Henry Trueman Wright Wood

“ While he achieved considerable reputation as a geologist and metallurgist, it was as a miner and a mining expert that he was really eminent. Though at the beginning of his inspectorship his energy in imposing novel restrictions and in insisting on the reform and improvement of existing methods was little appreciated by the mining community, he ultimately won in both his districts the esteem alike of miners and mine-owners. ”

“ Succeeding to his father's business at the age of twenty-two, he introduced into it so many scientific improvements that he soon amassed a considerable fortune and was able to devote his time and attention to his favourite mechanical pursuits. His inventions, though numerous and evincing very great ingenuity, were not of the very highest class. ”

“ As secretary to the Society of Arts, he took part in many public movements originated by the society, but being a man of simple tastes, and singularly devoid of personal ambition, he was never anxious to obtain recognition for his labours or to dispute with others the credit which was often justly his due. ”

“ He belonged to the same school of art-craftsmen as William Morris and Walter Crane, and his influence on contemporary ornament, if not so fully recognised as that of those two artists, was considerable. Many of the best-known designers of his day were taught by him.
One of the first promoters of the Arts and Crafts Society and a founder of the Art Workers Guild, of which he was at one time master, Day was from 1897 to his death almost continuously a member of the council of the Royal Society of Arts, before which society he delivered four courses of Cantor lectures. ”

“ Equally abortive was a more modest proposal to construct an experimental atmospheric railway from Waterloo station over Hungerford suspension bridge to Hungerford Market. In Hague's engineering works Bramwell also studied methods of steam propulsion on common roads, and while still an apprentice came to know Walter Hancock [q. v.] , who first constructed a successful road locomotive. In later life Bramwell was sole survivor of those associated with the first experiments in steam-carriages, which the development of railroads killed. ”

“ So great did his reputation soon become that on one occasion an opposing counsel asked that he should not be allowed to remain in the committee-room, on the ground that ' nature had endowed him with qualities that did not place his opponents on a fair footing.' Numerous stones are still extant, attesting the skill with which he would detect a flaw in some elaborate set of calculations, thereby upsetting an opponent's case, or would support his own conclusions by an argument based on mathematical data, possibly only then put before him. ”

“ A keen mechanical instinct enabled him to contrive ingenious models for the illustration of his evidence. In parliamentary committee-rooms, where he dealt almost entirely with questions of civil engineering, Bramwell soon gained as great a reputation as in the law courts. His authority on questions relating to municipal and water-works engineering especially became so high that he was permanently retained by all the eight water companies of London. ”

“ Bramah's most important contribution to mechanical science was his hydraulic press, patented in 1795. The power which he gave to engineers by this invention of converting into a steady continuous pressure of practically unlimited amount a number of comparatively small impulses, was an entirely new one, and was capable, as it afterwards proved, of enormous development. That this development was not unforeseen by the projector is evident from the proposals he made in several of his patents, proposals which in many cases have only recently been carried into effect. ”

“ Bramwell, whose only relaxation was in variety of work, was indefatigable in honorary service to the various societies and institutions of which he was a member. Here he showed to advantage his exceptional gifts of speech and his powers of historical survey. He joined the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1854, was elected to the council in 1864, and became president in 1874, when he reviewed the history and progress of mechanical engineering. ”

“ Probably nowhere else could he have found so suitable a field for the exercise of his peculiar talents as in a parliamentary committee-room, nor is it easy to conceive a man better adapted to this special sort of work.
But, besides his parliamentary practice, Bidder was also much employed in the actual practice of his profession, and as engineer constructed numerous railways and other works at home and abroad. The Victoria Docks (London) are considered one of his chief constructive works, and, after railway matters, hydraulic engineering principally engaged his attention. ”

“ The Wedgwoods, then small potters, employed him to construct flint-mills for grinding the calcined flint employed for glazing pottery, and, like all the engineers of his time, he tried his hand at the solution of the great problem of clearing mines from water, a problem not to be solved till the perfected steam-engine provided the power alone able to meet the difficulty. ”

“ The great reputation of Brindley, however, was gained in civil, not in mechanical, engineering. Having been called in by the Duke of Bridgewater in 1759 to advise upon the project for forming a canal by which the produce of the Worsley coal-mines could be cheaply transported to Manchester, he produced a plan of striking originality, including the construction of an aqueduct by which the canal was to be carried over the river Irwell. ”

“ In 1865 he graduated D.Sc. at the University of London, and in the same year he resigned his post on the geological survey and became lecturer to the Miners' Association of Cornwall and Devon and secretary to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. In 1868 he was employed by the Khedive of Egypt on an exploring expedition to examine the mineral resources of the Sinaitic peninsula. ”

“ Owen's successful administration in Paris in 1855 led to his appointment in 1857 as deputy general superintendent of the South Kensington Museum, and in 1860 he was promoted to the post of assistant director, Cole being director of the museum and secretary of the Science and Art Department. In 1862 the second great London exhibition was held, and Owen acted as director of the foreign sections, a post for which his knowledge of foreign languages specially qualified him. In 1867 another exhibition was held in Paris, and Owen was second in command to Cole as assistant executive commissioner. ”

