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Watt   /wɑt/   Listen
Watt

noun
1.
A unit of power equal to 1 joule per second; the power dissipated by a current of 1 ampere flowing across a resistance of 1 ohm.  Synonym: W.
2.
Scottish engineer and inventor whose improvements in the steam engine led to its wide use in industry (1736-1819).  Synonym: James Watt.



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"Watt" Quotes from Famous Books



... Campbell by Kippis, in which, when enumerating the works of the learned Doctor, Kippis says, "He was also the author of The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules,—a favourite pamphlet with the common people." We next find the book down to Campbell as the "author" in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, which is copied both by Chalmers and Lowndes. And so the error has been perpetuated, even up to the time of the publication of a meritorious History of Banbury, by the late Mr. Alfred Beesley, in ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... the separation. We met in the street at Brighton, and he told me that I had grown! I was never to speak to him again. But years later, after I had appeared at the Lyceum and had made some success in the world, I was in the garden of a house which adjoined Mr. Watt's new Little Holland House, and he, in his garden, saw me through the hedge. It was then that I received from him the first letter that I had had for years. In this letter he told me that he had watched my success with eager interest, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... became obvious to Colonel Morton that Leipzig Trench must be held, as without reinforcements, no further advance could be made, both flanks being exposed, as the 8th Division on their right had been driven back. The left was particularly exposed and parties under Sergt. Macgregor and Sergt. Watt were organised and sent to strengthen the left where "B" and "D" Companies had been almost annihilated. It was now 9 o'clock and the Battalion casualties now amounted to 22 officers and 400 other ranks. The bombers, who had been sent up to replace casualties, were holding the flanks successfully. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... what Europe is suffering from in our time is the consequence of having worked too hard, since that unlucky day when Watt gave too much thought to a boiling kettle. We have worked too hard without knowing why we were doing it, or what our work would do with us. We were never wise enough to loaf properly, to stop and glance casually around for our bearings. We went ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world—after God—Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... him or to Edward Taylor of Noan, Tipperary. The error is emphasised in the Dictionary of National Biography. Though Richardson upholds some of the more rigid classical doctrines, his work is of a much higher order. The book is attributed to Richardson in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, 1824, but it had been assigned to Taylor in Isaac Reed's "List of Detached Pieces of Criticism on Shakespeare," 1803. From the evidence of the Gentleman's Magazine for 1797 (Vol. 67, Part II., p. 1076) it would appear that the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... was all finished, and the Post had spoken of it, Joe went to his father and begged some wire and rigging, and the boys chipped in to buy several sixty-watt lamps. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... Carron Iron Works, near Falkirk His invention of refining iron in a pit-coal fire Embarks in coal-mining at Boroughstoness Residence at Kinneil House Pumping-engines wanted for his colliery Is introduced to James Watt Progress of Watt in inventing the steam-engine Interviews with Dr. Roebuck Roebuck becomes a partner in the steam-engine patent Is involved in difficulties, and eventually ruined Advance of the Scotch iron trade Discovery of ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... me to write the Life of Watt, I declined, stating that my thoughts were upon other matters. This settled the question, as I supposed, but in this I was mistaken. Why shouldn't I write the Life of the maker of the steam-engine, out of which I had made fortune? Besides, I knew ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... respectively entitled The Phaenomena called by the name of Gravitation proved to be Proximate Effects of the Orbicular and Rotary Motions of the Earth and On the New Theory of the System of the Universe. In Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, 1824, Sir Richard is thus contemptuously referred to: 'This personage is the editor of The Monthly Magazine, in which many of his effusions may be found with the signature of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Cartwright, a country parson, had invented the power-loom, and about 1804 had so far perfected it, that it could successfully compete with the hand-weaver; and all this machinery was made doubly important by James Watt's steam-engine, invented in 1764, and used for supplying motive power ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... rails were cast entirely of iron with a flange at one side to keep the wheel steadily in place, that the modern roadbed in all its fundamental principles made its appearance. This, be it observed, was only two years after Watt had patented his first steam engine, and it was nearly fifty years before Stephenson built his first locomotive. The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. Just as vessels had existed ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... significance in the history of the Negro in America was the series of inventions in England by Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Crompton in the years 1768-79. In the same period came the discovery of the power of steam by James Watt of Glasgow and its application to cotton manufacture, and improvements followed quickly in printing and bleaching. There yet remained one final invention of importance for the cultivation of cotton on a large scale. Eli Whitney, a graduate of Yale, went to Georgia and was employed as a teacher ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... social forces impel them to achieve social ends while apparently achieving only their own ends. The man who, carrying out an invention, thinks only of private welfare to be thereby secured, is in far larger measure working for public welfare: instance the contrast between the fortune made by Watt and the wealth which the steam-engine has given to mankind. He who utilizes