genius perfected the control of one of the greatest revealed powers
yet given to man, may well be applied the saying of Wellington,
"That which makes a great general makes a great artist, the power
and the determination to overcome difficulties." Born with a sickly
temperament, and prevented thereby from attending school, or indulging
in the usual healthy play of children, Watt, unassisted by others,
devoted his time to study, and in retirement and reflection laid the
foundation of knowledge destined to bear such ample fruit. In addition
to mere book knowledge, he early exhibited a partiality for mechanical
contrivances and operations, and this determined him to commence his
career as a mathematical instrument maker. For this purpose he set out
for Glasgow in 1754, but owing to the limited resources of the town
at that period, he finally decided on going to London, where, after
great difficulty, he was apprenticed for a twelvemonth to an instrument
maker in Finch Lane. At the end of his apprenticeship Watt, having
become enfeebled from over attention to work, repaired to Greenock to
recruit his health, and ultimately returned to Glasgow, where he was
established by the authorities, within the precincts of the college
as mathematical instrument maker to the University. In process of
time Watt's shop became a favourite resort for professors as well as
students, and he counted among his visitors Professor Simson, Drs.
Black, Dick, and Moor;[47] but his most intimate friend, and the one
most closely connected with his after life, was John Robison, a student
at Glasgow, afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh
University, to whom the honour is due of having first directed Watt's
attention to the steam-engine. The event which actually led to the
commencement of his invaluable discoveries on this subject, was the
entrusting to him the repair of a small model of Newcomen's engine,
which the college possessed. In his endeavours to put this engine into
working order, Watt was led to investigate thoroughly the properties
of steam upon which its action depended; and ultimately in the spring
of 1765, after many trials and untiring perseverance, he arrived at
the great and simple idea of a separate condenser, into which the
steam expanded; thereby preventing that wasteful expenditure of heat,
which was the necessary result of the old plan of condensing the steam
in the working cylinder, by admitting a jet of cold water directly
under the piston. In addition to this Watt surrounded the cylinder
with a second casing to be filled with the surplus steam, for the
purpose of preventing radiation of heat, and closed in the top (which
in Newcomen's engine had been left open for the sake of the pressure
of the atmosphere upon the piston) by putting a cover on, with a hole
and stuffing box for the piston rod to slide through; a plan which
enabled steam pressure to be used in place of atmospheric. Newcomen's
engine, at this time used only for pumping out water in mines, thus
became a true steam-engine of immense power, capable of being worked
with economy, and of being turned to the various uses to which science
has since applied it. For these great improvements a patent, dated
January 5, 1769, was taken out by Watt and Dr. Roebuck, the founder of
the Carron iron works, with whom Watt had become acquainted. Little,
however, was done for some years in manufacturing engines on a large
scale; Roebuck fell into difficulties, while Watt, harassed, depressed
in spirits, and in want of money, was forced to obtain employment
as a civil engineer and land-surveyor. Among the many works that he
was engaged on in this capacity may be mentioned: the Crinan Canal,
afterwards completed by Rennie; the deepening of the river Clyde;
improvements in the harbours of Ayr, Port Glasgow, and Greenock; the
building of bridges at Hamilton and Rutherglen; and lastly, surveying
and estimating a line of canal between Fort William and Inverness,
which was subsequently executed by Telford on a larger scale than was
then proposed, under the name of the Caledonian Canal. In the latter
half of the year 1773 Roebuck's affairs came to a crisis; and Watt,
through the agency of Dr. Small, having been brought into relation with
Mr. Boulton, a man possessing an intimate knowledge of business, with
extended views and a liberal spirit of enterprise, an arrangement was
entered into between them, and the firm of Boulton and Watt established
at Soho. This was the turning point in Watt's fortunes; under the
vigorous management of Boulton, his great invention at length began
to be appreciated, and the saving of fuel was found to be nearly
three-fourths of the quantity consumed by Newcomen's engine. In 1775
an extension of the original patent until the year 1800 was obtained.
