James Watt, Chemist: Understanding the Origins of the Steam Age

252 Pages·2009·1.72 MB·English

by  David Philip Miller

JAMES WATT, CHEMIST:
UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF THE
STEAM AGE
SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Series Editor: Bernard Lightman
TITLES IN THIS SERIES
1 Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences: Shared Assumptions,
1820–1858
James Elwick
2 Recreating Newton: Newtonian Biography and the Making of Nineteenth-
Century History of Science
Rebekah Higgitt
3 Th e Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain
Jessica Ratcliff
4 Science and Eccentricity: Collecting, Writing and Performing Science for
Early Nineteenth-Century Audiences
Victoria Carroll
5 Typhoid in Uppingham: Analysis of a Victorian Town and School in Crisis,
1875–1877
Nigel Richardson
6 Medicine and Modernism: A Biography of Sir Henry Head
L. S. Jacyna
7 Domesticating Electricity: Expertise, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880–1914
Graeme Gooday
FORTHCOMING TITLES
Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland
Diarmid A. Finnegan
Communities of Science in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Juliana Adelman
Regionalizing Science: Placing Knowledges in Victorian England
Simon Naylor
www.pickeringchatto.com/scienceculture
JAMES WATT, CHEMIST:
UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF THE
STEAM AGE
by
David Philip Miller
london
PICKERING & CHATTO
2009
Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
2252 Ridge Road, Brookfi eld, Vermont 05036-9704, USA
www.pickeringchatto.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without prior permission of the publisher.
© Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd 2009
© David Philip Miller 2009
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Miller, David Philip.
James Watt, chemist : understanding the origins of the steam age. – (Science and
culture in the nineteenth century)
1. Watt, James, 1736–1819 – Knowledge – Chemistry. 2. Steam engineering
– Great Britain – History – 19th century.
I. Title II. Series
621.1’092–dc22
ISBN-13: 9781851969746
e: 9781851966851
∞

Th is publication is printed on acid-free paper that conforms to the American
National Standard for the Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
Printed in Great Britain at MPG Books Ltd.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures ix
Introduction 1
I. Representations
1. Of Statues, Kettles and Indicators – Th e ‘Mechanical Watt’ 11
2. Th e Demise of the ‘Chemical Watt’ in the Nineteenth Century 33
3. Th e ‘Mechanical Watt’: Th e Making of a ‘Philosophical Engineer’ 59
II. Realities
4. Watt’s Chemistry of Heat 85
5. Th e Steam Engine as Chemistry 125
6. Th e Indicator Understood, or Why Watt was not a
Proto-thermodynamicist 147
7. Conclusions 169
Notes 177
Works Cited 217
Index 235
For Dorothy and Albert Miller
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First I want to acknowledge the support of my colleagues in the School of His-
tory and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. In times when
universities, without wishing to deny the privileges involved in working in one,
are troubled and sometimes confusing places to be, collegial encouragement
makes up for a lot. My wife, Margaret, our children, Kylie and Tom, and friends
have borne another Watt project with good grace, and tolerated, maybe on
occasion even secretly enjoyed, my frequent and extended absences overseas in
libraries and archives. During those absences I have benefi ted from the help of
numerous librarians and archivists, especially those in: the British Library; Bir-
mingham Central Library; the University of Glasgow, Special Collections; the
Watt Monument Library in Greenock; and, perhaps rather incongruously for a
project such as this, the Library of Congress in Washington D. C. Th e effi cient
services of the Interlibrary Loans Unit at the University of New South Wales
Library have been invaluable, as usual.
Th is book has grown out of work that I have been doing over a few years now
and it draws in parts on previously published articles. I thank the relevant bodies
and individuals for permission to use here work previously published. Chapters
1 and 4 draw on parts of ‘True Myths: James Watt’s Kettle, his Condenser and his
Chemistry’, History of Science, 42 (2004), pp. 333–60, by permission of Science
History Publications. Chapters 5 and 6 make use of and extend material from
‘Seeing the Chemical Steam through the Historical Fog: Watt’s Steam Engine as
Chemistry’, Annals of Science, 65 (2008), pp. 47–72. Th ese extracts are reprinted
by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk/
journals). Chapter 4 also uses material published, with Trevor Levere, in ‘“Inhale
it and See”? Th e Collaboration between Th omas Beddoes and James Watt in
Pneumatic Medicine,’ Ambix, 55 (2008), pp. 5–28. For this I thank my coauthor
and the copyright holder, Maney Publishing (http://www.maney.co.uk/jour-
nals/ambix and http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/amb).
Alongside Trevor Levere, the following have given assistance or encourage-
ment to me in various ways, for which I thank them: Jim Andrew, Patricia Fara,
Jan Golinski, Rob Iliff e, Peter M. Jones, Christine MacLeod, Ben Marsden, Ray
– vii –
viii James Watt, Chemist
McKenzie, Jack Morrell, Simon Schaff er and Larry Stewart. Th ank you also to
Pickering & Chatto and the Series Editor, Bernard Lightman, for allowing me
to appear in this guise. Tom Miller provided invaluable technical support when
he wasn’t tying up my computers by running lengthy numerical simulations of
granular processes.
Although my parents are, in a fundamental sense, very much to blame for all
that follows, I am happy to take complete responsibility for it whilst dedicating
this book to them, and to all that they stand for.
Sydney
Valentine’s Day, 2009.
LIST OF FIGURES
Frontispiece: James Eckford Lauder, ‘James Watt and the Steam Engine:
Dawn of the Nineteenth Century’ x
Figure 1.1 Watt by Chantrey in Suspension 11
Figure 1.2 Mechanical Drawing on the Lap of the Chantrey Statue 14
Figure 1.3 Statue of Watt by C.B. Grassby 17
Figure 1.4 Th e Big Yellow Kettle: Watt Mythology Lives 18
Figure 1.5 Watt’s Kettle in Meiji Japan 19
Figure 1.6 R. W. Buss, ‘Watt’s First Experiment on Steam’ 21
Figure 1.7 Marcus Stone, ‘Watt Discovers the Condensation of Steam’ 23
Figure 1.8 James Watt Jr Edits the Campbell Anecdote 25
Figure 1.9 Andrew Carnegie Unveils the Watt Statue 29
Figure 1.10 Watt Statue with Indicator 30
Figure 5.1 Diagram from Boulton to Watt, 21 July 1781 134
Figure 5.2 Page from Watt’s 1765 Experiments, with Kettle Sketch 139
Figure 5.3 Watt’s Tabulation of Experiments on Heat 144
Figure 5.4 Watt’s Expansive Working, from 1782 Patent 144
Figure 6.1 Indicator Diagram Apparatus 153
Figure 6.2 Indicator Diagram made by Boulton & Watt, 1803 156
Figure 6.3 ‘… let us take any gas whatever at temperature T’ 156
Figure 6.4 Preece’s Diagram of Indicator Compared with Indicator in
Collection of the Th inktank, Birmingham 159
Figure 6.5 Th e Pointer Indicator or Pressure Gauge 164