Caption: Dedication - Transportation Building Dedication Addresses
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there is no claim admitting of substantiation that he other than retarded the determining of the potency of steamAs a means of locomotion. As with some big men of our own times an acknowledgment of a single authoritative source was with him the sine quo non for peace and harmony. He was the authority on the steam engine and his dictum was that high pressure was not only dangerous, a menace to life and limb, but fallacious in theory and practice* Every- thing that could be accomplished with high pressure he insisted could be better done with low pressure and all the strength of his tremendous influence was brought to bear to enforce this as a principle and establish it as the law of the land* The latter is no exaggeration as through Watt's activity and aggressiveness he brought about enactments of Parliament* which, while operating to deter those who otherwise might have made great names for themselves, at the same time so protected hia own patents as to give him a practical monopoly. so to speak. It was a Watt's Trust, Those nearest to him, Dr. Robinson and Dr. Darwin, held progressive ideas of the utility of steam as a propelling power - for "wheel carriages11 as the first named wortiiy put it; the other good man going farther and growing more expressive in dubbing - what he tried his best to induce Boulton, Watt's partner, to prevail upon the latter to build - "a fiery chariot.n But the un- approachable and supremely stubborn James would have none of it, being then, 1769, oblivious to all things mechanical not relating to the perfection of his rotary engine.
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