This gave a fresh stimulus to Watt's fertile brain, and resulted in
patents being taken out, between the years 1781-1785, for the rotatory
motion of the sun and planet wheels (the crank having been pirated by
Wasbrough), _the expansive principle of working steam_; _the double
engine_; _the parallel motion_; _the smokeless furnace_; _the float to
regulate the supply of water into the boiler_; and _the governor_. At
a later period Watt also invented the indicator, by means of which the
actual horse power of an engine could be ascertained. This beautiful
series of inventions in a measure may be said to have perfected the
machine, and at the present time the condensing steam engine differs in
no material respect from the engine as Watt left it.
While residing at Birmingham, Mr. Watt's house became the resort
of many learned men. In the meetings of the Lunar Society, held at
Soho House, originated his experiments on water, and between him and
Cavendish is the honour divided of having first promulgated the theory
of its composition. During the dispute which arose upon this subject,
Watt's reply, on a friend regretting that another should have carried
off this honour, is worth recording, as showing the modest dignity of
his character: "It matters not," said he, "whether Cavendish discovered
this or I, it is discovered."
In the year 1800 Mr. Watt, having acquired an ample competency, ceased
to take an active part in the business of the firm, and the remainder
of his life was spent in retirement; but his active mind, still
unwearied, continued to follow its natural bent. On two occasions
afterwards, in 1811 and 1812, he gave proofs of the undiminished powers
of his inventive genius. In the one instance he was induced, by his
grateful recollections of his residence in Glasgow, to assist the
proprietors of the waterworks there with a plan for supplying the town
with better water, by means of a suction pipe laid across the Clyde to
reach to the other side, where water of a very superior quality might
be procured. This pipe was formed of cast iron, with flexible joints,
after the manner of a lobster's tail, so as to accommodate itself to
the bed of the river, and fully answered the purpose for which it was
designed. In the other instance he was prevailed upon, by the earnest
solicitation of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, to attend
a deputation of the Navy Board, and to give, with his friend Captain
Huddart and Mr. J. Jessop, an opinion upon the works then carrying
on at Sheerness Dockyard, and the further ones projected by Messrs.
Rennie and Whitby. On this occasion he no less gratified the gentlemen
associated with him by the clearness of his general views, than by his
knowledge of the details; and he received the thanks of the Admiralty
for his services. In 1814 he yielded to the wishes of his friends,
of Dr. Brewster especially, and undertook a revision of Professor
Robison's articles on steam and steam-engines for an early edition
of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, which he enriched with valuable
notes, containing his own experiments on steam, and a short history
of his principal improvements upon the engine itself. Among other
mechanical contrivances of Mr. Watt's may be mentioned: a machine for
copying letters; an instrument for measuring the specific gravity of
fluids; a regulator lamp; a plan for heating buildings by steam; and a
contrivance for drying linen. In his eighty-third year, Mr. Watt was
still occupied in inventing a machine for copying statues, but this
remained unfinished, death arrested his hand; he died in the year 1819,
at Heathfield, in Staffordshire; and thus, full of years and honours,
ended the life of a man who, though born in a secluded village town,
and reared in comparative poverty, was yet enabled, by persevering
industry and the happy gifts of nature, to contribute so greatly to the
commercial prosperity of the world.
Mr. Watt was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in
1784, of the Royal Society of London in 1785, and a corresponding
member of the Batavian Society in 1787. In 1806 the honorary degree of
LL.D. was conferred upon him by the spontaneous and unanimous vote of
the Senate of the University of Glasgow; and in 1808 he was elected,
first a corresponding, and afterwards a foreign member of the Institute
of France. A few years before his death it was intimated to him, by a
message from Sir Joseph Banks, that, to use the words of Mr. Muirhead,
the highest honour usually conferred in England on men of literature
and science--namely a baronetcy, was open to him, should he desire it;
but, although Watt felt flattered by this intimation, he determined,
after consulting with his son, to decline the honour.