“ After attending a school in France, he entered Merchant Taylors' School in January 1858, and on leaving continued his education in Germany for eighteen months. He then after a short time as a clerk went at the age of twenty into the works of Lavers & Barraud, glass painters and designers. Thence he moved to the workshops of Clayton & Bell, makers of stained glass, and there he remained for two years, his principal work being to design the cartoons. In 1870 he worked for Heaton, Butler & Bayne on the decoration of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, and in the same year he started for himself in London. ”

“ After a brief employment in the Ordnance Survey and a still briefer trial of a clerkship in the office of a life assurance company, he took regularly to engineering. He was employed on several works of more or less importance, and became associated with Robert Stephenson in 1834 in the London and Birmingham railway. A year or so later this brought him into parliamentary work, and here he soon found full scope for his marvellous powers of calculation. ”

“ He also reported in the same year on a Venezuelan goldfield, and from 1869 to 1872 he was engineer to a gold-mining company in Northern Italy. In 1872 he was nominated Inspector of Mines under the new Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, being appointed to Cornwall. Eight years later—in 1880—he was transferred to North Wales, where he retained for twenty-one years. In 1890, on the death of Sir Warington Smyth [q. v.] , he became professor of mining at the Royal School of Mines, an office which he held concurrently with his inspectorship. He proved an excellent teacher. ”

“ ARCHER, FREDERICK SCOTT (1813–1857) , inventor of the collodion process in photography, was the second son of a butcher at Bishop Stortford, and was, as a young man, assistant to a silversmith, Massey, in Leadenhall Street. Showing some talent for sculpture, he was enabled, by the kindness of friends, to start in business as a sculptor, and it was a desire to obtain reproductions of his works that led him to take up the then recently discovered art of photography. ”

“ Like many other remarkable men, however, James Brindley had a wise and careful mother. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to one Abraham Bennett, a millwright, or as he would now be termed an engineer, of Sutton, near Macclesfield. Strangely enough, he seems for some time to have had the credit of being but a poor workman, so much so that his master even threatened to cancel his indentures and send him back to the field-work for which alone he was fitted. ”

“ Yet it was not till he was over forty that he made 400l. in any one year. In 1860 he took with hesitation an office at No. 35A Great George Street. Thenceforth his practice as a consultant rapidly increased, and within ten years his income grew very large. ”

“ In 1846 he returned to England and was appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution in Manchester, where he had settled in practice as a consulting chemist. He now devoted himself almost entirely to questions of industrial chemistry, tanning, the desulphurisation of coke, the protection of iron ships from rust, the manufacture of chlorate of potash, iron puddling, calico-printing, &c. A few years later he took up the manufacture of coal-tar products, especially of phenic or carbolic acid, which he was the first to manufacture in a pure state in this country. ”

“ The invention by which he is best known is the fish-joint for the rails of railways. Before the date of this invention (1847) engineers had failed in all their efforts to contrive a joint which should firmly unite the ends of the rails while allowing fast traffic to be carried over them. Bridges Adams applied the well-known ‘fish’ or overlapping plate to the ends of the rails, and set the joint in the space between two of the supporting ‘chairs,’ instead of immediately over a ‘chair,’ so that the destructive effect of the pressure between the wheels and the chair was avoided. ”

“ He was also connected in various capacities with several of the earlier foreign exhibitions. He was one of the first to practise, as a scientific amateur, the art of photography, and was one of the founders of the Photographic Society. ”

“ Archer himself, soon after his discovery, left his house in Henrietta Street, and went to live in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, where he practised, with no great success, as a photographer. Here he produced several other inventions. Of these the more important were a camera, in which the various processes for producing a photographic picture could be carried on ”

“ His most important invention was the chemical telegraph of 1843 previously mentioned. This apparatus could be worked at a speed hitherto impossible, and its invention certainly entitles Bain to the credit of being the pioneer of modern high-speed telegraphy. It is stated that the rate at which the apparatus was capable of working was discovered accidentally, in consequence of the breaking of a spring during an experiment. ”

“ Leaving the Hague, he came to England, and appears to have made a scanty living as an itinerant mechanic. By the help of a gentleman who was struck with, his mechanical powers, he was enabled to set up in business in Devereux Court, Strand, whence he afterwards removed to the Adelphi. ”

“ At the age of sixteen he left London for France, where he remained till 1846. One result of this long stay abroad was that till the end of his life he spoke English with a French accent, and was, in consequence, frequently taken for a foreigner. ”

“ Besides his writings on technical subjects, he was the author of several political pamphlets, published under the pseudonym of Junius Redivivus. Most of these were issued about the time of the 1832 Reform Bill. He died at Broadstairs, and was buried at St. Peter's. In 1834 he married Sarah Flower [see Adams, Sarah Flower] .
[A very full biographical notice in Engineering newspaper, 26 July 1872 (xiv. 63) , and a shorter sketch in the Journal of the Society of Arts, 2 August 1872 (xx. 763) ; Men of the Time (eighth edition) .] ”

“ His son and his grandchildren possess this visualising power, and they also inherit considerable calculating abilities. A study of Bidder's system, partly natural and partly elaborated, cannot fail to be of value to all who wish to improve their calculating powers ”

“ His principal reputation was gained as an engineer. He invented an improved method of manufacturing links for chain cables, which he patented in 1816 conjointly with Philip Thomas, and the experiments which he carried out led to the introduction of chain cables into the navy. ”