The Invention of the Steam-Engine

James Watt, the grandson of a teacher of mathematics, and the son of a shipwright merchant, of Greenock, was born in 1736. On the advice of a Glasgow Professor, he was sent to London in 1755 to be apprenticed to a mathematical instrument maker. ¹⁵⁰ However, on arriving in London, he discovered that the seven years’ apprenticeship rule of the gild was largely insisted upon, and it was only with difficulty that he could find any one who would take him for so short a time as a year. This was finally arranged, and a Mr. Morgan was to give him a year’s instruction for twenty guineas. ¹⁵¹