After you have read. Do you agree with the list of inventions mentioned in the text?

Do you agree with the list of inventions mentioned in the text?

Can you fill in the table?

invention	Who?	When?	What country?
the compass
the mechanical clock
the glass lens
the printing press
the steam engine
the telegraph
electric power
wireless communication
antibiotics
the transistor

Unit 6

TOPIC PRESENTATION

Outstanding engineers

Who said it?

1. Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

2. Imagination is more important than knowledge.

3. You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.

4. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

5. An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

6. A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

7. Make a habit of two things: to help or at least to do no harm.

_________________________________________________________

a) Benjamin Franklin; b) Albert Einstein; c) Charles Darwin; d) Galileo

e) Aristotle; f) Thomas Alva Edison; g) Hippocrates

SKILLS

Reading

Text 1

Before you read

What do you know about James Watt?

While you read

Read the text (average / skimming reading) and fill in the profile

Born -
Died -
Residence -
Nationality -
Parents -
Alma mater -
Fields -
Employer -
Known for -

JAMES WATT

James Wattwas a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.

James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock, Scotland. His father was a shipwright, ship owner and contractor, while his mother, Agnes Muirhead, came from a distinguished family and was well educated. Watt's grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a mathematics teacher.

Watt did not attend school regularly; initially he was mostly schooled at home by his mother but later he attended Greenock grammar school. He exhibited great manual dexterity, engineering skills and an aptitude for mathematics, while Latin and Greek failed to interest him.

When he was eighteen, his mother died and his father's health began to fail. Watt travelled to London to study instrument-making for a year, then returned to Scotland, settling in the major commercial city of Glasgow intent on setting up his own instrument-making business. He made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things. Because he had not served at least seven years as an apprentice, the Glasgow Guild of Hammermen (which had jurisdiction over any artisans using hammers) blocked his application, despite there being no other mathematical instrument makers in Scotland.

Watt was saved from this impasse by the arrival of astronomical instruments to the University of Glasgow that required expert attention. Watt restored them to working order and was remunerated. These instruments were eventually installed in the Macfarlane Observatory. Subsequently three professors offered him the opportunity to set up a small workshop within the university. It was initiated in 1757 and one of the professors, the physicist and chemist Joseph Black, became Watt's friend.

At first he worked on maintaining and repairing scientific instruments used in the university, helping with demonstrations, and expanding the production of quadrants. In 1759 he formed a partnership with John Craig, an architect and businessman, to manufacture and sell a line of products including musical instruments and toys. This partnership lasted for the next six years, and employed up to sixteen workers. Craig died in 1765. One employee, Alex Gardner, eventually took over the business, which lasted into the twentieth century.

While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and re-heating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. He developed the concept of horsepower. The SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him.

In 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret Miller, with whom he had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood. His wife died in childbirth in 1772. In 1777 he married again, to Ann MacGregor, daughter of a Glasgow dye-maker, with whom he had two children. Watt died in 1819 at the age of 83.

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