James Watt

James Watt was one of the most amazing men of the Industrial Revolution. Without him I doubt it would have really been the movement it was. Too explain myself please see below as for my explanation.

James Watts masterpiece was the Steam engine but, it did not happen all at one time. When James was young he was brought in contact with the engine of the time, the Newcomen Steam Engine. He felt it did not work as efficiently as it could so he set out to change. He developed the Separate Condenser, a “New Invented Method of Lessening the Consumption of Steam and Fuel in Fire Engines”. This was his first patent. He then did other things until time brought him back to his workshop to continue to work on improving his engine. He then invented the double action action engine which was a piston action engine (push-pull). A couple of years later he improved on this by developing the parallel bar which moved the bar for the piston in a perpendicular motion. Finally, later he completed his Watt Engine by adding the pressure gauge. James Watt really was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. His engine was not only used in trains but also in coal mines, farming, and many other areas. Because of all of his contribution the WATT was named after him.

James Watt invented the double-acting steam engine that replaced the woefully inefficient Newcomen “atmospheric” engine as the dominant means of industrial and motive power that drove the industrial revolution. In honor of this achievement, the SI unit of power is called a watt, which is equivalent to a joule per second.

James Watt derived the bulk of his wealth from his partnership with Matthew Boulton. The partnership of Boulton & Watt was a major engineering firm in the 19th century: it certainly exploited Watt's patent on the steam engine, but it's business was making and selling steam engines, not collecting royalties.

Typically, steam engines work by external combustion.

Liquid, most often water, is heated inside a closed, pressurized vessel. The expansion of the fluid, controlled by valves, drives a piston or pistons, whose linear motion is converted to rotary motion by a connection to a crankshaft, much like an internal combustion engine.

Unlike IC engines, modern steamers often recycle the expanded steam by way of a condenser, which converts the depressurized steam back into water.

And so the cycle repeats...

There are many engines that work by raising a fluid to a high pressure and then allowing it to do work as you exhaust it. A petrol engine, for example, mixes petrol and air. After ignition the gas rises to a high pressure and temperature and then does work. In a steam engine you raise the temperature of water, that turns into steam and in an enclosed space the pressure goes up.
Normally the high pressure gas either drives a piston or a turbine in order to do work.
Steam is very useful, particularly under certain conditions because the amount of fuel needed (wood, coal, coke, oil, gas, metals heated by radioactive metals etc) can be practically supplied, and the working fluid (water) is readily available.
Many of the worlds biggest engines use steam as the working fluid.
Source - Quora.com

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