My mother recently upgraded her 400 Watts kitchen mixer to a 750 Watts model. She says that grinding rice and dal for dosa has become faster because of this. She is also able to grind more batter in one go, making this quite efficient. Electricity bills haven’t gone up either! More power to Watts! So what is this Watt and who is it named after?
Watt is a unit of power. On electrical appliances such as kitchen mixers, the wattage indicates how much electricity the appliance can supply to its components without getting damaged. This unit was named after James Watt, the inventor, whose genius was the driving force for the industrial revolution.
Watt’s journey was an interesting one. He was so far ahead of his times that he spent a great deal of time waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with his ideas!
James Watt was born in Greenock, Scotland on 19 January 1736. His father was a carpenter whose main trade was building ships. Young James grew interested in the instruments that went on a ship — compasses, telescopes, quadrants, etc. When his father gifted him his own little toolkit, he started taking these instruments apart and putting them back together again, sometimes creating new ones in the process! His handiwork prompted the workers in his father’s shop to remark, “James has a fortune at his fingers’ ends!”
Full steam ahead!
Combining this love with his aptitude in mathematics, James decided to become a maker of mathematical instruments. His skill ensured that he became one of the finest in his trade in a very short time, but this also had the effect of other instrument makers ganging up against him to prevent too much business going his way. Having never been a good businessman, Watt had to learn to live in near poverty until the university professors spotted his talents and asked him to make precision instruments for them.
A turning point in Watt’s life occurred in 1763 when a certain professor asked him to repair a steam pump. Called the Newcomen pump, this was the first machine that used steam power to pump out water from mines. As Watt took it apart, he realised that it was quite inefficient because only a small portion of the steam actually got converted to mechanical power. This was because as the steam condensed, it would cool the cylinder, which then needed more steam to reheat. That such vast quantities of steam could produce so little power seemed unforgivably wasteful to Watt.
So he started studying all about steam. Since the latest research papers were in German and Italian, Watt learnt those languages first. Soon he discovered that steam had a property of trapping heat, called the ‘latent heat of steam’. He knew this was the key to making the steam pump more efficient.
In 1765, while walking down a street thinking of the engine, Watt suddenly had a thought that a separate chamber could be built to hold the steam, where it could be condensed without cooling the cylinder. At the end of his walk, the whole design was neatly arranged in his mind. Rushing to his lab, he worked on a prototype and to his delight it worked perfectly!
Building the larger engine, however, was another story. The world had not yet caught up with this idea. The cast iron used to manufacture the cylinder was of poor quality, and the piston wasn’t packed tight enough. Watt and his associates tried to patch it up with rags, paper, cork, and even horse dung at one point. (Did you know that it was Watt who coined the term ‘horse power’?) Nothing worked. Having spent a large amount of energy and money on this, there was nothing left to do but wait for the world to catch up.
It took the world 11 years. Eleven years that Watt spent in self-doubt, near poverty, disillusionment that he once declared in a letter to his friend that, “Of all things in life, there is nothing more foolish than inventing.” Luckily, his investor Boulton did not lose faith in him, but instead pumped in more encouragement and finances and hired the finest craftsmen to work on this project. In 1776, the first commercial Boulton-Watt steam engine pumped water out of a 90-foot mine in less than an hour, using 1/4th of the steam that the Newcomen engine used.
Watt however was far from satisfied! He knew this design could accomplish much more than just pumping water. And how right he was! Soon, steam was able to power ships across the Atlantic in less then a week, and a few years later, made trains zoom across continents in much the same time.
Until his death in 1819 at the age of 83, Watt continued to invent the most revolutionary gadgets that propelled England headlong into the Industrial Revolution, changing the world forever.
Watt an Inventor!
My mother recently upgraded her 400 Watts kitchen mixer to a 750 Watts model. She says that grinding rice and dal for dosa has become faster because of this. She is also able to grind more batter in one go, making this quite efficient. Electricity bills haven’t gone up either! More power to Watts! So what is this Watt and who is it named after?
Watt is a unit of power. On electrical appliances such as kitchen mixers, the wattage indicates how much electricity the appliance can supply to its components without getting damaged. This unit was named after James Watt, the inventor, whose genius was the driving force for the industrial revolution.
Watt’s journey was an interesting one. He was so far ahead of his times that he spent a great deal of time waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with his ideas!
James Watt was born in Greenock, Scotland on 19 January 1736. His father was a carpenter whose main trade was building ships. Young James grew interested in the instruments that went on a ship — compasses, telescopes, quadrants, etc. When his father gifted him his own little toolkit, he started taking these instruments apart and putting them back together again, sometimes creating new ones in the process! His handiwork prompted the workers in his father’s shop to remark, “James has a fortune at his fingers’ ends!”
Full steam ahead!
Combining this love with his aptitude in mathematics, James decided to become a maker of mathematical instruments. His skill ensured that he became one of the finest in his trade in a very short time, but this also had the effect of other instrument makers ganging up against him to prevent too much business going his way. Having never been a good businessman, Watt had to learn to live in near poverty until the university professors spotted his talents and asked him to make precision instruments for them.
A turning point in Watt’s life occurred in 1763 when a certain professor asked him to repair a steam pump. Called the Newcomen pump, this was the first machine that used steam power to pump out water from mines. As Watt took it apart, he realised that it was quite inefficient because only a small portion of the steam actually got converted to mechanical power. This was because as the steam condensed, it would cool the cylinder, which then needed more steam to reheat. That such vast quantities of steam could produce so little power seemed unforgivably wasteful to Watt.
So he started studying all about steam. Since the latest research papers were in German and Italian, Watt learnt those languages first. Soon he discovered that steam had a property of trapping heat, called the ‘latent heat of steam’. He knew this was the key to making the steam pump more efficient.
In 1765, while walking down a street thinking of the engine, Watt suddenly had a thought that a separate chamber could be built to hold the steam, where it could be condensed without cooling the cylinder. At the end of his walk, the whole design was neatly arranged in his mind. Rushing to his lab, he worked on a prototype and to his delight it worked perfectly!
Building the larger engine, however, was another story. The world had not yet caught up with this idea. The cast iron used to manufacture the cylinder was of poor quality, and the piston wasn’t packed tight enough. Watt and his associates tried to patch it up with rags, paper, cork, and even horse dung at one point. (Did you know that it was Watt who coined the term ‘horse power’?) Nothing worked. Having spent a large amount of energy and money on this, there was nothing left to do but wait for the world to catch up.
It took the world 11 years. Eleven years that Watt spent in self-doubt, near poverty, disillusionment that he once declared in a letter to his friend that, “Of all things in life, there is nothing more foolish than inventing.” Luckily, his investor Boulton did not lose faith in him, but instead pumped in more encouragement and finances and hired the finest craftsmen to work on this project. In 1776, the first commercial Boulton-Watt steam engine pumped water out of a 90-foot mine in less than an hour, using 1/4th of the steam that the Newcomen engine used.
Watt however was far from satisfied! He knew this design could accomplish much more than just pumping water. And how right he was! Soon, steam was able to power ships across the Atlantic in less then a week, and a few years later, made trains zoom across continents in much the same time.
Until his death in 1819 at the age of 83, Watt continued to invent the most revolutionary gadgets that propelled England headlong into the Industrial Revolution, changing the world forever.
by VEENA PRASAD (From The Hindu)
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