By way of introduction I need to do two things. The first is to provide a historical outline of the life of James Watt, a general overview that will assist in situating my specific, and rather specialized, argument about the centrality of chemistry to his life and work. The second is to explain the structure and the strategy of my study, as well as some of the basic assumptions that underlie it.

The ‘Great Steamer’ – A Life Outlined

James Watt, who the geologist Roderick Murchison referred to in 1839, with a peculiar mixture of deference, affection and condescension, as ‘the Great Steamer’, had been born just over a hundred years earlier, in 1736, to a moderately prosperous merchant family in Greenock, a small town on the lower reaches of the River Clyde, near Glasgow in Scotland. Watt's paternal grandfather was a ‘professor’ of mathematics, teaching that subject and navigation in a community dominated increasingly in the mid-eighteenth century by maritime trade. Watt's father was a ships’ chandler and general merchant. While Watt's elder brother John entered the family business – he was lost at sea on a merchant venture – the family was prosperous enough to invest in an informal apprenticeship for Watt to the London-based instrument maker John Morgan. The young Watt's time in London was undoubtedly difficult. He worked exceedingly hard and suffered problems with his health. But the experience opened up for him a world of instruments, skills and trade that profoundly shaped his later career.

The next step in that career was Watt's establishment as an instrument-maker at the University of Glasgow, within the confines of the College. Though Watt certainly did make and repair instruments for the professorate of the College he also engaged in a more general trade in musical instruments and fancy toys. In the early days he was also an agent for his father's business and plied the general hardware trade. By all accounts, as a child Watt had been studious and thoughtful, though his education at the local grammar school had been badly interrupted by health problems.