Watt's Perfect Engine: Steam and the Age of Invention

Watt did not invent the light bulb. Watt did not invent the steam engine either. He improved it and helped spread its applicability to industry. He was an important member of the Lunar Society with his partner, Matthew Boulton, as well as Erasmus Darwin, John Whitehurst, James Small, etc. Another good book to get is Jenny Uglow's The Lunar Men (?), which is about this circle of interesting guys.

James Watt's name has become well known as the inventor of the light bulb; but it was the steam engine which also earned him fame - and which did not come about due to his single-handed genius. The development, function and role of the 'perfect engine' during his times in England is revealed in Ben Marsden's Watt's Perfect Engine: Steam And The Age Of Invention, a lively historical coverage of how the engine evolved and reflected not only the promise, but the problems of the Industrial Revolution. A fine, wide-ranging history.

Four men were responsible for starting the Industrial Revolution. Newcomen, Trevithick, Stevenson and Watt. Yet today, we measure power in Watts, not Trevithicks or anything else. Of the four, James Watt is the best remembered. How did this come about? Was he perhaps the greatest of them? Marsden takes us back two centuries to answer this. From Marsden's narrative, Newcomen seems the more perceptive inventor, compared to Watt. Yet we see how Watt had a driving passion for business that led to great success. Quite possibly, some of his methods may attract ire nowadays. But Henry Ford and other industrialists would no doubt have found much in Watt to be understandable and commendable. Marsden suggests that Watt's tenacious enforcing of his patents may have stifled development of improvements to the steam engine. Perhaps. But even so, consider this. Any such impediment would have the advantage to Britain in other fields of invention. For it would show that patents were highly enforceable. A strong patent environment may have contributed to Britain's industrial lead, that lasted a century. So even if Watt's methods led to a tactical slowdown, strategically it bolstered Britain. Keep in mind that prior to the Industrial Revolution, throughout most of previous history, there was no such thing as patent protection. So innovations were often kept secret, if this was practical. Keeping progress glacially slow.