Greenock on the River Clyde in Scotland, and was of a quiet, almost
shy disposition, and delicate in health. He was fond of drawing and of
studying mechanical problems, but rarely had much to say about his
studies. The story goes that as he sat one evening at the tea-table
with his aunt, Mrs. Muirhead, she said reprovingly to him, “James
Watt, I never saw such an idle boy: take a book or employ yourself
usefully; for the last hour you haven’t spoken a word, but taken
off the lid of that kettle and put it on again, holding a cup or a
silver spoon over the steam, watching it rise from the spout, and
catching the drops it falls into. Aren’t you ashamed of spending your
time in this way?” And history goes on to presume that as the boy
watched the bubbling kettle he was studying the laws of steam and
making ready to put them to good use some day.
[Illustration: WATT FIRST TESTS THE POWER OF STEAM]
He picked out the trade of a maker of mathematical instruments, and
went to London to fit himself for it. He was apprenticed to a good
master and made rapid progress, but the climate of London was bad for
his health, and as soon as his term of instruction was finished he
went back to Scotland. There he found it difficult to get employment,
but at last he obtained permission to open a small shop in the
grounds of the University of Glasgow, and to call himself
“Mathematical-instrument-maker to the University.”
When the Newcomen engine was given to Watt to repair he studied it
closely, and soon reached an important conclusion. A great amount of
heat was lost whenever the cold water was let into the cylinder to
condense the steam, and this loss vastly increased the expense of
running the engine, and cut down its power. He saw that to prevent
this loss the cylinder must be kept as hot as the steam that entered
it. This led him to study the nature of steam, and he had soon made
some remarkable discoveries in regard to it. He found that water had a
high capacity for storing up heat, without a corresponding effect on
the thermometer. This hidden heat became known as latent heat.
It was of course a matter of common knowledge that heat could be
obtained by the combustion of coal or wood. Watt found that heat lay
also in water, to be drawn out and used in what is called steam. If
you change the temperature of water you find that it exists in three
different states, that of a liquid, or water, that of a solid, or ice,
and that of a gas, or steam. If water were turned into steam, and two
pounds of this steam passed into ten pounds of water at the freezing
point the steam would become liquid, or water, again, at 212° of
temperature, but at the same time the ten pounds of freezing water
into which the steam had been passed would also have been raised to
212° by the process. This shows that the latent heat of the two pounds
of steam was sufficient to convert the ten pounds of freezing water
into boiling water. That is the latent heat which is set free to work
when the steam coming in contact with the cold changes the vapor from
its gaseous to a liquid state. The heat, however, is only latent, or
in other words of no use, until the temperature of the water is raised
to 212°, and the vapor rises.
Mr. Lauder, a pupil of Lord Kelvin, writing of Watt’s “Discoveries of
the Properties of Steam,” describes his results in this way: “Suppose
you take a flask, such as olive oil is often sold in, and fill it with
cold water. Set it over a lighted lamp, put a thermometer in the
water, and the temperature will be observed to rise steadily till it
reaches 212°, where it remains, the water boils, and steam is produced
freely. Now draw the thermometer out of the water, but leaving it
still in the steam. It remains steady at the same point--212°. Now it
requires quite a long time and a large amount of heat to convert all
the water into steam. As the steam goes off at the same temperature as
the water, it is evident a quantity of heat has escaped in the steam,
of which the thermometer gives us no account. This is latent heat.
“Now, if you blow the steam into cold water instead of allowing it to
pass into the air, you will find that it heats the water six times
more than what is due to its indicated temperature. To fix your idea:
suppose you take 100 lbs. of water at 60°, and blow one pound of steam
into it, making 101 lbs., its temperature will now be about 72°, a
rise of 12°. Return to your 100 lbs. of water at 60° and add one pound
of water at 212° the same temperature as the steam you added, and the
temperature will only be raised about 2°. The one pound of steam heats
six times more than the one pound of water, both being at the same
temperature. This is the quantity of latent heat, which means simply
hidden heat, in steam.
