«

Talking about steam engines and patents:

In late 1764, while repairing a small Newcomen steam
engine, the idea of allowing steam to expand and condense in
separate containers sprang into the mind of James Watt. He spent
the next few months in unceasing labor building a model of the
new engine. In 1768, after a series of improvements and substantial
borrowing, he applied for a patent on the idea, requiring him to
travel to London in August. He spent the next six months working
hard to obtain his patent. It was finally awarded in January of the
following year. Nothing much happened by way of production
until 1775. Then, with a major effort supported by his business
partner, the rich industrialist Matthew Boulton, Watt secured an
Act of Parliament extending his patent until the year 1800. The
great statesman Edmund Burke spoke eloquently in Parliament in
the name of economic freedom and against the creation of
unnecessary monopoly – but to no avail.1 The connections of
Watt’s partner Boulton were too solid to be defeated by simple
principle.

Once Watt’s patents were secured and production started, a
substantial portion of his energy was devoted to fending off rival
inventors. In 1782, Watt secured an additional patent, made
“necessary in consequence of ... having been so unfairly
anticipated, by [Matthew] Wasborough in the crank motion.”2
More dramatically, in the 1790s, when the superior Hornblower
engine was put into production, Boulton and Watt went after him
with the full force of the legal system.3
During the period of Watt’s patents the U.K. added about
750 horsepower of steam engines per year. In the thirty years
following Watt’s patents, additional horsepower was added at a
rate of more than 4,000 per year. Moreover, the fuel efficiency of
steam engines changed little during the period of Watt’s patent;
while between 1810 and 1835 it is estimated to have increased by a
factor of five.4

After the expiration of Watt’s patents, not only was there
an explosion in the production and efficiency of engines, but steam
power came into its own as the driving force of the industrial
revolution. Over a thirty year period steam engines were modified
and improved as crucial innovations such as the steam train, the
steamboat and the steam jenny came into wide usage. The key
innovation was the high-pressure steam engine – development of
which had been blocked by Watt’s strategic use of his patent.

That’s the opening from Chapter 1 of Boldron & Levine’s “Against
Intellectual Monopoly”, which you can download and read from here
<http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm>.