Brief Biographies (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Brief Biographies

The inventor of the steam-engine, now so extensively applied to production in all the arts of industry, is entitled to be regarded as one of the most extraordinary men who has ever lived. Steam is the very Hercules of modern mythology. In the manufactures of Great Britain alone, the power which it exercises is estimated to be equal to the manual labor of four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number of males supposed to inhabit the globe. Steam has become the universal lord. It impels ships in every sea, and drags tram-loads of passengers and merchandise in all lands. It pumps water, drives mills, hammers iron, prints books and newspapers, and works in a thousand ways with an arm that never tires. All this marvelous and indescribable power has flowed from the invention of one man, the subject of the following memoir.

James Watt was born at Greenock on the Clyde, on the 19th of January, 1736. His parents were of the middle class, - honest, industrious people, with a character for probity which had descended to them from their "forbears," and was the proudest inheritance of the family. James Watt was thus emphatically well-born. His grandfather was a teacher of navigation and mathematics in the village of Cartsdyke, now part of Greenock, and dignified himself with the name of "Professor." But as Cartsdyke was as yet only a humble collection of thatched hovels, and the shipping of the Clyde was confined principally to fishing-boats, the probability is, that his lessons in navigation were of a very humble order. He was, however, a dignitary of the place, being Bailie of the Barony, as well as one of the parish elders. His son, James Watt, the father of the engineer, settled at Greenock as a carpenter and builder.

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