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Well to be honest Im ashamed I knew about Watt and the steam engine and how the idea came to him in glasgow Green very near where I live and where theres a statue of the man but never this...n 1882, 63 years after Watt's death, the British Association gave his name to the unit of electrical power - and today James Watt's name is to be found written on almost every lightbulb in the world.http://scienceonstreets.phys.strath....ames_Watt.html
Swan and Edison are usually more synonymous with the invention of the light bulb itself, saying that Watt was a brilliant man, and one of many who heralded from Scotland. Scotland probably invented more things per head of population than just about anywhere on earth. Swan actually produced the first patented light buld and not Edison, however Edison went on to perfect Swan's patented bulb. Swan was from Sunderland which is not too far from Scotland.
Great info... I think back then there was so much stealing ideas went on as now of course... many it seems claimed to be the inventor of the light bulb.. and to be honest I only knew of Watt from the steam engine, funny though how his name was given to the watts on the bulbs... but will we ever know for sure .. heres one sites views.
You do not believe Thomas Edison should be credited as the inventor of the light bulb?
Definitely not, and a lot of what I look at in the book is trying to show that invention is a very complex social process. He was in a very competitive race where he borrowed—some said stole—ideas from other inventors who were also working on an incandescent bulb. What made him ultimately successful was that he was not a lone inventor, a lone genius, but rather the assembler of the first research and development team at Menlo Park, N.J. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articl...the-light-bulb
Perhaps more than any other single individual, Watt gave momentum to the upstart Industrial Revolution which transformed societies across the globe.
I think it's worth noting that he was of the generation that followed Newton and Galileo. Without their contributions, he may not have been able to achieve nearly as much.
...the British Association gave his name to the unit of electrical power...
Just a slight correction. The watt is a unit of power, it's not confined to electricity. And it's defined as one joule per second, a joule being a unit of work, and named after James Prescott Joule, another English physicist.
The joule is defined as the amount of work performed by utilizing one newton to move an object one meter (or metre, if you will).
And some of you might know a thing or two about some guy named Newton.
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James Watt and the light bulb
