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Author: Richard Leslie Hills
Publisher:
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 296
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFinal part of the trilogy on James Watt, this book includes: the development of rotary motion and its application in factories to drive machinery; patents and other problems in Cornwall; and other developments and interests Watt had in his later years. The author weaves elements of Watt's family life into the book.
Author: Malcolm Dick
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: 2020-01-28
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 1789625041
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJames Watt is celebrated as the inventor of the energy efficient pumping and rotative steam engines. Studies of Watt have focused on his inventiveness, influence and reputation. This book explores new aspects of his work and places him in family, social and intellectual contexts during the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
Author: David Philip Miller
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2019-04-18
Total Pages: 469
ISBN-13: 0822986795
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Life and Legend of James Wattoffers a deeper understanding of the work and character of the great eighteenth-century engineer. Stripping away layers of legend built over generations, David Philip Miller finds behind the heroic engineer a conflicted man often diffident about his achievements but also ruthless in protecting his inventions and ideas, and determined in pursuit of money and fame. A skilled and creative engineer, Watt was also a compulsive experimentalist drawn to natural philosophical inquiry, and a chemistry of heat underlay much of his work, including his steam engineering. But Watt pursued the business of natural philosophy in a way characteristic of his roots in the Scottish “improving” tradition that was in tension with Enlightenment sensibilities. As Miller demonstrates, Watt’s accomplishments relied heavily on collaborations, not always acknowledged, with business partners, employees, philosophical friends, and, not least, his wives, children, and wider family. The legend created in his later years and “afterlife” claimed too much of nineteenth-century technology for Watt, but that legend was, and remains, a powerful cultural force.
Author: David Philip Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-22
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 1317314050
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMiller examines Watt's illustrious engineering career in light of his parallel interest in chemistry, arguing that Watt's conception of steam engineering relied upon chemical understandings.
Author: Ben Russell
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2014-08-15
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13: 1780234023
DOWNLOAD EBOOKScottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt (1736–1819) is best known for his pioneering work on the steam engine that became fundamental to the incredible changes and developments wrought by the Industrial Revolution. But in this new biography, Ben Russell tells a much bigger, richer story, peering over Watt’s shoulder to more fully explore the processes he used and how his ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artifacts. Over the course of the book, Russell reveals as much about the life of James Watt as he does a history of Britain’s early industrial transformation and the birth of professional engineering. To record this fascinating narrative, Russell draws on a wide range of resources—from archival material to three-dimensional objects to scholarship in a diversity of fields from ceramics to antique machine-making. He explores Watt’s early years and interest in chemistry and examines Watt’s partnership with Matthew Boulton, with whom he would become a successful and wealthy man. In addition to discussing Watt’s work and incredible contributions that changed societies around the world, Russell looks at Britain’s early industrial transformation. Published in association with the Science Museum London, and with seventy illustrations, James Watt is not only an intriguing exploration of the engineer’s life, but also an illuminating journey into the broader practices of invention in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Published in association with the Science Museum, London
Author: Thanu Padmanabhan
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2019-04-23
Total Pages: 286
ISBN-13: 303017509X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis lucid and captivating book takes the reader back to the early history of all the sciences, starting from antiquity and ending roughly at the time of Newton — covering the period which can legitimately be called the “dawn” of the sciences. Each of the 24 chapters focuses on a particular and significant development in the evolution of science, and is connected in a coherent way to the others to yield a smooth, continuous narrative. The at-a-glance diagrams showing the “When” and “Where” give a brief summary of what was happening at the time, thereby providing the broader context of the scientific events highlighted in that chapter. Embellished with colourful photographs and illustrations, and “boxed” highlights scattered throughout the text, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in the history of science, and how it shaped our world today.
Author: Sally Baggott
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-05-13
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 1317099311
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMatthew Boulton was a leading industrialist, entrepreneur and Enlightenment figure. Often overshadowed through his association with James Watt, his Soho manufactories put Birmingham at the centre of what has recently been termed 'The Industrial Enlightenment'. Exploring his many activities and manufactures-and the regional, national and international context in which he operated-this publication provides a valuable index to the current state of Boulton studies. Combining original contributions from social, economic, and cultural historians, with those of historians of science, technology and art, archaeologists and heritage professionals, the book sheds new light on the general culture of the eighteenth century, including patterns of work, production and consumption of the products of art and industry. The book also extends and enhances knowledge of the Enlightenment, industrialization and the processes of globalization in the eighteenth century.
Author: M.W. Collins
Publisher: WIT Press
Published: 2015-12-14
Total Pages: 483
ISBN-13: 1845641493
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume looks afresh at the life and works of Lord Kelvin including his standing and relationships with Charles Darwin, T. S Huxley and the X-club, thereby throwing new light on the nineteenth-century conflict between the British energy and biology specialists. It focuses on two principal issues. Firstly, there is the contribution made by Kelvin to the formulation of the Laws of Thermodynamics, both personal and in the content of the scientific communications exchanged with other workers, such as Joule and Clausius. Secondly, there is Kelvin’s impact on the wider field of science such as thermoelectricity and geology (determination of the age of the earth). Of late a number of studies and initiatives, including the Centenary celebrations of Kelvin’s death and exhibits such as that of the ‘Revolutionary Scientist’ in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, have been undertaken aiding the redefinition of Kelvin’s greatness and achievements. The book also raises awareness to ‘improve our approach to the teaching of elementary thermodynamics by attempting to empathise with Kelvin’s perspective’. It is completed by a full biography, overviews of various monuments to his memory, and short ‘Stories in Pictures’ on the Atlantic cable, Maxwell’s Demon, the universities associated with the development of thermodynamics and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Scientists and engineers with an interest in thermodynamics and anyone interested in the work of Lord Kelvin will find benefit in Kelvin, Thermodynamics and the Natural World.
Author: Peter M. Jones
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2017-10-03
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 1526130319
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIndustrial Enlightenment explores the transition through which England passed between 1760 and 1820 on the way to becoming the world’s first industrialised nation. In drawing attention to the important role played by scientific knowledge, it focuses on a dimension of this transition which is often overlooked by historians. The book argues that in certain favoured regions, England underwent a process whereby useful knowledge was fused with technological ‘know how’ to produce the condition described here as Industrial Enlightenment. At the forefront of the process were the natural philosophers who entered into a close and productive relationship with technologists and entrepreneurs. Much of the evidence for this study is drawn from the extraordinary archival record of the activities of Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) and his Soho Manufactory. The book will appeal to those keen to explore the dynamics of change in eighteenth-century England, and to those with a broad interest in the cultural history of science and technology.
Author: Matthew C. Hunter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-03-23
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 022639039X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPainting with Fire shows how experiments with chemicals known to change visibly over the course of time transformed British pictorial arts of the long eighteenth century—and how they can alter our conceptions of photography today. As early as the 1670s, experimental philosophers at the Royal Society of London had studied the visual effects of dynamic combustibles. By the 1770s, chemical volatility became central to the ambitious paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, premier portraitist and first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts. Valued by some critics for changing in time (and thus, for prompting intellectual reflection on the nature of time), Reynolds’s unstable chemistry also prompted new techniques of chemical replication among Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and other leading industrialists. In turn, those replicas of chemically decaying academic paintings were rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century and claimed as origin points in the history of photography. Tracing the long arc of chemically produced and reproduced art from the 1670s through the 1860s, the book reconsiders early photography by situating it in relationship to Reynolds’s replicated paintings and the literal engines of British industry. By following the chemicals, Painting with Fire remaps familiar stories about academic painting and pictorial experiment amid the industrialization of chemical knowledge.
