go+to+the+john+(to)

the strain left its mark upon John

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   The Online Books Page est créée en 1993 par John Mark Ockerbloom pour répertorier les textes électroniques de langue anglaise en accès libre sur le web. A cette date, John Mark Ockerbloom est doctorant à l’Université Carnegie Mellon (à Pittsburgh, en Pennsylvanie, Etat des Etats-Unis). En 1999, il rejoint l’Université de Pennsylvanie pour travailler à la R&D (recherche et développement) de la bibliothèque numérique de l’université. A la même époque, il y transfère The Online Books Page, tout en gardant la même présentation, très sobre, et il poursuit son travail d’inventaire dans le même esprit. En 2003, ce répertoire fête ses dix ans et recense plus de 20.000 textes électroniques, dont 4.000 textes publiés par des femmes, à savoir 20% de sa liste de liens. En décembre 2006, il recense 25.000 titres, dont 6.300 titres du Projet Gutenberg.

   Voir aussi: bibliothèque numérique, Ockerbloom, John Mark, Projet Gutenberg, texte électronique.

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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John Lombe's father, Henry Lombe, was a worsted weaver who married twice. John was the second son of the second marriage and was still a baby when his father died in 1695. John, a native of the Eastern Counties, was apprenticed to a trade and employed by Thomas Cotchett in the erection of Cotchett's silk mill at Derby, which soon failed however. Lombe went to Italy, or was sent there by his elder half-brother, Thomas, to discover the secrets of their throwing machinery while employed in a silk mill in Piedmont. He returned to England in 1716 or 1717, bringing with him two expert Italian workmen.

Thomas Lombe was a prosperous London merchant who financed the construction of a new water-powered silk mill at Derby which is said to have cost over £30,000. John arranged with the town Corporation for the lease of the island in the River Derwent, where Cotchett had erected his mill. During the four years of its construction, John first set up the throwing machines in other parts of the town. The machines were driven manually there, and their product helped to defray the costs of the mill. The silk-throwing machine was very complex. The water wheel powered a horizontal shaft that was under the floor and on which were placed gearwheels to drive vertical shafts upwards through the different floors. The throwing machines were circular, with the vertical shafts running through the middle. The doubled silk threads had previously been wound on bobbins which were placed on spindles with wire flyers at intervals around the outer circumference of the machine. The bobbins were free to rotate on the spindles while the spindles and flyers were driven by the periphery of a horizontal wheel fixed to the vertical shaft. Another horizontal wheel set a little above the first turned the starwheels, to which were attached reels for winding the silk off the bobbins below. Three or four sets of these spindles and reels were placed above each other on the same driving shaft. The machine was very complicated for the time and must have been expensive to build and maintain.

John lived just long enough to see the mill in operation, for he died in 1722 after a painful illness said to have been the result of poison administered by an Italian woman in revenge for his having stolen the invention and for the injury he was causing the Italian trade. The funeral was said to have been the most superb ever known in Derby.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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He was the son of Francis Barber, coalmaster of Greasley, and Elizabeth Fletcher. In his will of 1765. his uncle, John Fletcher, left the bulk of his property, including collieries and Stainsby House, Horsley Woodhouse, Derbyshire, to John Barber. Another uncle, Robert, bequeathed him property in the next village, Smalley. It is clear that at this time John Barber was a man of considerable means. On a tablet erected by John in 1767, he acknowledges his debt to his uncle John in the words "in remembrance of the man who trained him up from a youth". At this time John Barber was living at Stainsby House and had already been granted his first patent, in 1766. The contents of this patent, which included a reversible water turbine, and his subsequent patents, suggest that he was very familiar with mining equipment, including the Newcomen engine. It comes as rather a surprise that c.1784 he became bankrupt and had to leave Stainsby House, evidently moving to Attleborough. In a strange twist, a descendent of Mr Sitwell, the new owner, bought the prototype Akroyd Stuart oil engine from the Doncaster Show in 1891.