a new material, improves a method of production, or introduces a better way of carrying on business, and does this for the purpose of distancing competitors, gains for himself little ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... of Vincent Novello's uses the same couplet (from Watt's Divine Songs for Children, Song XXVIII., "For the Lord's Day, Evening") in the description of glees by the old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near Hambledon—I refer to John Nyren, author ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... expression for diameter of cylinder and length of stroke, and does not apply to the actual power of the engine. It is found by multiplying the cube root of the stroke in feet by the square of the diameter in inches and dividing the product by 47. This rule is based upon the postulate established by Watt, that the speed of a piston with two feet stroke is 160 feet per minute, and that for longer strokes the speed varies as the cube roots of the length of the stroke. It is needless to say this rule is not ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Mrs. Robson, weeping afresh as she entered the count's room, "Oh, sir, how shall I ever repay all your goodness? and Mrs. Watt's? She has acted like a sister to me. But, indeed, I am yet the most miserable creature that lives. I have lost my dearest child, and must strip his poor sister of her daily bread to bury him. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... naturally convinced others that he was five different people. But the real message of Stevenson was as simple as that of Mahomet, as moral as that of Dante, as confident as that of Whitman, and as practical as that of James Watt. ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... George Four and Will his brother; William IV. With these two kings we need not bother; The first a gourmand, bon viveur, The next a sailor, bluff, sans peur. Trevithick, Newcomen, and Watt Are names will never be forgot; For their crude engines were the source Of man's control of Steam's wild force. Steam By eighteen-thirty man has tamed 1830 Steam to his use; and widely famed Was puffing 'Rocket' with the power Of doing thirty miles an hour. Steam prompts ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison

... bridges quickly followed upon these early experiments, for we hear of several being built on the arched system, and large cotton-mills being erected upon fireproof principles at the commencement of the present century, the iron girders and columns of one mill being designed by Boulton and Watt. A little later, Eaton Hodgkinson proved by experiments the uncertainty of cast iron with regard to tensile strength, which he showed to be much less than had been stated by Tredgold. Cast iron was afterwards largely adopted by engineers. The experiments of Hodgkinson supplied a safe foundation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... old philosopher felt the thrill of dawn and knew that the day of great mechanical inventions was at hand. He had read the meaning of the puffing of the young steam engine of James Watt and he had heard of a marvelous series of British inventions for spinning and weaving. He saw that his own countrymen were astir, trying to substitute the power of steam for the strength of muscles and the fitful wind. John Fitch on the Delaware and James Rumsey on the ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... the beginning of the ages, which can only be just by virtue of just judgments in separate human breasts—separate yet combined. Even steam-engines could not have got made without that condition, but must have stayed in the mind of James Watt. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... place of horses, they were rated as so many horse-power according to the number of horses they displaced. It then became important to find out what was the power of the horse. Observing the strong dray horses used by the London breweries, Watt found that a horse could go two and one-half miles per hour and at the same time raise a weight of one hundred and fifty pounds suspended by a rope over a pulley; this is equivalent to thirty-three thousand pounds raised ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... denunciations of scepticism, materialism, argumentation, logic; the quotation, (referred to a motto "in the Swiss gardens"), "Speech is silvern, silence is golden," and a loud assertion that all great things are silent. The age is commended for Watt's steam engine, Arkwright's spinning jenny, and Whitfield's preaching, but its policy and theories are alike belittled. The summaries of the leading writers are interesting, some curious, and a few absurd. On the threshold of the age Dryden is ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... engineers, "depends much less on the theoretical knowledge of scholars than on the practical skill of the workmen who always succeed better in overcoming difficulties than cultivated minds." For example, Watt, Stephenson, Arkwright, Crampton and, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Harriet, I would gladly seek Your inmost thought—Why can't the woman speak? Have you not all things?"—"Sir, do I complain?" - "No, that's my part, which I perform in vain; I want a simple answer, and direct - But you evade; yes! 'tis as I suspect. Come then, my children! Watt! upon your knees Vow that you love me."—"Yes, sir, if you please." "Again! By Heav'n, it mads me; I require Love, and they'll do whatever I desire: Thus too my people shun me; I would spend A thousand pounds to get a single friend; I ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... President of Columbia College, in a lecture delivered before the Mechanics' Institute, Broadway, New York, in December, 1851, claims for Fulton "the application of a known force in a new manner, and to new and before unthought-of purposes." Now what are the real facts? James Watt, in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... enterprising establishment proposed to furnish all the hymn-books to a congregation not abundantly blessed with this world's goods, provided it might insert a little advertisement. The thrifty congregation in turn thought there would be no harm in binding up any proper announcement with Watt and Doddridge; but when they assembled on Christmas morning, they started back aghast as they ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... After Watt's death, I set earnestly about seeing what could be done in the way of escape. Frank Harvey, of the First West Virginia Cavalry, a boy of about my own age and disposition, joined with me in the scheme. I was still possessed with my original plan of making my way down the creeks to the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... was much money and plate, belonging to his master and others. Lilly was faithful to his charge in this fearful time, and kept himself cheerful by amusements. 