BOULTON & WATT 250TH ANNIVERSARY

 
Boulton and Watt 50 pound note

James Watt left Glasgow – he had worked as a technician at the University of Glasgow -- in May of 1774 and arrived in Birmingham on the last day of that month – so, almost exactly 250 years ago! The engineering genius of the Scottish Enlightenment shook hands with Matthew Boulton, one of the pioneers of English industrialization.

James Watt is the more famous name – well-known to anyone who has ever checked the brightness of a lightbulb. Watt did not invent the steam engine, but improved it in ways that made it central to the Industrial Revolution.

Matthew Boulton was not only a businessman and industrial innovator. He was part of a circle of intellectuals – the Lunar Society, that met monthly to discuss wide-ranging topics. Members included Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin. Boulton might have led the life of a gentleman of leisure, thanks to inheritances, but he had idealistic notions of business:

I am partial to trade in as much as it extends a man's powers of doing good and I would rather be distinguished as the greatest Manufacturer in Europe than as a Count of the Holy Empire.

Anyway, Watts's steam engine and Boulton's business ambition would eventually revolutionize the manufacture of money.

 

The best book on the numismatic history of Boulton & Watt:

Richard Doty, The Soho Mint and the Industrialization of Money (Smithsonian, 1998)

Also excellent:

Sue Tungate, Matthew Boulton and the Soho Mint: Copper to Customer (Brewin Books, 2020)

 

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