Matthew Boulton (1728–1809)

The name Boulton & Watt is among the most famous of the industrial revolution. The company was a partnership between the inventor and steam-engine designer James Watt and the businessman and inventor Matthew Boulton. It became the most influential engineering business in the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and revolutionised the application of power in industry.

Boulton was born at Birmingham in the English midlands, where his father owned a business making small metal goods. He left school at 15 and at 17 invented a technique for inlaying enamel. From 1757 he led his father’s business, increasing its success by clever marketing. He had substantial capital from his wife’s family and in 1761 he began building a large water-powered factory on a new site at Soho near Birmingham to manufacture small metal goods such as buttons, belt buckles and clock parts. He developed new lines such as silver-plate and ormolu vases.

Boulton met James Watt in 1768 and took a share in his patent for the separate condenser, then lobbied the government successfully to extend it by more than a decade. In 1775, he and Watt created their formal partnership to design and install steam engines, typically at mines and blast furnaces. The parts were made by others under their supervision and they took a royalty on fuel savings but in 1796 they opened a specialist foundry to make the engines themselves. Boulton’s vision of the potential of steam power and his funding for development led to further advances, notably rotary motion, which allowed steam power to be applied to rolling mills, textile machinery and a multitude of other purposes. Between 1775 and 1800 the firm installed approximately 450 engines in Britain and Europe.

The Soho manufactory was the leading engineering company in the world for a generation, making not only steam engines but pumping equipment, gas plant and other equipment devised by Watt, Boulton and William Murdoch. Boulton applied new technologies in other parts of his business, establishing a separate Soho Mint for making coinage and medals using steam-powered presses. He won a contract to provide copper coinage for the government in 1797 and supplied equipment for the Royal Mint.

Boulton’s businesses became a model of industrial efficiency, quality control and systematic production. In the 1770s, he introduced a pioneering health insurance scheme for workers, funded by compulsory contributions from wages. In the 1780s, he joined the campaign to abolish the slave trade. He also supported the creation of a hospital and theatre for the fast-growing city. His home, Soho House, hosted meetings of the influential group of scientists known as the Lunar Society, which included Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, Benjamin Franklin and Erasmus Darwin as well as Boulton, Watt, Murdoch and others.

Boulton retired due to ill health in 1800. His house is preserved and many items made by Boulton & Watt are displayed in the Birmingham Science Museum.