JAMES WATT AND THE INVENTION OF THE STEAM ENGINE

JAMES WATT

UNTIL a little more than one hundred years ago, the chief power used in the production of food, clothing, and shelter was hand power. Cattle and horses were used to cultivate the fields. Windmills and water wheels were employed to grind corn and wheat. But most tools and machines were work-ed by hand. Men had, for many years, dreamed of a new power which would be more useful than either work animals, sails, windmills, or water wheels. This new power was steam. Yet no one had been able to apply the power of steam so that it would grind corn and wheat, spin and weave cotton and wool, or do any useful thing at all. The man who succeeded in giving to the world this new power was James Watt. Steam now propels  ships over the Atlantic in less than a week. It speeds express trains across our continent in ninety hours, and   it   does   a   thousand   other   wonderful   and   useful things.

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION

James   Watt   was   born   in   1736,   at   Greenock, Scotland, not far from Glasgow. His early education was received at home, his mother giving him lessons in reading, and teaching him to draw with pencil and
chalk. His father drilled  him in arithmetic and encouraged him in the use of tools. When at length James   went   to   school,   he   did   not   at   first   get   along well. This was due to illness which often kept him at
home for weeks at a time. Still, he always did well in arithmetic and geometry, and after the age of four-

teen he made rapid progress in all his studies.

            Even as a small boy, James was fond of tinkering with things. This fondness was not always appreciated,   as   is   shown   by   a   remark   of   an   aunt: “James   Watt,   I   never   saw   such   an   idle   boy;  take  a book or employ yourself usefully; for the last hour you have not spoken a word, but taken off the lid of that   kettle   and   put   it   on  again,   holding   now   a   cup and   now   a   silver   spoon over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, and catching the drops of water it turns into. Are you not ashamed to spend your time in this way?”

Much of his time, as he grew older and stronger, was spent in his father’s shop, where supplies for ships were kept, and where ship repairing was done. He had a small forge and also a workbench of his own. Here he fashioned cranes, pulleys, and pumps, and learned to work with differ-ent metals and woods. So skillful was he that the men remarked, “James has a fortune at his fingers’ ends.”

WATT AND THE TEAKETTLE

The time at last came for choosing a trade. The father had wished James to follow him in his own business. But Mr. Watt had recently lost considerable money, and it now seemed best for the youth to choose a trade in which he could use his mechanical talents. So James set out for Glasgow to become an instrument maker.

LEARNING INSTRUMENT MAKING

He entered the service of a mechanic who dignified himself with the name of “optician.” This mechanic, though the best in Glasgow, was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, and earned a simple living by mending spectacles, repairing fiddles, and making fishing tackle. Watt was useful enough to his master, but there was little that a skillful boy could learn from such a workman. So he decided to seek a teacher in London.

         There were plenty of instrument makers in London, but they were bound together in a guild. A boy wishing to learn the trade must serve from five to seven years. Watt had no desire to bind himself for so long a period. He wished to learn what he needed to know in the shortest possible time; he wanted a “short cut.” Master workman after master workman for this reason turned him away. Only after many weeks did he find a master who was willing to take him. For a year’s instruction, he paid one hundred dollars and gave the proceeds of his labor. The hours in the London shops were long. “We work,” wrote Watt, “to nine o’clock every night, except Saturdays.” To relieve his father of the burden of supporting him, he got up early and did
extra work. Towards the end of the year he wrote, with no little pride: “I shall be able to get my bread
anywhere, as I am now able to work as well as most journeymen, though I am not so quick as many.”

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

         In order to open a shop of his own, Watt returned to Glasgow. He was opposed in this by the hammer-men’s guild. The hammer-men said that he had not served an apprenticeship and had no right to set up in business. They would have succeeded in keeping him from making a start, had not a friend, a teacher in the University of Glasgow, come to his aid, providing him with a shop in a small room of one of the college buildings.

         Watt soon became a Jack-of-all-trades. He cleaned and repaired instruments for the university. Falling into the ways of his first master, he made and sold spectacles and fishing tackle. Though he had no ear for music and scarcely knew one note from another, he turned his hand to making organs. So successful was he, that many “dumb flutes and gouty harps, dislocated violins, and fractured guitars” came to him to be cured of their ills.
         All the while, Watt spent his leisure time in reading. The college library was close at hand, so there was no lack of books. Chemistry, mathematics, and mechanics were studied. By learning all he could and by doing everything well, Watt came to be known as a man “who knew much and who could make anything.”

