INVENTOR ESCOCÉS

The most advanced students carried out three activities in English about Scotland:

1.- An inventor

2.- Sports

3.- The mystery of Loch Ness

Research is sought and it is in English as the school wants to be bilingual and is already preparing children to learn L2 in Scottish culture.

                                                          James Watt´s workshop (1924)
This is the workshop of James Watt, an inventor born in Scotland in 1736. He’s often credited with inventing the steam engine – though in actual fact, he improved on one which had already been developed. He’s seen as a key figure in the Industrial Revolution.
 Curators at the Science Museum in London have reassembled the workshop of 18th century inventor James Watt, so people can see what it was like.

 Here’s the BBC’s science correspondent, Tom Fielden says about Watt:

http://wsdownload.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/pdf/2011/03/110331095234_110331_6min_watts_workshop.pdf


"When Watt died in 1819, this workshop was locked up and its contents left pretty much undisturbed until the 1920s when it was more or less picked up lock, stock and barrel by the Science Museum and put into storage. It’s been a long wait, but the contents, a regular cornucopia of gadgets, tools, contraptions, you name it, have all been painstakingly reassembled here in the main hall of the Science Museum. I think, really, it’s its spiritual home if nowhere else."

In adition to this, the Curator of Mechanical Engineering at the Science Museum, Ben Russell, says:

" It’s an absolutely astonishing… it’s a treasure trove, really. We actually counted 8,430 objects, and it’s a complete physical record of Watt’s entire working life and interests, going back to the 1750s. So it’s unparalleled anywhere. But really what the workshop does, it shows the engine, and there are some fragments about the engine, but it shows a lot of his other projects as well, from chemistry to pottery, instrument making, even musical instrument making. So it shows how diverse a bloke he was." 

Besides,  Andrew Nahum, the Curator of Innovation Curator at London’s Science Museum, claims:

"He didn’t just do steam, he was a potter, he built bridges and harbours and canals. He was, if you like, a one man innovation centre."