James Watt: Genius in the Shadow of Self-Doubt

-Karthik Gurumurthy

James Watt is fascinating! What strikes me most is how human and contradictory he was – a brilliant inventor who transformed the world with the steam engine, yet someone plagued by self-doubt, hypochondria, and negativity.

It is interesting to read how Watt was unintentionally experimenting with dangerous substances. The volatile organic compounds from burning coal are actually anesthetic compounds that can depress the central nervous system, and high doses could even cause cardiac arrest! So Watt was quite the risk-taker, though as a hypochondriac, he’d have been mortified to know it.

I love the observation that “innovation is near-sighted” – Watt couldn’t see that his failures were actually stepping stones to breakthrough. His apparatus might have failed at first, but given what he knew at the time, we can hardly judge him for not seeing the bigger picture.

There’s a wealth of detail about his medical experiments, which seem wildly dangerous by today’s standards. He and his colleagues were producing carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and other gases without fully understanding what they were making. One of his servants was apparently “cured” of some condition by inhaling gas that made him spit blood! Watt himself described how inhaling air from red-hot chalk with water (likely carbon dioxide and carbonic acid) caused “violent vertigo” that could make someone “fall down in the sleep of forgetfulness.” Yet he considered this a medical treatment!

Watt collaborated with notable figures of his time – he worked with the physician Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather), corresponded with Humphry Davy, and they all treated various ailments with these experimental gases. Oxygen was reported to help a 60-year-old woman menstruate again and cure headaches. They even used carbon monoxide as a treatment!

His personal character comes through vividly in his letters. He suffered from chronic health problems his entire life, complaining about them as early as age 19 – headaches, weariness, and various pains. In one letter from April 1788, he writes about recovering from an illness with “a great hoarseness & dryness in my throat” and his “tongue the cough and has taken the flatness with it & is now quite gone.” He mentions taking rhubarb and tartar vitriol (sulfuric acid!) as medicine.

Despite his physical complaints, he was clearly brilliant in business. Instead of charging customers the full price for his steam engines upfront, he devised a clever premium system – customers paid one-third of the fuel cost savings that resulted from using his more efficient engines versus their old ones. That’s a remarkably modern business model!

His self-criticism is painfully familiar. In his forties, he described his memory as “poor and confused with stupidity.” He was much harder on himself than necessary, while friends and colleagues like Matthew Boulton recognized his genius. Lord Jeffrey compared Watt’s intellect to an elephant’s trunk – able to pick up a straw or uproot an oak with equal ease.

What I find most relatable is how his personal flaws existed alongside his genius. He suffered from deep anxiety and lack of courage, even running away from home as a teenager to escape family pressures. Yet this same troubled man revolutionized engineering and helped launch the industrial age. It’s a powerful reminder that innovation and human frailty often go hand in hand.