Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1917 — WORLD OWES MUCH TO WATT [ARTICLE]

WORLD OWES MUCH TO WATT

Scotsman the First to Realize and Make Practical the- Wonderful Power of Steam. .2‘Science took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam and created a giant which turns with tireless arms the countless wheels of toll.” Thus Ingersoll’s poetic explanation of the origin of the transformation of pent-up steam into controlled and industrially valuable mechanical action. Elaborated in a more prosaic manner, James Watt, a young Scotchman of Glasgow, and an Instrument maker by trade, once had an idea. It was a most revolutionary idea. Men had been working on steam engines for many centuries, but they had produced nothing of any practical valuf. In the engines of that period steam was admitted into only one end of the cylinder, and about the only use such an engine had was to pump water. And it wasn’t very good at that. As for using an engine to turn a wheel —why, nobody had thought of that.* It simply wasn’t being done. But James did it. He let steam into both ends of the cylinder Instead of only one, put a flywheel on the end of a shaft and a crank on the other, and there was the steam engine, all ready for its real business. Watt was born In Greenock, Scotland, on January 19, 1736, his father being a builder, contractor and merchant.