Five statues have been erected to the memory of this illustrious man,
of which number the one in Westminster Abbey, by Chantrey, bears on its
pedestal the famous inscription by Lord Brougham:--
NOT TO PERPETUATE A NAME
WHICH MUST ENDURE WHILE THE PEACEFUL ARTS FLOURISH
BUT TO SHEW
THAT MANKIND HAVE LEARNT TO HONOUR THOSE
WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE
THE KING
HIS MINISTERS AND MANY OF THE NOBLES
AND COMMONERS OF THIS REALM
RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO
JAMES WATT
WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL GENIUS
EARLY EXERCISED IN PHILOSOPHIC RESEARCH
TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF
THE STEAM ENGINE
ENLARGED THE RESOURCES OF HIS COUNTRY
INCREASED THE POWER OF MAN
AND ROSE TO AN EMINENT PLACE
AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FOLLOWERS OF SCIENCE
AND THE REAL BENEFACTORS OF THE WORLD
BORN AT GREENOCK MDCCXXXVI
DIED AT HEATHFIELD IN STAFFORDSHIRE MDCCCXIX.
--_Muirhead's Translation of Arago's Historical Eloge of James
Watt._ London, 1839.--_Memoir, by his son J. Watt_, _Encyclopædia
Britannica_.--_Quarterly Review_, October, 1858.
WILLIAM H. WOLLASTON, M.D., P.R.S. &c.
Born August 6, 1766. Died December 22, 1828.
William Hyde Wollaston was born at East Dereham, a village sixteen
miles from Norwich. His father was an astronomer of some eminence,
who in the year 1800 published an extensive catalogue of the northern
circumpolar stars. After a preparatory education, Wollaston entered at
Caius College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.B. in 1787,
and that of M.D. in 1793; soon afterwards he became a Tancred Fellow.
During his residence at Cambridge, he devoted himself more to the study
of astronomy than any other science.
On leaving Cambridge in 1789, he settled at Bury St. Edmunds, and
began to practise as a physician, but met with so little success, that
he soon removed to London. Shortly after his arrival, he became a
candidate for the office of Physician to St. George's Hospital, but was
defeated by the election of his principal opponent, Dr. Pemberton. It
is stated that this circumstance had such an effect on Wollaston, that
he declared, in a moment of pique, he would abandon the profession,
and never more write a prescription, were it for his own father.
This statement is, however, contradicted in a biographical notice of
him, contained in the reports of the Astronomical Society, where it
is affirmed that he continued to practise physic in London to the
end of the year 1800, when an accession of fortune determined him to
relinquish a profession he never liked, and to devote himself entirely
to science.
On the 9th of May, 1793, Wollaston was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society; and in June, 1797, appeared his first contribution to the
'Philosophical Transactions,' being a paper 'On Gouty and Urinary
Concretions.' From this period until his decease, Wollaston was a
constant contributor to the 'Transactions,' as well as to various
scientific journals. His papers in the 'Philosophical Transactions'
amount to thirty-nine, and, in addition to strictly chemical subjects,
include memoirs in astronomy, optics, mechanics, acoustics, mineralogy,
crystallography, physiology, and botany.
On the 30th of November, 1804, he was elected Junior Secretary to the
Royal Society; and on the death of Sir Joseph Banks, in June, 1820,
succeeded him in the President's chair, until the anniversary, November
30th of the same year, when he retired in favour of Sir Humphry Davy,
to whom, at the election, he gave the whole weight of his influence.
In the years 1804-5 Wollaston first made known to the world the
existence of the two metals, palladium and rhodium, which he found
were contained in the ore of platinum, associated with osmium and
iridium, two metals discovered about the same time by Mr. Tennant. In
1809 he showed that the supposed new metal, tantalum, was identical
with columhium, previously discovered by Mr. Hatchett; and shortly
before his death, he transmitted to the Royal Society a communication,
constituting the Bakerian lecture of 1828, in which he fully describes
his ingenius method of rendering platinum malleable. From this
invention he is stated to have acquired more than 30,000_l._
Dr. Wollaston's knowledge was more varied, and his tastes less
exclusive, than any other philosopher of his time, except Cavendish;
but optics and chemistry are the two sciences in which he made the
greatest discoveries. To him we owe the first demonstration of
the identity of galvanism and common electricity, and the first
explanation of the cause of the different phenomena exhibited by
them. Dr. Wollaston was accustomed to carry on his experiments in the
greatest seclusion, and with very few instruments; he was also endowed
with an extreme neatness of hand, and invented the most ingenious
methods of determining the properties and constituents of very minute
quantities of matter. It is related by Dr. Paris (in his Life of Davy),
that a foreign philosopher once calling on Wollaston with letters
of introduction, expressed a great desire to see his laboratory.
