The name of James Watt is invariably associated with the invention of the steam engine and with little else.
It is not generally known that he was also responsible for numerous other less important but still useful contrivances.
Nor do many realize that one of his major discoveries belongs, because of its curious origin, in the chronicles of the strange and the incredible.
Within a few years after it was first conceived, James Watt's steam engine was a commercial success.
And in the year 1783, its inventor was enjoying both the income and the prestige to which his great scientific contribution entitled him.
It came, therefore, as something of a surprise to Dr. McCregor, the pastor of the local church, when Watt appeared at his door early one summer morning, quiet in the workman's overall.
I'd like to claim the church steeple.
The church steeple? What for, Mr. Watt?
It's an experiment I want to try. A crazy idea I got in my brain and I cannot get it out.
And I came by it in a crazy way.
What way was that?
I cannot tell you no for fear you'd laugh.
But if you let me claim, doctor, and if the experiment works, why then I'll tell you the queerest story you ever heard.
A few moments later, the inventor appeared carrying a large kettle in his hand.
Perched precariously at the very top of the steeple, he raised the kettle and, with a sudden gesture, overturned it.
Unable to restrain himself longer, Dr. McCregor ran down the porch steps and raced toward the church.
But even before he arrived there, James Watt had descended from the steeple.
The pastor found the famous man knee-deep in the waters of the moat, shouting excitedly.
It worked! Dr. McCregor, it worked!
I stumbled on a new scheme for making ammunition.
You drop molten lead and it turns into gunshots.
Yes, Dr. McCregor's church steeple proved to be the first shop tower ever used.
More than a century thereafter, Leighton Shop was the chief ammunition employed in the wars of Europe.
And even today, similar shop towers are still in operation.
But it is doubtful whether even their owners know the story that James Watt told Dr. McCregor that same morning.
The strange story of what had led him to his experiment.
But I do not see, Mr. Watt, how you knew the lead would disintegrate when you dropped it.
I came by the idea in a queer sort of way.
It was in a dream.
A dream?
A dream that kept coming back to me next after next after next.
I'd be standing in an open field, and all of a sudden the clouds would burst and the rain would start beating down around me.
Then I'd hold out my hand to feel the drops and to be hard on my hand like little balls of metal.
And I'd say to myself, why man, it is raining, living raindrops, and that's a queer thing indeed.
And then I'd wake, and the remembering of those drops wouldn't let me sleep again.
And so at last I said to myself, could it be that fallen lead disintegrates, as you call it, and forms the shape of gunshots?
And so I decided to find out, and I did, and that's all there is to it.
It is a strange thing I know. How would you explain it?
But neither the man of God nor any other man since has been able to explain James Watt's strange dream.
Had he unconsciously grasped the principle of his remarkable discovery and then projected it in the form of the rain symbol?
Or was the dream what he himself intimated it was?
A miracle, a miracle incredible but true.