ENGINEERS AND MECHANICIANS.
“No man can look back on the last twenty or thirty years without feeling that it has been the age of Engineers and Mechanicians. The profession has, in that period of time, done much to change the aspect of human affairs; for what agency during that period, single or combined, can be compared in its effects, or in its tendency towards the amelioration of the condition of mankind, with the establishment of railroads, of the electric telegraph, and to the improvement in steam navigation?”
“The wide range of the profession of an Engineer requires the assistance of many departments of science and art, and must call into employment important branches of manufacture. He can perform no great work without the aid of a great variety of workmen; and it is on their strength and skill, as well as on their scientific direction, that the perfection of his work will depend. The personal experience of one individual cannot fit him for the exigencies of a profession which is ever extending its range of subjects, and is constantly dealing with new and complex phenomena,—phenomena which are all the more difficult to deal with from the fact, that they are generally surrounded by such variable circumstances as render them incapable of being submitted to precise measurement and calculation, or of being made amenable to the deductions of exact science. Consequently, nothing is more certain than that he who wishes to reach the perfection of his art must avail himself of the experience of others as well as his own, and that he will not unfrequently find the sum of the whole little enough to guide him. And let no inventive genius suppose that his own tendencies or capabilities relieve him from this necessity.
“There is no such thing as discovery and invention, in the sense which is sometimes attached to the words. Men do not suddenly discover new worlds, or invent new machines, or find new metals. Some indeed may be, and are, better fitted than others for such purposes; but the progress of discovery is, and always has been, much the same. There is nothing really worth having that man has obtained that has not been the result of a combined and gradual progress of investigation. A gifted individual comes across some old footmark, and stumbles on a chain of previous research and inquiry. He meets, for instance, with a machine, the result of much previous labour; he modifies it, pulls it to pieces, constructs and reconstructs it, and, by further trial and experiment, he arrives at the long-sought-for result.”
Such were the emphatic words of Mr. Hawkshaw, F.R.S., in opening his Address on his election as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, session 1861-62. It would not be difficult to illustrate the President’s data by many bright instances of their truth. But we remember too well the sad story of Myddleton bringing the New River to our metropolis, a very early engineering labour, who, although he died not so poor as is usually represented, yet his family fell into decay. Almost equally familiar is the story of the life of George Stephenson, the maturer of the locomotive engine; and the career of his son, Robert Stephenson, the constructor of the London and Birmingham Railway, and second only to his father as a railway engineer. George learned to read and write at night-schools, and “figuring” by the engine-fires. As Robert grew up, his father was enabled to send him to Edinburgh University, where he acquired some knowledge in mathematics and geology: these acquisitions afforded subjects for comment and discussion between him and his father, and were of valuable use to both in their future joint avocations; and when the father had retired, in the sphere of railways Robert was recognised as the foremost man, the safest guide, and the most active worker. In the great railway mania of 1844, he was engineer for thirty-three new schemes; and his income was large, beyond any previous instance of engineering gain. His other great railway achievements were, the High-level Bridge at Newcastle; the Chester and Holyhead line; he constructed the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges, and designed the tubular bridges for Canada and Egypt. These intense labours brought him to his grave in his fifty-sixth year. It has been truly said of Robert Stephenson:
“He almost worshiped his father’s memory, and said he owed all to his father’s training, his example, and his character; and he declared in public: ‘It is my great pride to remember that, whatever may have been done, and however extensive may have been my own connexion in the railway development, all I owe, and all I have done is primarily due, to the parent whose memory I cherish and revere.’ Like his father, he was eminently practical, and yet always open to the influence and guidance of correct theory.
“In society Robert Stephenson was simple, unobtrusive, and modest; but charming, and even fascinating, in an eminent degree. Sir John Lawrence has said of him, that he was, of all others, the man he most delighted to meet in England, he was so manly, yet gentle, and withal so great.
“His great wealth enabled him to perform many generous acts in a right noble and yet modest manner, not letting his right hand know what his left hand did.”[[99]]
In the life of Thomas Telford, we have another striking instance of a man who, by the force of natural talent, unaided save by uprightness and persevering industry, raised himself from low estate to take his stand among the master-spirits of the age. He was born in 1757, in Dumfriesshire, sent to the parish-school, and employed as a shepherd-boy; in his leisure, delighted to read the books lent him by his village friends. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a stone-mason, and for several years worked on bridges and stone-buildings, village-churches, and manses, in his native district. In 1780 he went to Edinburgh, and for two years closely attended to architecture and drawing. He then removed to London, and worked upon the quadrangle of Somerset House, under Sir William Chambers, as architect. His next practice was in the construction of graving-docks, wharf-walls, and similar engineering works; and he built above forty bridges in Shropshire. His greatest works are, the Ellesmere Canal, 103 miles in length, with its wonderful aqueduct-bridges; the Caledonian Canal, which cost a million of money; the Bedford Level, and other important drainage works; 1000 miles of Highland roads and 1200 bridges; St. Katherine’s Docks, London, constructed with unexampled rapidity; and the great road from London to Holyhead, and the works connected with it. The Menai Suspension Bridge is a noble example of his boldness in designing, and practical skill in executing a novel and difficult work; and it is related of him that, just previous to the fixing of the last bar, he knelt in private prayer to the Giver of all good for the successful completion of the great work. Telford left an account of his labours of more than half a century; yet he found time to teach himself Latin, French, Italian, and German. He was the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in whose theatre is a noble portrait of him; and in Westminster Abbey, where he is interred, is a marble statue of the Eskdale shepherd-boy, whose works, in number, magnitude, and usefulness, are unrivalled.
