James Watt summary

Among the pleasures to be derived from venturing through the early editions of Britannica is the one we think of as “being present at the creation.” Steam engines had been around as novelties for centuries, but the first practical ones were invented by the Englishmen Thomas Savery in 1698 and

Steam engine, machine using steam power to perform mechanical work through the agency of heat. (Read James Watt’s 1819 Britannica essay on the steam engine.) A brief treatment of steam engines follows. For full treatment of steam power and production and of steam engines and turbines, see Energy

Compass, in navigation or surveying, the primary device for direction-finding on the surface of the Earth. Compasses may operate on magnetic or gyroscopic principles or by determining the direction of the Sun or a star. The oldest and most familiar type of compass is the magnetic compass, which is

Tool, an instrument for making material changes on other objects, as by cutting, shearing, striking, rubbing, grinding, squeezing, measuring, or other processes. A hand tool is a small manual instrument traditionally operated by the muscular strength of the user, and a machine tool is a