'I bought a bass viol, and got a master to instruct me; the intervals of time I spent in bowling in Lincoln's Inn Fields with Watt, the cobbler, Dick, the blacksmith, and such-like companions.' Nor did he neglect more serious business, but attended divine service at the church of St. Clement Danes, where two ministers died in this time; but the third, Mr. Whitacre, 'escaped not only then, but all contagion following,' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... it be recorded that Cadmus invented letters? Why should we inquire who first made gunpowder and glass? Why should every schoolboy be taught that Watt was the inventor of the steam engine? Can any of these be put in the scale, as benefactors of our race, with the man who first trained a horse to carry him on its back, or drew milk with his hands from the udders of a cow? ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... flight of Time; a steamer on the Thames or lines of telegraph inevitably suggest the benefits of Civilization, man's triumph over Nature, the heroism of Inventors, the courage, amid ridicule and poverty, of Stephenson and Watt. Like faint, rather unpleasant smells, these thoughts lurk about railway stations. I can hardly post a letter without marvelling at the excellence and accuracy of the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... By FRANCIS WATT. The stories in "The Book of Edinburgh Anecdote," good in themselves, illustrate in an interesting way bygone times. The heroics and the follies, the greatness and the littleness, the wit and humour of famous or even infamous citizens ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... water trickling into the coal measures[4] acted, therefore, like water trickling upon chemicals that have long been mixed together dry and inert. Immediately the latent reactions were set going. Savery, Newcomen, a host of other workers, culminating in Watt, working always by steps that were at least so nearly obvious as to give rise again and again to simultaneous discoveries, changed this toy of steam into a real, a commercial thing, developed a trade in pumping engines, created foundries and a new art of engineering, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... need of taking your time now to recapitulate the many things that ought to be done to promote the planting of nut trees and the scientific investigation of nut growing. Dean Watt's address, published in the 12th annual report, and the letter of the secretary to state vice-presidents, contain outlines for these things. The attention of the present convention is more particularly to be given to advocating nut tree ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... wise and learned disdain these shifts, and will open the said novel as avowedly as they would the lid of their snuff-box. I will only quote one instance, though I know a hundred. Did you know the celebrated Watt of Birmingham, Captain Clutterbuck? I believe not, though, from what I am about to state, he would not have failed to have sought an acquaintance with you. It was only once my fortune to meet him, whether in body or in spirit it matters not. There were assembled about half ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... pages no attempt whatever will be made to give a technical explanation of the mechanism of the winding motion. It may be said that it was a special application of the Sun and Planet motion originally utilised by Watt in his Steam Engine, for obtaining a rotary motion of ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... improvements of this age may be mentioned the introduction of gas and the incipient construction of new bridges over the Thames, in which the engineer Rennie took a leading part. Before the end of the eighteenth century the workshops of Boulton and Watt had been lit by gas, and Soho was illuminated by it to celebrate the peace of Amiens. By 1807 it was used in Golden Lane, and by 1809, if not earlier, it had reached Pall Mall, but it scarcely became general in London until somewhat ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... I can get no one to speak it; the actresses are so damn'd difficult to please. When first I writ it they would not speak it, because there were not double-entendres enough in it; upon which I went to Mr Watt's and borrowed all his plays; went home, read over all the epilogues, and crammed it as full as possible; and now, forsooth, it has too many in it. Oons! I think we must get a pair of scales and weigh out a sufficient ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... gigantic planetoid itself. Then furiously Cleveland drove his beams against the crimsonly opaque obscurity into which the peculiar, viscous stream of substance was disappearing. Time after time he applied his every watt of power, with no result. A vast volume of space, roughly ellipsodial in shape, was closed to him by forces entirely beyond his experience or comprehension. But suddenly, while his rays were still trying to pierce that impenetrable murk, it disappeared instantly and, without ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... Harrison County farmer, was born in 1859, a slave of Watt Rosborough. Richard's family left the Rosboroughs when the Negroes were freed, and moved to a farm near Woodlawn. Richard married when he was twenty-five and moved to an adjoining farm, which ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... to material needs and joys, surely pure science has also a word to say. People sometimes speak as if steam had not been studied before James Watt, or electricity before Wheatstone and Morse; whereas, in point of fact, Watt and Wheatstone and Morse, with all their practicality, were the mere outcome of antecedent forces, which acted without reference to practical ends. This also, I think, merits a moment's attention. You ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... that the first successful steamboat, built by Robert Fulton, made its voyage to Albany, the engine having been built by Watt ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... engineers, Watt and Park, had been on the Sardinian steamer Cagliari when she was seized by the Neapolitan Government, and her crew, including the engineers, imprisoned at Naples. At the instance of the Conservative