James Watt
Page 23
16 M. Berg, The Age of Manufactures (London, 1994), p. xiii.
17 M. Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and their Makers (London, 1972), p. 1.
18 H. W. Dickinson and R. Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine, 2nd edn (London, 1989), p. 261.
19 G. Miege, The Present State of Great-Britain and Ireland in Three Parts, 4th edn (London, 1718), pp. 146–7.
20 R. Porter, A Social History of England in the 18th Century (London, 1982), p. 334.
21 A. P. Wadsworth and J.D.L. Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780 (New York, 1968), p. 413.
22 J. B. Say, A Treatise on Political Economy, Book 1 (Philadelphia, PA, 1855), p. 16.
23 R. Samuel, ‘Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain’, History Workshop, III (1977), pp. 6–72.
24 D. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, 1969), p. 5.
25 M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2005), p. 247.
26 M. Berg, ‘From Imitation to Invention: Creating Commodities in Eighteenth-century Britain’, Economic History Review, LV (2002), pp. 1–30: p. 1.
27 L.T.C. Rolt, Tools for the Job: A Short History of Machine Tools (London, 1965), p. 56; Dickinson and Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine, p. 263.
28 N. Hewison, ‘Ormolu Ornaments’, in Matthew Boulton: Selling What All the World Desires, ed. S. Mason, exh. cat., Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), pp. 55–62: p. 55.
29 F. Arago, Historical Eloge of James Watt, trans. J. P. Muirhead (London, 1839), p. 187.
30 Ibid., p. 192.
31 T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (London, 1948), p. 58; Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, p. 391.
32 D. P. Miller, James Watt, Chemist (London, 2009), p. 82.
33 H. Torrens, ‘Some Thoughts on the History of Technology and Its Current Condition in Britain’, History of Technology, 22 (2000), pp. 223–32: p. 226.
34 N. Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage: The La Rochefoucauld Brothers’ Tour of England in 1785 (Woodbridge, 1995), p. xix.
35 D. Cannadine, ‘Engineering History, or the History of Engineering? Re-writing the Technological Past’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, LXXIV (2004), pp. 163–180: p. 167.
36 G. Head, A Home Tour Through the Manufacturing Districts of England, in the Summer of 1835 (New York, 1836), p. 157.
37 R. W. Emerson, English Traits (Boston, 1866), pp. 88–9.
38 W. L. Webb, ‘Patrick O’Brien’ obituary, The Guardian, 8 January 2000, www.guardian.co.uk, accessed 24 September 2012.
39 K. Farrer, ed., Letters of Josiah Wedgwood to 1770 (Manchester, 1903), pp. 325–6.
Chapter One: Sensible, Ingenious and Enterprising Men, 1736–56
1 D. Defoe, A Tour through the Island of Great Britain (London, 1748), vol. II, p. 91.
2 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 15, JWP 6/36.34, J. Watt to J. Watt Senior, 19 June 1755.
3 J. Boswell, The Life of Dr Johnson (London, 1840), p. 539.
4 M. L. Mare and W. H. Quarrell, eds, Lichtenberg’s Visits to England, as Described in his Letters and Diaries (Oxford, 1938), p. 45.
5 Defoe, A Tour through the Island of Great Britain, vol. II, p. 147.
6 Leather tanning often used immense vats of dog excrement, the enzymes in which softened the hides so they could be worked more easily. T. Covington, Tanning Chemistry: The Science of Leather (London, 2009), p. 166; B. Faujas de Saint Fond, A Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, ed. A. Geikle (Glasgow, 1907), vol. I, p. 114.
7 The boatmen who worked on the River Thames were renowned for their swearing. Peter Ackroyd even suggests that Handel’s Water Music was composed to drown them out during George I’s first formal trip on the river. Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography (London, 2000), p. 553.
8 François de La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England, ed. J. Marchand (Cambridge, 1933), p. 20.
9 G. Birkbeck, ed., Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD, including a Journal of his Tour to the Hebrides (London, 1839), p. 56.
10 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782: A Reprint of the English Translation of 1785 (London, 1924), pp. 30–31.
