Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/289

Rh being lubricated with wax and tallow, instead of water as formerly. The model answered the expectations of the inventor, but in the course of his trials the beam broke, and he set it aside for some time.

In tracing the progress of improvement in the steam engine, we have been obliged to pass over some incidents in his life which took place during the same period, and which we now proceed to notice. In the course of the" year 1763, Mr Watt married his cousin Miss Miller, daughter of the chief magistrate of Calton, Glasgow; previously to which he removed from his apartments in the college, and opened a shop in the Saltmarket, apposite St Andrew's Square, for the purpose of carrying on his business as Mathematical and Philosophical instrument-maker. Here he applied himself occasionally in making and repairing musical instruments, and made several improvements on the organ. He afterwards removed to Buchanan's land in the Trongate, a little west of the Tontine, and in 1768 he shut shop, and removed to a private house in King Street, nearly opposite to the Green market. It was not, however, in any of these residences that the interesting experiments and valuable discoveries connected with the steam engine were made; the experiments were performed, and the model erected in the delft work at the Broomielaw quay, in which concern Watt soon after became a partner, and continued so to the end of his life.

In 1765, Dr Lind brought from India a perspective machine, invented there by a Mr Hurst, and showed it to his friend Mr Watt, who, by an ingenious application of the principle of the parallel ruler, contrived a machine much lighter, and of more easy application. Many of these machines were made and sent to various parts of the world; and Adams, the eminent philosophical instrument-maker, copied one of those sent to London, and made them for sale.

Mr Watt, having relinquished the business of mathematical instrument-maker, commenced that of civil engineer, and m the course of 1767, he surveyed the Forth and Clyde canal; but the bill for carrying, on this great and beneficial public work being lost in parliament, his attention was directed to the superintendence of the Monkland canal, for which he had previously prepared the estimates and a survey. He likewise surveyed for the projected canal between Perth and Forfar, as also for the Crinan canal, which was subsequently executed under the superintendence of Rennie.

In 1773, the importance of an inland navigation in the northern part of Scotland between the eastern and western seas became so great, that Mr Watt was employed to make a survey of the Caledonian canal, and to report on the practicability of connecting that remarkable chain of lakes and valleys. These surveys he made, and reported so favourably of the practicability of the undertaking, that it would have been immediately executed, had not the forfeited lands, from which the funds were to be derived, been restored to their former proprietors. This great national work was afterwards executed by Mr Telford, on a more magnificent scale than had originally been intended.

What Johnson said of Goldsmith may with equal justice be applied to Watt, "he touched not that which he did not adorn." In the course of his surveys, his mind was ever bent on improving the instruments he employed, or in inventing others to facilitate or correct his operations. During the period of which we have been speaking he invented two micrometers for measuring distances not easily accessible, such as arms of the sea. Five years after the invention of these ingenious instruments, one Mr Green obtained a premium for an invention similar to one of them, from the Society of Arts, notwithstanding the evidence of Smeaton and other proofs that Watt was the original contriver.