Government, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... highest mental culture, but of a devoted Christian heart; and was privileged with their intimacy to the end. Among them I cannot refrain from naming such noble Missionaries as Perkins, Smith, and Leupolt, French, Stuart, Welland, and Shackell, Owen, Humphrey, Budden and Watt, Hoernle, and Pfander—that grand apologist to the Mahometans—all of whose friendship I enjoyed, as well as that of the Author himself. If some of these were men the like of whom we may not soon look upon again—a galaxy of rare appearance—yet, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... life is to be found the material for discoveries and inventions yet undreamed of. Lying in the shade of an apple tree under the open sky, Newton read from a falling apple the fundamental principles of the law of gravitation which has revolutionized science; sitting at a humble tea table Watt watched the gurgling of the steam escaping from the kettle, and evolved the steam engine therefrom; with his simple kite, Franklin drew down the lightning from the clouds, and started the science of electricity; through studying a ball, the ancient scholars conceived the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... Now, Watt., was so good-humoured a fellow, that he could laugh at an Irish bull, and withal, so staunch a Protestant, that a papal bull only excited a feeling of pity and contempt; but a bull of the breed which was careering ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... farther with him upon the subject.' 'Mr. Miller appears to be master and man. I am sorry about this foolish fellow. Had I known his train, I should not, as I did, have rather forced him into the service. Upon finding the windows in the state they were, I turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon Mr. Stewart. The latter did not appear for a length of time to have visited the light-room. On asking the cause—did Mr. Watt and him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, "who was a very obstreperous man." I ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... revolutionized business and social life. Every department of life is teeming with the fruits of science and philosophy, which have been largely built up by colleges and college-trained men. Bacon, Newton and Locke were sons of the English universities. Watt and Fulton associated with college men, and "derived from them the principles of science which they applied in the development of the steam engine and steam navigation. Professor Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was not only a college graduate ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... in such reproving tones that they hung their heads in shamefulness and desisted. And at length they were persuaded into a pacification, and made the amende honorable by shaking each other by the hand, whereat I was rejoiced, for, as Poet WATT says, "Birds which are in little nests ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... suppose we are to thank you for the Comic Almanac, which, as usual, is very amusing; and for the Book on Watt, which disappointed me. The scientific part is no doubt very good, and particularly clear and simple; but there is nothing remarkable in the account of Watt's character; and it is an absurd piece of French impertinence in Arago to say, that England has not yet learnt to appreciate men like Watt, because he was not made a peer; which, were our peerage an institution like that of France, would have been ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... After a photograph from the fresco by His friend Giotto, discovered under the whitewash on a watt of the Bargello palace; now in the ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... 15.247, a new rule within Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations enacted by the FCC in 1985. This rule challenged the industry, which has only now risen to the occasion, to build a radio that would run at no more than one watt of output power and use a fairly exotic method of modulating the radio wave called spread spectrum. Spread spectrum in fact permits the building of networks so that numerous data communications can occur simultaneously, without interfering ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... changed the face of England and brought to the manufacturing class wealth and prominence. The population of Lancashire was not more than 300,000 in 1760, the West Riding of Yorkshire about 360,000, and the total population of England 6,000,000. The inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, Crompton, Watt, and Cartwright revolutionised the cotton trade in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, and increased enormously the production of woollen goods. England ceased to be mainly a nation of farmers ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... down and the proud old British union floating over it in triumph. Fifteen minutes had only elapsed and the Chesapeake was entirely in the hands of the British. There was one lamentable mishap. Lieutenant Watt, who hauled down the enemy's colours was, with two of his men, killed by a discharge of musketry from the Shannon's marines, in the belief that the conflict still continued. The Chesapeake had forty-seven killed and ninety-eight ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... asserted that, in case of a conviction, Government had decided to arrest about 800 more persons.[333] This is mere hearsay; but it has been fastened upon by those who seek to father upon Pitt the design of reviving the days of Strafford and "Thorough." A fortnight previously Watt, once a government informer, was convicted at Edinburgh of a treasonable plot to set the city on fire, sack the banks, and attack the castle. Before he went to execution he ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... at Gascoyne. "There be only seventeen of us here now," said he at last. "Brinton and Lambourne are away to Roby Castle in Lord George's train, and will not be back till Saturday next. And Watt Newton is ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... line of the Great Glen of Scotland in a S.W. direction from Inverness early suggested the idea of connecting the east and west coasts of Scotland by a canal which would save ships about 400 m. of coasting voyage round the north of Great Britain through the stormy Pentland Firth. In 1773 James Watt was employed by the government to make a survey for such a canal, which again was the subject of an official report by Thomas Telford in 1801. In 1803 an act of parliament was passed authorizing the construction of the canal, which was begun forthwith under Telford's direction, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... attractive "turns," has been violently dissolved. Mr. PRINGLE, whose ample supply of vitriolic invective was always at the service of the PRIME MINISTER, has been left by an ungrateful constituency at the bottom of the poll, and Mr. WATT has shared his fate. It is true that Mr. HOGGE managed to save his bacon, but without the support of Harlequin and Pantaloon I fear his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various

