| Description | Span date of drawings: 1778-1864
Dates of engines ordered: 1782-1803
Portfolios 1 to 244 contain drawings for engines that employed the sun and planet gear. The sun and planet gear was a mechanism for converting the reciprocating motion of the engine beam into rotative motion to power textile mills, grindstones, tilt hammers, rolling mills etc. Watt developed the sun and planet gear as an alternative to the crank, as there were technical advantages in using the sun and planet gear and fly wheels to generate rotative motion, and also as the crank was the subject of a patent taken out by James Pickard, dated 23 Aug. 1780. Watt included the sun and planet gear in his patent of 13 Feb. 1782, and the majority of sun and planet engines were built between 1784 and 1800. Pickard's patent expired in 1794, but Boulton & Watt continued to employ the sun and planet gear until around 1803.
Henry Hazleton arranged the portfolios in roughly chronological order, going by the earliest date he could find on the drawings. This arrangement holds for Portfolios 1 to 237, but Portfolios 238 to 244 are out of the chronological sequence. It is unclear why Hazleton left these until the end, but most contain large numbers of drawings or drawings for several engines for the same customer. Hazleton also amalgamated some original Drawing Office Books (portfolios) which contained drawings of different engines for the same customer. For example Portfolio 2 contains drawings for two separate engines for Henry Goodwyn & Co. which came originally from two separate books. However he was not consistent in this; for example Portfolio 63 contains the drawings for the Salford Twist Co.'s first engine, whereas the drawings for their other three engines can be found in Portfolio 242. He listed sun and planet engines in Section A of the Catalogue of Old Engines.
Note that the following portfolios in this series contain drawings for engines that are not sun and planet engines:
5/77: 9 horse power double-acting crank engine, 1795 (for H. P. Whately)
5/239a: "Double Battering Engine", 1778 (for John Wilkinson, not built)
5/239b: "Bradley Coal Engine", 1782 (for John Wilkinson, not built)
5/241c: 8 horse power double-acting crank engine, 1797 (for Hawkesbury Colliery)
5/242c: 100 horse power crank engine, 1800-1801 (for the Salford Twist Co.)
5/242d: 10 horse power crank engine, 1810 (for Philips & Lee)
Span date of drawings: 1789-1849
Dates of engines ordered: 1789-1849
Portfolios 1274 to 1278 contain drawings of engines that were mounted in boats to work pumps on canals, while Portfolio 1279 contains drawings of various engines mounted in boats to work dredging machinery. The firm sold various boat-mounted pumping engines in the 1790s, which they somewhat confusingly referred to as "boat engines."
They later applied various types of rotative engines to work pumping and dredging machinery; sun and planet, independent crank, bell crank and side lever engines. Sometimes the engine was also used to power the boat as well as the pumping or dredging machinery, for example the Calcutta dredge [see Pf. 1279e].
Henry Hazleton appears to have been unsure what to do with these portfolios in the 1890s, and omitted most of them from the Catalogue of Old Engines. He gathered the drawings of dredging engines together from other portfolios, for example the drawing of the Liverpool Docks "mud engine" [see Pf. 1279c] was removed from an original 'book' containing drawings of several 10 horse independent engines. He may have intended to add the dredging engines to the Dock & Harbour Engines, as he included the Genoese dredge [see Pf. 1279f] in the Catalogue, after the Dock & Harbour Engines at the end of Section F. However he was not consistent in his arrangement as he numbered some dredging engines among the Boat Engine portfolios, and he also mentioned dredging boats in a note at the end of the Boat Engines section.
He may have been intending to add the canal pumping engines to the Boat Engines, as at the end of the Boat Engines section, Section N, he wrote "Dredging Boats, Canal [pumping] Boats & Miscellaneous drawings not yet included but the 127 Portfolios include these." |
| Arrangement | The Drawings are sub-divided into series based on Henry Hazleton's 1890s arrangement. These series are listed below, with their corresponding Catalouge of Old Engines titles and sections. More detailed information on each series is given in the individual lists.
