Building up steam
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Building up steam David Philip Miller: The life and legend of James Watt. Collaboration, natural philosophy, and the improvement of the steam engine. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, 422pp, US$35.00 PB Larry Stewart1,2
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
James Watt’s industrial enlightenment rests upon a long-standing historiography and an iconic reputation. In this elegant study, David Miller takes on Watt’s evolving image, from early nineteenth-century hagiography through endless revisions—many self-serving—promoting the civic virtues of a local hero, whether in the form of statues in Glasgow or Birmingham, or on postage stamps and bank notes. In a more recent twist, Watt and his steam innovations have become associated with the controversial effects of fossil capital (Malm 2016). Through these many tales, we learn how Watt’s iconic inspiration from his encounter with the steam coming out of a kitchen kettle was turned into a new and captive form of power. Placing Watt in a broader economic and social context at least evades the easy, and popular, characterization of a solitary mechanical genius. Watt proves here a highly contested figure. As Miller shows, Watt’s celebrity inevitably made him no friends among his many engine rivals. This was to be expected. But Watt’s reputation did not easily fit narrow categories of mechanical practice. In his lifetime, he was described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1803 as “a real philosopher” (237) and, more recently, as an “episodic natural philosopher” (124). In other words, Watt has been taken to represent much more than a mere, if ingenious, mechanic. What we now make of this depends on erasing some of the early image-makers’ wishes. To distinguish Watt’s shadow from his substance, we must reveal the role of enlightenment natural philosophy in early-modern innovation. This is emphatically not the same as saying that philosophical ideas led to Watt’s inventions in steam. Miller, thankfully, takes a broader and more productive approach by first exploring Watt’s early training and his background in a family of instrument makers and maths teachers. The young Watt had an introduction, through teachers and family,
* Larry Stewart [email protected] 1
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada
2
University of King’s College, Halifax, NS, Canada
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to mathematics, to navigational and experimental apparatus, to telescopes and quadrants, not to mention books both on nature and philosophy and even, as has been suggested, an early interest in the mid-century rage for electrical devices. It is perhaps easiest to see this in the influence of Professors John Robison, Robert Dick and John Anderson in Glasgow. Robison became a long-time friend, as did Joseph Black who was thought to be a major influence on Watt’s notions of heat and steam. Of course, Watt was involved with the Delftfield Pottery in Glasgow and this led him to the production of kilns and ceramics for Black’s chemical experiments. Miller reveals Anderson and Ro
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