Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/291

Rh may be formed of the profits arising by this arrangement, when we know that from the proprietors of three large engines erected at Chacewater in Cornwall, Watt and Boulton received £800 annually.

John Smeaton had for many years been employed in erecting and improving the steam engine on Nexvcomen's principle, and did as much for its perfection as beauty and proportion of mechanical construction could effect. The fame of Smeaton does not rest on his improvements on the steam engine. What he has done in other departments of engineering, is amply sufficient to rank him as one of the most ingenious men England ever produced. Yet even what he has left behind him, in the improvement of Newcomen's engine, is well worthy the study, and will ever elicit the admiration, of the practical mechanic. To a man of weaker mind than Smeaton, it must have been galling to see all the ingenuity and application which he had bestowed on the subject of steam power, rendered almost useless by the discovery of a younger man. Yet when he saw Watt's improvement, he was struck with its excellence and simplicity, and with that readiness and candour which are ever the associates of true genius, he communicated to Mr Watt, by a complimentary letter, the high opinion he held of his invention; admitting that "the old engine, even when made to do its best, was now driven from every place, where fuel could be considered of any value." How different this from the treatment he received from inferior in- dividuals, labouring in the same field! His right to the invention of a separate condenser, was disputed by several, whose claims were publicly and satisfactorily refuted. Among others, he was attacked in a strain of vulgar abuse, and a tissue of arrant falsehoods, by a Mr Hornblower, who wrote the article "Steam Engine," in the first and second editions of Gregory's Mechanics. This Mr Hornblower, not contented with giving his own shallow evidence against Watt, has, with the characteristic grovelling which pervades the whole of his article, endeavoured to give weight to his assertions, by associating with himself a respectable man. Mr Hornblower states, that, in a conversation with Mr S. Moor, secretary to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, that gentleman had stated that Mr Gainsborough was the true inventor of the separate condenser. Mr Moor had doubtless an intimate knowledge of the true state of the matter; and, fortunately for his reputation as a sincere and candid man, we find him controvert this upon oath, at his examination in the case, Watt and Boulton versus Bull, in 1792.

In 1775, Mr Watt married, for the second time. The lady, Miss M'Gregor, was the daughter of Mr M'Gregor, a wealthy merchant of Glasgow, who, as will be seen hereafter, was the first in Britain, in conjunction with Mr Watt, to apply chlorine in the process of bleaching. From this time, Watt applied himself assiduously to the improvement of that powerful machine for which he had already done so much. In 1781, he took out a patent for the regulating motion, and that beautiful contrivance, the sun and planet wheel. The short history of this latter invention, gives an apt illustration of his exhaustless powers of contrivance. For the purpose of converting the reciprocating motion of the large beam into a rotatory movement for driving machinery, he had recourse to that simple contrivance, the crank; but while it was preparing at Soho, one of the workmen communicated it to Mr Steed, who immediately took out a patent, and thus frustrated Watt's views. Mr Watt bethought himself of a substitute, and hit upon the happy idea of the sun and planet wheel. This and the like occurrences may have given him that fondness for patents, with which he has frequently been charged.

During the course of the following year, two distinct patents were granted to Mr Watt, one in February, and the other in July, for an expansive engine—