James Watt junior, FRS (5 February 1769 – 2 June 1848) was a Scottish engineer, businessman and activist.

Early life

He was born on 5 February 1769, the son of James Watt by his first wife Margaret Miller, and half-brother of Gregory Watt. He was educated at

Winson Green Winson Green is a loosely defined inner-city area in the west of the city of Birmingham, England. It is part of the ward of Soho. It is the location of HM Prison Birmingham (known locally as Winson Green Prison or "the Green") and of City Hospi ...

near

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, by the Rev. Henry Pickering. His father was unable to find a better school, though dissatisfied with his son's progress. At age 15 Watt spent a year at the

Bersham Ironworks Bersham Ironworks were large ironworks at Bersham, near Wrexham, Wales. They are most famous for being the original working site of John Wilkinson. They were also the first site in the world to use a new way of boring holes in cannon and stea ...

of John Wilkinson; and then went to

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

. There he lodged with Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure, and knew Marc-Auguste Pictet and

Jean-André Deluc Jean-André Deluc or de Luc (8 February 1727 – 7 November 1817) was a Swiss geologist, natural philosopher and meteorologist. He also devised measuring instruments. Biography Jean-André Deluc was born in Geneva. His family had come to the ...

. Subsequently, he studied German in

Eisenach Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...

In Manchester

In 1788 Watt returned to England and a position in the textile trade in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. Initially he worked at Taylor & Maxwell, makers of

fustian Fustian is a variety of heavy cloth woven from cotton, chiefly prepared for menswear. It is also used figuratively to refer to pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech, from at least the time of Shakespeare. This literary use is beca ...

, where Charles Taylor was a partner. Watt worked there in the counting-house. He was then employed by the Manchester radical Thomas Walker, changing jobs just before the Priestley riots of July 1791. The

Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, popularly known as the Lit. & Phil., is one of the oldest learned societies in the United Kingdom and second oldest provincial learned society (after the Spalding Gentlemen's Society). Promine ...

was just one of a number of intellectual groups in Manchester at that period: Walker, Watt, Thomas Cooper and Samuel Jackson were leaders in the discussion of liberal reform and the views of Adam Smith. Watt became secretary of the Society in 1790, with

John Ferriar John Ferriar (1761 – 4 February 1815), was a Scottish physician and a poet, most noted for his leadership of the Manchester Infirmary, and his studies of the causes of diseases such as typhoid. Background Ferriar was born near Jedburgh, R ...

. At this point Watt's interests were rather broad: Jacob Joseph Winterl the Hungarian chemist,

Christoph Meiners Christoph Meiners (31 July 1747 – 1 May 1810) was a German racialist, philosopher, historian, and writer born in Warstade. He supported the polygenist theory of human origins. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History. Biogra ...

, the ''Dictionary of Chemistry'' started by

James Keir James Keir FRS (20 September 1735 – 11 October 1820) was a Scottish chemist, geologist, industrialist, and inventor, and an important member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. Life and work Keir was born in Stirlingshire, Scotland, in ...

. It was through Cooper that Watt joined the Constitutional Society, and then went to work for Richard & Thomas Walker. Cooper, Jackson and Walker were radicals and

abolitionists Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The Britis ...

, prominent in founding the Manchester Constitutional Society in 1790. The whole radical group resigned ''en masse'', in 1791, when the Literary and Philosophical Society refused to send a message of sympathy to

Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...

, driven from his home in the riots.Robinson p. 351.

In France

Watt went to Paris on a sales trip in France with Cooper in March 1792, at the time of the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

. In April they conveyed to the Jacobin Club a greeting from the Manchester Constitutional Club. There was a reply of 13 April, from Jean-Louis Carra. Almost immediately Watt was denounced in the British parliament, with Cooper and Walker, by

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. His name became coupled with Joseph Priestley's. In Paris Watt used letters of introduction from Priestley. He met the chemists

Antoine Lavoisier Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794),
CNRS (

Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin. The name is used in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, French Guiana ...

in particular, though the talk was all of politics. He encountered also

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

, who became a friend. Over the summer he had business discussions with

Jean-Marie Roland, vicomte de la Platière Jean-Marie is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: * Jean-Marie Abgrall (born 1950), a French psychiatrist, criminologist, specialist in forensic medicine, cult expert, and graduate in criminal law * Jean-Marie C ...

. Tom Wedgwood came to visit. At first Watt was in favour with the revolutionary leaders, and defended the

September massacres The September Massacres were a series of killings of prisoners in Paris that occurred in 1792, from Sunday, 2 September until Thursday, 6 September, during the French Revolution. Between 1,176 and 1,614 people were killed by '' fédérés'', gu ...

. Later in 1792 Cooper and Watt became suspect as supporters of

Jacques Pierre Brissot Jacques Pierre Brissot (, 15 January 1754 – 31 October 1793), who assumed the name of de Warville (an English version of "d'Ouarville", a hamlet in the village of Lèves where his father owned property), was a leading member of the Girondins du ...

, and left for Italy. Watt remained in self-imposed exile, with a well-founded fear of legal procedures that might be taken against him. When prosecutions against Walker and Jackson failed, early in 1794, the shadow lifted.

Later life

Returning to England in 1794, Watt gave up on plans of emigration to America: they had been very real in 1793, when Cooper was preparing to go, and Priestley was still encouraging him late in the following year. At that point Watt was watching closely the treason trials, in particular that of Thomas Hardy, about which he corresponded with

Thomas Beddoes Thomas Beddoes (13 April 176024 December 1808) was an English physician and scientific writer. He was born in Shifnal, Shropshire and died in Bristol fifteen years after opening his medical practice there. He was a reforming practitioner and t ...

