Born: 19 January 1736, Greenock, United Kingdom
Died: 25 August 1819, Heathfield Hall

James Watt was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen’s 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.

As Watt developed the concept of horsepower, the SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him.