which did not arrive until 1763, and began his own
experiments in 1761. How did he obtain the necessary appliances and
apparatus, one asks. The answer is easy. He made them. Apothecaries'
vials were his steam boilers, and hollowed-out canes his steam-pipes.
Numerous experiments followed and much was learnt. Watt's account of
these is appended to the article on "Steam and the Steam Engine" in the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica," ninth edition.

Detailed accounts of Watt's numerous experiments, failures,
difficulties, disappointments, and successes, as one after the other
obstacles were surmounted, is not within the scope of this volume, these
being all easily accessible to the student, but the general reader may
be interested in the most important of all the triumphs of the
indefatigable worker--the keystone of the arch. The Newcomen model
arrived at last and was promptly repaired, but was not successful when
put in operation. Steam enough could not be obtained, although the
boiler seemed of ample capacity. The fire was urged by blowing and more
steam generated, and still it would not work; a few strokes of the
piston and the engine stopped. Smiles says that exactly at the point
when ordinary experimentalists would have abandoned the task, Watt
became thoroughly aroused. "Every obstacle," says Professor Robison,
"was to him the beginning of a new and serious study, and I knew he
would not quit it until he had either discovered its worthlessness or
had made something of it." The difficulty here was serious. Books were
searched in vain. No one had touched it. A course of independent
experiments was essential, and upon this he entered as usual, determined
to find truth at the bottom of the well and to get there in his own way.
Here he came upon the fact which led him to the stupendous result. That
fact was the existence of latent heat, the original discoverer of which
was Watt's intimate friend, Professor Black. Watt found that water
converted into steam heated five times its own weight of water to steam
heat. He says:

Being struck with this remarkable fact (effect of latent heat),
and not understanding the reason of it, I mentioned it to my
friend, Dr. Black, who then explained to me his doctrine of
latent heat, which he had taught some time before this period
(1764); but having myself been occupied with the pursuits of
business, if I had heard of it I had not attended to it, when I
thus stumbled