Sun and Planet Engines (originally "Engines of the Sun & Planet Type," Catalogue of Old Engines Section A)
Crank Engines (originally "Engines of the Crank Type," Section B)
Pumping and Canal Engines (originally "Canal Engines" and "Pumping Engines," Sections C and L)
Dock and Harbour Engines (Section D)
Vacuum and Blowing Engines (Section K)
Mints and Mint Engines (originally "Mint Engines and Machinery," Section E)
Bell Crank Engines (originally "Engines of the Small Side Lever Type," Section J)
Gas Lighting Apparatus (originally "Drawings of Gas Plants," Section G)
Independent Beam (Crank) Engines (originally "Engines of the Independent Type," Section I)
Side Lever Boat Engines for Land (originally "Engines of the Side Lever (Boat) Type, used on Land, Section H)
Water Works Engines (Section F)
Steam Boat Engines (originally "Boat Engines," Section N)
Boat-Mounted Pumping and Dredging Engines (omitted from the Catalogue of Old Engines)
General Boat Engine Drawings (omitted from the Catalogue of Old Engines)
Cornish Mine Engines (originally "Engines erected on Cornish Mines," Section M)
Boilers and Heating Apparatus
Higginson's Floors, Dickson's Propellors, Hays' Propellor Regulators
Engine Designs by James Watt, Bull and Hornblower's Engines, Dutch Windmill etc.
Additional Small Engines
Designs by William Murdock, Atmospheric and Other Engines, Drawings for Court Cases
Additonal Sugar Plantation Engines, Boilers etc.
James Watt & Co. Drawings
Unused and Unidentified Engine Drawings
Drawings of Components and Parts
Other Machinery made by Boulton & Watt
Soho Manufactory and Soho Foundry
Drawings of Mills, Other Firms' Products etc.
Soho House, Scientific Apparatus, James Watt's Lathe Engine etc.
Miscellaneous Drawings
(All the above series were originally covered by Section O of the Catalogue, "Miscellaneous Drawings:")
Additional Material from the Watt Room, not included in the Catalogue of Old Engines:
Old Portfolio Covers
The Steam Boat Box
More detailed information on each series is given in the individual lists, while reference numbers and covering dates will be found in the List which follows this Introduction. |
| AdminHistory | Early Drawings Assistants.
The drawings listed here are the "main series" of drawings, that is, the drawings which were placed in the Watt Room museum at Soho Foundry and which were re-arranged by Henry Hazleton and described in the "Catalogue of Old Engines." The mainly cover the period from the start of the firm in 1775 to the 1840s.
When Matthew Boulton and James Watt first went into business in 1775, Watt made all the drawings himself, at his home, with little full-time assistance, although he probably had some help from the firm's early engineers such as John Hall and Logan Henderson. His first dedicated assistant was William Playfair, who was recommended to Watt by Robert Small, and who joined at some point in 1777. Playfair seems to have left temporarily in 1778, before being recalled following Hall's dismissal from Soho. Playfair left Boulton & Watt's employment for good in 1781.
John Southern was appointed as Watt's assistant in June 1782. His appointment did not mark the creation of a formal "Drawing Office" per se, as he worked at Watt's house at Harper's Hill, but he does appear to have facilitated the keeping of formal records of drawing and ordering activities. Charles Pordern joined circa April 1787, having been recommended to Boulton by Samuel Wyatt.
Making and Keeping the Drawings.
Watt developed a systematic approach to making drawings. The first drawings to be made would be those of the engine house, followed by general elevations and plans of the engine and boiler, and then drawings of components such as the working gear, nozzles, pipes and so on. Drawings of the engine house would usually be sent to the client. General drawings of the engine were either sent to the client or to the engine erector who was to put up the engine. Drawings of components were sent to whichever foundry which was to make the part. Nearly all the drawings would be copied, and the set of copies would be placed in a portfolio for reference. These portfolios were somewhat confusingly referred to as "books" of drawings. James Watt's invention of the copying press made the task of copying drawings much less onerous, but he found that the thin unsized paper used for copying letters was not suitable for copying drawings, as it was too flimsy. Therefore drawings had to be copied onto normal drawing paper, which produced a reverse copy which could not be viewed the right way round by looking throught the paper, as it was not transparent. Therefore drawings had to be copied before the titles, captions and dimensions were added, and also all copies were marked "reverse" to remind the engineers that they were looking at a drawing that was the wrong way round.
Watt and Southern developed various practices to ensure that drawings were produced and organised in an orderly fashion. They began to number the portfolios as they were opened, resulting in a running chronological sequence. Southern kept a record of the portfolios, or a "List of Books" as he called it, in his "Blotting Book No. 1" (4/4). He began his numbering with portfolios opened in 1778, but he did not number any of the earlier portfolios. He also began to record the daily drawing activities in a diary-style book called the "Drawings Day Book" (4/145). The third major innovation was the assigning of individual letter codes to each drawing. These codes were recorded in the Drawings Day Book. Portfolios were also opened for drawings of particular parts, such as parallel motion, working gear and so on. This made it easier to refer back to previous drawings when preparing new ones - it was standard practice of Boulton & Watt to take elements from previous engines when planning new ones, and some drawings of components were used again and again, sometimes for up to ten engines. However, these component portfolios were not included in the numbering system. The practice also developed of re-using unwanted drawings and other scraps of paper such as the blank halves of letters for copy drawings and rough sketches.
