44 Fun Facts About James Watt

Paul Crutzen tied the start of which proposed epoch to Watt's steam engine?

The Anthropocene was pitched as the age of human impact, but in 2024 the bodies that set Earth's time scale rejected it as a formal epoch.

What was the trade of Watt's father?

Shipwright: in his father's workshops young James built models and grew familiar with ships' instruments, which led him to train as an instrument maker.

Watt's son James Junior was denounced in Parliament for supporting which revolution?

The French Revolution: in 1792 he delivered a greeting from a Manchester reform society to the Jacobin Club in Paris, and later had to clear his name at home.

In which city did the young Watt spend a year training as an instrument maker?

London: hard work on little food broke his health within the year, though he had learned enough to work as well as most journeymen.

At which university did Watt run a small workshop as an instrument maker?

Glasgow: after he repaired astronomical instruments for the university, it let him set up a workshop on its grounds and named him its instrument maker.

What did Watt realise was wasting energy in Newcomen engines?

The cylinder was repeatedly cooled and reheated, so most of the steam's heat went into rewarming cold metal instead of driving the piston.

Two members of Watt's Birmingham scientific circle were both grandfathers of which famous naturalist?

Charles Darwin: Erasmus Darwin and potter Josiah Wedgwood were his grandfathers, and Erasmus had published his own theory of evolution decades earlier.

Which chemist, famous for the concept of latent heat, helped fund Watt's early engine work?

Joseph Black had discovered latent heat years before, yet Watt found it again on his own while testing steam, unaware of his friend's work.

Short of money for his engine, Watt spent years marking out routes for what in Scotland?

Canals: decades later the Caledonian Canal through Loch Ness was built along a route he had proposed.

What did Watt's first patent cover?

Separate condenser: Boulton joined Watt in asking Parliament to extend the patent, and a 1775 Act stretched it to 1800.

Knowing little about music, which instrument did Watt build for a masonic lodge?

An organ: though he scarcely knew one note from another, he added improvements of his own, and musicians admired the result.

Which ironmaster's precision boring, first developed for artillery, gave Watt tight-fitting cylinders?

John Wilkinson supplied the cylinders and was also a customer: one of the first two Watt engines of 1776 went to work at his own ironworks.

Where were most of the first commercial Watt engines installed?

Cornish mines: fuel was costly in Cornwall, so managers of its copper and tin mines were eager for an engine that burned far less.

Which mechanism did Watt use for rotary motion because a rival held the crank patent?

The sun and planet: the crank's patent holders offered to swap licences with Watt, but he flatly refused.

Which invention did Watt say he was more proud of than any other?

The parallel motion linkage: 'I have started a new hare,' he wrote to Boulton in 1784, having found a way to guide the piston rod without chains.

Which device did Watt add to his engines in 1788 at Boulton's suggestion?

The centrifugal governor was an older idea Watt adapted: its spinning balls swung outward as the engine sped up, narrowing the steam valve.

Which Watt device drew a diagram of pressure against volume inside the cylinder?

The steam indicator's pressure-volume diagrams became central to thermodynamics after Clapeyron used one to explain the Carnot cycle in 1834.

In Watt's double-acting engine, what did the steam do?

Pushed the piston both ways: one of the earliest such engines drove the Albion flour mill from 1786, until fire gutted the mill in 1791.

Watt modelled a flexible pipe laid under the River Clyde on the tail of which animal?

A lobster: the riverbed was too uneven for rigid pipes, so Watt designed a jointed iron tube that could bend along it.

Which kind of business, whose mills ran on horses, led Watt to start rating engines in horsepower?

A brewery: it burned no fuel for an engine to save, so Watt compared his engine with the horses it would replace instead.

One watt equals one what per second?

Joule: that unit honours James Prescott Joule, who showed that mechanical work can be turned into heat.

Who proposed naming the unit of power the watt in an 1882 address to the British Association?

