“I CAN THINK OF NOTHING ELSE BUT THIS MACHINE”: On this day (N.S.) in 1736, James Watt was born. He did not invent the steam engine. But the improvements he made on Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine were so significant that the invention of the Watt Steam Engine was arguably the act that began the Industrial Revolution.

P.S. Heriot-Watt University in Scotland has forever linked Watt’s name with mine … or, more accurately, with somebody else with a first initial G and the surname Heriot.