JAMES Watt's development of the steam engine acted as a catalyst to the industrial revolution, so perhaps there are fewer better lenses through which to view his achievements than the writing of another Scot who earned a vast fortune at the time, Andrew Carnegie.
The philanthropist's 1905 work,
James Watt by Andrew Carnegie, which references Sir Walter Scott and Adam Smith amongst others, can be read today as a tribute to the life of Greenock-born Watt, whose refinements to the steam engine from the mi
d-1750s drove the rapid rise of the railroads both in Britain and the US. It also helped ensure Carnegie's success as the pre-eminent steel magnate of his day.
Over its 11 chapters, the work reflects on many aspects of Watt's extraordinary life, delivering insight into the character and temperament of the Glasgow-based inventor. The book demonstrates Watt's legacy – which coined the eponymous unit of electricity the "watt", the term "horsepower" and whose work was responsible for discovering that water is a compound, not an element. One must also keep in mind that Watt's premier invention contributed directly to Carnegie's fortune.
Born on 19 January, 1736, to a "good nest" of Aberdeenshire farmers, Watt's grandfather was a Covenanter killed at the Bridge of Dee in battle against John Graham of Claverhouse in 1644, while his mother's line dated to the reign of King David. Carnegie frames Watt's childhood as "precocious", while bemoaning what usually becomes of precocious children - very little, in Carnegie's view.
But Watt was marked for technical greatness from a young age, becoming a habitual "fixer" of gadgets, from pocket watches to torches to fishing tackle. Carnegie believes even then that Watt's work was touched by "genius" and he describes Watt's habits of study as "omnivorous".
Skipping a seven-year shipyard apprenticeship and resultantly unemployed, Watt was in 1756 taken on as an instrument-maker by Glasgow University after demonstrating his grasp of engineering (learned in one year in London and said to surpass that of a seasoned Clydeside shipmaster.)
After early successes in building church organs from scratch - apparently mastering the science of sound and tone in a short space of frenzied research - Watt turned his attention to steam as a means of propulsion, following the advice of his colleague, Professor Joseph Black.
Glasgow University was then one of the leading lights of the scientific establishment; Lord Kelvin had recently been taken on as Lord Chancellor and the economist Adam Smith was a close friend of Watt. But Watt's early time at the university, Carnegie claims, saw him produce "potboiler" inventions he could sell, rather than serious research.
Watt made his name by taking apart an existing Newcomen engine. Using his newly discovered properties of latent heat - and after a revelation on the golf course on Glasgow Green - he added an extra chamber to ensure a more efficient production of heat and effectively harnassing steam.
But it was a long road to eventually prosperous success for Watt, through several private business partnerships with Prof Black and Dr John Roebuck.
Side projects at this time for the cash-strapped Watt included a commission to survey the proposed Forth and Clyde canal - he would go on to survey the Caledonian Canal and Ayr Harbour - while several patents would eventually bring him financial stability. He was also a keen astronomer.
On the very day Watt obtained his first patent, Carnegie notes, fellow inventor Richard Arkwright received his for the Spinning Frame, a year after James Hargreaves had invented the original Spinning Jenny. Together Arkwright, Hargreaves, Watt and railway engineer George Stephenson would foment the industrial explosion in Britain.
With an apparent "timidity and fear of money matters", but with a "Scotch peasant's horror of debt", Watt would help create an industry worth millions a year, even then, for Carnegie and other barons.
Carnegie estimates that "in 1880 the value of world industries dependent upon steam was thirty-two thousand millions of dollars ($32 billion), and that in 1888 it had reached forty-three thousand millions of dollars." In other words, Watt's invention powered and propelled almost every industry, from shipping to transport to manufacturing.
Watt would continue to work in private partnership to sell over 1164 of his steam engines, marry again and suffer times bad and good. Most notably, Watt was charged - but not by Carnegie - to have in fact delayed the industrial revolution by several years through officious enforcement of his patents.
Though Watt died aged 83 on 9 August 1819, in the English town of Heathfield, Carnegie in 1905 writes: "We may be sure the searching, restless brains of [Benjamin] Franklin and Watt would have been meditating upon strange things these days if they were now alive."
Over 100 years later, and with Watt still living through his legacy, we still wonder just how more strange and magnificent the world could yet become.
