James Watt was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer and chemist. He is famous for developing a separate condensing chamber for the steam engine. This invention greatly improved the efficiency of the steam engine and played a considerable role in advancing the role of steam engines in the Industrial revolution.He was born in Greenock, Scotland on 18 January 1736.
Initially Watt worked as a maker of mathematical instruments, but later found himself working with steam engines.
At the University of Glasgow, Watt had become engaged in his first studies on the steam engine.
During the winter of 1763–1764 he was asked to repair the university's model of an earlier model of the steam engine made by Thomas Newcomen around the year 1711. After a …show more content…
Such a separate condenser avoided the large heat losses that resulted from repeatedly heating and cooling the body of the piston, and so engine efficiency was improved. On Watt's many business trips, there was always a good deal of correspondence that had to be copied. To avoid this tiresome task, he invented letterpress copying. This works by writing the original document with a special ink. Copies are then made by simply placing another sheet of paper on the freshly written sheet and then pressing the two together. Watt's interests in applied chemistry led him to introduce chlorine bleaching into Great Britain and to devise a famous iron cement. In theoretical chemistry, he was one of the first to argue that water was not an element, but a compound.
James Watt was important because he made the steam engine more efficient. He gave us the means to exploit energy-dense fossil fuels. It changed the world and ended the era of renewable energy. He was by no means the only inventor to have changed the course of history and in so doing the future of our planet, but, as Glasgow prepares to celebrate the invention of the
Initially Watt worked as a maker of mathematical instruments, but later found himself working with steam engines.
At the University of Glasgow, Watt had become engaged in his first studies on the steam engine.
During the winter of 1763–1764 he was asked to repair the university's model of an earlier model of the steam engine made by Thomas Newcomen around the year 1711. After a …show more content…
Such a separate condenser avoided the large heat losses that resulted from repeatedly heating and cooling the body of the piston, and so engine efficiency was improved. On Watt's many business trips, there was always a good deal of correspondence that had to be copied. To avoid this tiresome task, he invented letterpress copying. This works by writing the original document with a special ink. Copies are then made by simply placing another sheet of paper on the freshly written sheet and then pressing the two together. Watt's interests in applied chemistry led him to introduce chlorine bleaching into Great Britain and to devise a famous iron cement. In theoretical chemistry, he was one of the first to argue that water was not an element, but a compound.
James Watt was important because he made the steam engine more efficient. He gave us the means to exploit energy-dense fossil fuels. It changed the world and ended the era of renewable energy. He was by no means the only inventor to have changed the course of history and in so doing the future of our planet, but, as Glasgow prepares to celebrate the invention of the