In 1759, Mr. James Brindley, whose name is so celebrated as the engineer of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, obtained a patent for some improvements in the atmospheric engine. He proposed that the boiler should be made of wood and stone, with a stove or fire-place of cast iron within it, so that the fire should be surrounded on every side by water. The chimney was to be an iron pipe or tube, conducted through the boiler; so that the heated air, in passing from the fire, should impart a portion of its heat to the water. He also proposed a method of feeding the boiler, which, by self-acting machinery, would keep the water in the boiler at a fixed level, independently of any attention on the part of the engine-man. This was to be accomplished by a buoy or float upon the surface of the water in the boiler, which should communicate with a valve in the feed-pipe, so that when the level of the water in the boiler fell, the float or buoy, falling with it, would open the valve and supply the feed. It is stated, in the _Biographia Britannica_, that Mr. Brindley, in 1756, undertook to erect an engine at Newcastle-under-Lyne; but he is said to have been discouraged by the obstacles which were thrown in his way, and to have abandoned the steam engine.
The interval between the invention of the atmospheric engine, and the amelioration it received at the hands of Smeaton, has been rendered memorable by the advent of one who was destined to work a mighty change in the condition [Pg077] of the human race by the application of his vast genius to the adaptation of steam power to the uses of life.
(45.) JAMES WATT was born at Greenock, in Scotland, on the nineteenth day of January, in the year 1736.[16]
The great-grandfather of Watt, a farmer in Aberdeenshire, was killed in one of the battles of Montrose. The victorious party, not thinking death a sufficient expiation for the political opinions in support of which he had fought and bled, punished him in the person of his son, by confiscating his little property. Thomas Watt, the son, thus deprived of support, was received by distant relations, and, for a time, applied himself to study, by which he was enabled, after the restoration of tranquillity, to establish himself at Greenock as a teacher of practical mathematics and navigation. He resided in the burgh or barony of Crawford's Dyke, and attained a position of sufficient respectability to be elected to the office of baron-baillie, or chief magistrate, and died in 1734, at the advanced age of ninety-two years.