“Proceeding further with the experiment, if, instead of allowing the
steam to blow into the water, you confine it until it gets to some
pressure, then blow it into the water, it takes the same weight to
raise the temperature to the same degree. This means that the total
heat remains practically the same, no matter at what pressure.
“This is James Watt’s discovery, and it led him to the use of
high-pressure steam, used expansively.”
Newcomen, in making his steam-engine, had simply made additions to
Papin’s model. Watt had already done much more, for in trying to find
how the engine might be made of greater service he had discovered at
the outset the principle of the latent heat of steam. He knew that in
Newcomen’s engine four-fifths of all the steam used was lost in
heating the cold cylinder, and that only one-fifth was actually used
in moving the piston. It was easy to see how this loss occurred. The
cylinder was cooled at the top because it was open to the air, and was
cooled at the bottom in condensing the steam that had driven the
piston up so as to create a vacuum which would lower the piston for
another stroke. Watt knew that what he wanted was a plan by which the
cylinder could always be kept as hot as the steam that went into it.
How was he to obtain this? He solved it by the invention of the
“separate condenser.” This is how he tells of his discovery. “I had
gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon, early in 1765. I had
entered the green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street and had
passed the old washing-house, when the idea came into my mind that as
steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a
communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel
it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling
the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam
and injection-water if I used a jet as in Newcomen’s engine. Two ways
of doing this occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a
descending pipe, if an offlet could be got at the depth of thirty-five
or thirty-six feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump.
The second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and
air.... I had not walked farther than the golf-house when the whole
thing was arranged in my mind.”
This was the discovery that gave us practically the modern
steam-engine, with its countless uses in unnumbered fields. Newcomen’s
engine was limited to the pressure of the atmosphere, Watt’s could use
the tremendous force of steam under higher and higher pressure. He led
the steam out of the cylinder and condensed it in a separate vessel,
thereby leaving the cylinder hot. He closed the cylinder top, and
prevented the loss of steam. The invention may seem simple enough as
we study it, but as a matter of fact it was the attainment of this
result of keeping the cylinder as hot as the steam that enters it that
has given us our steam-engine.
The morning following that Sunday afternoon on which the idea of the
condenser had occurred to Watt he borrowed a brass syringe from a
college friend, and using this as a cylinder and a tin can as a
condenser tried his experiment. The scheme worked, albeit in a
primitive way, and Watt saw that he was on the track of an engine that
would revolutionize the labor of men. But he saw also that it would
take both time and money to bring his invention to its most efficient
form.
His instrument-making business had prospered, he had taken in a
partner, and the firm now employed sixteen workmen. About the same
time he married, and rented a house outside the university grounds.
Soon he was busily at work building a working model of his
steam-engine.
A working model was very hard to make. Watt himself was a skilful
mechanician, but the men who helped him were not. The making of the
cylinder and the piston gave him the chief trouble. The cylinder would
leak. It took him months to devise the tools that would enable him to
make a perfect-fitting cylinder, and when he had accomplished that he
still found that in one way or another a certain amount of steam would
escape. Yet, although imperfect, his model was already many times more
powerful than the Newcomen engine he had started with.
But before very long Watt found that this work was leading him into
debt. He told his good friend Professor Black, who had discovered the
latent heat of steam before Watt had, that he needed a partner to help
him in his business of building engines. Black suggested Dr. Roebuck,
who had opened the well-known Carron Iron Works near Glasgow. The two
men met, and, after some negotiations, formed a partnership. Roebuck
agreed to pay Watt’s debts to the sum of a thousand pounds, to provide
the money for further experiments, and to obtain a patent for the
steam-engine. In return for this he was to become the owner of a
two-third interest in the invention.
It was more difficult to secure a patent in those days than in later
times, for both the courts and the public considered that the right to
make use of any new invention should belong to the whole world, and
not alone to one man or to a few men. Watt’s models had to be very
carefully made, and his designs very accurately drawn if he was to
secure any real protection, and the preparation of these took a vast
amount of time. But Roebuck continued to encourage him, and on January
5, 1769, he was granted his first patent, the very same day on which
another great English inventor, Arkwright, obtained a patent for his
spinning-frame. This first patent covered Watt’s invention of the
condenser, but not his next invention, which was the double-acting
engine, or in other words, a method by which the steam should do work
on the downward as well as on the upward stroke.
With his patent secured Watt spent six months building a huge new
engine, which he had ready for use in September, 1769. In spite of all
his painstaking it was only a partial success. The cylinder had been
badly cast, the pipe-condenser did not work properly, and there was
still the old leakage of steam at the piston. Men began to doubt
whether the new engine could ever be made to accomplish what Watt
claimed for it, but although he realized the difficulties the inventor
would not allow himself to doubt. Unfortunately his way was no longer
clear. Dr. Roebuck met with reverses and had to end the partnership
agreement, and Watt had to borrow money from his old friend Professor
Black to secure his patent. To add to his distress his wife, who had
been his best counselor, died.
Dr. Roebuck had owed money to a celebrated merchant of Birmingham
named Matthew Boulton. Boulton had heard a great deal about Watt’s
engine, and now consented to take Roebuck’s interest in Watt’s
invention in payment of the debt. At the same time the firm of
Boulton and Watt was formed, and in May, 1774, Watt shipped his trial
engine south, and set out himself for Birmingham.
Boulton was a business genius, and Watt now found that he could leave
financial matters entirely to his care, and busy himself solely with
his engine. He had better workmen, better appliances, and better
material in Birmingham than he had had in Glasgow, and the engine was
soon beginning to justify his hopes. But the original patent had only
been granted for fourteen years, and six of these had already passed.
Boulton was not willing to put money into the building of a great
factory until he was sure that the engines would be secured to the
firm. Therefore more time had to be spent in obtaining an extension of
the patent. This was finally done, and Watt was granted a term of
twenty-four years. At once Boulton set to work, the first engine
factory rose, and hundreds of men in England turned to Birmingham to
see how much truth there was in the wonderful stories that had been
spread abroad of the new invention.
Men soon learned that the stories were true. Orders began to flow in,
and Watt had his hands full in traveling about the country
superintending the erection of his steam-engines. The mines of
Cornwall had become unworkable, and as a great deal depended on the
success of the engine in such work, he traveled to Cornwall to make
sure that there should be no faults. The miners, the engineers, and
the owners had gathered to see the new engine. It stood the test
splendidly, making eleven eight-foot strokes per minute, which broke
the record. After that the other mines of Great Britain discarded the
old expensive Newcomen engine, and sent in orders for Watt’s. The firm
prospered, and the inventor began to feel some of the material
comforts of success. He had married a second time, and made a home for
his wife and children in Birmingham. Now, when he could spare the time
from superintending the workmen and traveling over the country, he
gave his thoughts to further inventive schemes.
Watt had not only invented the condenser and the double-acting engine,
he had produced an indicator for measuring the pressure of steam in
the cylinder, and also what was called the fly-ball governor, which
took the place of the throttle-valve he had first used to regulate the
speed of his engines. These improvements had so increased the uses of
the engine that scores of rival inventors were abroad, and therefore
he decided to secure a second patent. This he did in 1781, the patent
being issued “for certain new methods of producing a continued
rotative motion around an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion
to the wheels of mills or other machines.” The next year he secured
still another patent, and now he had so perfected his double-acting
engine that it had a regular and easily controlled motion, in
consequence of which, as he said in his specifications, “in most of
our great manufactories these engines now supply the place of water,
wind and horse mills, and instead of carrying the work to the power,
the prime agent is placed wherever it is most convenient to the
manufacturer.” This meant that the steam-engine had now reached the
point where it could be made to serve for almost any purpose and
placed in almost any position that might be required.
