Instead of instant success, trying days and years were still before them. A patent was decided upon, a matter of course and almost of formality in our day, but far from this at that time, when it was considered monopolistic and was highly unpopular on that account. Watt went to Berwick-on-Tweed to make the required declaration before a Master in Chancery. In August, 1768, we find him in London about the patent, where he became so utterly wearied with the delays, and so provoked with the enormous fees required to protect the invention, that he wrote his wife in a most despairing mood. She administered the right medicine in reply, "I beg you will not make yourself uneasy though things do not succeed as you wish. If the engine will not do, something else will; never despair." Happy man whose wife is his best doctor. From the very summit of elation, to which he had been raised by the success of the model, Watt was suddenly cast down into the valley of despair to find that only half of his heavy task was done, and the hill of difficulty still loomed before. Reaction took place, and the fine brain, so long strained to utmost tension, refused at intervals to work at high pressure. He became subject to recurring fits of despondency, aggravated, if not primarily caused by anxiety for his family, who could not be maintained unless he engaged in work yielding prompt returns.
We may here mention one of his lifelong traits, which revealed itself at times. Watt was no man of affairs. Business was distasteful to him. As he once wrote his partner, Boulton, he "would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a disputed account or make a bargain." Monetary matters were his special aversion. For any other form of annoyance, danger or responsibility, he had the lion heart. Pecuniary responsibility was his bogey of the dark closet. He writes that, "Solomon said that in the increase of knowledge there is increase of sorrow: if he had substituted business for knowledge it would have been perfectly true."
Roebuck shines out brilliantly in this emergency. He was always sanguine, and encouraged Watt to go forward. October, 1768, he writes:
You are now letting the most active part of your life insensibly glide away. A day, a moment, ought not to be lost. And you should not suffer your thoughts to be diverted by any other object, or even improvement of this [model], but only the speediest and most effectual manner of executing an engine of a proper size, according to your present ideas.
Watt wrote Dr. Small in January, 1769, "I have much contrived and little executed. How much would good health and spirits be worth to me!" and a month later, "I am still plagued with headaches and sometimes heartaches." Sleepless nights now came upon him. All this time, however, he was absorbed in his one engrossing task. Leupold's "Theatrim Machinarum," which fell into his hands, gave an account of the machinery, furnaces and methods of mine-working in the upper Hartz. Alas! the book was in German, and he could not understand it. He promptly resolved to master the language, sought out a Swiss-German dyer then settled in Glasgow whom he engaged to give him lessons. So German and the German book were both mastered. Not bad work this from one in the depths of despair. It has been before noted that for the same end he had successfully mastered French and Italian. So in sickness as in health his demon steam pursued him, giving him no rest.
Watt had a hard piece of work in preparing his first patent-specification, which was all-important in those early days of patent "monopolies" as these were considered. Their validity often turned upon a word or two too much or too little. It was as dangerous to omit as to admit. Professionals agree in opinion that Watt here displayed extraordinary ability.
In nothing has public opinion more completely changed than in its attitude toward patents. In Watt's day, the inventor who applied for a patent was a would-be monopolist. The courts shared the popular belief. Lord Brougham vehemently remonstrated against this, declaring that the inventor was entitled to remuneration. Every point was construed against the unfortunate benefactor, as if he were a public enemy attempting to rob his fellows. To-day the inventor is hailed as the foremost of benefactors.
Notable indeed is it that on the very day Watt obtained his first patent, January 5th, 1769, Arkwright got his spinning-frame patent. Only the year before Hargreaves obtained his patent for the spinning-jenny. These are the two inventors, with Whitney, the American inventor of the cotton-gin, from whose brains came the development of the textile industry in which Britain still stands foremost. Fifty-six millions of spindles turn to-day in the little island—more than all the rest of the civilised world can boast. Much later came Stephenson with his locomotive. Here is a record for a quartette of manual laborers in the truest sense, actual wage-earners as mechanics—Watt, Stephenson, Arkwright, and Hargreaves! Where is that quartette to be equalled?
Workingmen of our day should ponder over this, and take to heart the truth that manual mechanical labor is the likeliest career to develop mechanical inventors and lead them to such distinction as these benefactors of man achieved. If disposed to mourn the lack of opportunity, they should think of these working-men, whose advantages were small compared to those of our day.
The greatest invention of all, the condenser, is fully covered by the first patent of 1769. The best engine up to this time was the Newcomen, exclusively used for pumping water. As we have seen, it was an atmospheric engine, in no sense a steam engine. Steam was only used to force the heavy piston upward, no other work being done by it. All the pumping was done on the downward stroke. The condensation of the spent steam below the piston created a vacuum, which only facilitated the fall of the piston. This caused the cylinder to be cooled between each stroke and led to the wastage of about four-fifths of all the steam used. It was to save this that the condenser was invented, in obedience to Watt's law, as stated in his patent, that "the cylinder should be kept always as hot as the steam that entered it"; but it must be kept clearly in mind that Watt's "modified machines," under his first patent, only used steam to do work upon the upward stroke, where Newcomen used it only to force up the piston. The double-acting engine—doing work up and down—came later, and was protected in the second patent of 1780.