John Rennie, who designed three of the noblest bridges in the world, in addition to other great engineering works, was born in 1761, in the county of East Lothian. He learned his first lessons in mechanics in the workshop of a millwright; before he was eleven years old he had constructed a windmill, a pile-engine, and a steam-engine; he next learned elementary mathematics and mechanics, and drawing machinery and architecture, and attended lectures on mechanical philosophy and chemistry. His greatest works are the Plymouth Breakwater; Waterloo, Southwark, and London bridges; the London, East and West India Docks; and great steam-engines; his principal undertakings having cost forty millions sterling. He was rarely occupied in business less than twelve hours a day; he seldom illustrated his information with any other instrument than a two-foot rule, which he always carried in his pocket. He owed his good fortune to talent, industry, prudence, perseverance, boldness of conception, soundness of judgment, and habits of untiring application: his works were indeed executed for posterity.
Sir Edward Banks, who built Rennie’s three stupendous bridges, was a labourer at Chipstead on the Merstham railway, some sixty years since: by his own natural abilities, which had not been cultivated to any extent, and by his integrity and perseverance, he became contractor for public works, and acquired great wealth: and it shows the simplicity of his nature, that, struck with the retired picturesqueness of Chipstead churchyard, he chose it for the depository of his remains, where the tablet to his memory bears his bust, and an arch and the three great bridges,—the goal of his remarkable career.
The history of the life of the elder Brunel is strangely tinged with romance. He was born in Normandy in 1769, was early intended for the priesthood; but when at the college of Gisors, he would steal away to the village carpenter’s shop, and draw faces and plans, and learn to handle tools; and one day, seeing a new tool in a cutler’s window, he pawned his hat to purchase it. He was next sent to the ecclesiastical seminary of St. Nicaise at Rouen; there, in his play-hours, he loved to watch the ships along the quay; and seeing some large iron castings landed from an English ship, he inquired, Where had they come from? and on being told from England, the boy exclaimed, “Ah, when I am a man, I will go and see the country where such grand machines are made.” On his return home, he continued his mechanical recreations; made musical instruments; and invented a nightcap-making machine, which is still used by the peasantry in that part of Normandy. His father now gave up all hope of his son for the priesthood, and had him qualified to enter the navy, and at seventeen he was nominated to a royal corvette; but while serving there he continued his mechanical pursuits, and made for himself a quadrant in ebony. His ship having been paid off in 1792, Brunel went to Paris, where he nearly fell a victim to the fury of the Revolution; but he escaped to Rouen, and thence fled to the United States, where he landed in 1793. While at New York, the idea of his block-machinery occurred to him. He now executed canal surveys, and designed the Park Theatre, and superintended its erection; he was next appointed chief engineer for New York, and there erected a cannon-foundry, with novel contrivances for casting and boring guns. He left New York in January 1799, and landed at Falmouth in the following March: there he met his early love, Sophia Kingdom, and the pair were shortly after united for life.
Brunel brought with him to England a duplicate writing and drawing machine; a machine for twisting cotton-thread and forming it into balls; a machine for trimmings and borders for muslins, lawns, and cambrics. The famous block-machinery was Brunel’s next invention; then various wood-working machinery, and machines for manufacturing shoes; and next the Battersea saw-mills; but the failure of the two latter speculations brought Brunel into difficulties, from which he was extricated by a government grant of 5000l., in consideration of the savings by the use of his block-machinery. He then improved the stocking-knitting machine and steam-engine; metallic paper and crystallised tinfoil; improvements in stereotyping and the treadmill. In engineering, he designed suspension, swing, and other bridges, and machines for boring cannon. He next experimented with a boat on the Thames, fitted with a double-action engine, and made his first voyage in it to Margate in 1814, when he narrowly escaped personal violence from the proprietors of the sailing-boats. Marine engines and paddle-wheels were next improved by Brunel; and these were followed by his carbonic-acid gas engine, which proved too costly a machine. Then came the crowning event of his life, the construction of the Thames Tunnel, taking the idea of his excavating-machine from the boring operations of the Teredo navalis. In this formidable work he was assisted by his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then only nineteen years of age; and after most perilous operations, the tunnel was completed, and opened March 25th, 1843. This was the engineer’s last work: as a commercial adventure it proved disastrous, which preyed on the mind of Brunel; though he lived six years longer, until he had attained his 81st year.
