This Week's Great Day Memorable Events in the history of the Empire.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LI, Issue 66, 19 August 1930, Page 6

This Week's Great Day Memorable Events in the history of the Empire.

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AUGUST 19.—DEATH OF JAMES WATT.

One hundred and eleven years ago, on the 19th August, 1819, James ! Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, whose genius provided mankind with a new power which revolutionised the world, died at the age of 83. He was born on the 19th January, 1736, at Greenock, in Scotland, where his father carried on business as, a merchant. Owing to ill-health Watt was unable to attend school regularly, and a considerable portion of his education was acquired by his own reading at home. As a boy he displayed a special aptitude for mechanics, and this led to his being apprenticed to a Glasgow mathematical instrument maker, with whom he remained for three years. At the age of 19 he went to London, where he followed his trade for a little over a year, when the state of his health i forced him to return to Scotland. He then opened a mathematical instrument shop in the precincts of Glasgow University, and during the next seven years he gave a great amount of thought to the possibility of effecting improvements in the so^ called steam engine, but his experiments produced no definite results. In the winter of 1763 he was called I upon to repair a model of Newcom-; en's engine, which formed part of the University's scientific apparatus, and he was then impressed by the tremendous amount of steam required to work the model. The Newcomen engine was not really a steam engine, for it was op- r crated by means of atmospheric pressure, steam being used only to produce, by its own condensation, a vacuum in a cylinder, into which a piston was forced by the pressure of the outside air. The jets of cold water, which were sprayed on the cylinder to condense the steam, had the effect of cooling the cylinder to such an extent that, at each stroke of the piston, four-fifths of the steam was wasted in heating the walls of the cylinder, while a portion of the cold water

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used to produce the condensation was j heated to boiling point, and thus gave j off steam which resisted the descent of the piston. Watt's experiments to remedy the waste of steam led to the first of his epoch-marking inventions, namely, a separate condenser, an air-ex-hausted vessel, to which the steam was carried-from the cylinder for the purpose of condensation, and by this means he not only succeeded in avoiding the former waste of steam in the cylinder, but was able to keep the cylinder cool. Having thus perfected an economical engine on Newcomen's principle Watt set himself the task of constructing an engine in which steam should provide the motive power, and this he effected by closing the top of the cylinder, which had formerly been open to the air, and causing steam, and not atmospheric pressure, to operate the piston. This machine, which was worked with a comparatively small expenditure of fuel and yielded any desired amount of power, gave Watt the distinction of being the inventor of the first practicable steam engine, while his numerous subsequent inventions left the steam engine, in its many forms, virtually as it remains to the present day. ,

Some time elapsed before Watt derived any pecuniary benefits from his genius, and it was not until his partner, Matthew Boulton, had expended nearly fifty pounds in connexion with the inventions that the steam engine became a commercial success and provided the two men with handsome fortunes. In 1800 Watt, who had refused the government's offer of a title and many other honours, retired from active interest in the extensive and world-famed business which he and Boulton had established in Birmingham, and to the end of his life he devoted himself to "mechanical pursuits, and one of his last inventions was a contrivance for copying sculpture work.