James Pickard was an English inventor. He modified the

Newcomen engine The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is sometimes referred to as the Newcomen fire engine (see below) or Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam being drawn into the cylinder, thereby creating ...

in a manner that it could deliver a rotary motion. His solution, which he patented in 1780, involved the combined use of a crank and a

flywheel A flywheel is a mechanical device that uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy, a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. In particular, a ...

James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) 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 f ...

's company

Boulton and Watt Boulton & Watt was an early British engineering and manufacturing firm in the business of designing and making marine and stationary steam engines. Founded in the English West Midlands around Birmingham in 1775 as a partnership between the Engl ...

circumvented Pickard's patent, with an invention of their employee

William Murdoch William Murdoch (sometimes spelled Murdock) (21 August 1754 – 15 November 1839) was a Scottish chemist, inventor, and mechanical engineer. Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton & Watt and worked for them in Cornwall, as a steam engin ...

, the so-called sun and planet gear, patented by Watt in 1781.

References

Nuvolari, A. / Verspagen, B. / von Tunzelmann, N. (2003) The Diffusion of the Steam Engine in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Paper to be presented at the 50th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, Philadelphia, 20–22 November 2003
Archived
in Archive.org. English inventors Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown {{England-engineer-stub