To me the most touching item in James Watt’s workshop is his son’s trunk. Gregory died of consumption at only 27 years old. The trunk is full of his schoolwork; beautiful paintings, drawings, diagrams and page upon page of his lessons and notes, in immaculate copperplate writing. It is a poignant reminder that the genius engineer was as human as the rest of us. Quite apart from his own bad health, his first wife died in childbirth and only one of his […]