James Watt's Workshop

The room stayed sealed for more than a century. In 1924 the museum removed the entire contents, including the door, the window and the floorboards, and reconstructed the space in London; the display you see now was rebuilt and reopened in 2011 after every one of the eight thousand four hundred objects was catalogued. Look for the two copying machines, which Watt designed to reproduce busts and medallions mechanically, and for the plaster casts of faces he was trying to reduce. There are packets of chemicals, letters, a bust of Watt himself, and the kind of everyday mess that no museum would normally keep.

The workshop matters because it shows the private side of a public figure. Watt was a compulsive experimenter who never quite stopped, and the objects reveal his interests ranging far beyond steam. It is also a rare survival: very few working spaces from the eighteenth century exist anywhere with their contents intact. A memorable detail is the sculpture copying machine, which Watt hoped would let anyone own a marble bust, and which he was still improving in his eighties.

Did You Know? The attic stayed locked for a hundred and five years after Watt died, with dust, tools and half finished experiments left exactly where he put them.