Problem: James Watt  (30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) - 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1781, which was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and reheating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines.

Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired. The famous partnership was transferred to the men's sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr. . Longtime firm engineer William Murdoch was soon made a partner and the firm prospered.  Watt continued to invent other things before and during his semi-retirement. Within his home in Handsworth, Staffordshire, Watt made use of a garret room as a workshop, and it was here that he worked on many of his inventions. Among other things, he invented and constructed several machines for copying sculptures and medallions which worked very well, but which he never patented. One of the first sculptures he produced with the machine was a small head of his old professor friend Adam Smith. He maintained his interest in civil engineering and was a consultant on several significant projects. He proposed, for example, a method for constructing a flexible pipe to be used for pumping water under the Clyde at Glasgow.  He and his second wife travelled to France and Germany, and he purchased an estate in mid-Wales at Doldowlod House, one mile south of Llanwrthwl, which he much improved.  In 1816 he took a trip on the paddle-steamer Comet, a product of his inventions, to revisit his home town of Greenock.  He died on 25 August 1819 at his home "Heathfield" in Handsworth, Staffordshire (now part of Birmingham) at the age of 83. He was buried on 2 September in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Handsworth. The church has since been extended and his grave is now inside the church.

what happened in his later years?

Answer with quotes: Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired.


Problem: Beck was born in Los Angeles, to David Campbell and Bibbe Hansen. His father is a Canadian-born arranger, composer and conductor who worked on hundreds of albums and numerous films. Beck's mother grew up amid New York's Andy Warhol Factory art scene of the 1960s, where she was a Warhol superstar, but moved to California at age 17, where she met Campbell; she is a visual artist. Bibbe's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while Bibbe's father, artist Al Hansen, was partly of Norwegian descent.

In 2000, Beck and his fiancee, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich.  Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Change's noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album Beck has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground.  Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s.

Were there any other public comments made about Sea Change?

Answer with quotes: one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.


Problem: Safran was born in Melbourne to Jewish parents. His maternal grandparents were Polish Jewish Bundists. Safran's mother, Gitl, was born in Uzbekistan as they were fleeing their home country for Australia. She died in 2003.

As of 2002 Safran had been a regular host of Melbourne community radio station 3RRR (Triple R) on its morning show "Breakfasters". Additionally, he co-hosted the weekly radio show Sunday Night Safran on national youth radio station Triple J with Father Bob Maguire. After a lengthy hiatus late 2008 due to a busy filming schedule, Sunday Night Safran returned to the airwaves on 12 July 2009. The program ended at the end of 2015.  The program was iconic because the co-hosts talked to each other for much longer than instructed to (one such incident involved Fr Bob and Safran looking up the word monstrance in a dictionary following a dispute) and referring to the audience as "Dear Listeners". By Safran's own admission, Maguire and he "only seem to talk about Scrabble and White Supremacists".  During the program's run, Safran and Maguire were able to get interviews from people such as religious scholar Reza Aslan, Julian Assange's mother Christine, The Exorcist star Linda Blair, philosopher and School of Life founder Alain de Botton, writer, retired prison doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, West Memphis Three Damien Echols, antitheist Christopher Hitchens, conspiracy theorist David Icke, former white supremacist skinhead Frank Meeink, pro-euthanasia doctor Philip Nitschke, The Act of Killing director Joshua Oppenheimer, journalist and writer Jon Ronson, true crime writer and Ted Bundy co-worker Ann Rule, the Lizardman Erik Sprague, African-American pro-Israel political activist and Zionist Chloe Valdary, Jewish activist against child sexual abuse Manny Waks, psychic Lisa Williams and John Safran's dad, Alex.

what did he do after that?

Answer with quotes: