Memorials of the lineage, early life, education and development of the genius of James Watt

200 MEMORIALS OF
my health do not permit me to enter fully into the subject of your
letter. The contrivance you mention does not seem to me entirely
new. Clocks have been made which have been wound by the action
of the tide, by running water, by the rise and fall of the barometer,
and, I believe, by the wind ; and watches which have been wound up
by the motion of the person who carried them, — but all these methods
have, for some reason or other, been found more curious than useful.
I have seen more than one excellent clock, which has drawn upon a
piece of vellum, changed annually, the rise and fall of the barometer ;
and there is somewhere, I believe, in some of the early volumes of
the Memoirs of the French Academy, descriptions of clocks to keep
register of the directions and force of the wind, and various other
meteorological matters. I conceive that an ingenious mechanic would
not find great difficulty in executing the machine you mention ; but
it would occupy much time and attention, and would be expensive,
and I doubt whether its utility would be commensurate to these
circumstances.
" If, however, you should think your ideas worthy of being fol-
lowed any further, after making proper drawings, I would recommend
a model 1 to be made of a tolerable size before you proceed further. —
I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, James Watt."
The circumstance, however, of so much ingenuity being exhibited
in the complicated contrivance, by one of his townsmen, did not escape
the reflective observation of the great mechanician, and originated a
train of events important to the community in general. Being in
Greenock some days subsequent to the writing of the above letter,
1 This was Watt's ultimate or rather initiatory the earliest possible moment, were to reduce it toy
test for all inventions and fondly cherished " im- practice. It would save infinite disappointment,
provements." It was that which he applied and often profitless waste of money as well as
rigidly in every instance, in his own case ; and it time, and disburthen the arts of much that hardly
would he well if all speculators in mechanics, at belongs to their loftier province.