Thomas Hudson Beare

“ His method of dealing with the problem of supplying these towns was described in a communication submitted to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1887, entitled 'Chalk Water Springs in the London Basin' (Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, xc. 1) .
Of the patents taken out by Grover perhaps the most important was that for his so-called 'spring washer,' used to prevent the slacking of permanent-way fish bolts on railway lines; these washers have been very extensively used in all parts of the world. ”

“ In 1845 Hawkshaw was appointed engineer to the Manchester and Leeds Railway, the nucleus of the present Lancashire and Yorkshire railway system, and he remained consulting engineer to the latter company until 1888. ”

“ To Bright therefore belongs the distinction of laying the first Atlantic cable and of first establishing telegraphic communication between Europe and America. He received the honour of knighthood at the extraordinarily early age of twenty-six (1858) as a recognition of his distinguished services to applied science and to his country. Though this cable so soon broke down, the mere fact that many successful messages had been sent through it showed that the problem was one which could be solved. With the second and third Atlantic cables of 1866 and 1866 Bright was himself not directly concerned. ”

“ James was educated at the parish school, and afterwards at a private school, and on leaving this he engaged in gardening and farm work in order to prepare himself to become a landscape gardener. He had, however, a natural taste for engineering work, and, becoming acquainted with a surveyor on the Roxburgh estates, he picked up a considerable knowledge of surveying, and was eventually employed to make a survey of the estates. ”

“ Coode was probably the most distinguished harbour engineer of the nineteenth century; it would be difficult to estimate too highly the value to the trade and mutual intercourse of the different parts of the British empire, of the harbour and river improvement schemes in every part of the world for which he was responsible. ”

“ It is not possible to deal even in outline with the numerous schemes in all branches of engineering for which Hawkshaw was responsible; only a few of the leading and more important ones can be referred to here. In connection with railways perhaps his most famous works were the Charing Cross and Cannon Street railways, with their large terminal stations and bridges over the Thames; the East London Railway, with its utilisation of the old Thames tunnel, constructed by the elder Brunei ”

“ In 1885 he published the results of a series of experiments on the magnetic properties of iron, and for his researches in this subject he was awarded in 1890 a Royal Society medal.
It was not until 1891 that Hopkinson had an opportunity of carrying out any constructive engineering of importance outside the field of lighthouse work. In that year he was appointed by the corporation of the city of Manchester as their adviser on the electric lighting of the city, and he acted as consulting engineer during the carrying out of the work ”

“ After serving for two years in this position, in 1844 he set up for himself in London as a consulting engineer, and was occupied mainly in railway work in connection with the lines from Sheffield to the east coast, afterwards amalgamated into the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway Company. In 1846 the famous railway mania attained its full proportions, and Fowler took an active part in the struggles over the numerous railway acts then promoted in parliament. ”

“ He began his professional career as an architect, and was responsible for several important private mansions, among which may be mentioned the seat of the Marquis of Downshire at Easthampstead, Berkshire. Being offered, however, in 1845 the appointment of assistant engineer to the commissioners of sewers for the city of London, he abandoned architecture for civil engineering; a year later he was appointed chief engineer to the commissioners. ”

“ He was educated at Croydon and in Germany, in which country he was afterwards to make his name as an engineer. In 1827 he became a pupil of Francis Giles, and was chiefly engaged in railway work. He was in 1838 appointed engineer-in-chief to the Hamburg and Bergedorf railway, and it was in the city of Hamburg that the engineering work by which he will be remembered was carried out for the next twenty-two years. ”

“ In 1890 he was appointed professor of electrical engineering and head of the Siemens Laboratory at King's College, London. Though he did no actual teaching in connection with this post, it gave him the necessary facilities for carrying on his researches on the dynamo, and his direction of the laboratory was of great value in stimulating the students, and providing advanced students with suggestions for researches. ”

“ On his return from the Crimea Rawlinson took up his duties as chief engineering inspector under the local government board, and in connection with this office he prepared and published some valuable notes entitled 'Suggestions on Town Sewering and House Draining, for the Instruction of Engineers and Surveyors to Local Boards.' The correctness of the views he then advocated has been proved by their extensive adoption throughout the kingdom and elsewhere. ”

“ He had many narrow escapes, and during the terrible gale of October 1859, when the Royal Charter was wrecked, it was thought that the whole of the working party had been drowned; but the small sailing tender in which the party embarked from the rock succeeded at length in making Swansea harbour. ”

“ Hawkshaw was also a member of the international congress which met at Paris in 1879 to consider the proposed inter-oceanic ship canal across Central America. He was opposed to the Panama canal scheme because he did not believe it could be constructed at a reasonable cost, and so retired from the congress.
In 1862 he became engineer to the Amsterdam ship canal, which was eventually opened by the king of Holland on 1 Nov. 1876. ”

