(1804+00+000+0)

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Heathcote was the son of a small farmer who became blind, obliging the family to move to Long Whatton, near Loughborough, c.1790. He was apprenticed to W.Shepherd, a hosiery-machine maker, and became a frame-smith in the hosiery industry. He moved to Nottingham where he entered the employment of an excellent machine maker named Elliott. He later joined William Caldwell of Hathern, whose daughter he had married. The lace-making apparatus they patented jointly in 1804 had already been anticipated, so Heathcote turned to the problem of making pillow lace, a cottage industry in which women made lace by arranging pins stuck in a pillow in the correct pattern and winding around them thread contained on thin bobbins. He began by analysing the complicated hand-woven lace into simple warp and weft threads and found he could dispense with half the bobbins. The first machine he developed and patented, in 1808, made narrow lace an inch or so wide, but the following year he made much broader lace on an improved version. In his second patent, in 1809, he could make a type of net curtain, Brussels lace, without patterns. His machine made bobbin-net by the use of thin brass discs, between which the thread was wound. As they passed through the warp threads, which were arranged vertically, the warp threads were moved to each side in turn, so as to twist the bobbin threads round the warp threads. The bobbins were in two rows to save space, and jogged on carriages in grooves along a bar running the length of the machine. As the strength of this fabric depended upon bringing the bobbin threads diagonally across, in addition to the forward movement, the machine had to provide for a sideways movement of each bobbin every time the lengthwise course was completed. A high standard of accuracy in manufacture was essential for success. Called the "Old Loughborough", it was acknowledged to be the most complicated machine so far produced. In partnership with a man named Charles Lacy, who supplied the necessary capital, a factory was established at Loughborough that proved highly successful; however, their fifty-five frames were destroyed by Luddites in 1816. Heathcote was awarded damages of £10,000 by the county of Nottingham on the condition it was spent locally, but to avoid further interference he decided to transfer not only his machines but his entire workforce elsewhere and refused the money. In a disused woollen factory at Tiverton in Devonshire, powered by the waters of the river Exe, he built 300 frames of greater width and speed. By continually making inventions and improvements until he retired in 1843, his business flourished and he amassed a large fortune. He patented one machine for silk cocoon-reeling and another for plaiting or braiding. In 1825 he brought out two patents for the mechanical ornamentation or figuring of lace. He acquired a sound knowledge of French prior to opening a steam-powered lace factory in France. The factory proved to be a successful venture that lasted many years. In 1832 he patented a monstrous steam plough that is reputed to have cost him over £12,000 and was claimed to be the best in its day. One of its stated aims was "improved methods of draining land", which he hoped would develop agriculture in Ireland. A cable was used to haul the implement across the land. From 1832 to 1859, Heathcote represented Tiverton in Parliament and, among other benefactions, he built a school for his adopted town.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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Telford was the son of a shepherd, who died when the boy was in his first year. Brought up by his mother, Janet Jackson, he attended the parish school at Westerkirk. He was apprenticed to a stonemason in Lochmaben and to another in Langholm. In 1780 he walked from Eskdale to Edinburgh and in 1872 rode to London on a horse that he was to deliver there. He worked for Sir William Chambers as a mason on Somerset House, then on the Eskdale house of Sir James Johnstone. In 1783–4 he worked on the new Commissioner's House and other buildings at Portsmouth dockyard.

In late 1786 Telford was appointed County Surveyor for Shropshire and moved to Shrewsbury Castle, with work initially on the new infirmary and County Gaol. He designed the church of St Mary Magdalene, Bridgnorth, and also the church at Madley. Telford built his first bridge in 1790–2 at Montford; between 1790 and 1796 he built forty-five road bridges in Shropshire, including Buildwas Bridge. In September 1793 he was appointed general agent, engineer and architect to the Ellesmere Canal, which was to connect the Mersey and Dee rivers with the Severn at Shrewsbury; William Jessop was Principal Engineer. This work included the Pont Cysyllte aqueduct, a 1,000 ft (305 m) long cast-iron trough 127 ft (39 m) above ground level, which entailed an on-site ironworks and took ten years to complete; the aqueduct is still in use today. In 1800 Telford put forward a plan for a new London Bridge with a single cast-iron arch with a span of 600 ft (183 m) but this was not built.

In 1801 Telford was appointed engineer to the British Fisheries Society "to report on Highland Communications" in Scotland where, over the following eighteen years, 920 miles (1,480 km) of new roads were built, 280 miles (450 km) of the old military roads were realigned and rebuilt, over 1,000 bridges were constructed and much harbour work done, all under Telford's direction. A further 180 miles (290 km) of new roads were also constructed in the Lowlands of Scotland. From 1804 to 1822 he was also engaged on the construction of the Caledonian Canal: 119 miles (191 km) in all, 58 miles (93 km) being sea loch, 38 miles (61 km) being Lochs Lochy, Oich and Ness, 23 miles (37 km) having to be cut.

