Correspondence of the late James Watt on his discovery of the theory of the composition of water. With a letter from his son / Edited with introductory remarks and an appendix by James Patrick Muirhead.

  • Watt, James, 1736-1819.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence of the late James Watt on his discovery of the theory of the composition of water. With a letter from his son / Edited with introductory remarks and an appendix by James Patrick Muirhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/410
    Longitude.^ for 1839, accompanied Ijy the paper of Lord Jirougliam, with Notes, which I added, at his Lordship’s re(iuest, and wliich he desired to lie printed along with it. Tlie reader will find all these in the Appendix to your translation. To those who may wish to form a just apprecia- tion of the circumstances in which this coi'respon- dence took jilace, and of the merit that attaches to my father for the discoveiy it records, I beg to state, in the words of the great master of the English tongue, that “ it was written, not in the soft obscuri- “ ties of retirement, or under the shelter of academick “ bowers; but amidst inconvenience and distraction, A “ in sickness and in sorrow.” About the beginning of the year, when the cor- respondence commences, he had returned fi-om jilan- ning and superintending the erection of his steam en- gines, during a long sojourn in Cornwall, where he had been much harassed by attempts to pirate his improvements ; and he was, through the greater pai-t (jf the subsequent period, laboriously engaged in making out drawings and descriptions for the long specifications of his three great patents for mecha- nical improvements and inventions, taken out in the years 1781, 1782, and 1784, besides giving the con- stant attention necessary to the concerns of a nascent manufactory, and himself writing volumes of other letters on business, which alone would have furnished full employment even to an industrious intellect.