History
James Watt designed his first governor in 1788 following a suggestion from his business partner Matthew Boulton. It was a conical pendulum governor and one of the final series of innovations Watt had employed for steam engines. James Watt never claimed the centrifugal governor to be an invention of his own. Centrifugal governors were used to regulate the distance and pressure between millstones in windmills since the 17th century. It is therefore a misunderstanding that James Watt is the inventor of this device.
A giant statue of Watt's governor stands at Smethwick in the English West Midlands. It is known as the flyball governor.
Another kind of centrifugal governor consists of a pair of masses on a spindle inside a cylinder, the masses or the cylinder being coated with pads, somewhat like a drum brake. This is used in a spring-loaded record player and a spring-loaded telephone dial to limit the speed.
Read more about this topic: Centrifugal Governor
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)