Matthew Boulton and his partner, james watt, developed the steam engine for industrial applications, most significantly for coin stamping. While Watt provided the engineering expertise necessary to redesign the steam engine, moving the site of steam condensation outside the piston to vastly improve efficiency, Boulton provided the entrepreneurial drive and unflagging enthusiasm to promote the new technology. Together, Boulton and Watt helped spur the Industrial Revolution, as their steam engines provided the power that drove many factories. Over the quarter-century that they held a patent for the steam engine, they built and sold more than 500 of them, placing them throughout the industrializing world.
Boulton was born on September 3, 1728, in Birmingham, England. He received little formal education, leaving school at the age of 14 to join his father’s silver-stamping business. By 1750, he had become a full partner in his father’s business, inheriting it in 1759. At first, he continued to manufacture buttons and buckles, but he soon expanded operations.
Inspired by the ingenious American inventor benjamin franklin’s visit to England in 1758, Boulton joined with the scientist Erasmus Darwin and his own doctor, William Small, to found the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which met on the bright nights of the full moon (for safer travel, and hence the name) to discuss scientific developments. Boulton concurrently developed his manufacturing interests, which always went hand in hand with his scientific interests. In 1761, he established the "Soho Manufactory," a "community" of factories loosely linked to perform successive steps in the manufacturing of different products, such as flatware and snuffboxes or other trinkets, all derived from common sheets of metal.
Boulton’s interest in steam engines was peaked in 1764, in response to Darwin’s suggestion of building a steam carriage. He further developed this interest upon meeting James Watt, a Scottish engineer, who shared his enthusiasm for steam engines. While conducting research at a Glasgow University laboratory in 1769, Watt studied a model of thomas newcomen’s steam engine and endeavored to improve upon the design. That same year, he joined with John Roebuck to patent his own steam engine design.
By 1773, Roebuck had gone bankrupt while still in debt to Boulton, who agreed to forgive loan repayments in exchange for the rights to Roebuck’s share of Watt’s steam engine patent. When Roebuck agreed, Watt and Boulton joined forces to extend the patent another 25 years, as of 1775. Watt further improved his design, patenting a double-action rotative steam engine in 1882 and the Watt engine in 1888. Without Boulton’s entrepreneurial skill, however, Watt’s steam engines would not have effected as significant an influence as they did— it was Boulton who placed the engines in the Cornish tin mines, driving the lapping machines that drained them for excavation.
The Royal Society recognized the influence wrought by Boulton on the world of science by inducting him into its fellowship in 1885, despite the fact that he never published a single scientific paper. The next year, Boulton applied the steam engine to his own silver-stamping business by designing steam-driven coinage machines that he patented in 1790. Before he even received this patent, however, the director of the United East India Company, Robert Wissett, contracted him to mint coinage for the colony of Bencoolen on the island of Sumatra. Boulton and Watt proceeded to mint coinage on contract to several other colonies under the auspices of the East India Company, including Bombay and Calcutta. In 1797, the Royal Mint followed suit by commissioning Boulton to reform its copper currency throughout the realm. Boulton steam engines continued to drive the machines in the Royal Mint for almost a century, remaining in operation until 1882.
By the time that Boulton passed his share of Boulton, Watt & Company along to his son, Matthew Robinson Boulton, in 1800, it had manufactured more than 500 steam engines. These engines drove factories, such as Sir richard arkwright’s textile mills, that figured significantly in the development of the Industrial Revolution. In his retirement, Boul-ton contributed to the social structure of his hometown, Birmingham, establishing a theater in 1807 in addition to founding the General Hospital and Birmingham Assay Office. Boulton died in Birmingham on August 18, 1809.
