Now his interest was
vastly. quickened. He set up the model and operated it, noticed
how the alternate heating and cooling of its cylinder wasted
power, and concluded, after some weeks of experiment, that, in
order to make the engine practicable, the cylinder must be kept
hot, "always as hot as the steam which entered it." Yet in order
to condense the steam there must be a cooling of the vessel. The
problem was to reconcile these two conditions.
At length the pregnant idea occurred to him--the idea of the
separate condenser. It came to him on a Sunday afternoon in 1765,
as he walked across Glasgow Green. If the steam were condensed in
a vessel separate from the cylinder, it would be quite possible
to keep the condensing vessel cool and the cylinder hot at the
same time. Next morning Watt began to put his scheme to the test
and found it practicable. He developed other ideas and applied
them. So at last was born a steam engine that would work and
multiply man's energies a thousandfold.
After one or two disastrous business experiences, such as fall to
the lot of many great inventors, perhaps to test their
perseverance, Watt associated himself with Matthew Boulton, a man
of capital and of enterprise, owner of the Soho Engineering
Works, near Birmingham. The firm of Boulton and Watt became
famous, and James Watt lived till August 19, 1819--lived to see
his steam engine the greatest single factor in the new industrial
era that had dawned for English-speaking folk.
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