Young James Watt Experimenting, 1740s
James Watt, as a boy, experimenting with steam. James Watt (January 30, 1736 - August 25, 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Some of his inventions include the double acting engine where the piston both pushes and pulls (1782), the centrifugal governor (1788), and the pressure gauge (1790). In 1785, Watt was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He developed the concept of horsepower and the SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him. Illustration colorized from original in Harper's Weekly, December 21, 1867
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1700s 1740s Colorised Colorization Eighteenth Enhancement Experimenting Harpers Mechanical Watt Weekly
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