C. William Siemens said Watt was the first with 'a clear physical conception of power', and in the same address put a horsepower at 746 watts.

Which invention did Watt patent in 1780 to save time on his vast correspondence?

A method of copying letters: ink from a fresh letter was pressed onto thin damp paper, and offices still used the process into the 20th century.

Which chemical process did Watt investigate after meeting the chemist Berthollet?

Bleaching textiles: Watt passed the chlorine method to his father-in-law, a bleacher, who put it to work on cloth.

Which Birmingham intellectual circle counted Watt among its important members?

The Lunar Society met near the full moon, so members had moonlight to travel home by in an age without street lighting.

Who took over the engine firm when Watt retired in 1800?

His and Boulton's sons took over, though in truth they had already been managing more and more of the business for years.

What was the name of the house where Watt died?

Heathfield Hall: the house was later demolished, but its old gatehouse lodge still stands, marked with a blue plaque to him.

Where was Watt buried?

St Mary's Church, Handsworth, was later enlarged over his grave, so he now lies inside, in a chapel holding Chantrey's marble statue of him.

Chantrey's colossal statue of Watt was first placed in which church?

Westminster Abbey: the statue was later removed from the Abbey and has since been kept at other sites.

On which Bank of England note did Boulton and Watt appear together from 2011?

£50: in 2021 the Bank of England replaced the pair with the codebreaker Alan Turing on a new plastic £50.

Which Scot appeared on a Bank of England note in 2007, four years before Watt did?

Adam Smith knew Watt well: the economist was among the professors who befriended the young instrument maker at his university workshop.

Watt and Henry Cavendish became rival claimants over discovering the makeup of what?

Water: Watt set out his theory in 1783 and Cavendish published his experiments the next year, and the quarrel over who came first ran on for decades.

In one telling of the kettle legend, which relative scolded young Watt for idly toying with its steam?

His aunt, Mrs Muirhead, in the version a cousin wrote down in 1798; other tellings make it his mother, and the story is likely a myth.

Which long-serving Boulton and Watt engineer, credited by some with the rotary mechanism, became a partner in 1810?

William Murdoch built a working model steam carriage in 1784, but Watt wanted him gently talked out of pursuing it.

Which title did Watt decline when it was offered to him?

A baronetcy: he likewise pleaded to be excused when he was asked to serve as a county sheriff.

Which steel tycoon wrote a biography of James Watt, published in 1905?

Andrew Carnegie first turned the publishers down, then agreed, asking why he shouldn't write the life of the man whose steam engine had made his fortune.

Which novelist called the elderly Watt 'this magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change on the world'?

Walter Scott met him at a gathering of literary men, and held up the great engineer as proof that truly wise men happily read novels.

Which learned body made Watt a fellow in 1784?

The Royal Society of Edinburgh: his friend John Robison, later an Edinburgh professor, had once stepped into Watt's shop expecting a mere workman and found a philosopher.

Which subjects did Watt's grandfather Thomas teach near Greenock?

Mathematics and navigation: Thomas taught fishermen and seamen there after war killed his father and drove the family from its Aberdeenshire farm.

Raised a Presbyterian, which religious view is Watt usually described as holding later?

Deism: yet in the 1791 Birmingham riots he was pointed out as a Presbyterian, though he had never been to a meeting-house there.

Watt said he would rather face what than settle an account or make a bargain?

A loaded cannon: it took Boulton's business sense, not Watt's, to turn the engine into a commercial success.

In retirement, what did Watt build a machine to reproduce?

Sculptures and medallions: he was still working on the machine in his attic workshop in the last years of his life.

In 1816 Watt revisited Greenock aboard which pioneering paddle-steamer?

The Comet was Henry Bell's steamer, and Watt's own engine improvements were what had made such vessels practical.

Where has Watt's untouched garret workshop been recreated in its entirety since 1924?

The Science Museum: the garret sat right under the roof, so it was very hot in summer and very cold in winter.