In 1808 he was invited by King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden to assist Count Baltzar von Platen in the survey and construction of a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic. Telford surveyed the 114 mile (183 km) route in six weeks; 53 miles (85 km) of new canal were to be cut. Soon after the plans for the canal were completed, the King of Sweden created him a Knight of the Order of Vasa, an honour that he would have liked to have declined. At one time some 60,000 soldiers and seamen were engaged on the work, Telford supplying supervisors, machinery—including an 8 hp steam dredger from the Donkin works and machinery for two small paddle boats—and ironwork for some of the locks. Under his direction an ironworks was set up at Motala, the foundation of an important Swedish industrial concern which is still flourishing today. The Gotha Canal was opened in September 1832.

In 1811 Telford was asked to make recommendations for the improvement of the Shrewsbury to Holyhead section of the London-Holyhead road, and in 1815 he was asked to survey the whole route from London for a Parliamentary Committee. Construction of his new road took fifteen years, apart from the bridges at Conway and over the Menai Straits, both suspension bridges by Telford and opened in 1826. The Menai bridge had a span of 579 ft (176 m), the roadway being 153 ft (47 m) above the water level.

In 1817 Telford was appointed Engineer to the Exchequer Loan Commission, a body set up to make capital loans for deserving projects in the hard times that followed after the peace of Waterloo. In 1820 he became the first President of the Engineers Institute, which gained its Royal Charter in 1828 to become the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was appointed Engineer to the St Katharine's Dock Company during its construction from 1825 to 1828, and was consulted on several early railway projects including the Liverpool and Manchester as well as a number of canal works in the Midlands including the new Harecastle tunnel, 3,000 ft (914 m) long.

Telford led a largely itinerant life, living in hotels and lodgings, acquiring his own house for the first time in 1821, 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, which was partly used as a school for young civil engineers. He died there in 1834, after suffering in his later years from the isolation of deafness. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Both Charles Chubb and his younger brother Jeremiah served as apprentices to a blacksmith. The brothers were in business together in Daniel Street, Portsea, Hampshire, from 1804 until 1820, when Charles moved to London to establish the firm of Chubb \& Son. In 1818, Jeremiah Chubb had patented a detector lock; this invention proved to be the foundation of the later success of the firm of Chubb \& Son. Charles Chubb made improvements on this lock, for which he took out patents in 1824, 1828 and 1833. He also took out several patents for fireproof and burglarproof safes.

In the Portsea factory, at first there were only two or three employees engaged in lockmaking, but when Charles Chubb moved to London another twelve were taken on and thus things remained until 1830, when a factory was opened in Wolverhampton with up to two hundred employees. The manufacture of fireproof and burglarproof safes was carried out at a separate factory in London, which had up to one hundred and fifty employees. The two factories supplied nearly 1,500,000 patent locks and about 30,000 safes and strongrooms, costing between £8 and £5,000, the latter being the largest-ever safe supplied to a bank at that time.

See also: Chubb, John

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.

About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.

Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.

Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.

Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.

In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.

In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.

He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.

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See also: Blenkinsop, John

SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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The son of a printer, Baxter was apprenticed to a wood engraver and there began his search for improved methods of making coloured prints, hitherto the perquisite of the rich, in order to bring them within reach of a wider public. After marriage to the daughter of Robert Harrild, founder of the printing firm of Harrild \& Co., he set up house in London, where he continued his experiments on colour while maintaining the run-of-the-mill work that kept the family.

The nineteenth century saw a tremendous advance in methods of printing pictures, produced as separate prints or as book illustrations. For the first three decades colour was supplied by hand, but from the 1830s attempts were made to print in colour, using a separate plate for each one. Coloured prints were produced by chromolithography and relief printing on a small scale. Prints were first made with the latter method on a commercial scale by Baxter with a process that he patented in 1835. He generally used a key plate that was engraved, aquatinted or lithographed; the colours were then printed separately from wood or metal blocks. Baxter was a skilful printer and his work reached a high standard. An early example is the frontispiece to Robert Mudie's Summer (1837). In 1849 he began licensing his patent to other printers, and after the Great Exhibition of 1851 colour relief printing came into its own. Of the plethora of illustrated literature that appeared then, Baxter's Gems of the Great Exhibition was one of the most widely circulated souvenirs of the event.