... Road. The park was then entire, and was completely enclosed by a high wall, similar in character to the portion remaining in the Witton Road which forms the boundary of the "Lower Grounds." The Hall was occupied by the second James Watt, son of the great engineer. He had not much engineering skill, but was a man of considerable attainments, literary and philosophical. His huge frame might be seen two or three times a week in the shop of Mr. Wrightson, the bookseller, in New Street. He was on very intimate terms ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... industrial era began with the locomotive and steamship; James Watt invented the one and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... imperishable eloquence or song, or who may extend the empire of our race over matter, may feel in our reading room, for the first time the consciousness of powers yet undeveloped. It is not impossible that our volumes may suggest the first thought of something great to some future Burns, or Watt, or Arkwright. But I do not speak of these extraordinary cases. What I confidently anticipate is that, through the whole of that class whose benefit we have peculiarly in view, there will be a moral and an intellectual improvement; that many hours, which might otherwise be wasted in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... der Merwe, Johannes Adolph P. Van der Walt, Jacobus Van Eeden, Jacobus Willem Van Heerden, Hercules Christian Venter, Jan Abraham Vermaas, Hendrik Cornelius Wilhelmus Vintcent, Alwyn Ignatius Vosloo, Johannes Arnoldus Watt, Thomas Wilcocks, Carl Theodorus Muller ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I am glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs. Rouncewell. "You are a fine young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!" Mrs. Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... by a small air cooled petrol or gasoline motor developing eight horse-power, and coupled direct to a 2-kilo watt alternator. At one end of the shaft of the latter the disk discharger is mounted, its function being to break up the train of waves into groups of waves, so as to impart a musical sound to the note produced in the receiver. A ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... have, with few exceptions, proved to be the best. In the second place, some adequate power must be found to propel the machinery, which is ordinarily too heavy to be run by hand or foot power. This necessary motive power was discovered in steam. The steam engine was devised by James Watt, an English inventor of great ingenuity. He invented a cylinder containing a piston, which could be forced back and forth by the introduction of steam. His progress was much retarded by the inability of the mechanics of his time to make an accurate cylinder of sufficient ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... cards, club cards for whist, etc., and in a short time I had a fine collection to suit the most fastidious society dame. The first one who got a glimpse of the pretty things was the dear Mrs. Robert Watt, a lifelong friend who had been unceasing in her kindness from the first day of the accident. When she beheld all that I had accomplished she was amazed at my ability and the pluck shown by my making these ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... Dott have testified from their own experience to the usefulness of the drug in chronic bronchitis, asthma and afebrile catarrh. Dr. Watt states that the natives of Bengal find relief for asthma in smoking the leaves. In Bombay its expectorant action is commonly known and its juice is used, mixed with ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... morbid, we should remember that there is a strong temptation to believe that this depression is more common and more prevalent than it truly is. Sometimes there is a gloom which overcasts all life, like that in which James Watt lived and worked, and served his race so nobly,—like that from which the gentle, amiable poet, James Montgomery, suffered through his whole career. But in ordinary cases the gloom is temporary and transient. Even the most depressed are not always so. Like, we know, suggests like powerfully. If you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... summer evenings its burghers rambled to eat cream and junket at the Dairy Farm by the river bank, and afterwards sit to watch the fish rise, while the youngsters and maidens played hide-and-seek in the woods. But there came a day when the names of Watt and Stephenson waxed great in the land, and these slow citizens caught the railway frenzy. They took it, however, in their own fashion. They never dreamed of connecting themselves with other towns and a larger world, but of aggrandisement ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... up to now has depended upon the same principle as a Watt's governor; that is, there are two little balls attached to each by a limb to a central shaft: they rise and fall according to their speed of rotation, and this movement is indicated ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... only smiled, but laughed. Every mail brought great bundles of letters that sang his praises. Robert Watt, who had translated his books into Danish, wrote of their wide popularity among his people. Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon), who as early as 1872 had translated The Jumping Frog into French, and published it, with extended comment on the author and his work, in the 'Revue des deux ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... believe that brother Jonathan exercised his prolific brain on him, before the actual time of his birth. The first name on record in connexion with this infant Hercules is that of Dr Robison, who communicated his ideas to Watt in 1759. The latter thereupon made a model locomotive, but entertained doubts as to its safety. Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, patented a "steam waggon" in 1782. William Murdoch, the friend and assistant of Watt, made a model in 1787 which drew a small waggon round a room ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... definitions of the trust; State statutes; may not enforce contracts or collect debts; recent laws more intelligent; constitutional provisions against; volume of legislation; the problem analyzed; history and summary. Tyler, Watt, rising of. Tyndale's translation of ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... questions, the pupil may be encouraged to ask his on. Thus in undertaking the examination of a given topic—say, the Battle of Hastings (SS69-75), the issue of the Great Charter (SS195-202), or "The Industrial Revolution" and Watt's invention of an improved Steam Engine (S563)—there are five inquiries which naturally arise and which practically cover ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... the rough, clumsy contrivance upon which he had seized—a bit of mechanism which had cost the boy a good many of his shillings, and the blacksmith much time in filing and fitting in an extremely rough way—"that Newcomen and Watt and the other worthies of the steam engine's early days hit upon exactly the same ideas. It is curious how men in different places, when trying to contrive some special thing, all start ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... Sydney, the wife of Ratcliff, Earl of Sussex, who figures in Scott's story of "Kenilworth." Near at hand is the tomb of Sir Thomas Bromley, the Lord Chancellor, who presided at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. But the chief feature of this chapel is the colossal marble effigy of James Watt, the celebrated improver of the steam-engine—a splendid monument, from the chisel of ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... The Watt English walnut at Penticton, B. C., is proving a regular cropper of uniform large round nuts of good flavor. This tree is a seedling from my own nursery. I do not know from what tree it grew, but ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... not warning her that we were traversing a quicksand, Betty, rather shaken, very muddy and with a suspicion of tears in her voice, bound me by a blood-curdling nautical oath not to breathe a word of the mishap to Mummy, Daddy or Miss Watt, her governess. The pledge having been given, Betty, the offending boots discarded, fled to her own room by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various

... which were stowed on chocks in the waist, just forward of the main-mast, one inside the other when not in use. The boats were, the long boat, a large, roomy boat with a movable mast; the cock, cog or cok boat, sometimes called the galley-watt; and the whale, or jolly boat, a sort of small balenger, with an iron-plated bow, which rowed fourteen oars. It was the custom to tow one or more of these boats astern, when at sea, except in foul weather, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... "Watt? Was he a poet? I did not know zat. He who invented ze stim-injaine? And yet if he was a poet it is natnrale zat ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... facility closed in 1930 when Brinkley's Kansas medical license was revoked. He then moved to south Texas and established his million-watt ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... comes uppermost without the unnecessarily troublesome preliminary of deliberate thinking. But Ernest Le Breton was only making his first experiment in the queer craft, and he looked upon himself as a veritable Watt or Columbus when he had actually discovered that hitherto unknown object, a thing to write about. He went straight back to good Mrs. Halliss's with his discovery whirling in his head, stopping only by the way at the stationer's, to invest in half a quire of white foolscap. 'The ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... institutions. But he was a slow worker, and his health was never robust. It was enough that he should have written his book and cherished friendships such as it is given to few men to possess. Hume and Burke, Millar the jurist, James Watt, Foulis the printer, Black the chemist and Hutton of geological fame—it is an enviable circle. He had known Turgot on intimate terms and visited Voltaire on Lake Geneva. Hume had told him that his book had "depth and solidity and acuteness"; the younger Pitt had consulted ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... Scotchman has a pedigree." It is a national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. Sir Walter's pedigree was gentle, he being connected, though remotely, with ancient families upon both sides of the house. He was lineally descended from Auld Watt, an ancient chieftain whose name he often made ring in border ballads. He was one of twelve children, and was not specially distinguished through childhood; though, being lame, he got much comfort from books. He took the usual ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... held was helping to make the brick used in the U.S. Quarter Master Depot. Colonel James Keigwin operated a brick kiln in what is now a colored settlement between 10th and 14th and Watt and Spring Sts. The clay was obtained from this field. It was his task to off-bare the brick after they were taken from the molds, and to place them in the eyes to be burned. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... movements of the period were among his friends and acquaintance. He knew Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton, who was the first man in England to verify Franklin's experiments, was a friend of Priestley. So too were Smeaton the engineer, James Watt, Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, and Erasmus Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr, and had met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His closest friend for many years was Theophilus Lindsey. One might also mention the great Lavoisier, Magellan the Jesuit ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... Thinking alone avails little, experimentation alone avails not much, but the one along with the other has removed mountains. Just as Newton thought scientifically about that falling apple and reduced our conceptions of the universe to order, just as Watt thought scientifically about that kettle-lid lifted by the steam and so introduced the modern era of mechanical power brought under man's control, so Jenner thought about and experimented with cowpox until he had satisfied himself that he had discovered ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... suffered heavily. Archibald, the ninth Earl, inheriting a patrimony much reduced by the loyalty and zeal of his ancestors, spent it all in the