James Watt

This book explores James Watt’s early years and interests, as well as his highly successful 25-year partnership with the industrialist Matthew Boulton. But while traditional biographies of Watt concentrate on the steam engine, James Watt: Making the World Anew tells a richer story: it explores the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts, and places Watt within the context of Britain’s early industrial transformation. Watt’s work is emblematic of a wider culture of multifaceted artisanship, and this book probes the widely held motivation for making things, looking not only at what was produced but also why. It draws on a rich range of resources – from archival material and biographies on Watt to objects themselves, and sources from fields as diverse as ceramics, antique systems of proportion, sculpture and machine making. Generously illustrated, James Watt is a unique, expansive exploration of the engineer’s career. His life is used as a lens through which the broader practices of manufacturing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the Industrial Revolution, are explored. Published in association with the Science Museum, London.