Revived by his native air he set out again to seek his fortune—again to Glasgow. Again to be met with disappointment! He had not learned his trade in Glasgow, and therefore Glasgow would have none of him. Not so much as a workshop would it give him. It seemed almost as if there were no place open for the boy.
But his friend the professor came to the front again. If Watt could find no place in the city, then the University should shelter him. And so they gave him a workshop twenty feet square in the old College grounds, and a room in which to sell his instruments, and he was at last fairly launched.
But business progressed but slowly. He lived, to be sure, in an atmosphere that must have delighted him. The professors and the students found him out. They came and came again. He seemed always to have something original to say. He was a man who read much and thought much—humble as a child about his own attainments—eager with the generosity of the great man to give others their due—yes, even more than their due. They found out that he knew all about engineering, and not a little about natural history, art, languages—and then the trick of observation was so strong with him that nothing escaped him. In time it came to be the general opinion that the young instrument-maker was one of the ablest men about the University. But gratifying as was the making of these friends, they did not bring Watt in any money. Somehow his instruments did not sell well. He was too far from the town. Indeed, his business was so poor he sometimes thought of giving it up. It may have been there was a want of practical “push” in him, a quality he never gained all through his life. Somewhat discouraged he took to making fiddles and flutes and guitars and even organs,—but he was yet very far from making that fortune he had come out to seek.
There are crises, turning-points in the lives of most people. They are seldom noisy. Sometimes, indeed, they come so quietly as to be hardly noticed. And now Watt was gradually nearing his.
About this time his thoughts began to turn to steam. It may be that had he been busy and successful as an organ-maker, his great invention might never have seen the light.
People had, of course, known for long that there was a power in water exposed to heat. Now in 1759, when Watt was twenty-three, his attention was drawn to the Steam Engine. He pondered it. After he had pondered it he set to work. His first model was a failure. But the idea had silently and firmly lodged in his brain. He went on with his everyday business, but ever in his leisure back sprang his mind to that subject that was to be his all-absorbing life-work. He read eagerly what other men had done. He got a model of another man’s engine and he studied it. He found what he thought defects. He groped steadily on—now seeing a light—again thrown into darkness—now following what turned out to be a will-o’-the-wisp—again getting hold of an idea that seemed to him a gem.
There came to him gradually dawning thoughts. First, that of Latent Heat. Again, that a small quantity of water in the shape of steam heats a large quantity of cold water. Yet, again, that at 212° water is elastic, and that steam heats six times the weight of cold water to a temperature of 212°, the temperature of steam.
And so he went on step by step, till one day the thing burst on him, full-fledged, as it were—complete, dazzling, a perfect inspiration.
It was a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1765. He was taking a stroll in a quiet part of Glasgow, now a paved and busy thoroughfare called the Green. A Sunday calm brooded over what was on weekdays a scene of busy life—of washing and drying clothes. His thoughts, as usual, hovered about his beloved theme. It inspired him with a very passion as a child of his own. The key to his engine—long sought—suddenly flashed before his mind’s eye. The thing had been waiting incomplete for want of it. It came to him then—the idea of a Separate Condenser.
A great uprising of his mind followed. In his solitary walk the flashing thought filled the man with rapture.