11 C. William, ed., Sophie in London 1786; being the Diary of Sophie V. La Roche (London, 1933), p. 43.
12 R. Porter, A Social History of England in the 18th Century (London, 1982), p. 23.
13 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782, p. 18.
14 The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, vol. II: 1744–1753 (London, 1840), p. 419.
15 See his diary for 28 September 1665, for example.
16 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 15th edn (London, 1809), pp. 441–2.
17 J. Brewer, ‘Commercialisation and Politics’, in The Birth of a Consumer Society, ed. N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb (London, 1982), p. 211.
18 A. de Tocqueville, Journeys in England and Ireland, ed. Jacob Peter Mayer (London, 1979), pp. 106–7.
19 J. Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1850 (London, 2009), p. 172; P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1962), p. 75.
20 Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, p. 178.
21 Peter Matthias, The First Industrial Nation, 2nd edn (London, 1983), p. 65.
22 Ibid., p. 166; Phyllis Deane, ‘The British Industrial Revolution’, in The Industrial Revolution in National Context, ed. Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 13–35: p. 25.
23 Porter, A Social History of England in the 18th Century, p. 333.
24 Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, pp. 306, 308.
25 Once arrived, he earned himself a job by wearing a wooden hat of oval cross-section, which he had ingeniously manufactured on a lathe.
26 C. Hibbert, ed., An American in Regency England: The Journal of a Tour of 1810–11 (London, 1968), p. 15.
27 Robert Southey, Letters from England [1807], ed. J. Simmons (London, 1951), p. 202.
28 Science Museum inv. 1997–32/1, manuscript journal of Robert Hamilton, 1796–99.
29 R. L. Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, 1736–1774 (Ashbourne, 2002), p. 36.
30 J. P. Muirhead, The Life of James Watt, with Selections from his Correspondence (London, 1858), p. 13.
31 Ibid., p. 25.
32 A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), pp. 22–3.
33 Muirhead, The Life of James Watt, p. 487.
34 Ibid., p. 23.
35 Ibid., pp. 28–9.
36 Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, p. 42.
37 H. Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1963), p. 16.
38 Ibid., p. 237.
39 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 1, JWP 4/11.160, J. Watt to J. Watt Senior, 11 June 1754.
40 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 1, JWP 4/11.161, ‘A List of James Watt Clothes Taken to Glasgow’.
41 James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, p. 48.
42 Muirhead, The Life of James Watt, p. 23.
43 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 1, 6/46.1, J. Watt to J. Watt Senior, 19 August 1756; R. Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000), pp. 35–36.
44 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782, p. 87.
45 W. G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (London, 1955), p. 202.
46 P. Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edn (London, 1961), p. 114.
47 J. Langton and R. J. Morris, eds, Atlas of Industrializing Britain, 1780–1914 (London, 1986), p. 80.
48 Mantoux, The Industrial Revolutio
n in the Eighteenth Century, p. 115.
49 Langton and Morris, eds, Atlas of Industrializing Britain, p. 82, fig. 9.3.
50 Matthias, The First Industrial Nation, p. 104.
51 N. Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage: The La Rochefoucauld Brothers’ Tour of England in 1785 (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 158.
52 Langton and Morris, eds, Atlas of Industrializing Britain, p. 86.
53 Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage, p. 118.
54 P. Bagwell, The Transport Revolution from 1770 (London, 1974), pp. 63–4.
55 Ibid., p. 22; James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, p. 33.
56 M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty (Oxford, 1995), p. 287.
57 Matthias, The First Industrial Nation, p. 38; P. Hudson, The Industrial Revolution (London, 1992), pp. 52–3.
58 Porter, A Social History of England in the 18th Century, p. 91.
59 Jean Marchand, ed., A Frenchman in England, 1784 (Cambridge, 1933), p. 197.
60 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782, p. 66.
61 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 1, JWP 4/11.117, J. Watt to J. Watt Senior.
62 E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (London, 1995), p. 31.
63 James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, p. 48.
64 Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage, p. 154.
65 Marchand, ed., A Frenchman in England, 1784, p. 29.
66 Mare and Quarrell, eds, Lichtenberg’s Visits to England, p. xiv.
67 P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1999), p. 666.
68 Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, p. 62.
