James Watt; (30 January 1736 – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. Watt was much honoured in his own time. In 1784 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and was elected as a member of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy; of Rotterdam in 1787. In 1789 he was elected to the elite group; the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. In 1806 he was conferred the honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Glasgow. The French Academy elected him a Corresponding Member and he was made a Foreign Associate in 1814.