The statue depicts James Watt holding a piece of paper with his left hand, while his right hand is held up high and holding a Watt Indicator. The statue stands atop an octagonal pedestal with each side showing a relief sculpture depicting engineering tools. Watt was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776. This was fundamental to the changes brought by the industrial revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. He coined the term 'horsepower' to allow him to quantify the output of his engines so he could then sell them to mill owners. He is immortalised in the term used to measure power output – 'Watts'.