This series of articles seeks to examine the character attributes of highly successful leaders, regardless of their adherence to a strong faith or moral standard. In presenting these thoughts, Leadership Ministries is not agreeing with or advocating these traits or practices, but rather presents these as ideas for discussion and development in your own leadership journey.
James Watt (1736-1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer. He is credited with the first practical steam engine, the Watt Engine of 1776, which helped bring about the Industrial Revolution. Building on the work of Thomas Newcomen, Watt drastically improved the power, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of steam engines, and adapted his engine to produce a rotary motion, greatly broadening its use.[1] Watt was a prolific inventor, credited with a number of groundbreaking technologies that affected the world.
Watt developed the concept of “horsepower” to measure the power of an engine. Today our standard unit of power, the “watt”, is named after him. Watt grew up in a wealthy family, with his father involved in the slave trade. He suffered bouts of bad health as a child. His mother, well-educated and who taught James from an early age, died when he was 18. Then his father’s health began to fail. As a young man he became an instrument maker, setting up a small workshop at the University of Glasgow, where he made a modest living. He later married and had five children. His first wife died in childbirth in 1773. He married again and had two more children.
The kettle myth. A story circulates to this day that Watt was inspired to invent his version of the steam engine by seeing a kettle boiling, the steam forcing the lid to rise. In fact, Watt tried to understand the thermodynamics of steam and heat. His diaries detail his many experiments. He worked on a model Newcomen steam engine and realized most of the steam was consumed in heating the engine cylinder on every cycle. By creating a separate chamber for the steam to condense, he greatly increased the power of the engine.
Watt’s steam engines were enormous, requiring their own buildings to house them. Photo: Shutterstock
Strapped for money. Machinists of the time could not produce engine parts with enough precision, which made perfecting his steam engine a years-long pursuit. Watt spent all he had on getting a patent for his invention, eventually being employed as a surveyor and civil engineer for years to make ends meet. His original business partner on the engine went bankrupt. He eventually partnered with Matthew Boulton of Birmingham, and had access to the best ironworkers in the world. The partnership became the Boulton and Watt Company, which lasted the next 25 years.
Their engines for pumping water from mines were very large, with cylinder diameters of 50 inches and a height of more than 24 feet, requiring construction of a building to house it. Boulton and Watt charged an annual fee to the coal mining companies to run their engines. Boulton and Watt’s engines were copied by other makers profusely, and they spent many years in patent disputes, eventually collecting much of what was owed through arbitration and settlements. The courts consistently found in favor of Watt against others who had stolen his patented designs.
A chemical copy. Watt also invented a method for making copies of documents or drawings using a chemical transfer. In 1779 he began experimenting with inks, papers and methods for wetting a thin paper and applying pressure to result in a transfer. Watt perfected his process over a number of years, and gave his shares of the invention to his sons in 1794. It became widely used in offices all the way into the Twentieth Century, until it was supplanted by Xerography in the mid 1900s.
Watt was widely respected during his time as a scientist. Chemist Humphry Davy commented, “Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous idea of his character; he was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application.” Watt continued to experiment and invent well into his retirement years from his home in Handsworth, Staffordshire. He died in his home on August 25, 1819.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Orville and Wilbur Wright were two American aviation inventors who are credited with the world first successful airplane. They made their first controlled flight in December 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.