James Watt’s 1778 Instruction Book: Around the Text

The Soho Manufactory in Birmingham is renowned, rightly, for its prodigious output of material objects and machines, heralding the nineteenth century industrial era. But it should also be recognised for its parallel ‘paper manufactory’. Boulton and Watt established one of the first engineering Drawing Offices in Britain; they maintained an archive of Pattern Books and produced numerous ephemeral printed items for publicity. James Watt’s 1778 Instruction Book is at first sight a modest production, a slim ephemeral volume of steel engraved images taken from Watt’s design drawings, and made in order to allow distant workmen and artisans to assemble a condensing steam engine according to Watt’s specifications. It is a user manual, and has few of the alluring visual qualities of the presentation drawings made back in Birmingham. Nonetheless, this booklet gained enormous significance, both then, during the ‘patent trials’ of the 1790s, when Boulton and Watt successfully defended their commercial hold on the condensing engine through an extended patent, by defeating (in the phrase of the time) the ‘piracy’ of rival firms. Also recently, as an element in debates initiated in the 1970s and continuing, as economic historians and scholars of technology studies alike have aimed to explain the hierarchies of knowledge and intellectual property at a time of apparently candid publication of former trade secrets. One final aspect to consider with reference to the supporting materials and activities created around the design, production, and promotion of this printed text is the relationship of such multiples to original design drawings in relation to the repeatability and reliability that was inherent in the promise of Watt’s technical expertise. This paper considers these issues raised by the instruction book in relation to its material and visual presence, and with reference to the construction of knowledge in scientific and technical visual culture