Book reviews: Watt's Perfect Engine: Exploding the myths of patent genius who became the Bill Gates of the steam age

From: Scotland on Sunday | Date: January 26, 2003| Author: | Copyright information

WATT'S PERFECT ENGINE

Ben Marsden

Icon Books, 9 pounds 99 pence.

WE ALL know the story. A young James Watt gazed at a simmering kettle, then grew up and replaced the rattling lid with a piston, heralding the age of steam. But how much of this familiar legend is true? Ben Marsden's entertaining and informative little book provides the answer, which as you might guess is: not a lot.

Greenock's most famous son did not invent steam power; he perfected it. Long before Watt's birth in 1736, Thomas Newcomen's 'fire engines' were being used in mines all over Britain, sucking floodwater out of ...

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