The second and fifth (final) patents, in 1773 and 1792, were concerned with smelting and the third, in 1776, featured a boiler-mounted impulse steam turbine. The fourth and most important patent, in 1791, describes and engine that could be applied to the "grinding of corn, flints, etc.", "rolling, slitting, forging or battering iron and other metals", "turning of mills for spinning", "turning up coals and other minerals from mines", and "stamping of ores, raising water". Further, and importantly, the directing of the fluid stream into smelting furnaces or at the stern of ships to propel them is mentioned. The engine described comprised two retorts for heating coal or oil to produce an inflammable gas, one to operate while the other was cleansed and recharged. The resultant gas, together with the right amount of air, passed to a beam-operated pump and a water-cooled combustion chamber, and then to a water-cooled nozzle to an impulse gas turbine, which drove the pumps and provided the output. A clear description of the thermodynamic sequence known as the Joule Cycle (Brayton in the USA) is thus given. Further, the method of gas production predates Murdoch's lighting of the Soho foundry by gas.

It seems unlikely that John Barber was able to get his engine to work; indeed, it was well over a hundred years before a continuous combustion chamber was achieved. However, the details of the specification, for example the use of cooling water jackets and injection, suggest that considerable experimentation had taken place.

To be active in the taking out of patents over a period of 26 years is remarkable; that the best came after bankruptcy is more so. There is nothing to suggest that the cost of his experiments was the cause of his financial troubles.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology, Ports and shipping

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John Harrison was the son of a carpenter and was brought up to that trade. He was largely self-taught and learned mechanics from a copy of Nicholas Saunderson's lectures that had been lent to him. With the assistance of his younger brother, James, he built a series of unconventional clocks, mainly of wood. He was always concerned to reduce friction, without using oil, and this influenced the design of his "grasshopper" escapement. He also invented the "gridiron" compensation pendulum, which depended on the differential expansion of brass and steel. The excellent performance of his regulator clocks, which incorporated these devices, convinced him that they could also be used in a sea dock to compete for the longitude prize. In 1714 the Government had offered a prize of £20,000 for a method of determining longitude at sea to within half a degree after a voyage to the West Indies. In theory the longitude could be found by carrying an accurate timepiece that would indicate the time at a known longitude, but the requirements of the Act were very exacting. The timepiece would have to have a cumulative error of no more than two minutes after a voyage lasting six weeks.

In 1730 Harrison went to London with his proposal for a sea clock, supported by examples of his grasshopper escapement and his gridiron pendulum. His proposal received sufficient encouragement and financial support, from George Graham and others, to enable him to return to Barrow and construct his first sea clock, which he completed five years later. This was a large and complicated machine that was made out of brass but retained the wooden wheelwork and the grasshopper escapement of the regulator clocks. The two balances were interlinked to counteract the rolling of the vessel and were controlled by helical springs operating in tension. It was the first timepiece with a balance to have temperature compensation. The effect of temperature change on the timekeeping of a balance is more pronounced than it is for a pendulum, as two effects are involved: the change in the size of the balance; and the change in the elasticity of the balance spring. Harrison compensated for both effects by using a gridiron arrangement to alter the tension in the springs. This timekeeper performed creditably when it was tested on a voyage to Lisbon, and the Board of Longitude agreed to finance improved models. Harrison's second timekeeper dispensed with the use of wood and had the added refinement of a remontoire, but even before it was tested he had embarked on a third machine. The balance of this machine was controlled by a spiral spring whose effective length was altered by a bimetallic strip to compensate for changes in temperature. In 1753 Harrison commissioned a London watchmaker, John Jefferys, to make a watch for his own personal use, with a similar form of temperature compensation and a modified verge escapement that was intended to compensate for the lack of isochronism of the balance spring. The time-keeping of this watch was surprisingly good and Harrison proceeded to build a larger and more sophisticated version, with a remontoire. This timekeeper was completed in 1759 and its performance was so remarkable that Harrison decided to enter it for the longitude prize in place of his third machine. It was tested on two voyages to the West Indies and on both occasions it met the requirements of the Act, but the Board of Longitude withheld half the prize money until they had proof that the timekeeper could be duplicated. Copies were made by Harrison and by Larcum Kendall, but the Board still continued to prevaricate and Harrison received the full amount of the prize in 1773 only after George III had intervened on his behalf.

Although Harrison had shown that it was possible to construct a timepiece of sufficient accuracy to determine longitude at sea, his solution was too complex and costly to be produced in quantity. It had, for example, taken Larcum Kendall two years to produce his copy of Harrison's fourth timekeeper, but Harrison had overcome the psychological barrier and opened the door for others to produce chronometers in quantity at an affordable price. This was achieved before the end of the century by Arnold and Earnshaw, but they used an entirely different design that owed more to Le Roy than it did to Harrison and which only retained Harrison's maintaining power.

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See also: Burgi, Jost; Huygens, Christiaan

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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John Deere was the son of a tailor, and first worked as a tanner before becoming apprenticed to a blacksmith. He married Demarius Lamb in 1827, but it appears that competition for blacksmiths was fierce, and the Deere family moved frequently. Two attempts to establish forges ended in fires, and changing partnerships and arguments over debts were to be a feature of Deere's working life. In 1836 John Deere moved west on his own, in an attempt to establish himself. He settled in Grand Detour, Illinois. In this new frontier a blacksmith's skills were sought after, and the blacksmith, with no ready supply of raw materials, had to be able to operate both a furnace for melting metal and a forge for working it. Deere was sufficiently successful for his family to be able to join him. A chance visit to a sawmill and the acquisition of a broken saw blade led to the making of a plough that was to establish John Deere in manufacturing. There were two distinctive features associated with the plough: the soil in the area failed to stick to the steel blade, with obvious benefits to the draught of the implement; and second, the shape of the working mouldboard was square. The reputation that developed with his first three ploughs established that Deere had made the transition from blacksmith to manufacturer.

Over the next decade he had a number of partnerships and eventually set up a factory in Moline, Illinois, in 1848. The following year he sold 2,136 ploughs, and by early 1850 he was producing 350 ploughs per month. Deere was devastated by the loss of his eldest son in the year that the company moved to Moline. However, his second son, Charles, joined him in 1851 and was to be a major influence on the way in which the company developed over the next half-century. The company branched out into the production of cultivators, harrows, drills and wagons. John Deere himself played an active part in the company, but also played an increasing role in public life, with a particular interest in education. The company was incorporated in 1868.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Ports and shipping, Railways and locomotives

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Stevens, a wealthy landowner with an estate at Hoboken on the Hudson River, had his attention drawn to the steamboat of John Fitch in 1786, and thenceforth devoted much of his time and fortune to developing steamboats and mechanical transport. He also had political influence and it was at his instance that Congress in 1790 passed an Act establishing the first patent laws in the USA. The following year Stevens was one of the first recipients of a US patent. This referred to multi-tubular boilers, of both watertube and firetube types, and antedated by many years the work of both Henry Booth and Marc Seguin on the latter.

A steamboat built in 1798 by John Stevens, Nicholas J.Roosevelt and Stevens's brother-in-law, Robert R.Livingston, in association was unsuccessful, nor was Stevens satisfied with a boat built in 1802 in which a simple rotary steam-en-gine was mounted on the same shaft as a screw propeller. However, although others had experimented earlier with screw propellers, when John Stevens had the Little Juliana built in 1804 he produced the first practical screw steamboat. Steam at 50 psi (3.5 kg/cm²) pressure was supplied by a watertube boiler to a single-cylinder engine which drove two contra-rotating shafts, upon each of which was mounted a screw propeller. This little boat, less than 25 ft (7.6 m) long, was taken backwards and forwards across the Hudson River by two of Stevens's sons, one of whom, R.L. Stevens, was to help his father with many subsequent experiments. The boat, however, was ahead of its time, and steamships were to be driven by paddle wheels until the late 1830s.

In 1807 John Stevens declined an invitation to join with Robert Fulton and Robert R.Living-ston in their development work, which culminated in successful operation of the PS Clermont that summer; in 1808, however, he launched his own paddle steamer, the Phoenix. But Fulton and Livingston had obtained an effective monopoly of steamer operation on the Hudson and, unable to reach agreement with them, Stevens sent Phoenix to Philadelphia to operate on the Delaware River. The intervening voyage over 150 miles (240 km) of open sea made Phoenix the first ocean-going steamer.

From about 1810 John Stevens turned his attention to the possibilities of railways. He was at first considered a visionary, but in 1815, at his instance, the New Jersey Assembly created a company to build a railway between the Delaware and Raritan Rivers. It was the first railway charter granted in the USA, although the line it authorized remained unbuilt. To demonstrate the feasibility of the steam locomotive, Stevens built an experimental locomotive in 1825, at the age of 76. With flangeless wheels, guide rollers and rack-and-pinion drive, it ran on a circular track at his Hoboken home; it was the first steam locomotive to be built in America.

