Genre:

Short Fiction, Drollery

Subjects:

Steam-power, Engineers, Invention, Nationalism, War

People mentioned:

Archimedes

    Opens with John Bull proclaiming that 'steam has made England no longer an Island'. Punch tells Mrs Gerkins how, as a child, James Watt would be transfixed by the tunes and shapes caused by the steam emerging from his aunt's kettle. Believes Watt heard in 'the singing kettle the songs of the English Cyclops', who was making railways, carriages, saw-mills, and steam-engines, but then concealed the fact that he then saw in the steam the French invasion of Britain.