. Thomas Walker took heart from Hardy's acquittal by a jury, and felt able to speak out once more against the government. Clermont replica

Instead of leaving, Watt became a partner in the

Soho Foundry Soho Foundry is a factory created in 1775 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt and their sons Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr. at Smethwick, West Midlands, England (), for the manufacture of steam engines. Now owned by Avery Weigh-Tr ...

firm of Boulton & Watt. Over time, he shared responsibility with Matthew Robinson Boulton for its management. Watt took on the daily operations and organisation of the Foundry, with Boulton being more concerned with planning. One problem was breaking into the steam engine market of the industrial north:

Peter Ewart Peter Ewart (14 May 1767 – 15 September 1842) was a British engineer who was influential in developing the technologies of turbines and theories of thermodynamics. Biography He was son of the Church of Scotland minister of Troqueer near D ...

and

Isaac Perrins Isaac Perrins was an English bareknuckle prizefighter and 18th-century engineer. A man reputed to possess prodigious strength but a mild manner, he fought and lost one of the most notorious boxing matches of the era, a physically mismatched cont ...

had been tried as representatives, before the more satisfactory James Lawson was found. The younger generation of Watt and Boulton by the later 1790s had become serious adversaries of those firms who had reacted by infringing the company's patents in the north of England. Like others in his firm and family, Watt gave enthusiastic support to the

Pneumatic Institution The Pneumatic Institution (also referred to as Pneumatic Institute) was a medical research facility in Bristol, England, in 1799–1802. It was established by physician and science writer Thomas Beddoes to study the medical effects of gases, know ...

of Beddoes. He circulated German contacts, Lorenz von Crell. and

Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren (1 May 1760 – 26 November 1798) was a German chemist and a native of Bernburg. He began his career working in a pharmacy in Bernburg, and later worked as a pharmacist in Offenbach am Main and Erfurt. In 1782 he be ...

, about it. Some years later, Boulton & Watt were able to sell gases to an industrial market, rather than for medical purposes. Watt later gave some technical assistance to

Robert Fulton Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the world's first commercially successful steamboat, the (also known as ''Clermont''). In 1807, that steamboa ...

, providing in 1807 for Fulton the engine for ''

North River Steamboat The ''North River Steamboat'' or ''North River'', colloquially known as the ''Clermont'', is widely regarded as the world's first vessel to demonstrate the viability of using steam propulsion for commercial water transportation. Built in 1807, t ...

'', which was the first steamboat to run on the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. Becoming more seriously interested in marine engines, he bought in 1817 the '' Caledonia'' of 102 tons, fitted her out with new engines, and went in her to Holland and up the River Rhine to

Coblenz Koblenz (; Moselle Franconian: ''Kowelenz''), spelled Coblenz before 1926, is a German city on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle, a multi-nation tributary. Koblenz was established as a Roman military post by Drusus around 8 B.C. Its na ...

, the first steamship to leave an English port. On his return he made major improvements in

marine steam engine A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat. This article deals mainly with marine steam engines of the reciprocating type, which were in use from the inception of the steamboat in the early 19th century to their ...

s. Watt moved into

Aston Hall Aston Hall is a Grade I listed Jacobean house in Aston, Birmingham, England, designed by John Thorpe and built between 1618 and 1635. It is a leading example of the Jacobean prodigy house. In 1864, the house was bought by Birmingham Corpor ...

, Warwickshire, in 1817 and was appointed

High Sheriff of Warwickshire This is a list of sheriffs and high sheriffs of the English county of Warwickshire. The Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most ...

for 1829–30. After his father's death in 1819, Watt became a concerned guardian of his memory and reputation. He became controlling of biographical references, where they suggested Watt senior had depended on the help of others, and of Henry Brougham's epitaph for

Francis Chantrey Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey (7 April 1781 – 25 November 1841) was an English sculptor. He became the leading portrait sculptor in Regency era Britain, producing busts and statues of many notable figures of the time. Chantrey's most notable w ...

's memorial in

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...

. He was also assertive on behalf of his father's priority claim on the chemical composition of water, over that of

Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish ( ; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English natural philosopher and scientist who was an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "infl ...

. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

in 1820. Watt died unmarried, at

, on 2 June 1848. An Australian author claims that he fathered seven children with a Margaret Redfern, but birth and death records show that she lived in Belfast, and her husband was an Andrew Watt. She was the sister of

William Redfern William Redfern (1774 – 17 July 1833) was an English-raised surgeon in early colonial Australia who was transported to New South Wales as a convict for his role in the Mutiny on the Nore. He is widely regarded as the “father of Australia ...

, and mother of

William Redfern Watt William Redfern Watt (1813 – 17 October 1894) was an Irish-born Australian politician. He was born at Belfast and migrated to New South Wales around 1832, to manage the properties of his uncle William Redfern. Around 1838 he married Mary G ...

References

* *A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, ''The Early Growth of Steam Power'', The Economic History Review New Series, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1959), pp. 418–439. Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Economic History Society. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2591464 *Eric Robinson, ''An English Jacobin: James Watt, Junior, 1769–1848'', Cambridge Historical Journal Vol. 11, No. 3 (1955), pp. 349–355. Published by: Cambridge University Press. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021128 *

Notes

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Watt, James 1769 births 1848 deaths Scottish engineers Scottish businesspeople High Sheriffs of Warwickshire Sheriffs of Warwickshire Fellows of the Royal Society Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society