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DOM:Today, we bring you a man who had a very special kind of genius.

DICK:He took an invention that had been around for more than 50 years, the steam engine, and made it a shedload better.

DOM:Yeah, he also made a shedload of cash.

DICK:So good was he, that you can still find his face on a 50 quid note, look.

DOM:Yeah, and, AND, also, the first letter of his surname you will find stamped on pretty much every lightbulb around the house.

DICK:Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we give you–

DOM:James watt.

WATTS:Alright boys.

DICK:'James Watt was born in 1736 in Grennock, Scotland.' The story goes that as a boy he was fascinated by the steam pouring out of a boiling kettle.'

DOM:'When he grew up, he became a mechanical engineer and started to eagerly explore how steam engines worked.'

DICK:'James Watt's genius was to take the steam engine an invention that had been around for many years and make it work better and more efficiently than anyone else had managed and make himself a shedload of money in the process.

DOM:'Watt's engines were the first to power big machines in factories, paving the way for the industrial revolution.'

DICK:'This is a Newcomen steam engine. They were used to pump water out of mines and were invented nearly 25 years before James Watt was even born.'

DOM:And you see, Watt had his first bit of genius inspiration when he was given a small Newcomen engine to repair.

DICK:Yeah and while he was doing this he came up with an idea for his own steam engine that would be even better than the Newcomen engine.

DOM:Hang on a minute, back track a bit. I'm having problems just piecing it all together anyway.

DICK:Yeah I mean, how does something as flimsy as steam move big slabs of metal about like we saw with the steam engine?

DOM:Yeah I know, if only Fran, our resident genius scientist were here to tell us–

DOM:Oh hey, Fran–

FRAN:This is my model of a steam engine.

DOM:Doesn't look anything like a steam engine.

FRAN:Well we've got a sealed chamber at the bottom and a moveable plunger at the top.

DOM:Alright, so this plunger's like the piston or something?

FRAN:Yeah, exactly and we've got a little bit of water in the bottom. I'm gonna heat up that water, some of it will turn into steam and let's just see what happens.

FRAN:Goggles on.

DOM:Oh, hey!

ALL:Wow.

DOM:Look at that!

DICK:Good work. 'When the heated water turns to steam, it pushes the plunger up.'

DOM:'And when the steam cools and turns back to water

DOM:'the plunger is pulled back down again.

DOM:Oh hey, there it goes look!

DICK:Yes.

DOM:It's going down.

FRAN:And the same pushes and pulls can move something as strong as metal. And I've got something to prove it.

FRAN:So over here I've got a can that's got a little bit of water in it and that water is boiling away and producing lots of steam.

DOM:'Fran's an expert, this is not something to be messed with at home.'

FRAN:OK, I'm gonna dunk it in this ice water here.

FRAN:And let's cool it down as quickly as possible

FRAN:so dump that ice on it.

DICK:More ice, more ice.

FRAN:More ice, more ice. Dump it on top, dump it on top. Ahh!

DICK:Brilliant! Look at that!

DOM:'That sudden cooling of the can turned the steam back into water really quickly, creating what's called a vacuum. A powerful sucking force, strong enough to crush metal.'

DICK:'But back to James Watt and his genius ideas for improving steam engines. As we've seen, these engines were a new way of getting lots of power 250 years ago.'

DOM:'But they used an incredible amount of coal as fuel. Watt reckoned he could do a lot better so he invented his own steam engine.'

DICK:'And if you want to see what he came up with then there's no better place than this - the Crofton Pumping station in Wiltshire.'

PUMPING STATION WORKER:What we're looking at here, is James Watt's separate condenser - his most important invention.

PUMPING STATION WORKER:The original engine by Thomas Newcomen you had to heat up the cylinder and cool it down every time the engine works which is incredibly inefficient.

PUMPING STATION WORKER:And what James Watt did, he said, "I'll leave that bit hot and I'll put the cold bit in here."

OK, so the engine stays hot all the time -

PUMPING STATION WORKER:That's right.

DICK:saving money, genius.

DICK:'In fact, Watt's brilliant separate condenser meant his steam engines used 75% less coal than other engines. His engines were also more powerful.'

5600:04:23:24 00:04:31:09DOM:'Together that meant they could be used to power all sorts of different machines in factories across the world. Genius.'

WATTS:Aye, it was pretty clever wasn't it?

DICK:'But Watt's genius was about more than clever machines.'

DICK:Back in Watt's time, horses did a lot of the jobs that machines do for us today.

DOM:So Watt had to try and prove that his steam engines could doeverything that a horse could.

DICK:His answer was to come up with a measurement of power that we still use today, horsepower.

DOM:Ta Da! Come on the buddy.

DICK:Giddy up.

DOM:Giddy up. Aah!

DICK:'In those days, one of the jobs horses did was to lift coal out of coal mines.

DICK:'Watt worked out that your average horse could shift 150kg of coal up a mineshaft, a distance of 30m over one minute. He called that, one horsepower.'

DICK:Stop Billy. Billy stop, stop, stop.

DOM:Ay, ay, ay, for goodness sake. Stop it.

DICK:I think we need something with a lot more horsepower.

DICK:This Jaguar racing car can get to a top speed of 167mph

DOM:Yeah that's cause it's got an incredibly powerful engine. 265 horsepower.

DICK:'So, what does all that horsepower feel like?

DICK:'This is terrifyingly fast. These engines are way more powerful than anything from Watt's day.'

DICK:Seriously, that was one of the maddest things I've ever done.

DICK:Now it's not just engine power where our genius James Watt left his mark.

DOM:Oh no. We use his very name Watt, as a way of measuring electrical power. For example, the bulb inside here it's a 60 watt.

DICK:And our cameraman Pat, is using a lamp there that's 40 watts of power so that you can see us.

DOM:Yeah, so there you go, when it comes to measuring power, Watt is your man.

DICK:Genius.

WATTS:Too kind boys, too kind.