William McNaught (1813–1881)[1] was a Scottish engineer, from Glasgow, who patented a compound steam engine in 1845. This was a technique of improving the efficiency of a standard simple Boulton & Watt beam engine. The engine was compounded by adding a high-pressure cylinder between the support column and the flywheel, on the side opposite the low-pressure cylinder. This improvement could be retrospectively fitted to existing engines.[2]