scientific pursuits to which he devoted himself, and in which he was the friendly rival of Watt, Priestley, Cavendish, and other leading chemists and mechanicians of two or three generations ago. His eldest son, heir to little more than a famous name and a chivalrous and enterprising disposition, had to fight his own ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... who applies these laws to utilitarian purposes, are rarely united in the same person. If the one conspicuous exception which the past century presents to this rule is not unique, we should probably have to go back to Watt ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... roof of my respected brother-in-law, the next under my own. The ancients, with their primitive modes of laborious transit, were only half alive. We of to-day, thanks to the melodious tea-kettle and inventive cerebral tissue of the youthful Watt, live in a perpetual hand-clasp, so to speak, and, by means of the flashing chain of light which girdles the globe are kept in touch with the world. It is food for reflection that the thought which is evolved from the shadowy recesses ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... business at Glasgow, 67. Appointed Quaestor, 68; Dean of Faculty, 68; Vice-Rector, 68. Dissensions in the University, 69; their origin in the academic constitution, 70. Enlightened educational policy of the University authorities, 71. James Watt, University instrument-maker; Robert Foulis, University printer, 71. Wilson, type-founder and astronomer. The Academy of Design. Professor Anderson's classes for working men, 72. Smith and Watt, 73. Smith's connection with Foulis's Academy of Design, 74. Smith and Wilson's ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... London in great poverty, having wasted all his money on his inventions. But at the time of his death, another mechanical enthusiast, Thomas Newcomen, was working on the problem of a new steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was improved upon by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year 1777, he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of real ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... Biography appeared in 1863, The Huguenots, their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland (1867), and The Huguenots in France a little later. He also wrote biographies of Telford and James Watt, and of the Scottish naturalists, Edwards the shoemaker and Dick the baker. He received the degree of LL.D. from Edin. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... sinning against the rules of counterpoint; on which Haydn said to him, 'I thought I was to teach you, but it seems you are to teach me, and I do not want a preceptor,' and thereon he wished his lordship a good-morning. Fancy Watt being asked how much Joan of Naples got for Avignon when she sold it to Pope Clement the Sixth, and being held unfit for an engineer because he could ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... suave as usual, deprecated Sir JOHN SIMON'S ferocity, reminded him that all cases of hardship could be considered by the Appeal Tribunals, and promised to investigate the cases that had been mentioned. "May I send in my list too?" asked Mr. WATT. But Mr. LONG, unwilling to share the fate of Mr. TENNANT, suggested that the SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND would form a more appropriate dumping-ground ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... buried than troubles began. Mr. Edmund Watt, a young District-commissioner at Cape Coast Castle, officially reported to Lieutenant-Governor W. B. Griffith, subsequently Administrator of Lagos, that Opoku, 'King' of Bekwa (Becquah), had used language tending to a breach of the peace. This commander-in-Chief of the Ashanti ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... have lived and died unknown. Cromwell and Napoleon need their revolutions, Grant his civil war. An Ajax gets no fame in the day of telescopic-sighted rifles; and, to express differently an instance which Spencer uses, what could a Watt have effected in a tribe which no precursive genius had taught to smelt iron or ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... abroad? Why have I been to Italy, France, Jummany with him—their manners noted and their realms surveyed, by jingo! I've improved myself, and Mary has remained as you was. I try a conversation, and she can't respond. She's never got a word of poetry beyond Watt's Ims, and if I talk of Byron or Moore to her, I'm blest if she knows anything more about 'em than the cook, who is as hignorant as a pig, or that beast Bulkeley, Lady Kick's footman. Above all, why, why did I see the woman upon whom my wretched heart is ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 'You have. Archimedes, Newcomen, Watt, Telford, Stephenson, those are your father's direct ancestors. Have you forgotten them? Have you forgotten your father, and the railways he made over half Europe, and his great energy and skill, and all connected with him as if he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... scandalised the nursery, like Griff, by unseemly pranks on Sundays, nor by innovations in the habits of Noah's ark, but was as much shocked as nurse when the lion was made to devour the elephant, or the lion and wolf fought in an embrace fatal to their legs. Bible stories and Watt's hymns were more to Clarence than even to me, and he used to ask questions for which Gooch's theology was quite insufficient, and which brought the invariable answers, 'Now, Master Clarry, I never did! Little boys should not ask such questions!' 'What's the use of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... first made use of to work the pumps; and it continued to be so employed long after the more powerful and economical condensing engine of Watt had been invented. In the Newcomen or "fire engine," as it was called, the power is produced by the pressure of the atmosphere forcing down the piston in the cylinder, on a vacuum being produced within it by condensation of the contained ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... example, of the profligate Charles II., or the worthless Duke of York, or the silly Duke of Cambridge, as you will see in other cities; but here the marble effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column in the principal square, and not far from it is that of the inventor Watt; while the statues erected to military men are to those who, like Wellington, have acquired a just renown in arms. The streets were full of well-dressed persons going to church, the women for the most part, I must ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... and the coast is clear. The elevator's gone up, and I walk softly past and through a big room where the tenants leave their baby carriages and bicycles. After this the cellar stretches off into several corridors, lit by twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling. You can hardly see anything. The corridors go between wire storage cages, where the tenants keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet cages. ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... can read these legends and doubt that the Flood watt an historical reality. It is impossible that in two different places in the Old World, remote from each other, religious ceremonies should have been established and perpetuated from age to age in memory of an event which never occurred. We have seen that at Athens ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... Manchester: and what has been the eventual result? After long waiting, after long delays, a new continent in the far west, and a new British Empire founded in the far east, have come to the relief of that portion of the country; that, concurrently with the development of that system, a Brindley, a Watt, an Arkwright, a George Stephenson arose. And so it is that Liverpool became what it is; and so it is that Manchester became what it is. But who was watching this great design of Providence in its small beginning? Who was fostering ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... reached by a perpendicular and very slippery ladder, and would be better suited for philosophical reflection in a gale if the crew did not use it as a store-room for engine-grease and old oilskins. In the Outer Islands, Watt's machine is, of course, unknown, and many of the roads which imaginative cartographers have inserted in their maps, will perhaps be finished when the last trump is about ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... is said, in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, to have prepared an edition of the poems of the Earl of Surrey, the whole impression of which was consumed in the fire which took place in Mr. Nicholl's premises in 1808. Can any of your readers say whether Dr. Percy had a copy of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various

... benefit. As a largely agricultural country, she was as yet little influenced by the discoveries of Watt, of Hargreaves, of Arkwright, or of Crompton. But her long-rested soil could produce in apparently unlimited quantities those very products of which the British forces stood most in need. The fleets were victualled and fitted out at Cork, and they carried thence ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... examined the severed edges. Very delicate but very distinct traces were visible of a thin mucilage, perhaps of rice-water or of diluted gum-tragacanth. How exquisite and how light are the touches of ethereal, Spiritual fingers! After all the trouble with my seals, when, emulating Dr. Watt's Busy Bee, so neat I spread my wax,' it was beginning to dawn upon me that clairvoyant eyes, quite as much as our own, require Heaven's broad sunshine on black ink ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... of this volume has lately appeared, and is entitled to equal commendation with its predecessors. Among the most important of the anecdotical lives are, Roger Bacon, Herschel, Watt, and Arkwright—names nearly and dearly allied with the triumphs of science in this country. In Arkwright's Memoir are some important as well as interesting particulars of the Cotton Manufacture in England. Our quotation is, however, from another portion of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... Riding to consist of the Townships of Anson, Bexley, Carden, Dalton, Digby, Eldon, Fenelon, Hindon, Laxton, Lutterworth, Macaulay and Draper, Sommerville, and Morrison, Muskoka, Monck and Watt (taken from the County of Simcoe), and any other surveyed Townships lying to the North of the said ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous

... their problem, and master the situation. A young man determined and willing will find a way or make one. A Franklin does not require elaborate apparatus; he can bring electricity from the clouds with a common kite. A Watt can make a model of the condensing steam-engine out of an old syringe used to inject the arteries of dead bodies previous to dissection. A Dr. Black can discover latent heat with a pan of water and two thermometers. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... to the north, appeared "a brilliantly lighted, teardrop shaped, blob of light." "Prongs, or streams of bright light, sprayed downward from the blob toward the earth." It was big, about the size of a 200 watt light bulb. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... intimated to Mr. Oakhurst, as when, emboldened by Mr. Hamilton's advice and assistance, and his own predilections, he became a San Francisco broker. Even before objection was made to his presence in the Board,—the objection, I remember, was urged very eloquently by Watt Sanders, who was supposed to be the inventor of the "freezing-out" system of disposing of poor stockholders, and who also enjoyed the reputation of having been the impelling cause of Briggs of Tuolumne's ruin and suicide,—even before ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... inventions is a dynamometer for determining the traction power of machines and animals, and his experiments with steam have led some of his enthusiastic partisans to claim for him priority to Watt in the invention of the steam-engine. In these experiments, however, Leonardo seems to have advanced little beyond Hero of Alexandria and his steam toy. Hero's steam-engine did nothing but rotate itself by virtue of escaping ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... his age has dreamed of attempting as great if not greater impossibilities. All honour, we say, to the boy who dreams impossibilities, and greater honour to him who, like Fred, resolves to attempt them! James Watt stared at an iron tea-kettle till his eyes were dim, and meditated the monstrous impossibility of making that kettle work like a horse; and men might (perhaps did) smile at James Watt then, but do men smile at James Watt now?—now that thousands ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne



Words linked to "Watt" :   applied scientist, watt second, watt-hour, discoverer, technologist, horsepower, inventor, artificer, kW, H.P., engineer, HP, power unit, James Watt



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