The younger Brunel’s first great work was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, followed by docks at Bristol and Sunderland, and several colliery tramways. In 1835, he was appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, being then only about twenty-eight years of age, but skilful and ingenious, and anxious to strike out an entirely new course in railway engineering. He adopted the broad-gauge, then a great and novel enterprise, but now ascertained to be unnecessary: the works were unusually costly, and so novel that the line was called the Grand Experimental Railway; while it rendered Brunel famous as a railway engineer. He next attempted the atmospheric principle; but this proved unsuccessful, and the loss exceeded half a million of money. His last and greatest railway engineering achievements were his “bowstring-girder” bridges at Chepstow and Saltash: the latter has two wrought-iron tubes, each weighing upwards of 1000 tons, and the viaduct and bridge are nearly half a mile, or 300 feet longer than the Britannia bridge. The central Saltash pier foundations, upon solid rock, 90 feet below the surface of the river, were laid within a wrought-iron cylinder 37 feet in diameter and 100 feet high, and the whole work involved six years’ toil, anxiety, and peril.
Next, Brunel devised an iron-plated armed ship capable of withstanding the fire of the Sebastopol forts; but his grand triumphs as a naval engineer were, the Great Western, steam-ship, propelled by paddle-wheels; and the Great Britain, propelled by a screw; but these were thrown into the shade by his Great Eastern, combining the powers of the paddle-wheel and the screw; and which, with the aid of Mr. Scott Russell, its builder, was completed and launched,—the largest ship that has ever floated. But this stupendous labour had undermined Mr. Brunel’s health; he was seized with paralysis, and died at the comparatively early age of fifty-three.[[100]]
Of Brunel’s great engineering skill there can be no question; he loved difficulties and engineering perils: he has been styled “the Michael Angelo of Railways;” and his victory in “the Battle of the Gauges” gained him extraordinary prominence in the railway world. His ruling passion was magnitude, without regard to cost: “he was the very Napoleon of engineers, thinking more of glory than of profit, and of victory than of dividends.” Capitalists subscribed to his projects freely, and he put his own savings into the same risks; if shareholders suffered, he suffered with them; and it must be conceded that both railway travelling and steam navigation have been greatly advanced by the speculative ability of Mr. Brunel’s Titanic labours.
The career of Joseph Locke, civil engineer, though less brilliant than that of Brunel, was one of more sterling worth. He was born in Yorkshire, in 1805, the son of a fellow-workman with George Stephenson at the pit. Locke had little schooling, and failing in two or three humble services, at the age of nineteen he became George Stephenson’s pupil, and then his assistant, taking charge of the survey of railway lines; he was appointed engineer-in-chief of the Grand Junction and South-Western lines; and next initiated the Continental Railway system, promoting the rapid communication between London and Paris. He was made a chevalier and officer of the Legion of Honour, and sat in the British Parliament for Honiton. He died at the early age of fifty-five, leaving great wealth to his widow (a daughter of Mr. M‘Creery, the literary printer), to form in the North a public park, and found a scholarship.
The high celebrity of Mr. Locke was not due to the fact of his making railways. It was, that he made them within the estimated cost,—an achievement which would sooner or later have been attained by the ordinary operations of capital. The Grand Junction Railway was eventually constructed for a sum within the estimate, and at an average cost of less than 15,000l. a mile. The heavy works on the Caledonian line were completed at less than 16,000l. a mile. This economical success was in a great measure owing to the adoption of a bold system of steep gradients—an expedient which Stephenson, it appears, disliked to the last, and which was a prevailing feature in his active rival’s designs. Locke hated a tunnel, and with embankments and inclines would encounter any difficulty.[[101]]
Thomas Cubitt, the great metropolitan builder and contractor, was another remarkable man of this class. He was born at Buxton, near Norwich, in 1788. At the time of his father’s death he was nineteen years old, and working as a journeyman carpenter. He next took a voyage to India and back, as captain’s joiner; and, on his return to the metropolis, with his savings began business as a master-carpenter. Within six years he erected large workshops in Gray’s-inn-road. One of his earliest works was building the London Institution in Moorfields. About 1824, he began to build Tavistock-square, Gordon-square, Woburn-place, and the adjoining streets; and next engaged to cover with houses large portions of the Five Fields, Chelsea, of which engagement Belgrave-square, Lowndes-square, and Chesham-place are the results.[[102]] He subsequently contracted to build over the large open district between Eaton-square and the Thames, now known as South Belgravia. He had completed most of his large engagements, and had just built for himself a mansion at Denbies, where he died in his sixty-seventh year, possessed of great wealth. Through life he constantly promoted the intellectual and moral improvement of his work-people. One of his brothers, and partner in business, is Mr. William Cubitt, M.P., who has twice served the office of Lord Mayor, and was, like his relative, originally a ship’s carpenter.
