Abstract
THE bicentenary of the birth of James Watt is being commemorated in many ways and in many places, and on a scale worthy of a great international figure. “Science,” Lord Playfair once said, “has no country though its investigators have birthplaces”; and the commemorations of Watt in places so far apart as America and Japan show that he is recognised as a world benefactor. In recent years, numerous centenary tributes have been paid to inventors and engineers such as Maudslay, Symington, Bell, Matthew Murray, Crompton, Trevithick and Telford?to mention only those of British birth?but the earliest and most notable of such recognitions in the present century was that at Birmingham in 1919, on the occasion of the centenary of Watt's death. The Birmingham gatherings had very valuable results. They led to the founding of a James Watt fellowship in the University, the writing of the monumental work of Mr. Rhys Jenkins and Mr. H. W. Dickinson on “James Watt and the Steam Engine”, and they also led to the founding of the Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology which has, among other things, helped to stimulate, both at home and abroad,? an interest in the lives and achievements of the pioneers of the past.
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The Watt Bicentenary Celebrations. Nature 137, 131–133 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137131a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137131a0