should be able to preserve from destruction such treasures sheltered in
a wax cylinder--some great man's words of wisdom, or the silver tones of
a sweet musician!
The more Edison's brain accomplished the more did it seem able to do. As
a man he showed himself untiring as when a boy. He went on discovering.
He invented a way of telegraphing from a moving train. He invented an
Electric Railroad, that drew delighted thousands at the Chicago
Exhibition.
In 1879 his attention turned to lighting, and he bent all his energies
on inventing an Incandescent lamp for electric light. He spent days
working at a sort of white heat. He began on the 16th October, but
mishaps and accidents seemed to threaten his invention.
"Let us," he cried to his partner in a ferment of excitement--"let us
make a lamp before we sleep, or die in the attempt." On the morning of
the 21st it was done!
It astonished the world. It opened up possibilities for miners and
divers, and for men everywhere.
On the occasion of its exhibition people flocked from all parts of the
United States. Special trains were run. The same furore over the marvel
reigned at the Paris Exposition, and at every other exhibition. And
through it all--a fame, a popularity enough to turn the head of most
mortals--the man remained the same--modest, simple, unpretentious.
From Menlo Park he went to Orange. His laboratory there was fitted up
with everything conceivable that an inventor red-hot and eager might
want at a moment's notice. And yet often the workrooms presented the
strangest appearance of disorder. Workmen sometimes stretched on
benches or floor after a heavy strain, the great master himself thrown
down--a stick under his head, a coat wound round it for a pillow, and
so snatching a short interval of sleep! He will not be interrupted by
visitors. In this great world of his own he seems at times to live a
sort of separate existence.
We are amazed, dazzled, astonished by the tremendous results one man in
his lifetime has achieved. He has not been content to take some thing
and modify and improve it and set it to a new purpose as men whom we
call inventors have done in all ages. But he seems to have called upon
the very forces of nature to do his bidding. It is almost as if he had
harnessed the winds, the air, sound, electricity, for his purposes.
A man after a single discovery not seldom rests on his laurels for life.
This man is still in his prime, and we cannot tell yet what product of
his brain will still astonish us, and we cannot touch here on a tithe of
what he has done. He lives sometimes in his northern home, in New
Jersey, sometimes at Orange.
As a man he shows the same genial, kindly sympathy which, as a boy,
never failed to win the hearts of his fellow-clerks, the same modesty
that disarmed their jealousy. These things chain his workmen to him
to-day with links of love. Now that men praise and laud him all over the
world he shows the same good-natured indifference to name and fame he
has shown all through. And he has lost nothing of the tireless energy
that used to support him through hard work and long night-sittings as a
boy--this man who, as someone has it, "has kept the path to the patent
office red-hot with his footsteps--this wonder-worker of the modern
world."
JAMES WATT.
There is perhaps no inventor's name with which the British boy is more
familiar than with that of James Watt. In every college of mechanics or
engineers we are met in bust or print by the kindly, shrewd, benevolent
face of the great inventor of the Condensing Steam Engine.
It is difficult for us to picture what the world must have been before
James Watt came into it--before, as it were, steam took its place and
while yet men and horses and wind and water struggled feebly to do what
steam now does with such apparent ease.
On the west coast of Scotland stands what is to-day the busy, thriving,
seaport town of Greenock--the birthplace of James Watt. But in 1736,
more than 150 years ago, it was little more than a picturesque
fishing-village, looking out on a peaceful, smiling bay, where a few
modest fishing-craft were to be seen, and beyond to the hills of
Argyllshire, before smoke and funnels blotted the fairness of the
landscape.
In an unpretentious little house in a Greenock by-street James Watt
first saw the light. His father was by trade a carpenter, an undertaker,
a general "merchant," for there was little competition in those simple
days, and men often "professed" more than one trade. In the course of a
few years little James was left the sole surviving child of five, and
perhaps on that account was specially precious to his parents. Neither
as the years went on did he grow into a sturdy, lusty country boy, but
rather struggled up slowly, anxiously overlooked by a mother's care, a
prey to ill-health and headache, even in his baby years. So that most of
his early education fell to his parents, his mother opening up to him
the beginnings of reading, his father those of writing and arithmetic.
School, to which he went by-and-by, proved a failure. Shy and shrinking,
he cared little for the play of other children. He was slow at
games, perhaps dull in class, and the boys and girls laughed at him.
Ill-health, too, made it hard for him to get on. He liked best to be at
home. For amusement he would draw in chalk on the kitchen floor, and for
playthings he would choose his father's instruments. One day a
neighbour remarked on the child's drawing.
"He should be at school," she said, "and not trifling away his time."
"Look first," said the father, pointing to the floor, "before you blame
him. He is solving a problem in geometry."
