Cars are marketed today using the term horsepower. However, the term was created long before cars. Find out why James Watt invented the term.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those.
[Home Heating & Air Conditioning Ad]
Dave Young:
Stephen Semple, when you told me that today's episode was going to be about James Watt, the only James Watt I could think of was the guy, I think he was Secretary of Interior under Reagan, maybe. I mean, it was a long time ago, but I don't think that's probably who we're talking about today. Is it?
Stephen Semple:
No, we're going back even earlier than that.
Dave Young:
Even farther.
Stephen Semple:
See that light bulb? See that light bulb behind you?
Dave Young:
That, that Watt?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Here's the funny thing about wattage as a way of measuring electrical flow. He actually never coined that term.
Dave Young:
The original James Watt, the man who our 60 watt bulb is named after never coined the term wattage.
Stephen Semple:
No. It was actually a term that was coined 60 years after his death, and it was proposed by William Siemens of, yes, Siemens Electric.
Dave Young:
Oh, wow.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. In honor of James Watt saying, I think we should call this wattage. But, that happened 60 years after Watts's death.
Dave Young:
Okay, so it's a measure of, is it a measure of power?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, it's a measure of electricity used. James Watt was, actually what we'll learn from this, he was far too smart to think that that would be actually a good term. Where Watt was known for actually was not work with electricity, but he did a lot of work with steam power, and he basically created the principles that steam engines work under today.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
He was a really big deal, and here's how big a deal James Watt is in history. In May of 2009, the Bank of England announced that Watt and his partner Bolton were going to be on the 50-pound note. When you get your picture on a banknote, you're a big fricking deal.
Dave Young:
Oh, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
This podcast is business podcast, it's not an inventor podcast, and here's the reason why we want on a study James Watt.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
Between the period of 1780 and 1790, he received 76,000 pounds in royalties for his patents. That would be equivalent to around $200 million in today's dollar.
Dave Young:
That predates the industrial revolution, really.
Stephen Semple:
It is that actually at the very front end of the industrial revolution, and that was just on his patents. This wasn't actually on design work or selling of stuff, this was on the patents that he had put together around steam power.
Dave Young:
Wow, okay. What business was he in?
Stephen Semple:
Well, and this is what we're going to study. We're not going to study his inventions, but basically how he sold them and how he popularized them. Because, what we know is it takes a lot more than just build something, and they will come. We've talked about that in other podcasts. It's much more than that. This is what we're going to explore. James was born on January 19, 1736, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, which is in the west lowlands of Scotland. When he was 18, his mother died, and his father was very poor, and he decided, I'm going to travel to London to make my fortune. He traveled to London, and he got training as an instrument maker. Then he returned to Scotland,