There was one further step for Watt to take in the development of his
invention. He wished a more powerful engine than his double-acting
one, and so he produced the “compound” engine. This was really two
engines, the cylinders and condensers of which were so connected that
the steam which had been used to press on the piston of the first
could then be used to act expansively upon the piston of the second,
and in this way the second engine be made to work either alternately
or simultaneously with the first. And this compound engine is
practically the very engine that we have to-day. Improvements have
been made, but they have been made in details. The piston-rings
invented by Cartwright have prevented the escape of steam, and so
permitted the use of a higher pressure than Watt could achieve, and
the cross-head invented by Haswell has provided the piston with a
better bed on which to rest and freed it from a certain friction.
The firm of Boulton and Watt had a successful career, and in time the
sons of the two partners took the latters’ places. Watt had occasion
to protect his patents by a suit at law, but he was victorious in
this, and by the time the patent rights had expired the firm had built
up such a large business that it was safe from rivals. Confident of
his son’s ability to carry on the business Watt at length retired, to
busy himself in studying other inventions, to cultivate his garden,
and to revisit familiar scenes in his beloved Scotland.
The steam-engine had come to take its place in the great onward march
of progress. Men were already at work planning to make it move cars
across the land and ships upon the sea. It was to revolutionize the
manufacture of almost everything; what men and women had done before
by hand it was now to do, and, devised at first because of the great
need of a new way to work the coal mines, it was to provide a motive
power to accomplish all kinds of labor.
Such is the story of how James Watt took Newcomen’s simple piston and
cylinder and so harnessed steam that he could make it do the work he
wanted.
V
ARKWRIGHT AND THE SPINNING-JENNY
1732-1792
All the great English inventors have sprung from families of small
means, and have had to work for their living. Richard Arkwright, born
at Preston, in Lancashire, December 23, 1732, was no exception to this
rule. He was the youngest of thirteen children, and his parents were
as poor as the proverbial church mice. He had no real education, only
such as he could pick up by chance, but he made the most of such
chances as came his way. He was apprenticed to a barber at Bolton, and
later took up that business for himself. It was an occupation in which
he would be apt to glean much gossip and many stray scraps of
information, but little that would tend to broaden his mind. Perhaps
he realized this for himself, and concluded that the hairdressing line
was not to be his destiny, for when he was in the neighborhood of
twenty-eight years of age he retired from his barber-shop, and became
a traveling dealer in hair and dyes. This would at least allow him to
see something more of the world.
His prospects at this new trade were good. He had come upon a new
method of dyeing hair and preparing it to be made into wigs. Wigs were
the fashion, and Arkwright had an excellent process, and was an
energetic and resourceful dealer. He saw something of the country
world of England, the men and women in it, what they wanted, and what
they needed. Doubtless his inventive mind was already revolving
improvements for them. The dealer in dyes and wigs was a shrewd and
canny man. Carlyle had this to say concerning him and his progress:
“Nevertheless, in stropping of razors, in shaving of dirty beards, and
the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had
notions in that rough head of his! Spindles, shuttles, wheels, and
contrivances, plying ideally within the same; rather hopeless-looking,
which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty.”
There is always a strain of romance, or at least adventure, in the
life of the itinerant pedlar, something of the free-footedness of the
gypsy, and something of the acumen of those Eastern traders who
traveled in caravans from the Orient. But doubtless we see the charm
more clearly than the traveler himself. It may have been, and most
likely was, a workaday job for Richard Arkwright. But consider the
romance that underlay it! This country vendor of hair was to become
one of the world’s great inventors, and to kneel before his sovereign
for the accolade that was to make him knight. Figaro of Seville, famed
as he was, was none superior to the Lancashire barber.
He traveled much through South Lancashire and Cheshire, and there he
came in daily contact with the cotton-spinners. A weaver of great
ingenuity and tireless purpose, James Hargreaves, had invented what
was known as a spinning-jenny, an arrangement by which many spindles,
fastened in a wooden frame, would work together by the turning of a
fly-wheel. This machine could do the work of many spinners, and in a
much shorter time. The rovings of cotton went under a bar-clasp that
took the place of the spinner’s finger and thumb. This bar-clasp could
be moved backward and forward on a rod as the spinner’s hand would do
when stretching the thread and winding it on. It had a precision of
action that resulted in a much greater regularity in the spun thread
than by the earlier process. It was a very ingenious device, and
Hargreaves deserved the greatest credit for the skill with which he
solved the problem.