Thomas Brassey, the railway contractor, is another remarkable instance of colossal labour. Born at Buerton in 1805, and educated at Chester, he commenced life as a surveyor at Birkenhead; and his first railway work was a contract to supply the stone for a viaduct of the Liverpool and Manchester line. From this period to the present hour, he has constructed, upon his own responsibility and credit, many hundred miles of railway in England, Scotland, France, Spain, and Canada, at the cost of millions of money. A striking instance of his energy and enterprise occurred in one of his French contracts. When the Barentine viaduct, of twenty arches, on the Rouen and Havre Railway, was nearly completed, the work gave way, and the casualty involved a loss of 30,000l. Mr. Brassey was neither morally nor legally responsible—he had repeatedly protested against the material used in the structure; but the viaduct was rebuilt entirely at Mr. Brassey’s cost.
Mr. George Bidder, the engineer, presents one of the few examples of early habits of calculation being matured to advantage. When about six years of age, he was first introduced to the science of figures. His father was a working man; his elder brother commenced instructing him to count up to 10, then to 100, and there he stopped. He repeated the process, and found that by stopping at 10, and repeating that every time, he counted up to 100 much quicker than by going straight through the series: he counted up to ten, then ten again = 20, 3 times 10 = 30, 4 times = 40, and so on. At this time he did not know one written or printed figure from another, nor did he know there was such a word as “multiply;” but, having acquired the power of counting up to 100 by ten and by 5, he set about, in his own way, to acquire the multiplication-table: he got a small bag of shot, which he arranged into squares of 8 on each side, and then, on counting them, found they amounted to 64; which fact once established, remained undisturbed in Mr. Bidder’s mind until this day; and in this way he acquired the whole multiplication-table up to 10 times 10, which was all he needed. In a house opposite his father’s lived an aged blacksmith, who allowed young Bidder to run about his workshop and blow the bellows for him, and on winter-evenings to listen to the old man’s stories by the forge-hearth. By practice his powers of numeration were drawn forth, he was rewarded with halfpence, and thus he became more attached to arithmetic. The “Calculating Boy” has now matured as an eminent engineer; the process of reasoning, or action of the mind, by which, when a boy, he trained himself in Mental Arithmetic, having laid the basis of sound professional skill, which he has most beneficially exercised in various great engineering works.
James Walker, civil engineer, who died in 1862, aged eighty-one, was the oldest member of the profession. He was one of the earliest members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, succeeded Telford as President, and filled the chair fourteen years. Mr. Walker, through his long life, was associated with many of the greatest hydraulic works in England and Scotland, including lighthouses, harbours, bridges, embankments, and drainage. He had accumulated in personalty 300,000l., which he took great pains to distribute by his will; for he was a kind-hearted, generous man, and considerate and liberal to those associated with him in his profession.
[99]. Smiles’s Lives of the Engineers, vol. iii.
[100]. He had more perilous escapes from violent death than fall to the lot of most men. He had two narrow escapes from drowning by the river suddenly bursting in upon the Thames-Tunnel works. During the Great Western Railway inspection, he was one day riding a pony rapidly down Boxhill, when the animal stumbled and fell, pitching the engineer on his head; he was taken up for dead, but eventually recovered. One day, when driving an engine through the Box-tunnel, he discerned some light object standing on the same line of road along which his engine was travelling; he turned on the full steam and dashed the object (a contractor’s truck) into a thousand pieces. When on board the Great Western steam-ship, he fell down a hatchway into the hold, and was nearly killed. But the most extraordinary accident which befel him was, in showing a sleight-of-hand trick to his children, his swallowing a half-sovereign, which dropped into his windpipe, remained there for six weeks, when it was removed through an incision in the windpipe, by Sir Benjamin Brodie and Mr. Key; his body was inverted, and after a few coughs, the coin dropped into his mouth. Mr. Brunel used afterwards to say, that the moment when he heard the gold piece strike against his upper front teeth was perhaps the most exquisite in his whole life.—Abridged from the Quarterly Review, No. 223.
[101]. Saturday Review.
[102]. This district was originally a clayey swamp; but Mr. Cubitt finding the strata to consist of gravel and clay of inconsiderable depth, the clay he removed and burned into bricks; and by building upon the substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from one of the most unhealthy to one of the most healthy—a singular adaptation of the means to the end.