Watt's Perfect Engine: Steam and the Age of InventionColumbia University Press, 2002 - 213 Seiten As the inventor of the separate-condenser steam engine--that Promethean symbol of technological innovation and industrial progress--James Watt has become synonymous with the spirit of invention, while his last name has long been immortalized as the very measurement of power. But contrary to popular belief, Watt did not single-handedly bring about the steam revolution. His "perfect engine" was as much a product of late-nineteenth-century Britain as it was of the inventor's imagination. As one of the greatest technological developments in human history, the steam engine was a major progenitor of the Industrial Revolution, but it was also symptomatic of its many problems. Armed with a patent on the separate-condenser principle and many influential political connections, Watt and his business partner Matthew Boulton fought to maintain a twenty-five-year monopoly on steam power that stifled innovation and ruthlessly crushed competition. After tinkering with boiling kettles and struggling with leaky cylinders for years without success, Watt would eventually amass a fortune and hold sway over an industry. But, as Ben Marsden shows, he owed his astonishing rise as much to espionage and political maneuvering as to his own creativity and determination. This is a tale of science and technology in tandem, of factory show-spaces and international espionage, of bankruptcy and brain drains, lobbying and legislation, and patents and pirates. It reveals how James Watt--warts and all--became an icon fit for an age of industry and invention. |
Inhalt
Whats Watt? | 1 |
Breeding an Inventor | 9 |
Making an Instrumentmaker | 11 |
The Business of Natural Philosophy | 14 |
Rediscovering Steam | 25 |
Learning About the Newcomen Engine | 32 |
Reinventing Steam | 41 |
Watts Perfectible Engine | 54 |
the Centrifugal Governor | 124 |
Taking the Measure of Horsepower | 126 |
Southerns Steam Indicator | 130 |
Circumnavigating Watt Pirates and Patents | 135 |
Manufacturing and Marketing the Business of the Steam Engine | 145 |
Spinning Steam | 146 |
Global Steam | 149 |
My dear philosophe James Watt Man of Science | 157 |
Watts Temperamental Engine | 62 |
An Experiment in Engineering | 67 |
Patenting Principles | 76 |
From Roebuck to Boulton | 79 |
Learning Industry | 85 |
New Life for Old Patents | 92 |
A County of Fire Engines | 98 |
Doubling Rotating Expanding and Indicating | 105 |
the Hunt for a Rotative Engine | 107 |
Circling Around Pickard | 110 |
Making a Doubleacting Engine | 113 |
Watts Parallel Motion | 115 |
Not Making a Highpressure Expansive Engine | 118 |
James Watt Thomas Beddoes and Factitious Airs | 165 |
The Appliance of Science or the Sciences of the Steam Engine | 168 |
The Progeny of Steam Planes Trains and Automobiles? | 171 |
Driving Steam | 174 |
Superseding Steam | 178 |
Monuments and Myths Reimagining Watt | 181 |
Solitary or Social? | 185 |
the Topographical Watt | 188 |
the Monumental Watt | 191 |
Watt With or Without Warts? | 197 |
Glossary | 201 |
Bibliography | 205 |
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Discovering Water: James Watt, Henry Cavendish, and the Nineteenth Century ... David Philip Miller Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2004 |