69 Mathias, The First Industrial Nation, p. 49.
70 K. Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain: The Travel Journals of Jabez Maud Fisher, 1775–1779 (Oxford, 1992), p. 235.
71 Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, p. 73.
72 Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, p. 373.
73 Ibid., p. 395.
74 Porter, A Social History of England in the 18th Century, p. 336.
75 J. Tucker, Instructions for Travellers (Dublin, 1758), pp. 39–40
76 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782, p. 122.
77 C. MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 1988).
78 Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, p. 404.
79 D. Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (London, 1727), vol. II, p. 297.
80 Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, pp. 384, 386.
81 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782, p. 152.
82 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three, Reel 1, JWP 6/46.33, J. Marr to Watt Senior., 24 June 1755.
83 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three, Reel 1, JWP 6/46.
84 JWP 6/46.30, 21 July 1755.
85 JWP 6/46.31, 15 July 1755.
86 JWP 6/46.28, 6 August 1755.
87 JWP 6/46.31.
88 Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage, p. 55.
89 Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain, pp. 285–6.
90 Jones, Industrial Enlightenment, p. 98.
91 Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England, 1782, p. 164.
92 JWP 6/46.7, 7 June 1756.
93 JWP 6/46.32, 1 July 1755.
94 JWP 6/46.26, 9 August 1755.
95 JWP 6/46.12, 18 March 1756.
96 JWP 6/46.8, 18 May 1756.
97 JWP 6/46.16, 27 December 1755; JWP 6/46.12, 18 March 1756.
98 JWP 6/46.17, 29 November 1755.
99 JWP 6/46.11, 18 March 1756.
100 JWP 6/46.29, 5 August 1755.
101 JWP 6/46.30, 21 July 1755; JWP 6/46.19, 25 October 1755.
102 A. McConnell, Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800): London’s Leading Scientific Instrument Maker (Aldershot, 2007), p. 67.
103 T. S. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1924), p. 194.
104 JWP 6/46.28, London, 6 August 1755.
105 JWP 6/46.23, London, 2 September 1755.
106 JWP 6/46.11, London, 26 April 1756.
107 Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain, p. 255.
Chapter Two: Artists of High Reputation, 1757–64
1 John Slezer, Theatrum Scottiae (1693), available at National Library of Scotland, http://digital.nls.uk, accessed 23 August 2012.
2 S. Smiles, Lives of the Engineers: The Steam-engine. Boulton and Watt (London, 1878), p. 29; J. A. Denholm, The History of the City of Glasgow and Suburbs: Compiled from Authentic Records and Other Respectable Authorities (Glasgow, 1798), p. 101.
3 E. Robinson and A. E. Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution: A Documentary History (London, 1969), pp. 24–5.
4 R. L. Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, 1736–1774 (Ashbourne, 2002), p. 71.
5 W. Smellie, Literary and Characteristical Lives of John Gregory, Henry Home, Lord Kames, David Hume, and Adam Smith (Edinburgh, 1800), p. 161. Smellie, from Lanarkshire in Scotland, founded the Encyclopedia Britannica.
6 J. Keir, The First Part of a Dictionary of Chemistry &c. (Birmingham, 1789), p. iii; P. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment: Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (Manchester, 2008), p. 1.
7 A. Turner, Early Scientific Instruments: Europe, 1400–1800 (London, 1987), p. 183.
8 A. Morrison-Low, Making Scientific Instruments during the Industrial Revolution (Aldershot, 2007), p. 46.
9 Ibid., pp. 249–84.
10 M. L. Mare and W. H. Quarrell, eds, Lichtenberg’s Visits to England, as Described in his Letters and Diaries (Oxford, 1938), p. 159.
11 B. Faujas de Saint Fond, A Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, ed. A. Geikle (Glasgow, 1907), vol. I, p. 91.
12 A. McConnell, ‘Jesse Ramsden, London’s Leading Scientific Maker – Why?’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 93 (2007), pp. 2–6: p. 4; Science Museum inv. 1952–73.
13 A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), p. 103.
14 Simon Schaffer, ‘The Consuming Flame: Electrical Showmen and Tory Mystics in the World of Goods’, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. J. Brewer and R. Porter (London, 1993), pp. 489–526: p. 492.