Baxter remained an active printer through the 1850s, but increasing competition from the German coloured lithographic process undermined his business and in 1860 he gave up the unequal struggle. In May of that year, all his oil pictures, engravings and blocks went up for auction, some 3,000 lots altogether. Baxter retired to Sydenham, then a country place, making occasional visits to London until injuries sustained in a mishap while he was ascending a London omnibus led to his death. Above all, he helped to initiate the change from the black and white world of pre-Victorian literature to the riotously colourful world of today.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Jacquard was apprenticed at the age of 12 to bookbinding, and later to type-founding and cutlery. His parents, who had some connection with weaving, left him a small property upon their death. He made some experiments with pattern weaving, but lost all his inheritance; after marrying, he returned to type-founding and cutlery. In 1790 he formed the idea for his machine, but it was forgotten amidst the excitement of the French Revolution, in which he fought for the Revolutionists at the defence of Lyons. The machine he completed in 1801 combined earlier inventions and was for weaving net. He was sent to Paris to demonstrate it at the National Exposition and received a bronze medal. In 1804 Napoleon granted him a patent, a pension of 1,500 francs and a premium on each machine sold. This enabled him to study and work at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers to perfect his mechanism for pattern weaving. A method of selecting any combination of leashes at each shoot of the weft had to be developed, and Jacquard's mechanism was the outcome of various previous inventions. By taking the cards invented by Falcon in 1728 that were punched with holes like the paper of Bouchon in 1725, to select the needles for each pick, and by placing the apparatus above the loom where Vaucanson had put his mechanism, Jacquard combined the best features of earlier inventions. He was not entirely successful because his invention failed in the way it pressed the card against the needles; later modifications by Breton in 1815 and Skola in 1819 were needed before it functioned reliably. However, the advantage of Jacquard's machine was that each pick could be selected much more quickly than on the earlier draw looms, which meant that John Kay's flying shuttle could be introduced on fine pattern looms because the weaver no longer had to wait for the drawboy to sort out the leashes for the next pick. Robert Kay's drop box could also be used with different coloured wefts. The drawboy could be dispensed with because the foot-pedal operating the Jacquard mechanism could be worked by the weaver. Patterns could be changed quickly by replacing one set of cards with another, but the scope of the pattern was more limited than with the draw loom. Some machines that were brought into use aroused bitter hostility. Jacquard suffered physical violence, barely escaping with his life, and his machines were burnt by weavers at Lyons. However, by 1812 his mechanism began to be generally accepted and had been applied to 11,000 draw-looms in France. In 1819 Jacquard received a gold medal and a Cross of Honour for his invention. His machines reached England c.1816 and still remain the basic way of weaving complicated patterns.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Public utilities

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He was the third child and the eldest of three boys born to John Murdoch and Anna Bruce. His father, a millwright and joiner, spelled his name Murdock on moving to England. He was educated for some years at Old Cumnock Parish School and in 1777, with his father, he built a "wooden horse", supposed to have been a form of cycle. In 1777 he set out for the Soho manufactory of Boulton \& Watt, where he quickly found employment, Boulton supposedly being impressed by the lad's hat. This was oval and made of wood, and young William had turned it himself on a lathe of his own manufacture. Murdock quickly became Boulton \& Watt's representative in Cornwall, where there was a flourishing demand for steam-engines. He lived at Redruth during this period.

It is said that a number of the inventions generally ascribed to James Watt are in fact as much due to Murdock as to Watt. Examples are the piston and slide valve and the sun-and-planet gearing. A number of other inventions are attributed to Murdock alone: typical of these is the oscillating cylinder engine which obviated the need for an overhead beam.

In about 1784 he planned a steam-driven road carriage of which he made a working model. He also planned a high-pressure non-condensing engine. The model carriage was demonstrated before Murdock's friends and travelled at a speed of 6–8 mph (10–13 km/h). Boulton and Watt were both antagonistic to their employees' developing independent inventions, and when in 1786 Murdock set out with his model for the Patent Office, having received no reply to a letter he had sent to Watt, Boulton intercepted him on the open road near Exeter and dissuaded him from going any further.

In 1785 he married Mary Painter, daughter of a mine captain. She bore him four children, two of whom died in infancy, those surviving eventually joining their father at the Soho Works. Murdock was a great believer in pneumatic power: he had a pneumatic bell-push at Sycamore House, his home near Soho. The pattern-makers lathe at the Soho Works worked for thirty-five years from an air motor. He also conceived the idea of a vacuum piston engine to exhaust a pipe, later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company's railway and the forerunner of the atmospheric railway.

Another field in which Murdock was a pioneer was the gas industry. In 1791, in Redruth, he was experimenting with different feedstocks in his home-cum-office in Cross Street: of wood, peat and coal, he preferred the last. He designed and built in the backyard of his house a prototype generator, washer, storage and distribution plant, and publicized the efficiency of coal gas as an illuminant by using it to light his own home. In 1794 or 1795 he informed Boulton and Watt of his experimental work and of its success, suggesting that a patent should be applied for. James Watt Junior was now in the firm and was against patenting the idea since they had had so much trouble with previous patents and had been involved in so much litigation. He refused Murdock's request and for a short time Murdock left the firm to go home to his father's mill. Boulton \& Watt soon recognized the loss of a valuable servant and, in a short time, he was again employed at Soho, now as Engineer and Superintendent at the increased salary of £300 per year plus a 1 per cent commission. From this income, he left £14,000 when he died in 1839.

In 1798 the workshops of Boulton and Watt were permanently lit by gas, starting with the foundry building. The 180 ft (55 m) façade of the Soho works was illuminated by gas for the Peace of Paris in June 1814. By 1804, Murdock had brought his apparatus to a point where Boulton \& Watt were able to canvas for orders. Murdock continued with the company after the death of James Watt in 1819, but retired in 1830 and continued to live at Sycamore House, Handsworth, near Birmingham.

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