. It seemed as if 

 every subject that was casually started in conversation 

 had been that which he had been last occupied in study- 

 ing and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the pre- 

 cision, and the admirable clearness of the information 

 which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. 

 Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge 

 confined, in any degree, to the studies connected with 

 his ordinary pursuits. 



"That he should have been minutely and extensively 

 skilled in chemistry, and the arts, and in most of the 