The child was then six years old!
We are familiar with the story handed down to us through the centuries
of how the dreamy-eyed boy was engaged in watching the steam hiss from
the kettle-spout, the while holding a teaspoon below to count and catch
the drops of water. Tradition likes to see in this the tiny seedlings of
that mighty tree--the Condensing Steam Engine, but we fear that common
sense in the shape of his robust-minded aunt was nearer the mark when
she exclaimed--
"James Watt, I never saw such an idle boy as you are. For the last hour
you have not spoken one 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, catching and counting the
drops it falls into."
For change of air the boy was sometimes sent to Glasgow, the great
commercial capital being then no larger than a country market-town.
Mightily astonished were his relatives, and, according to their own
account, not a little scared, when of an evening his tongue was loosed,
and he would launch into tales, wonderful things that held them
entranced for hours, and sent them wakeful to bed. Was this time
prophetic of those later years when he would hold men and women
fascinated by the charm of his conversation?
And now young James was sent to the Greenock Grammar School, but he made
no great mark there, except in mathematics, in which he easily headed
the class. But Latin and Greek are not a boy's only education. At home
he was learning other things, from his parents' talk, from the pages
of books. And then there were the long golden hours when he put on a
leather apron like his father, and installed himself in his father's
workshop with a small forge and a small bench all his own, and with his
boyish fingers handled the tools so deftly and so cleverly that the
workmen watching him exclaimed--
"Little Jamie has gotten a fortune at his fingers' ends."
But while he worked his mind was not idle. He read eagerly and
precociously, as a delicate child sometimes does, devouring all such
books as he could lay hands on. Solid enough reading they will seem to
boys to-day.
_The Cloud of Witnesses_, Henry the Rymer's _Life of Wallace_, Boston,
Bunyan.
Added to this was his parents' talk, that fell on his young ears and
stamped itself on his young mind, and the picturesque surroundings of
his home, for he loved nature's beauties--the hills, the stars, the
trees. The mountains and the plains about his home were made romantic by
memories and associations of Covenanting times, told him by his father,
and his boyish rambles were made beautiful by wild flowers, and again
there were long delightful days of fishing to add to these.
But in the midst of all this struggling in the boy's mind was that
strong leaning to mechanical invention longing for an outlet. It peeped
out here and there--for instance, in being unable to see an instrument
without wishing to discover all its uses. And so well did he show
himself able even then to fashion delicate things like compasses and
quadrants--an instrument in shape like the fourth of a circle--that his
father, after much thought, made up his mind that James should learn
the trade of a mathematical instrument maker.
So in 1754 James came out from the shelter of home and launched himself
on the great world, rather more of an ordeal to the shy, timid boy
than it would have been to one more robust and enterprising. This was
practically the last of Greenock. The peaceful fishing-village was never
again to be his home. Naturally he turned his steps to Glasgow. We can
picture the great event in the quiet household. The boy getting ready,
his modest baggage, his clothes (his mother's tender care), a leather
apron, some carpenter's tools, and a quadrant.
But he was destined to go yet farther afield. No mathematical
instrument-maker was to be found in Glasgow. A professor to whom James
was introduced advised him to go to London. "To London" is an easy
enough journey to-day--then it was a mighty undertaking. No trains--no
steamers. One could only go by slow coach or on horseback. James chose
the latter. His trunk was sent by sea from Leith, and he along with a
friend set off on his long journey. He left on the 7th day of June, and
travelling by Coldstream and Newcastle, he arrived in the great
metropolis after a ride of twelve days!
Most likely, although there might have been fear in the boyish heart, it
also beat high with hope. Again and again has London made fair promises
to boys such as he. But disappointment was to meet him on the very
threshold. He found that apprentices who intended to serve a term of
seven years were only accepted. This was very far from James's thoughts.
What he wanted was to learn the trade, start off home again, and set
up in Glasgow for himself as soon as possible. After many failures,
however, he at last found a man willing to take him on for a year on his
promise to pay twenty guineas with the results of his work during that
time.
And now began a time of stern work and self-denial. He took poor
lodgings. He scrimped himself in everything but the bare necessaries of
life. He spent on himself exactly eight shillings a week. He could not,
he wrote, do with less. He scraped and pinched, remembering how ill his
father could afford his keep.
When he could get extra work he took it home at nights to his poor rooms
and sat up late over it, often ill and weary. In a month he could make
a quadrant better than any of the other apprentices. And so he struggled
on against loneliness and headache and depression. It was rarely safe to
venture out at night at that time in London, for sailor press-gangs were
abroad. No able-bodied man was spared. In one night they took as many as
1,000 men. Sitting as he did close to the shop door when at work, he was
often exposed to cold, and caught rheumatic pains which did not leave
him for many a day. After a year of this he went home to Greenock, in
his possession some tools and instruments, and in his hands and brain a
mighty store of skill and knowledge.