"Certainly," replied Wollaston, and immediately produced a small tray,
containing some glass tubes, a blowpipe, two or three watch-glasses, a
slip of platinum, and a few test-tubes.
Another anecdote is told of him, that, having been engaged one day in
inspecting a monster galvanic battery constructed by Mr. Children, he
accidentally met, on his way home, a brother chemist, who knew of Mr.
Children's grand machine, and uttered something about the inconvenience
of it being of such an enormous size; on this Wollaston seized his
friend by the button, led him into a bye corner, where, taking from
his waistcoat pocket a tailor's thimble which contained a galvanic
arrangement, and pouring into it the contents of a small phial, he
astonished his friend by immediately heating a platinum wire to a white
heat. He also produced platinum wire so extremely fine as to be nearly
imperceptible to the naked eye.
Towards the close of the year 1828, Wollaston became dangerously ill
with disease of the brain. Feeling his end approaching, and being
unable to write himself, he employed an amanuensis to write accounts
of such of his discoveries and inventions as he was unwilling should
perish with him; and in this manner some of his most important papers
were communicated to the Royal Society. It is a curious fact, that,
in spite of the extensive cerebral disease under which he laboured,
his faculties continued unclouded to the very last. When almost at the
point of death, one of his friends having observed, loud enough for
him to hear, that he was unconscious of what was passing around him,
Wollaston made a sign for pencil and paper, and then wrote down some
figures, and after casting up the sum, returned the paper: the amount
was found to be correct.
Dr. Wollaston died on the 22nd of December, 1828, at the age
of sixty-two--only a few months before his great scientific
contemporaries, Sir Humphry Davy and Dr. Thomas Young. He was buried in
Chiselhurst churchyard, Kent. Dr. William Henry[48] gives the following
summary of his character:--
"Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses of extraordinary
acuteness and accuracy, and with great general vigour of understanding.
Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had acquired
a powerful command over his attention, and had habituated himself
to the most rigid correctness both of thought and language. He was
sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics, to be
enabled to pursue with success profound enquiries in mechanical and
optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the
causes of phenomena not before understood, and to enrich the arts
connected with those sciences by the invention of ingenious and
valuable instruments. In chemistry he was distinguished by the extreme
nicety and delicacy of his observations, by the quickness and precision
with which he marked resemblances and discriminated differences, the
sagacity with which he devised experiments and anticipated their
results, and the skill with which he executed the analysis of fragments
of new substances, often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by
ordinary eyes. He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he
advanced from facts to general conclusions; a caution which, if it
sometimes prevented him from reaching at once the most sublime truths,
yet rendered every step of his ascent a secure station, from which it
was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions."--_Weld's
History of the Royal Society, with Memoirs of the Presidents._ London,
1848.--_Sketches of the Royal Society, &c., by Sir John Barrow, Bart.,
F.R.S._ London, 1849.
THOMAS YOUNG, M.D., F.R.S., &c.
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
Born June 13, 1773. Died May 10, 1829.
Dr. Thomas Young, celebrated for his universal attainments, was born
at Milverton, in Somersetshire. He was the eldest of ten children
of Thomas and Sarah Young; his mother was a niece of Dr. Richard
Brocklesby, a physician of considerable eminence in London. Both of
his parents were members of the Society of Friends, and to the tenets
of that sect, which recognizes the immediate influence of a Supreme
Intelligence as a guide in the ordinary conduct of life, Dr. Young
was accustomed in after years to attribute, in no slight degree, the
formation of those determined habits of perseverance which gave him
the power of effecting any object upon which he was engaged, and by
which he was enabled to work out his own education almost from infancy,
and with little comparative assistance from others. At the age of two
years Young could read with considerable fluency, and before he was
four years old had read the Bible through twice, and also Watts' hymns.
