rformed to satisfaction. But being then very much engaged with
other business, I neglected to take a patent immediately, and
having employed a blackguard of the name of Cartwright (who was
afterward hanged), about this model, he, when in company with
some of the same sort who worked at Wasborough's mill, and were
complaining of its irregularities and frequent disasters, told
them he could put them in a way to make a rotative motion which
would not go out of order nor stun them with its noise, and
accordingly explained to them what he had seen me do. Soon after
which, John Steed, who was engineer at Wasborough's mill, took a
patent for a rotative motion with a crank, and applied it to
their engine. Suspicions arising of Cartwright's treachery, he
was strictly questioned, and confessed his part in the
transaction when too late to be of service to us.

Overtures were made by Wasborough to exchange patents and work together,
which Watt scornfully rejected. He writes:

Though I am not so saucy as many of my countrymen, I have enough
innate pride to prevent me from doing a mean action because a
servile prudence may dictate it ... I will never meanly sue a
thief to give me my own again unless I have nothing left behind.

His blood was up. No dealings with rascals!

July, 1781, Watt had finished his studies, went to Penryn, and swore he
had "invented certain new methods of applying the vibrating or
reciprocating motion of steam or fire engines to produce a continued
rotation or circular motion round an axis or centre, and thereby to give
motion to the wheels of mills or other machines."

Watt proceeded to work out the plan of the rotary engine, stimulated by
numerous inquiries for steam engines for driving all kinds of mills. He
found that "the people in London, Manchester and Birmingham are
steam-mill mad."

During many long years of trial with their financial troubles, inferior
and drunken workmen, disappointing engines, Cornish mine-owners to annoy
him, it is highly probable that Watt only found relief in retiring to
his garret to gratify his passion for solving difficult mechanical
problems. We may even imagine that from his serious mission--the
development of the engine--which was ever present, he sometimes flew to
the numerous less exhausting inventions for recreation, as the weary
student flies to fiction. His mind at this period seems never to hav