[ [204] The invention was patented by James Pickard, a Birmingham button-maker, on the 23rd August, 1780 (No. 1263). Matthew Washborough of Bristol arranged with Pickard for employing it in the engine invented by him for securing circular motion. Washborough’s own patent has no reference to the crank, though he is usually named as the inventor of it.
[ [205] At a later date we find him writing to his partner thus:—“I cannot agree with Mr. Palmer’s notion about the crank engine, as, though a crank is not new, yet that application of it is new and never was practised except by us. It is by no means our interest to demolish the crank patent, because then all our own machines of that kind will be of no use, and I am convinced that the crank can be made their superior.”—Watt to Boulton, 15th October, 1781.
[ [206] Watt to Boulton, 19th November, 1780.
[ [207] Boulton and Watt were by this time employing their engine for a like purpose, as appears from a letter of Boulton to S. Wyatt, dated 28th February, 1781, in which he says,—“We are now applying our engines to all kinds of mills, such as corn mills, rolling iron and copper, winding coals out of the pit, and every other purpose to which the wind or water mill is applicable. In such applications, one hundred weight of coals will produce as much mechanical power as is equal to the work of ten men for ten hours, and these mills may be made very much more powerful than any water-mills in England.” To Mr. Henderson he wrote at the same date:—“I make no scruple to say but that I could readily build a more powerful and in every respect better copper-rolling mill by steam than any water-mill now in England. As soon as the Cornish engines are at work, I intend to turn millwright and make our steam-mills universally known.”
[ [208] Watt to Boulton, 21st April, 1781. On the following day (the 22nd April) Watt wrote another long letter to Boulton on the same subject. His mind could not be at rest, and he thus unburdened himself of his indignation:—“If you find yourself so circumstanced, as you say you are, that you dare not refuse [to erect the proposed engine for the Navy Board], then let them pay M. Washborough and have done with him, and let the engine be erected under our direction or Mr. Smeaton’s. With the latter I will go hand in hand; nay I will do more—I will submit to him in all mechanical matters; but I will by no means submit to go on with thieves and puppies, whose knowledge and integrity I contemn. Though I am not so saucy as many of my countrymen, I have enough of innate pride to prevent me from doing a mean action because a servile prudence may dictate it. If a king were to think Matt Washborough a better engineer than me, I should scorn to undeceive him. I should leave that to Matthew. The connexion would be stronger as the evidence would be undeniable. So much for heroics!... I will never meanly sue a thief to give me my own again, unless I have nothing left behind. As it now stands, I have enough left to make their patent tremble, and shall leave no mechanical stone unturned to aggrieve them. I will do more. I will publish my inventions, by which means they will be entirely precluded, because they must be fools indeed that will pay them for what they can have for nothing. I am very ill with a headache, therefore can write no more than passion dictates.”
[ [209] Washborough was much mortified by the decision of the Navy Board, and alleged that he had been badly used by them. The anxieties occasioned by his failure, and the pecuniary losses he had sustained, preyed heavily upon his mind, and he was seized by a fever which carried him off in October, 1781, when only in his 28th year. He was unquestionably a young man of much ingenuity and merit, and had he lived would have achieved high eminence and distinction as an engineer.
[ [210] Boulton to Watt, 21st June, 1781.
[ [211] Watt to Boulton, 21st June, 1781.
[ [212] While Boulton spoke good humouredly to his partner in Cornwall with the object of cheering him up, he privately unbosomed himself to his friend Matthews in London. When requesting him to call at once on the bankers and get the account reduced to an advance of 12,000l., and thus obtain Mr. Watt’s release, he complained of the distress which the communications of the latter had caused him. He thought his conduct ungenerous, taking all the circumstances into account, and considering that the firm were within a year of being tolerably easy in money matters. “When I reflect,” he wrote, “on his situation in 1772 and my own at that time, and compare them with his and mine now, I think I owe him little.... I some time ago gave him a security of all my two-thirds, after paying off L. V. and W. [the bankers], from which you may judge how little reason he has to complain. He talks of his duty to his wife and children; by the same rule I ought not to neglect mine. His wife’s fortune joined to his own did not amount to sixpence: my wife brought me in money and land 28,000l. I advanced him all he wanted without a security, but in return he is not content with an ample security for advancing nothing at all but what he derived from his connexion with me.”—Boulton to Matthews, 28th June, 1781. Boulton MSS.
[ [213] Watt to Boulton, 24th June, 1781.