James Watt summary
Below is the article summary. For the full article, see James Watt on the steam engine.
steam engine Summary
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 Summary
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 Summary
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
Scottish Enlightenment Summary
Scottish Enlightenment, the conjunction of minds, ideas, and publications in Scotland during the whole of the second half of the 18th century and extending over several decades on either side of that period. Contemporaries referred to Edinburgh as a “hotbed of genius.” Voltaire in 1762 wrote in