ABSTRACT
The water controversy at various times assumed the nature of a legal contest, with cases being made for the prosecution and the defence of the claimed priority of James Watt. The method discourse that Lord Brougham endorsed might be characterized as 'cautious induction'. Both Brougham and James Patrick Muirhead defended rights to invention and scientific discovery rights in the same kind of way. Brougham made a number of investigations into the water controversy. Muirhead's first major literary project with Watt Jr was his translation of Arago's Eloge of Watt. The link between the water question and concerns about patents was a very real one for Muirhead. Francis Jeffrey was less centrally involved in the water controversy than the other two advocates. Jeffrey conceded that Watt's discovery was 'somewhat obscured and embarrassed' by his adhesion to phlogistic doctrine.
