CHAPTER III. STEAM IN CAPTIVITY
For the beginnings of the enslavement of steam, that mighty giant
whose work has changed the world we live in, we must return to
the times of Benjamin Franklin. James Watt, the accredited father
of the modern steam engine, was a contemporary of Franklin, and
his engine was twenty-one years old when Franklin died. The
discovery that steam could be harnessed and made to work is not,
of course, credited to James Watt. The precise origin of that
discovery is unknown. The ancient Greeks had steam engines of a
sort, and steam engines of another sort were pumping water out of
mines in England when James Watt was born. James Watt, however,
invented and applied the first effective means by which steam
came to serve mankind. And so the modern steam engine begins with
him.
The story is old, of how this Scottish boy, James Watt, sat on
the hearth in his mother's cottage, intently watching the steam
rising from the mouth of the tea kettle, and of the great role
which this boy afterwards assumed in the mechanical world. It was
in 1763, when he was twenty-eight and had the appointment of
mathematical-instrument maker to the University of Glasgow, that
a model of Newcomen's steam pumping engine was brought into his
shop for repairs. One can perhaps imagine the feelings with which
James Watt, interested from his youth in mechanical and
scientific instruments, particularly those which dealt with
steam, regarded this Newcomen engine.
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