CAPTURED BY STEAM

BRANCA’S STEAM ENGINE 

OF 1629

Coal and tin mining had for a long time been important industries of Great Britain. Shallow mines were easy to work. Men and women carried out the coal or tin ore in buckets, by winding stairs. Or a windlass was used, turned by hand or with the aid of a horse. Water was taken out in the same way. As the shallow mines became exhausted, deeper ones were opened. The deeper the mine, the harder it was to lift out the coal or tin ore. Into these deeper mines also came quantities
of water, flooding many of them. Un-less a machine should be invented
which could be run at a small cost, to pump out the water and to hoist the coal or tin, these mines would have to be closed. The need of such a machineled to the invention of the first successful steam engine.

          Watt first heard of the steam engine in 1759. The idea captivated him, and he began to read how
others had tried to make successful engines. Finding that the best books on steam and “fire engines,” as they were then called, were in Italian and German, he took up the study of these languages.

          In an Italian book he read about Branca’s steam engine, invented in 1629. Branca’s engine was little more than a toy, no use being made of it, except to pulverize saltpeter and do other simple things of like sort.

PAPIN’S 

ENGINE

          In a German book he read about Papin’s engine, which was invented in 1690. In Papin’s engine steam was admitted into the cylinder. The steam was then allowed to condense, that is, turn back into water. This formed a vacuum, or space without any air in it, under the piston. The weight of the atmosphere, which is about fourteen pounds to the square inch, on the upper side of the piston, forced it down, and the descending piston raised a weight fastened to the rope. Papin never went further than the making of a model. But his idea of using steam to make a vacuum, and of using the pressure of the atmos-phere to force down a piston was applied a few years later with some success by Thomas Newcomen.

         Newcomen made his first engine in 1705. Although big and awkward, a number were used in England to pump out the water at the mines. But they could not be used in deep mines, as they could lift only six or seven pounds for each square inch of the piston. They worked slowly, making only about fifteen strokes a minute, and they were expensive also, a single engine burning fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of coal in a year.

FINDING THE TROUBLE

Watt had been thinking about steam for four or five years before he saw one of Newcomen’s engines. Then it was only a model of one, brought to him from the university for repair. When he had repaired the model, he started it to going. It made a few strokes and stopped. There was no more steam. The boiler seemed big enough, so he blew up the fire. The engine now ran all right, but it required much fuel and used up quantities of steam, though the load on the side of the pump was light. Most men would have thought nothing of this, and would have sent the model back to the university. But that was not Watt’s way. Everything he did not
understand was for him a subject for study, and he never stopped until he understood. So he set to work to discover why the engine used so much steam.

          Steam was used, you will remember, to make a vacuum in the cylinder. Watt found that to drive out the air and water, enough steam had to be let into the cylinder to fill it four times. Why was this? First, the cylinder was exposed to the air, which chilled it. The cold cylinder itself, before it was warm, changed considerable steam into water.

NEWCOMEN’S ENGINE

Second, cold water was poured into the cylinder to condense the steam, and this made the cylinder cold
again. Watt estimated that three fourths of all the steam used was thus wasted in heating and reheating the cylinder. Here was the trouble with Newcomen’s engine. Watt saw that, to remedy this defect, a way must be found to keep the cylinder always as hot as the steam which entered it, and the vacuum must be made in the cylinder, without cooling it.

MAKING THE INVENTION

THE HORSE Essay

1. A horse is a useful animal.
2. It has four legs.
3. It runs very fast.
4. It draws tongas.
5. People ride horses.
6. It eats gram and green grass.
7. It loves its master very much.

THE FARMER Essay

1.      The farmer is an useful person.

2.      He lives in a village.

3.      He tills the land.

4.      He sows seeds and reaps the crop.

5.      He grows wheat and rice.

6.      Sometimes, he spends money like water.

7.      Now, farmers are living a happy life.

AN ELEPHANT Essay

1.      The elephant is the largest animal in the world.

2.      It has two ears.

3.      Its ears are like fans.

4.      Its eyes are very small.

5.      It has a long trunk.

6.      It drinks water with it.

7.      It has two tusks.

8.      They are very costly.

9.      It is a useful animal.

10.  It carries heavy logs.

THE COW Essay

1.      The cow is a gentle animal.

2.      She has four legs.

3.      She has four udders.

4.      She gives us milk.

5.      Her milk is sweet.

6.      Butter and ghee are prepared from her milk.

7.      She gives us calves.

8.      The Hindus respect her very much.

9.      Her calf draws our cart.

MY SCHOOL Essay

1. I read in Marwari Inter College, Gorakhpur.

2. The building of my school is very grand.

3. There are thirty rooms in my school.

4. It has a big hall.

5. There are forty teachers in my school.

THE DOG Essay

1.      The dog is a faithful animal.

2.      It has four legs and a tail.

3.      It loves its master very much.

4.      It barks at strangers.

5.      At night, it guards the house.

6.      It is a useful animal.