Título: James Watt
Seção: First engines
Background: James Watt  (30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) - 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1781, which was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. 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 reheating 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.

Conteúdo: In 1776, the first engines were installed and working in commercial enterprises. These first engines were used to power pumps and produced only reciprocating motion to move the pump rods at the bottom of the shaft. The design was commercially successful, and for the next five years Watt was very busy installing more engines, mostly in Cornwall for pumping water out of mines.  These early engines were not manufactured by Boulton and Watt, but were made by others according to drawings made by Watt, who served in the role of consulting engineer. The erection of the engine and its shakedown was supervised by Watt, at first, and then by men in the firm's employ. These were large machines. The first, for example, had a cylinder with a diameter of some 50 inches and an overall height of about 24 feet, and required the construction of a dedicated building to house it. Boulton and Watt charged an annual payment, equal to one third of the value of the coal saved in comparison to a Newcomen engine performing the same work.  The field of application for the invention was greatly widened when Boulton urged Watt to convert the reciprocating motion of the piston to produce rotational power for grinding, weaving and milling. Although a crank seemed the obvious solution to the conversion Watt and Boulton were stymied by a patent for this, whose holder, James Pickard, and associates proposed to cross-license the external condenser. Watt adamantly opposed this and they circumvented the patent b

user: What was the first type of engine he worked on?

assistant: In 1776, the first engines were installed and working in commercial enterprises.

user: What kind of engines were they?

assistant: These first engines were used to power pumps and produced only reciprocating motion to move the pump rods at the bottom of the shaft. The

user: What were these engines used for?

assistant: The design was commercially successful, and for the next five years Watt was very busy installing more engines, mostly in Cornwall for pumping water out of mines.

user: Did he make a lot of money from these engines?

assistant: CANNOTANSWER

user: Were his engines always successful?

assistant: The erection of the engine and its shakedown was supervised by Watt, at first, and then by men in the firm's employ.

user: Were there ever any malfunctions?

assistant: Although a crank seemed the obvious solution to the conversion Watt and Boulton were stymied by a patent for this,

user: What did Watt and Boulton end up doing about this?

assistant: Watt adamantly opposed this and they circumvented the patent by their sun and planet gear in 1781.

user: What was most interesting about this article?

assistant: Over the next six years, he made a number of other improvements and modifications to the steam engine.

user: What was one of the improvements?

assistant: A double acting engine, in which the steam acted alternately on the two sides of the piston was one.