In the year 1800 he invented the water-main which was laid down by the Glasgow Water-Works Company across the Clyde. The joints were spherical and articulated, like those of the lobster's tail. His workshop, of which a sketch is hereafter given, as drawn by the artist Skelton, was in the garret of his house, and was well supplied with tools and all kinds of laboratory material. His lathe and his copying-machine were placed before the window, and his writing-desk in the corner. Here he spent the greater part of his leisure time, often even taking his meals in the little shop, rather than go to the table for them. Even when very old, he occasionally made a journey to London or Glasgow, calling on his old friends and studying the latest engineering devices and inspecting public works, and was everywhere welcomed by young and old as the greatest living engineer, or as the kind and wise friend of earlier days. He died August 19, 1819, in the eighty-third year of his age, and was buried in Handsworth Church. The sculptor Chantrey was employed to place a fitting monument above his grave, and the nation erected a statue of the great man in Westminster Abbey. This sketch of the greatest of all the inventors of the steam-engine has been given no greater length than its subject justifies. Whether we consider Watt as the inventor of the standard steam-engine of the nineteenth century, as the scientific investigator of the physical principles upon which the invention is based, or as the builder and introducer of the most powerful known instrument by which the "great sources of power in Nature are converted, adapted, and applied for the use and convenience of man," he is fully entitled to preëminence. His character as a man was no less admirable than as an engineer. Smiles, Watt's most conscientious and indefatigable biographer, writes:[41] [41] "Life of Watt," p. 512. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--James Watt's Workshop. (From Smiles's "Lives of Boulton and Watt.")]