The Aha! Moment by David Jones

Author:David Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2012-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

8

Rotating Things

One of the purest examples of an idea suddenly coming from the subconscious realm of the Random-Ideas Generator to the conscious mind was that of James Watt (see chapter 1). His idea for improving the steam engine came to him suddenly during a stroll on Glasgow Green in 1765; but it took him years of hard engineering effort to make it work. Furthermore, as Nicolas Carnot later noted (chapter 15), his cold external condenser is a direct counterpart to a steam engine’s hot external boiler. Yet that inspiration of James Watt was crucially important. He is rightly known as the father of the steam engine. Arthur C. Clarke extols the steam engine, with the crank and valve gear on its rotating wheel, as the most visually appealing of rotating machines. In my TV career, I have also devised visually appealing rotating machines. Here are some of them.

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