James Watt was a Scottish inventor, engineer and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought b
Portrait by Carl Frederik von Breda, 1792
Statue of Watt (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, by Francis Chantrey)
James Watt by John Partridge, after Sir William Beechey (1806)
Bust of Watt in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cyli
James Watt
…Great Britain and the rest of the world. While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. At the time engineers such as John Smeaton were aware of the inefficiencies of Newcomen's engine and aimed to improve it. Watt's insight was to realise…
JŽ 06-018 steam locomotive, in Ljubljana, Slovenia
A model of a beam engine featuring James Watt's parallel linkage for double action
A mill engine from Stott Park Bobbin Mill, Cumbria, England
A steam locomotive from East Germany