15 G. L’E. Turner, ‘Eighteenth-century Scientific Instruments and their Makers’, in Cambridge History of Science, ed. R. Porter (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 511–35: p. 516.
16 Peter Jones, Industrial Enlightenment: Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (Manchester, 2008), p. 75.
17 Larry Stewart, ‘A Meaning for Machines: Modernity, Utility and the Eighteenth-century British Public’, Journal of Modern History, LXX (1998), pp. 259–94: pp. 281, 282.
18 Larry Stewart, ‘Science and the Eighteenth-century Public’, in The Enlightenment World, ed. P. Jones, M. FitzPatrick, C. Knellwolf and I. McCalman (Abingdon, 2004), pp. 234–52: p. 240.
19 Morrison-Low, Making Scientific Instruments during the Industrial Revolution, p. 204.
20 Ibid., p. 282.
21 N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1988), pp. 46, 48.
22 A. Chapman, ‘Scientific Instruments and Industrial Innovation: The Achievement of Jesse Ramsden’, in Making Instruments Count: Essays in Honour of Gerard Turner, ed. R.G.W. Anderson, J. A. Bennett and W. F. Ryan (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 418–30, pp. 419–20.
23 P. Wood, ‘Anderson, John (1726–1796)’, Oxford Dictonary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 29 September 2011.
24 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series One (Marlborough, 1999), Part 8, Reel 114, Muirhead III 3/1, Waste Book 1757–1763, entries between 6 December 1757 and 19 August 1758.
25 J. P. Muirhead, The Origin and Progress of the Mechanical Inventions of James Watt (London, 1854), vol. I, pp. xxxv–xxxvi.
26 Industrial Revolution: A Docum
entary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 1, JWP 4/11.41, J. Watt to J. Watt Senior, 15 September 1758.
27 N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean (London, 2004), pp. 382–3.
28 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series One (Marlborough, 1999), Part 8, Reel 114, Muirhead III 3/1, Waste Book 1757–1763, 3 January 1757. Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series Three (Marlborough, 1999), Reel 1, JWP 4/11.59 and 41, September 1758.
29 S. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson and his Copying Machines (Charlottesville, VA, 1984), p. 50.
30 Chapman, ‘Scientific Instruments and Industrial Innovation’, p. 420.
31 M. Daumas, ‘Precision Mechanics’, in A History of Technology, ed. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall (Oxford, 1957), vol. IV, pp. 379–416: p. 400.
32 C. Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation (London, 1846), vol. I, p. 438.
33 A. Turner, Early Scientific Instruments: Europe, 1400–1800 (London, 1987), p. 209.
34 M. Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and their Makers (London, 1972), p. 115.
35 R. L. Hills, ‘Richard Roberts’, in Henry Maudslay and the Pioneers of the Machine Age, ed. J. Cantrell and G. Cookson (Stroud, 2002), pp. 54–73: p. 55.
36 M. Daumas, ‘Precision Mechanics’, p. 382.
37 Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, pp. 113–14.
38 McConnell, Jesse Ramsden, p. 36.
39 Ibid., p. 41.
40 Chapman, ‘Scientific Instruments and Industrial Innovation’, p. 423.
41 Turner, Early Scientific Instruments, p. 171.
42 D. Bryden, ‘James Watt, Merchant: The Glasgow Years, 1754–1774’, in Perceptions of Great Engineers: Fact and Fantasy, ed. D. Smith (1994), pp. 9–22: p. 10.
43 Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (London, 1747), p. 254.
44 Turner, Early Scientific Instruments, p. 211.
45 A. Morrison-Low, ‘Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution: “Location, Location, Location”’, in Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 94 (2007), pp. 9–16: p. 14.
46 Morrison-Low, Making Scientific Instruments during the Industrial Revolution, p. 199.
47 Campbell, The London Tradesman, p. 254.
48 Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, p. 106.
49 Ibid., p. 107.
50 Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History, Series One (Marlborough, 1999), Part 7, Matthew Boulton Correspondence and Papers, Reel 104, box 343, letter 52, 13 December 1800.