He was likewise from his earliest years in the habit of committing to
memory pieces of poetry, in proof of which there exists a memorandum,
written by Young's grandfather, on the margin of a copy of Goldsmith's
'Deserted Village,' to the effect that his grandson Thomas had repeated
to him the whole poem, with the exception of a word or two, before
he was five years old. In 1780 he was placed at a boarding-school at
Stapleton, near Bristol, and here the deficiency of the instructor
appears to have advanced the studies of the pupil, as Young now became
his own teacher, and used to study by himself the last pages of the
book taught almost before he had reached the middle under the eye of
the master.
In the year 1782 he became an inmate of the school kept by Mr.
Thompson, at Crompton, in Dorsetshire, remaining there nearly four
years, during which period he rapidly acquired knowledge upon various
subjects. Having commenced the study of botany, he was led to attempt
the construction of a microscope, with the assistance of an usher in
the school of the name of Benjamin Martin, in order to examine the
plants he was in the habit of gathering. In his endeavours to make
the microscope Young found it necessary to procure a lathe, and for a
time everything gave way to a passion for turning. This was, however,
at length succeeded by a desire to become acquainted with the nature
of fluxions, and after reading through and mastering a treatise upon
this subject, he turned his attention to the study of Hebrew and other
Oriental languages. Ultimately at the age of fourteen Thomas Young
was more or less versed in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew,
Persic, and Arabic, and in forming the characters of these languages
had already acquired a considerable portion of that beauty and accuracy
of penmanship which was afterwards so remarkable in his copies of Greek
compositions, as well as those subjects connected with the literature
of ancient Egypt. A story is related of him, that when requested a few
years later, by a friend of Dr. Brocklesby, who presumed somewhat upon
Young's youthful appearance, to exhibit a specimen of his penmanship,
he replied by writing a sentence in his best style in fourteen
different languages.
In 1787 Young was engaged, in conjunction with Mr. Hodgkin, as private
tutor to Hudson Gurney, grandson of Mr. David Barclay, of Youngsbury,
near Ware, in Hertfordshire, and he remained thus occupied during the
space of five years, extending his knowledge as far as possible. The
number of books he read through at that time was comparatively small,
but whatever book he began to read, he read completely and deliberately
through, and it was perhaps this determination always to master what
he might happen to be engaged on before attempting anything else,
which enabled Dr. Young to attain so great knowledge on such various
subjects. He himself had little faith in any peculiar aptitude being
implanted by nature for any given pursuits. His favourite maxim was,
that whatever one man had done another might do, and that the original
difference between human intellects was much less than it was supposed
to be; in this respect he resembled his great predecessor Newton, and
his cotemporary Dalton, both of whom had unbounded confidence in the
powers of patient thought.
In the autumn of 1792 Thomas Young removed to London, in order to study
medicine, which profession he had determined to adopt, being greatly
influenced in his choice by the wishes of his uncle Dr. Brocklesby.
This gentleman had kindly undertaken the charge of his education, and
Young was by him introduced to the members of the most distinguished
literary circles in the metropolis, including Burke, Drs. Lawrence and
Vincent, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir George Baker, and others. In the
autumn of 1793 he became a pupil at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and in
October 1794 proceeded to Edinburgh, still further to prosecute his
medical studies. While residing at Edinburgh Dr. Young mixed largely in
society, began the study of music, took lessons on the flute, and also
private lessons in dancing, and frequently attended performances at the
theatre. From this period he gave up the external characteristics of
the Quakers, and ultimately ceased to belong to their body, although he
practised to the end of his life the general simplicity of their moral
conduct.
During the year 1795 he commenced a tour on the Continent, staying at
the University of Göttingen during nine months, in order to prosecute
his studies and take a doctor's degree. In February, 1797, he came
back to England, and was almost immediately after his return admitted
a Fellow-Commoner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; the Master of the
College, Dr. Farmer, saying as he introduced Young to the fellows, "I
have brought you a pupil qualified to read lectures to his tutors."