History
The idea of its genesis using links is contained in a letter Watt wrote to Matthew Boulton in June 1784.
I have got a glimpse of a method of causing a piston rod to move up and down perpendicularly by only fixing it to a piece of iron upon the beam, without chains or perpendicular guides and one of the most ingenious simple pieces of mechanics I have invented.The context of Watt's innovation has been described by C. G. Gibson:
- During the Industrial Revolution, mechanisms for converting rotary into linear motion were widely adopted in industrial and mining machinery, locomotives and metering devices. Such devices had to combine engineering simplicity with a high degree of accuracy, and the ability to operate at speed of lengthy periods. For many purposes approximate linear motion is an acceptable substitute for exact linear motion. Perhaps the best known example is the Watt four bar linkage, discovered by the Scottish engineer James Watt in 1784.
Read more about this topic: Watt's Linkage
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