Revived by his native air he set out again to seek his fortune--again
to Glasgow. Again to be met with disappointment! He had not learned his
trade in Glasgow, and therefore Glasgow would have none of him. Not so
much as a workshop would it give him. It seemed almost as if there were
no place open for the boy.
But his friend the professor came to the front again. If Watt could find
no place in the city, then the University should shelter him. And so
they gave him a workshop twenty feet square in the old College grounds,
and a room in which to sell his instruments, and he was at last fairly
launched.
But business progressed but slowly. He lived, to be sure, in an
atmosphere that must have delighted him. The professors and the students
found him out. They came and came again. He seemed always to have
something original to say. He was a man who read much and thought
much--humble as a child about his own attainments--eager with the
generosity of the great man to give others their due--yes, even more
than their due. They found out that he knew all about engineering, and
not a little about natural history, art, languages--and then the trick
of observation was so strong with him that nothing escaped him. In time
it came to be the general opinion that the young instrument-maker was
one of the ablest men about the University. But gratifying as was the
making of these friends, they did not bring Watt in any money. Somehow
his instruments did not sell well. He was too far from the town. Indeed,
his business was so poor he sometimes thought of giving it up. It may
have been there was a want of practical "push" in him, a quality he
never gained all through his life. Somewhat discouraged he took to
making fiddles and flutes and guitars and even organs,--but he was yet
very far from making that fortune he had come out to seek.
There are crises, turning-points in the lives of most people. They are
seldom noisy. Sometimes, indeed, they come so quietly as to be hardly
noticed. And now Watt was gradually nearing his.
About this time his thoughts began to turn to steam. It may be that had
he been busy and successful as an organ-maker, his great invention might
never have seen the light.
People had, of course, known for long that there was a power in
water exposed to heat. Now in 1759, when Watt was twenty-three, his
attention was drawn to the Steam Engine. He pondered it. After he had
pondered it he set to work. His first model was a failure. But the
idea had silently and firmly lodged in his brain. He went on with his
everyday business, but ever in his leisure back sprang his mind to
that subject that was to be his all-absorbing life-work. He read
eagerly what other men had done. He got a model of another man's
engine and he studied it. He found what he thought defects. He groped
steadily on--now seeing a light--again thrown into darkness--now
following what turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp--again getting
hold of an idea that seemed to him a gem.
There came to him gradually dawning thoughts. First, that of Latent
Heat. Again, that a small quantity of water in the shape of steam heats
a large quantity of cold water. Yet, again, that at 212 deg. water is
elastic, and that steam heats six times the weight of cold water to a
temperature of 212 deg., the temperature of steam.
And so he went on step by step, till one day the thing burst on him,
full-fledged, as it were--complete, dazzling, a perfect inspiration.
It was a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1765. He was taking a stroll
in a quiet part of Glasgow, now a paved and busy thoroughfare called the
Green. A Sunday calm brooded over what was on weekdays a scene of busy
life--of washing and drying clothes. His thoughts, as usual, hovered
about his beloved theme. It inspired him with a very passion as a child
of his own. The key to his engine--long sought--suddenly flashed before
his mind's eye. The thing had been waiting incomplete for want of it. It
came to him then--the idea of a Separate Condenser.
A great uprising of his mind followed. In his solitary walk the
flashing thought filled the man with rapture.
Two drawbacks--waste of steam and waste of fuel--had been the ruin of
former inventions.
"Ye need not fash yourself about that, man," Watt said to a friend,
answering some objection that he had made, "I have now made an engine
that shall not waste a particle of steam."
And so, though it was but the beginning, though years of weary labour
and disappointment and discouragement waited him before the end was
reached, the Condensing Steam Engine, as we have it now, first sprang
into being that spring afternoon on the Green in Glasgow.
And now the young inventor set himself with eager enthusiasm to make a
model. There were no skilled workmen to be had, no self-acting tools, as
in our day, and so the first model was only partly successful. But not a
whit discouraged, he went on.
"My whole thoughts are bent on this machine," he said. "I can think of
nothing else."
And now there remains but to tell in a few words--for it is the record
of his manhood--the "ups and downs" just beginning, the disappointments,
the failures, the hopes and fears that waited on this offspring of his
brain. He was poor, and money was the first thing that was needed. Who
would risk thousands on such a vague and shadowy thing?
Meantime the pot had to be kept boiling! He looked into the future, and
he saw great things steam might yet be made to do, but there was bread
and butter needed for the present. So he went bravely in for surveying,
though there was little enough to be made by that. He had still
ill-health to struggle against. "I am still plagued with headaches," he
wrote about this time, "and sometimes heartaches."