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See also: Allen, Horatio; Cooper, Peter

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Steam and internal combustion engines

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John was the third son of David Elder. The father came from a family of millwrights and moved to Glasgow where he worked for the well-known shipbuilding firm of Napier's and was involved with improving marine engines. John was educated at Glasgow High School and then for a while at the Department of Civil Engineering at Glasgow University, where he showed great aptitude for mathematics and drawing. He spent five years as an apprentice under Robert Napier followed by two short periods of activity as a pattern-maker first and then a draughtsman in England. He returned to Scotland in 1849 to become Chief Draughtsman to Napier, but in 1852 he left to become a partner with the Glasgow general engineering company of Randolph Elliott \& Co. Shortly after his induction (at the age of 28), the engineering firm was renamed Randolph Elder \& Co.; in 1868, when the partnership expired, it became known as John Elder \& Co. From the outset Elder, with his partner, Charles Randolph, approached mechanical (especially heat) engineering in a rigorous manner. Their knowledge and understanding of entropy ensured that engine design was not a hit-and-miss affair, but one governed by recognition of the importance of the new kinetic theory of heat and with it a proper understanding of thermodynamic principles, and by systematic development. In this Elder was joined by W.J.M. Rankine, Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Glasgow University, who helped him develop the compound marine engine. Elder and Randolph built up a series of patents, which guaranteed their company's commercial success and enabled them for a while to be the sole suppliers of compound steam reciprocating machinery. Their first such engine at sea was fitted in 1854 on the SS Brandon for the Limerick Steamship Company; the ship showed an improved performance by using a third less coal, which he was able to reduce still further on later designs.

Elder developed steam jacketing and recognized that, with higher pressures, triple-expansion types would be even more economical. In 1862 he patented a design of quadruple-expansion engine with reheat between cylinders and advocated the importance of balancing reciprocating parts. The effect of his improvements was to greatly reduce fuel consumption so that long sea voyages became an economic reality.

His yard soon reached dimensions then unequalled on the Clyde where he employed over 4,000 workers; Elder also was always interested in the social welfare of his labour force. In 1860 the engine shops were moved to the Govan Old Shipyard, and again in 1864 to the Fairfield Shipyard, about 1 mile (1.6 km) west on the south bank of the Clyde. At Fairfield, shipbuilding was commenced, and with the patents for compounding secure, much business was placed for many years by shipowners serving long-distance trades such as South America; the Pacific Steam Navigation Company took up his ideas for their ships. In later years the yard became known as the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd, but it remains today as one of Britain's most efficient shipyards and is known now as Kvaerner Govan Ltd.

In 1869, at the age of only 45, John Elder was unanimously elected President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland; however, before taking office and giving his eagerly awaited presidential address, he died in London from liver disease. A large multitude attended his funeral and all the engineering shops were silent as his body, which had been brought back from London to Glasgow, was carried to its resting place. In 1857 Elder had married Isabella Ure, and on his death he left her a considerable fortune, which she used generously for Govan, for Glasgow and especially the University. In 1883 she endowed the world's first Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow, an act which was reciprocated in 1901 when the University awarded her an LLD on the occasion of its 450th anniversary.

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RLH / FMW

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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The son of a "coal viewer", Curr was brought up in the West Durham colliery district. In 1777 he went to the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at Sheffield, where in 1880 he was appointed Superintendent. There coal was conveyed underground in baskets on sledges: Curr replaced the wicker sledges with wheeled corves, i.e. small four-wheeled wooden wagons, running on "rail-roads" with cast-iron rails and hauled from the coal-face to the shaft bottom by horses. The rails employed hitherto had usually consisted of plates of iron, the flange being on the wheels of the wagon. Curr's new design involved flanges on the rails which guided the vehicles, the wheels of which were unflanged and could run on any hard surface. He appears to have left no precise record of the date that he did this, and surviving records have been interpreted as implying various dates between 1776 and 1787. In 1787 John Buddle paid tribute to the efficiency of the rails of Curr's type, which were first used for surface transport by Joseph Butler in 1788 at his iron furnace at Wingerworth near Chesterfield: their use was then promoted widely by Benjamin Outram, and they were adopted in many other English mines. They proved serviceable until the advent of locomotives demanded different rails.

