Currently reading... and I highly recommend the book and the WATER Exhibit at the ROM (even you can buy the book there!)
"In 1763 a twenty-seven-year-old instrument maker named James Watt repaired a model of a Newcomen steam engine owned by the University of Glasgow. Britain was in the grip of a dire fuel famine resulting from the early deforestation of its country side, and many of the primitive engines invented by Thomas Newcomen a half century earlier were working to pump floodwater from coal mines so that more coal could be excavated as a substitute fuel. While repairing the Newcomen machine, Watt had been startled by its inefficiency. Filled with the spirit of scientific inquiry then going on in the Scottish Enlightenment, he determined to try to improve its capacity to harness steam energy. Within two years he had a much-more-efficient design, and by 1776 was selling the world's first modern steam engine.
James Watt's improved steam engine was a turning point in history. It became the seminal invention of the Industrial Revolution"
(Solomon, Pg.1)
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