“ He was joined by E. O. Whitehouse in these researches, and when later he was appointed engineer to the Atlantic Cable Company, Whitehouse became electrician to the company.
The formation and history of the first Atlantic Cable Company was told by Bright in his presidential address to the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians in 1887 (Journal of the Society, xvi. 27) . On 29 Sept. 1856, at a meeting between Brett, Cyrus Field, and Bright, they mutually pledged themselves to form a company to establish and to work electric telegraphic communication between Ireland and Newfoundland ”

“ GORDON, JAMES EDWARD HENRY (1852–1893) , electrical engineer, son of James Alexander Gordon (1793–1872) [q. v.] , was born at Barford, Surrey, on 26 June 1852. He was educated at a private school at Brighton, and afterwards at Eton. He studied physics, under Professor W. G. Adams, F.R.S., at King's College, London, and afterwards proceeded to Caius College, Cambridge, where he was admitted on 8 July 1871. He worked in the laboratory of Professor Clerk Maxwell, was a junior optime in the mathematical tripos, and graduated B.A. in 1875. ”

“ In 1887 he took an active share in the formation of the Whitehall Electric Supply Company, which in the following year amalgamated with the Metropolitan Electric Supply Company, of which company he then became the engineer. ”

“ In January 1862 Grover set up in business as a consulting engineer at Westminster, and during the next eleven years he designed and carried out several important engineering works, mainly in connection with railways. ”

“ The general board of health, however, put a stop to these schemes, and again matters were at a deadlock until, by an act passed on 16 Aug. 1855, the representative body known as the metropolitan board of works came into being, the board appointing Bazalgette their chief engineer. This new body was not able, however, to expedite matters, as the plans which they ordered to be prepared for the main drainage scheme had to be approved by government. The plans prepared by Bazalgette were submitted in June 1856 to Sir Benjamin Hall, then chief commissioner to her majesty's works ”

“ In 1863 he served as a member of the army sanitary committee; and in April 1863, during the terrible cotton famine in Lancashire, he was sent down to that county by Lord Palmerston to organise relief works for the thousands of operatives thrown idle by the stoppage of the cotton supply from America owing to the civil war. ”

“ While in the service of this company he was employed in laying land telegraph lines of a very extensive character, including some thousands of miles of underground wires between London, Manchester, and Liverpool and other centres; in connection with these land systems he laid a cable of six wires between Port Patrick and Donaghadee in Ireland; this was the third cable laid, and the first in comparatively deep water. He remained chief engineer of the Magnetic company until 1860, and consulting engineer till 1870. ”

“ There is a portrait in the possession of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a replica of a painting by Ossani, and a bronze bust forms, part of a mural monument which has been erected by his friends on the Thames embankment at the foot of Northumberland Avenue. ”

“ HOPKINSON, JOHN (1849–1898) , electrical engineer, eldest son of John Hopkinson, mechanical engineer, was born on 27 July 1849 at Manchester. He was educated under C. Willmore at Queenwood, Hampshire. In 1865 he became a student at Owens College, Manchester, and in 1869 gained a Whitworth scholarship. He studied mathematics under Professor Barker at Owens, and, acting under the professor's advice, entered for and won a minor scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1867. At Cambridge he devoted himself to mathematics as his chief study, under Dr. ”

“ In 1874 he invented the group flash system for enabling mariners to distinguish one light from another, the flashes in his system being of varying length and separated by varying intervals of darkness as characterising the lights more distinctly. ”

“ He became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1853. He was responsible for an enormous number of improvements of various kinds carried out in the central quarter of the metropolis during the forty-nine years he held office. ”

“ Rolling Stock for economically constructing . . . Railways or Tramways,' London, 1870. 3. 'Iron and Timber Railway Superstructures,' London, 1874. 4. 'Suez Canals from the most ancient Times to the Present,' London, 1877. 5. 'Section of a Well at Hampstead,' London, 1878. 6. 'Ancient Reclamations in the English Fenlands,' London, 1878. 7. 'Proposed Richmond Footbridge,' London, 1890. 8. 'An Explanation of the London Water Question,' London, 1892. 9. ”

“ In July 1832 he went to Venezuela to take charge of the Bolivar Mining Association's mines, about two hundred miles from Caracas. He spent three years there; but bad health, brought about by the unhealthy climate, forced him to return to England in 1834. ”

“ Armstrong [q.v. Suppl.] , a self-acting valve designed to close the pipe automatically when the velocity of the water passing through it exceeds a certain limit ; the invention is still largely used by water companies. ”

“ He wrote the following professional papers, in addition to those already mentioned: 'The Construction of Sea Embankments in Morecambe Bay,' 1855. 'Proposed Ship Railway across the Isthmus of Suez,' 1859. 'Proposed Wet Docks at Whitehaven,' 1870, 'Report on proposed Site for Docks at Bristol,' 1871. 'Railway Accidents, their Causes and Means of Prevention' {Proc. Inst. Civil Eng. xxi. 345) . 'Presidential Address ' (ib. lxxii. 2) .
[Obituary notices in Proc, Inst. Civil Eng. cxi.; Burke's Peerage &c. 1890; Times, 4 June 1892.] ”