But after a time a gleam of hope shone through the clouds. After
failures and difficulties he at last succeeded in finding someone
willing to risk his money. So in 1769 he patented his engine, and began
to build it. In six months it was finished, and as it neared completion
Watt could hardly sleep. Then, and for long still in the future, he was
to suffer from bad, incapable workmen, and this accounted for his
partial failure.
"It was," he said, "a clumsy job." Watt grew depressed.
In 1770 he wrote: "I enter on my thirty-fifth year, and I think I have
hardly yet done thirty-five pence worth of good in the world."
A friend, seeing him cast down and unhappy, advised him to give up
inventing. As well might he have advised the sun not to shine or living
man to cease from breathing. Meantime the years went on. Watt was often,
as he said, "heart-sick." Long years after, remembering this weary time,
he said, "The public only look at my success." He stinted himself in
everything but bare necessaries, for as yet his engine had paid him
nothing and cost enormously. But light again arose in the darkness when
he got as a partner Boulton, of Birmingham, and from that day onwards
matters mended. Six of the fourteen years' patent were gone, but he
succeeded in getting a renewal of it for twenty-four years by Act of
Parliament, in spite of grumbling discontent of men who wanted to steal
the fruit of his brain, and were thus prevented.
Now he set to work in earnest. His first engine was made to blow the
bellows of ironworks. His second to pump water out of the mines in
Cornwall. In 1776 this was set up, and worked perfectly. "There it was,
'forking water' as never engine before had been known 'to fork.'"
"All the world are agape," he said, "to see what it can do."
And it did well. And now the "voice of the country was in its favour."
So the first step was taken. The others followed in quick succession.
The partners worked together perfectly. Watt understood engines, but
not men. He grew impatient, irritable, peevish if a workman were
inefficient, and would have dismissed him on the spot. Boulton was
wiser, and never failed to oil the wheels. Watt was despondent, easily
cast down; Boulton was his "backbone."
There came then into Watt's mind the idea of an engine that would
produce _rotary_ motion. This he patented in 1781. All round and about,
ready to pounce on it, were a perfect swarm of pirates.
"One's thoughts seem to be stolen before one speaks them," he said. And
again, "All mankind seem to be resolved to rob us."
In 1782 the first rotary machine worked. After long waiting there was a
brilliant result. It was made to drive a corn-mill. In our day it would
be hard to say what Watt's rotary machine is not made to do. It is made
for corn-mills and for cotton-mills, for sugar-mills and iron-mills. It
drives our steamers and rolls our hammer-iron and coins our money and
prints our books.
And now the great inventor had reached the highest pinnacle of fame. In
1790 he had an interview with the King, who asked about his engines.
But he had not landed at the topmost round of the ladder without much
painful climbing and many weary steps. His life had been all through
shadowed by ill-health, and an anxious, worrying mind that refused to
be calm. He had a shrinking distaste to business, and a fearful habit
of looking on the dark side of things. Often would he have sunk in
depression and despair had it not been for his cheery partner. It was
only in the late years of his life that he came to know anything like
peace. His mind all along had been too active for his body.
But though as an old man he retired from public life and from
business, he could not altogether retire from invention. He invented
a letter-copying machine, and one for copying statuary. In his old
age he lived very quietly in his comfortable house near Birmingham,
furnishing what he called his Garret, a room where he might be alone
and still invent, don again, as in boyhood, the leather apron, cook
his own food, and ponder anew the details of those wonderful
inventions he had given to the world.
Friends admitted there found "the great Mr. Watt" simple, modest,
careless of display--much as he had been as a boy--his voice low and
kindly, with still its broad, homely Scottish accent. The world would
have liked to draw him from his seclusion, to caress him, to make much
of him. It offered him a baronetcy, but his simple tastes lay not at all
in the direction of such honours, and he refused it.
In 1819, when he was eighty-three, the end came. "I feel," said the
great man with a calm in strange contrast to the fearfulness and
timidity that had accompanied him through life, "I feel that I am now
come to my last illness." He passed away quietly and without suffering.
They buried him in Handsworth Church--near to his partner, Boulton--and
erected an imposing statue in Westminster Abbey, and beneath it Lord
Brougham wrote his famous epitaph.
To us his life has much of pathos. Men have called him "the greatest
inventor in all ages," "the most extraordinary man that the world has
ever seen," but the long years of struggle and labour and waiting, the
weakness of body and the oft depression of spirit, are to us not a
little sad, specially when we remember how patiently he endured, how
uncomplainingly he suffered, that we might profit, that he might, as
Lord Brougham has it, "increase the power of man."
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