Jim Carruth, Glasgow’s official poet, thinks of the youthful James Watt, the great inventor, in one of his poems prompted by the extraordinary range of exhibits in Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum. Hamish Whyte’s contribution below is self-explanatory.
SPENDING TIME WITH MODEL
NEWCOMEN STEAM ENGINE
The young instrument maker is left alone
with the task of repairing this small model.
Full scale it pumps water out of coal mines
allowing the men to dig deeper underground.
He is well aware how steam from a small boiler
should escape to fill the cylinder above it,
where a piston shifts the linked arch head
of the pivoting beam and lowers the pump rod.
From there cold water injected into the cylinder
will condense the steam creating a partial vacuum.
The greater pressure outside the cylinder
pushes the piston down, lifting the pump rod up.
He revels in the intricate detail of the process
but as a witness to its inefficient beauty
he questions the inevitable loss, the cooling.
This model after all is about the learning.
REMAINS
We love clues
to the invisible.
From a workman’s hands
imprinted in concrete
on the Dundas Street
pavement
to this broken
terracotta tile
found near the Antonine
Wall bearing
the unmistakable mark
of a dog’s paw.
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