For ten years he went on contriving and inventing--with little hope
to cheer him, and with few friends to encourage him. He went on,
meanwhile, earning bread for his family by making and selling
quadrants, making and mending fiddles, flutes, and musical
instruments; measuring mason-work, surveying roads, superintending
the construction of canals, or doing anything that turned up, and
offered a prospect of honest gain. At length, Watt found a fit
partner in another eminent leader of industry--Matthew Boulton, of
Birmingham; a skilful, energetic, and far-seeing man, who
vigorously undertook the enterprise of introducing the condensing-
engine into general use as a working power; and the success of both
is now matter of history. {5}
Many skilful inventors have from time to time added new power to
the steam-engine; and, by numerous modifications, rendered it
capable of being applied to nearly all the purposes of manufacture-
-driving machinery, impelling ships, grinding corn, printing books,
stamping money, hammering, planing, and turning iron; in short, of
performing every description of mechanical labour where power is
required. One of the most useful modifications in the engine was
that devised by Trevithick, and eventually perfected by George
Stephenson and his son, in the form of the railway locomotive, by
which social changes of immense importance have been brought about,
of even greater consequence, considered in their results on human
progress and civilization, than the condensing-engine of Watt.
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