The Steam Engine as Chemistry

Seeing the Chemical Steam Through the Elistorical Fog Watt s Steam Engine as Chemistry) Annals of Science, 65 (2008), pp. 47-72. 

My point about Watt s chemistry, then, is a simple but little-heeded one. To understand its character and substance we need to assess the way that Watt drew upon a series of collaborative relationships, a number of them connected directly with practical ventures. First, we should look to his involvement with the Black tradition and the resources available to him from predecessors such as Boerhaave, Cullen, Eller and the like. From these resources, and from his own experimental work on the properties of steam (in the laboratory and, it must not be forgotten, in the large through the actual construction and operation of engines), Watt developed ideas about water and steam in which they were compounded with heat. This re-contextualization of Watt s chemistry makes it clear that throughout his active work on the steam engine, and consistent with... 

In the eighteenth century, the industrial revolution could not have taken place without chemistry. The industrial revolution was built on the steam engine, and steam engines required energy—energy obtained from fuels through chemical processes known as combustion reactions. 

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