But the spinners did not take kindly to this improvement. When they
discovered that Hargreaves could do more spinning with less work with
his machine, and could supply his own loom with all the woof that was
needed instead of keeping three or four spinners employed, they grew
highly indignant. They did not realize that the demand for cotton
cloth was far greater than the supply, and that they could all be
profitably employed operating the spinning-jenny. That panic which has
so often come over people when they learn of a new device entering
their field of action struck the cotton-spinners, and Hargreaves was
regarded as a foe rather than a friend. Hargreaves was driven from
Lancashire to Nottingham, and many of his larger jennies were broken
by mobs. A few of the smaller machines were saved, but the people’s
mind was very evident.
Hargreaves’ improvement on the old-fashioned spinning-wheel dates
from 1767, though he himself, it is said, had first used such a
machine in 1764. Two men, Wyatt and Paul, of Birmingham, had earlier
built a machine to spin stronger yarn than that usually used, but
their machine had shown many defects, and they had abandoned its use.
Arkwright knew of Hargreaves’ jenny, but not of the other machine, and
as he came upon none in use in his travels he cannot be held to have
been under any obligations to this earlier device.
The manufacture of cotton goods was in a primitive state in England.
Pure cotton fabrics could not be made, and the fustians that were
produced had a warp of linen yarn in them, due to the fact that no way
was known by which cotton yarn of sufficient strength could be spun.
Arkwright soon learned these difficulties that arose from the absence
of cotton warp and the deficiency of cotton weft, and his alert mind
commenced to wonder whether he could not so improve on Hargreaves’
jenny as to overcome these difficulties. He was not a skilled mechanic
himself, and so, when he decided to take up the subject, he employed a
clockmaker, named Kay, to help him. Realizing the hostility to any
improvement on the part of the cotton-spinners, he gave out that he
was engaged in building a machine to solve the world-old problem of
perpetual motion.
Under this cloak he worked, and soon found that his new occupation was
vastly more interesting than that of dealer in wigs had been. He was a
shrewd man, and therefore, when he withdrew from that trade in 1767,
it is probable that he foresaw that he was on the track of something
better. His idea was that cotton could be spun by rollers, and he said
that this thought occurred to him as he happened to watch a red-hot
iron bar lengthened out by passing between two rollers. But the iron
would necessarily have to be drawn out in such a process, while the
cotton wool could be indefinitely packed together. It would have to be
taken hold of, and forcibly stretched as it passed through the pair of
rollers, if it were to be drawn out, and not merely compressed. His
solution of this problem was a machine that had two pairs of rollers,
which were called drawing-rollers, the first pair of which revolved
slowly in contact with each other, while the second pair revolved more
rapidly in a similar way. One roller of each pair was covered with
leather, and the other was fluted lengthwise. The two were pressed
together by means of weights. In this manner the adhesion of the
cotton wool was safely secured, and there was no chance of the rollers
slipping around without drawing it in. The cotton passed through the
two pairs of rollers, and its extension depended entirely on the
difference in the velocity of the revolutions of the two pairs. When
the proper fineness had been obtained in this way, the cotton, as it
passed from the second pair of rollers, was twisted into a firm strong
thread by spindles attached to the frame.
Arkwright realized that he must have assistance in order to put his
machines on the market. He applied to a Mr. Atherton, and the latter,
although he considered the venture a hazardous one, sent him two
workmen to help in building his first machine. When this was
finished Arkwright went with it to Preston, and there set up his
spinning-frame and began to use it in a room of the house that
belonged to the Free Grammar School. His experiments convinced him of
its success. Then he thought how he could best introduce his machine
with least risk of rousing the popular fury. John Smalley, a liquor
merchant and painter, had helped him build his machine, and after
consultation, the two men decided to take the spinning-jenny to
Nottingham, which lay in the heart of the frame-work stocking trade.
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT]