James Watt Symposium
University of Birmingham 28 and 29 July 2016
Abstracts and Contributors
The contributors and their presentations are listed according to the order intheyappear in the programme
Ben Russell, ‘James Watt: making the world anew’
Abstract
In my book James Watt: Making the World Anew, I used James Watt’s workshop as a lens through which to recreate a history of how objects were made during Britain’s industrial revolution. This paper will briefly assess the workshop and the rich, wider world of artisanship which it represents.
Biography
Ben Russell is Curator of Mechanical Engineering at the Science Museum, London. He is presently curating a large exhibition on the history of robots, opening I February 2017, and has curated a number of other permanent galleries and exhibitions, including the redisplay of James Watt’s workshop, from his home at Heathfield, Birmingham, in 2011. This led on to his book, James Watt: Making the World Anew, (Reaktion Books, 2014).
Peter M. Jones, ‘James Watt: Competition and collaboration in the Industrial Knowledge Economy, 1774-1819’
Abstract
In 1856 George Williamson called for an éloge of James Watt ‘whose point of departure shall be the MAN rather than his WORKS, the MIND and its intellectual manifestations rather than, exclusively, its CREATIONS and their wonderful effects’. The aim of this paper is to provide some ideas and arguments which will allow a more nuanced picture of the man to be drawn. Unfortunately the voluminous correspondence of James Watt contains little direct testimony to the tensions in his intellectual upbringing and outlook. However, it is possible to investigate the underpinnings of the ‘man’ and his ‘mind’ indirectlyby examining his ambivalentattitude towards competition and collaboration against the backdrop of Britain’s expanding industrial economy.
Biography
Peter M. Jones is Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on the history of France and more recently on the British and European enlightenments. His two most recent books are Industrial Enlightenment: Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760-1820 (Manchester UP, 2009) and Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750-1840 (Oxford UP, 2016)
Jim Andrew, ‘The Lunar Society's welcome to a Scottish inventor’
Abstract
James Watt grew up Greenock, twenty miles west of Glasgow. Showing ability in instrument making, he sought training in Glasgow but found what he needed in London. Back in Glasgow he mixed with academics at the university, finding an intellectual atmosphere which suited him. Neither his brilliant improvement to the steam engine nor his business activities were progressing when friends in Birmingham suggested progress would be better if he moved south. In Birmingham he found the Lunar Society giving the intellectual and Boulton giving the technical stimulation to perfect his engine.
Biography
Dr Jim Andrew is an engineer who worked in the motor industry and public health before joining Birmingham Museum Service in 1974. Over the past forty years he has researched many exhibits, including James Watt’s oldest working engine, and the inventors who contributed to their development. His PhD in 1991 was for research on Watt’s engines which has continued with contributions to exhibitions and research papers. Since retiring in 2003, his research and writing have continued while retaining a place in the museums and in Midlands’ history.
Larry Stewart: ‘James Watt’s Paine: Fear, security and republicanism in the age of industry’
Abstract
James Watt was deeply alarmed by the promotion of republicanism and democracy in the industrial Enlightenment. As France began an unravelling, the breach of the Bastille was a symbol not just of liberty but of the collapse of authority. If Watt needed any reminder, it was surely in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France which predicted the decay of social cohesion. Watt’s fears were soon reflected in the Priestley riots, and especially in Tom Paine’s propaganda of Rights, along with Watt’s well-known worries over James, junior, who dabbled in dangerous democratic alliances in Manchester and Paris. Watt, senior, went to some lengths to ensure that democracy did not spread.
Biography
Larry Stewart, Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan, is a well-known historian of early modern science.His books include The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain (Cambridge UP, 1993) and, (with Margaret Jacob) Practical Matter: Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1850 (Harvard UP, 2004). He is past editor of the Canadian Journal of History.
Fiona Tait, ‘An introduction to the Papers of James Watt & Family’
Abstract
This talk will introduce the audience to the provenance and arrangement of the Papers and give some indication of the breadth and variety of subjects they cover. To encourage further research, some areas of the collection which have received less attention will be mentioned.
Biography
Fiona Tait worked as an archivist for Birmingham City Council for thirty years before retiring in 2015. She was appointed to the Archives of Soho Project in 2000 to catalogue the papers of James Watt and Family and also contributed to the celebrations for Matthew Boulton in 2009.
Jo-Ann Curtis and Toby Watley, ‘Bicentenary of James Watt at Birmingham Museums Trust’
Abstract
This joint presentation focus on Birmingham Museums’ programming plans for the Bicentenary of James Watt, as well as give an overview of its collections. Birmingham Museums’ links to both James Watt and James Watt Jnr include the Smethwick Engine on display at Think Tank, Aston Hall, where Watt Jnr lived, as well as a small collection of fine, applied art and objects of scientific interest.
Biographies
Jo-Ann Curtis has worked as Curator of History at Birmingham Museums since 2002. She has worked on a number of significant projects, and exhibitions, including the development of Birmingham history galleries which opened in 2012.
Toby Watley is Director of Collections at Birmingham Museums Trust. He has managed collections, learning and exhibition programmes that engage diverse audiences with heritage and culture spanning art, history and science, coupled with leading major heritage capital projects. Toby is responsible for the overall management and development of Birmingham Museums’ collection, the most important civic museum collection in England.
Lesley Richmond, ‘Watt’s Scottish legacy: past, present and future’
Abstract
This presentation will explore the surviving papers, artefacts and buildings associated with James Watt in Scotland, which cover work on scientific instruments, personal remains, paintings, engines and a workshop. It will also give an overview of the ideas that the Scottish Group have for commemorating the legacy of Watt in the run up to 2019.
Biography
Lesley Richmond is Deputy Director and University Archivist at the Library of the University of Glasgow and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute. She is also a member of the steering committee of the Scottish Group set up to celebrate the legacy of Watt on the bi-centenary of his death in 2019.
David Philip Miller, 'James Watt as natural philosopher: what do we know and what might we find out?'
Abstract
I re-evaluate the place of natural philosophical inquiry in Watt’s life. First I summarize my long-standing explorations of how Watt’s natural philosophy, especially his chemistry, informed his technological inventions. I also examine some of the difficulties in maintaining the position I have taken. Secondly, I suggest that, in learning more about Watt as natural philosopher, we should consider three possible sites of natural philosophical activity: the experimental laboratory; the manufactory (which could also be, in important ways, experimental); and the ‘out-of-doors’. I explore the possibility that Watt’s natural philosophy amalgamated insights from all these sites, and that we miss a great deal by concentrating only on his explicitly experimental notebooks.
Biography
Emeritus Professor David Philip Miller, taught history of science and technology at the University of New South Wales until his retirement in 2013. He has published on topics ranging from 18th-century natural history to 21st-century science and intellectual property. His many publications on James Watt include James Watt, Chemist: Understanding the Origins of the Steam Age (2009) and Discovering Water: James Watt, Henry Cavendish and the Nineteenth-Century Water Controversy (2004). He also edits the journal Annals of Science. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of the History of Science.
George Demidowicz, ‘The first working James Watt steam engine in the world: Water and steam power combined at the Soho Manufactory’
Abstract
Matthew Boulton’s now famous boast, ‘I sell here, Sir what all the world desires to have – Power’, originally included the desperate need for power at his own Manufactory. James Watt’s experimental Kinneil engine was shipped from Scotland to Soho in 1773, assembled in 1774, and experimentation continued. It was, however, also put to work in a new engine house, the first James Watt steam engine to be so applied. Boulton had for just over a decade depended on water power, but it had proved to be unreliable; he had to use horses to move the water wheel in times of drought. This paper will examine how Boulton solved his problem with Watt’s reciprocating steam engine and how the rotative Lap Engine installed in the Soho mill in 1788 eased matters further.
Biography
George Demidowicz is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham. After research in late medieval colonisation and settlement in Poland, he became increasingly involved in conservation issues and the protection and interpretation of the historic environment. He worked for Coventry City Council before his retirement and was head of the Conservation and Archaeology Team, which he set up in the early 2000s He has written numerous publications and his book The Soho Industrial Buildings: Manufactory, Mint and Foundry will be published by History West Midlands Ltd in 2017.
Frank A.J.L. James, ‘The Watts, Thomas Beddoes and Humphry Davy’
Abstract
This paper will discuss the various and significant roles that James Watt sr, James Watt jr and Gregory Watt played in establishing Thomas Beddoes’s Medical Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. Beddoes, partly on the Watts’ suggestion, employed Humphry Davy which put him on the path to become the country’s leading chemist.
Biography
Frank James is Professor of the History of Science at the Royal Institution and University College London and a past President of the Newcomen Society for the History of Engineering and Technology. He has written widely on science and technology and how they relate to other areas of society and culture, for example technology, art, religion and the military. His publications include studies of Michael Faraday and he is currently writing a book on Humphry Davy.
Kristen Schranz, ‘Catalyzing Chemical Correspondence: James Watt and the Case of Joseph Black and James Keir’
Abstract
James Watt was a crucial node point in the chemical correspondence between the Scottish chemist and physician Joseph Black and James Keir of the Lunar Society. Few letters appear to have passed directly between Black and Keir, but over several decades Watt remained a cornerstone of interchange between the two men. Situated in the wider discussion of systems of friendship and etiquette in the Republic of Letters, this talk illuminates Watt’s critical role in connecting two Scottish chemists at pivotal times in their respective manufacturing, teaching and writing.
Biography
Kristen M. Schranz is a PhD candidate at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (University of Toronto, Canada). Her dissertation investigates the writing, manufacturing and consulting activities of Scottish chemist James Keir and speaks to the multiplicity of sites of chemistry in eighteenth-century Britain.
David Hulse, ‘James Watt’s Lap Engine at the Soho Manufactory’
Abstract
In 1788 James Watt designed and built a beam engine the sole purpose of which was to provide the rotary drive for the lapping and polishing machines at Matthew Boulton’s Soho Manufactory at Handsworth in Birmingham. This engine is possibly the most famous rotary beam steam engine in the world and, it is now preserved in the Science Museum South Kensington. The Lap Engine is one of the first engines in the world to have its power output rated in horsepower.
Biography
Before his retirement, David Hulse was Chief Development Engineer for the Royal Doulton group of potteries. In 1974 he began to research the steam engines which were built in the eighteenth century and construct in miniature working examples including Newcomen’s atmospheric engine and James Watt’s Smethwick and Lap engines. He applied his skills as an engineer and ceramicist to replicate both the machines and their engine houses: see: David’s replicas will eventually be located at the Black Country Living Museum.
Kate Iles, ‘Selling Steam: Watt's Steam Engine in Popular Print Culture’
Abstract
The impact of the steam engine on science, technology and manufacturing has been well documented. However, the role played by print culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in representing and promoting this technology has not been explored. This paper will explore how manufacturers and commentators represented the steam engine in print culture.
Biography
Dr Kate Iles is a freelance lecturer and researcher based in the West Midlands. She was project officer on the Revolutionary Players website project: and contributed to the creation of History West Midlands magazine. Her research interests focus on the eighteenth-century Lunar Society. Since completing her PhD on Thomas Day, Kate has continued her research on gender and the Lunar Society and is currently a research associate at the University of Birmingham examining print culture associated with the steam industry.