James Watt.

Just inside the main entrance to the Heriot-Watt University are some toilets; an essential piece of information to the geriatric cyclist with a weak bladder. While I admit to the former, the latter has not shown its face in the TD household yet – though when it does, I will probably have forgotten that there are toilets here. While others were availing themselves of the facilities, I was renewing my acquaintance with Mr Watt whose effigy stands outside the entrance, and whose picture is a contender for the competition to test our members' knowledge of where they have seen some local landmarks.
 
Like Newton, whose reputation is blighted for ever by the presence of a fictitious apple, Watt’s is stained by his mother’s (or possibly his aunt’s) kettle. Watt is also credited, in the popular consciousness, with inventing the steam engine; he is no less remarkable for not having achieved that feat. It was Newcomen who developed the first practical steam engine though he was one of a line of engineers who made progressive improvements to the design from the first prototype. Watt’s contributions were first to incorporate a separate condenser which increased the efficiency by 66%, there then followed refinements that further increased the efficiency and finally he converted the engine's output from an oscillating beam whose main use was to operate pumps, to a rotary motion which could be used to operate a drive belt or provide locomotion.
 
It is fitting that Watt’s name is associated with this, the world’s first mechanics institute.