Until Watt's patent expired in 1800, it was Boulton & Watt's practice to insist on the return of the original sets of drawings after a particular engine had been erected, indeed most of the original drawings were usually marked "This drawing is the property of Boulton & Watt who beg that it may be kept clean, not permitted to be copied and returned to them as soon as the engine is finished" or similar on the back. Not all the originals were returned, but those that were were added to the portfolio for that particular engine, as were any rough sketches or relevant notes.
The Drawing Office.
John Southern and the other drawings assistants continued to work at Watt's house at Harper's Hill until Watt moved to Heathfield in September/October 1790. A drawing office was set up in the engine firm's rooms at Soho Manufactory, and it was here that the porfolios of drawings and many other of the firm's records were kept until the engine firm left the Manufactory in 1851. Southern acted as the head of the Drawing Office; indeed the inventory of 30 September 1791 (Premises Records, MS 3147/9/8), the first to record the Drawing Office, describes the office as "Mr. Southern's Room" and includes in its contents large and small copy presses, three drawing tables, nine drawing boards and one deal board.
When John Southern died in 1815 he was replaced as head of the Drawing Office by William Creighton. When Creighton died early in 1831 he was replaced by William Bennett, who remained in the post for only one year before leaving to set up an engineering partnership in Manchester. Bennett was replaced by Gilbert Hamilton, the son of James Watt's nephew Robert Hamilton. Gilbert had first joined the Drawing Office in 1821. Gilbert Hamilton became a partner in the firm, then called Boulton Watt & Co., in 1840 following the withdrawal of Matthew Robinson Boulton from the partnership. However Hamilton appears to have retained his role as head of the Drawing Office.
The role of head of the Drawing Office was not rigidly defined, and all the incumbents also acted as travelling engineers on numerous occasions. James Watt and later James Watt Jr. would also frequently work in the Drawing Office. Rules for the assistants were sometimes set down - James Watt drew up a "Guide for Copy Drawings" in 1785 and Watt Jr. drew up a proposed set of rules in 1828 (4/152).
The practices established by Southern - the numbering of portfolios, the coding of drawings, the keeping of the Drawings Day Book and the keeping of portfolios of drawings of standard components were continued by Creighton, Bennett and Hamilton. One record that was instituted by either Creighton or Hamilton was an index to the portfolios or "books" (4/149). It covers all the books of drawings up to the late 1850s / early 1860s. It is arranged alphabetically by customer, each entry giving the power of the engine, followed by the customer's name or the name of a steam boat, then the number of the "book" in which the drawings for that customer will be found. This index also assigned numbers to the earliest portfolios of drawings which had been opened before Southern began his numbering.
Later History of the Drawing Office.
The Drawing Office moved to Soho Foundry when James Watt & Co., as the firm had become, vacated their premises at Soho Manufactory in 1851. The later history of the Drawing Office and its practices is more obscure, partly due to the fact that fewer records survive. At some point, probably in the early 1860s, the chronological sequence of portfolios was brought to an end, and the portfolios set aside as historical records. The details of new system are not known, but the list of boat engines that Henry Hazleton drew up for reference in The Watt Room (MS 3147/10/11/6) records several some portfolio numbers between 1 and 18 containing boat engine drawings dating between 1845 and 1873. Moreover, in the latter half of the 19th century more and more drawings were made in the London office but again, how these were kept in relation to the drawings made at Soho is not known, as no formal records of how James Watt & Co. kept their drawings survive.
However many of the earlier practices endured. Drawings continued to be assigned individual letter codes. The Drawings Day Books were kept up until at least 1883 (4/146, 4/147). It appears that three types of portfolio were kept: drawings of individual components or types of machinery, for example "Base Plates", "Slide Valves", "Mint Machinery"; portfolios for individual customers, for example "Banbury Water Works"; and portfolios of various types of engine, for example "Blowing Engines". Not all customers had individual portfolios, especially if their engines were small standard types. Therefore drawings for individual customers of this period could be spread throughout several component portfolios, of which a great deal more use was now being made. A Drawings Ledger was also opened to record what drawings were being made for a particular engine (4/148). New materials were also introduced - glazed linen, tracing paper, and later blueprint paper, but the basic function of the Drawing Office, to produce originals and copies of drawings of engines and components, remained the same. |