Watts' Perfect Engine

We all know the story. A young James Watt gazed up at a simmering kettle, then grew up and replaced the rattling lid with a piston, heralding the age of steam. But how much of this familiar legend is true? Ben Marsden's entertaining and informative book provides the answer, which as you might guess is: not a lot. Scotland on Sunday



James Watt is synonymous with the steam engine: Promethean symbol of the Industrial Revolution. But what motivated Watt to re-invent steam? And how did Watt's perfect engine become the progenitor of progress and its problems in nineteenth-century Britain?