In 1788 Curr also developed a system for drawing a full corve up a mine shaft while lowering an empty one, with guides to separate them. At the surface the corves were automatically emptied by tipplers. Four years later he was awarded a patent for using double ropes for lifting heavier loads. As the weight of the rope itself became a considerable problem with the increasing depth of the shafts, Curr invented the flat hemp rope, patented in 1798, which consisted of several small round ropes stitched together and lapped upon itself in winding. It acted as a counterbalance and led to a reduction in the time and cost of hoisting: at the beginning of a run the loaded rope began to coil upon a small diameter, gradually increasing, while the unloaded rope began to coil off a large diameter, gradually decreasing.

Curr's book The Coal Viewer (1797) is the earliest-known engineering work on railway track and it also contains the most elaborate description of a Newcomen pumping engine, at the highest state of its development. He became an acknowledged expert on construction of Newcomen-type atmospheric engines, and in 1792 he established a foundry to make parts for railways and engines.

Because of the poor financial results of the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at the end of the century, Curr was dismissed in 1801 despite numerous inventions and improvements which he had introduced. After his dismissal, six more of his patents were concerned with rope-making: the one he gained in 1813 referred to the application of flat ropes to horse-gins and perpendicular drum-shafts of steam engines. Curr also introduced the use of inclined planes, where a descending train of full corves pulled up an empty one, and he was one of the pioneers employing fixed steam engines for hauling. He may have resided in France for some time before his death.

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WK / PJGR

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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John Kay was the youngest of five sons of a yeoman farmer of Walmersley, near Bury, Lancashire, who died before his birth. John was apprenticed to a reedmaker, and just before he was 21 he married a daughter of John Hall of Bury and carried on his trade in that town until 1733. It is possible that his first patent, taken out in 1730, was connected with this business because it was for an engine that made mohair thread for tailors and twisted and dressed thread; such thread could have been used to bind up the reeds used in looms. He also improved the reeds by making them from metal instead of cane strips so they lasted much longer and could be made to be much finer. His next patent in 1733, was a double one. One part of it was for a batting machine to remove dust from wool by beating it with sticks, but the patent is better known for its description of the flying shuttle. Kay placed boxes to receive the shuttle at either end of the reed or sley. Across the open top of these boxes was a metal rod along which a picking peg could slide and drive the shuttle out across the loom. The pegs at each end were connected by strings to a stick that was held in the right hand of the weaver and which jerked the shuttle out of the box. The shuttle had wheels to make it "fly" across the warp more easily, and ran on a shuttle race to support and guide it. Not only was weaving speeded up, but the weaver could produce broader cloth without any aid from a second person. This invention was later adapted for the power loom. Kay moved to Colchester and entered into partnership with a baymaker named Solomon Smith and a year later was joined by William Carter of Ballingdon, Essex. His shuttle was received with considerable hostility in both Lancashire and Essex, but it was probably more his charge of 15 shillings a year for its use that roused the antagonism. From 1737 he was much involved with lawsuits to try and protect his patent, particularly the part that specified the method of winding the thread onto a fixed bobbin in the shuttle. In 1738 Kay patented a windmill for working pumps and an improved chain pump, but neither of these seems to have been successful. In 1745, with Joseph Stell of Keighley, he patented a narrow fabric loom that could be worked by power; this type may have been employed by Gartside in Manchester soon afterwards. It was probably through failure to protect his patent rights that Kay moved to France, where he arrived penniless in 1747. He went to the Dutch firm of Daniel Scalongne, woollen manufacturers, in Abbeville. The company helped him to apply for a French patent for his shuttle, but Kay wanted the exorbitant sum of £10,000. There was much discussion and eventually Kay set up a workshop in Paris, where he received a pension of 2,500 livres. However, he was to face the same problems as in England with weavers copying his shuttle without permission. In 1754 he produced two machines for making card clothing: one pierced holes in the leather, while the other cut and sharpened the wires. These were later improved by his son, Robert Kay. Kay returned to England briefly, but was back in France in 1758. He was involved with machines to card both cotton and wool and tried again to obtain support from the French Government. He was still involved with developing textile machines in 1779, when he was 75, but he must have died soon afterwards. As an inventor Kay was a genius of the first rank, but he was vain, obstinate and suspicious and was destitute of business qualities.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Textiles

