James Watt’s steam engine had an enormous influence on the Industrial Revolution and the development of the modern world. The popular misconception is that the Scottish engineer, born in 1736 ...

What seemed to finalize the impact of the Watt engine on the Industrial Revolution was his creation of the double-acting engine. Doubling the efficiency, it condensed steam both above and below ...

This article was originally published with the title “ Centenary of the Steam Engine—James Watt ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 20 No. 19 (May 1869), p. 297 doi:10.1038 ...

James Watt invented horsepower so he could sell his steam engine as the next great thing. Learn more about how it started, and how it's calculated.

James Watt, a scientist, inventor, and visionary, demonstrated unwavering faith in his ventures despite encountering substantial financial, time, and design constraints. His aspiration to create ...

James Watt figured out a way to calculate horsepower. It was essentially the amount of work done by a horse in a said amount of time, and compared it to the steam engines at the time.

The introduction of the steam indicator in the late 1790s and early 1800s by James Watt and others had a great impact on the understanding of how the steam behaved inside the engine's cylinder and ...

An engine indicator is an instrument for graphically recording the cylinder pressure versus piston displacement through an engine stroke cycle. Engineers use the resulting diagram to check the design ...

At the time, people were regularly asking Watt how many horses his steam engine could replace, so he devised horsepower as a way of answering that question. Many years later, another standardized ...

Willian Murdoch was the inventor of Gas Lighting but also worked in Cornwall with James Watt (Boulton and Watt) on steam engines but left there in the late 1790's and returned to Scotland.