The method adopted by Watt to secure a remedy, so far as practicable,
of this defect of the older machine was as simple and as perfect as
was the principle which it embodied. He first removed from the
cylinder the prime source of its wastes; providing a separate
condenser, and thus avoiding the repeated chilling of its surfaces by
the cold water used in condensing the steam at exhaust, and also
permitting its strokes to be made with far greater frequency, thus
giving less time for cooling by the influence of the remaining vapors
after condensation. He next went still further, and provided the
cylinder with a closed top, keeping out the air, and a "jacket" of hot
boiler steam to _keep_ it as hot as the steam which entered it. These
were the two great improvements which converted the first real steam
engine into an economical form of heat engine and essentially finished
the work so grandly begun by Newcomen and Calley. These changes gave
us the modern steam engine; and these are Watt's first and greatest,
but by no means only, contributions to the production of the modern
world with all its comforts, its luxuries and its opportunities for
material, intellectual and moral advancement of individual and of
race. His work was to this extent complete in 1765.
But Watt did not stop here. There still remained for him the no less
important and the, in some senses, still more imposing, work of
finding employment for the new servant of mankind and of setting it at
its work of giving the human arm a thousand times greater strength, to
the mind of man uncounted opportunities to promote the advancement of
knowledge, of civilization, of every good of the race.
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