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John Wyatt was the eldest son of John and Jane Wyatt, who lived in the small village of Thickbroom in the parish of Weeford, near Lichfield. John the younger was educated at Lichfield school and then worked as a carpenter at Thickbroom till 1730. In 1732 he was in Birmingham, engaged by a man named Heely, a gunbarrel forger, who became bankrupt in 1734. Wyatt had invented a machine for making files and sought the help of Lewis Paul to manufacture this commercially.

The surviving papers of Paul and Wyatt in Birmingham are mostly undated and show a variety of machines with which they were involved. There was a machine for "making lead hard" which had rollers, and "a Gymcrak of some consequence" probably refers to a machine for boring barrels or the file-making machine. Wyatt is said to have been one of the unsuccessful competitors for the erection of London Bridge in 1736. He invented and perfected the compound-lever weighing machine. He had more success with this: after 1744, machines for weighing up to five tons were set up at Birmingham, Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield and Liverpool. Road construction, bridge building, hydrostatics, canals, water-powered engines and many other schemes received his attention and it is said that he was employed for a time after 1744 by Matthew Boulton.

It is certain that in April 1735 Paul and Wyatt were working on their spinning machine and Wyatt was making a model of it in London in 1736, giving up his work in Birmingham. The first patent, in 1738, was taken out in the name of Lewis Paul. It is impossible to know which of these two invented what. This first patent covers a wide variety of descriptions of the vital roller drafting to draw out the fibres, and it is unknown which system was actually used. Paul's carding patent of 1748 and his second spinning patent of 1758 show that he moved away from the system and principles upon which Arkwright built his success. Wyatt and Paul's spinning machines were sufficiently promising for a mill to be set up in 1741 at the Upper Priory, Birmingham, that was powered by two asses. Wyatt was the person responsible for constructing the machinery. Edward Cave established another at Northampton powered by water while later Daniel Bourn built yet another at Leominster. Many others were interested too. The Birmingham mill did not work for long and seems to have been given up in 1743. Wyatt was imprisoned for debt in The Fleet in 1742, and when released in 1743 he tried for a time to run the Birmingham mill and possibly the Northampton one. The one at Leominster burned down in 1754, while the Northampton mill was advertised for sale in 1756. This last mill may have been used again in conjunction with the 1758 patent. It was Wyatt whom Daniel Bourn contacted about a grant for spindles for his Leominster mill in 1748, but this seems to have been Wyatt's last association with the spinning venture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Mining and extraction technology

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John Coster, son of an iron-forge manager in the Forest of Dean, by the age of 38 was at Bristol, where he was "chief agent and sharer therein" in the new lead-smelting methods using coal fuel. In 1685 the work, under Sir Clement Clerke, was abandoned because of patent rights claimed by Lord Grandison, who financed of earlier attempts. Clerke's business turned to the coal-fired smelting of copper under Coster, later acknowledged as responsible for the subsequent success through using an improved reverberatory furnace which separated coal fume from the ores being smelted. The new technique, applicable also to lead and tin smelting, revitalized copper production and provided a basis for new British industry in both copper and brass manufacture during the following century. Coster went on to manage a copper-smelting works, and by the 1690s was supplying Esher copper-and brass-works in Surrey from his Redbrook, Gloucestershire, works on the River Wye. In the next decade he extended his activities to Cornish copper mining, buying ore and organizing ore sales, and supplying the four major copper and brass companies which by then had become established. He also made copper goods in additional water-powered rolling and hammer mills acquired in the Bristol area. Coster was ably assisted by three sons; of these, John and Robert were mainly active in Cornwall. In 1714 the younger John, with his father, patented an "engine for drawing water out of deep mines". The eldest son, Thomas, was more involved at Redbrook, in South Wales and the Bristol area. A few years after the death of his father, Thomas became partner in the brass company of Bristol and sold them the Redbrook site. He became Member of Parliament for Bristol and, by then the only surviving son, planned a large new smelting works at White Rock, Swansea, South Wales, before his death in 1734. Partners outside the family continued the business under a new name.

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