James Watt Research Paper

James Watt was a Scottish inventor, who changed the way that steam energy is used today. The improvements that Watt made to the Newcomen steam engine were extremely important to the progression of making industrial items during its time. Watt not only made an engine that would progress industrial machinery by a great amount, but also many other things that would help industry workers in that time-period.
James Watt was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland on January 19th 1736. Watt’s father owned a successful ship and home building business, while Watt’s mother taught him some before sending him to school. Here, Watt would learn many things such as a few different languages, and mathematics. However, Watt suffered from many pains such as migraines and toothaches, therefore, Watt was taught mostly at home due to not being able to attend school very often. So Watt’s mother taught him

reading, while his father taught him writing and arithmetic.
During Watt’s teenage years, his father lost his inheritance due to commercial disasters, and his mother died during that time also. It was during these years that Watt went to Glasgow Scotland’s university, where one of his relatives taught. Through this relative, Watt met Robert Dick, who encouraged Watt to pursue his gift in instrument making. Thus, Watt went to London in search for someone to teach him. After searching for two weeks, Watt came across someone by the name of John Morgan, Morgan agreed to teach Watt for some pay, also, Morgan shortened the amount of time the apprenticeship would take to complete from seven years down to only one. After only two months of teaching, Watt’s skills surpassed that of Morgans. And after a while Watt started to make a little bit of money by working ten hour days in Morgan’s shop. However, the long hours and effort taken to complete the course greatly declined Watt’s already bad health.
After the one year course was over, Watt decided to go back to Glasgow, where he would soon have a small shop at the university, thanks to some help from some of the university professors. However, some of the other instrument makers did not like Watt, due to the fact that he was trained within London. The University’s professors saw Watt’s talent, so not only did they get him a small shop, but they also made a position at the University for Watt called “Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University”.
It was during Watt’s years as an instrument maker that he came across a Newcomen steam engine that needed repairing.

For Watt, repairing a steam engine was definitely a test of what he could do, and while he was repairing the engine, he also found multiple problems with the steam flow. “Watt was impressed by its waste of steam. In May 1765, after wrestling with the problem of improving it, he suddenly came upon a solution” (Kingsford britannica). One of Watt’s first solutions to this problem was the making of a separate steam condenser. “At this time understanding of the steam engine was in a very primitive state. The science of thermodynamics would not be formalized for at least another 100 years” (Mcfadden interestingengineering.org). Therefore, the science on how to fix the engine’s heat problem would have taken quite a while. When Watt finally fixed the model that he was given, it did not as well as it should have, but he did end up finding the problem that needed fixing which was the fact that ¾ of the thermal energy was being used to heat the engine cylinder in each

cycle.
Watt’s solution to this heat loss was to make a separate cylinder that would condense the steam in an area that was apart from the piston but still connected to it. This would allow it so that the steam would be condensed somewhere else, therefore, the cylinder would always be kept hot, and it would never lose heat. That year, he introduced an engine that had a separate condenser and sealed cylinders. With the heating and cooling areas separated, the engine could work constantly without much of a pause so that the cylinder could reheat. Another thing that Watts engine was good at was fuel conservation, because compared to a Newcomen steam engine, Watt’s engine used one-third less fuel.
Shortly after making his new design of the steam engine, Watt met a British inventor called John Roebuck. John was the man who founded Carron works, and he was also the man who encouraged Watt to make his own engine. This would bring James Watt and John Roebuck into a partnership after he made a small prototype engine, using the funding given to him by Joseph Black, along with a patent that Watt took out in the same year.
During the building of the steam engine, Watt worked in land surveying, where he would mark out routes for canals in Scotland. This would allow Watt to make some extra funding for his project. When Robuck went bankrupt, English Manufacturer and engineer, Matthew Boulton, took Roebuck’s shares of Watt’s patent. Watt found no interest in land surveying, so he moved to Birmingham in 1774. When Watt’s patent was extended, he and Boulton started a partnership that lasted a total of 25 years. The partnership with Boulton was very beneficial due to the fact that Watt had access to some of the best Ironworkers that there was. This allowed Watt to have access to very specific parts that was needed for the engine to be built.
Boulton’s funding allowed for extremely rapid progress on the engine, so much progress in fact, that Watt was able to install two engines that were fully functional in only (somewhere around) a year or two. One of the engines was used to pump water at Staffordshire colliery, and the other engine was used to blow air into the furnaces at John Wilkinson's forages. James Watt’s engines were also very sought after by mine workers who wanted to reduce costs, as well as fuel costs.
Overall, James Watt was not only creative when it came to inventing, but he was also fairly successful. His engines not only were revolutionary for their time, but also contributed to the industrial revolution by a great amount.