Government refusing to take up this valuable invention, a company was formed by Huddart's friends for the manufacture of rope upon his new principle. These gentlemen built a factory at Limehouse, which was established under the name of Huddart & Co.
Captain Huddart now devoted himself to the further development of his valuable invention; he contrived a registering machine whereby the yarns were formed as they came out of the tar-kettle, the tar being kept at the temperature (212-220° Fah.) he found by experiment to be sufficient for the required purpose, without injuring by too great heat the fibres of the rope.
He also constructed a laying machine, which gave the same length and twist to every strand, and an uniform angle and pressure to the rope or cable. These improvements involved the manufacture of much beautiful machinery, which was made after Huddart's design and under his own personal superintendance.[21]
Captain Huddart lived to an advanced old age, and even in his last illness his disposition to inquire into causes and effects did not forsake him, as his body gradually wasted away, he caused himself to be weighed from time to time, noting thereby the quantity of moisture which escaped by the breath and insensible perspiration. He died at Highbury Terrace, London, at the age of seventy-six, and was interred in a vault under St. Martin's Church, in the Strand.—Memoir of Capt. Jos. Huddart, by Wm. Cotton, D.C.L. London, 1855.
EDWARD JENNER, M.D., L.L.D., F.R.S., &c.
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
Born May 17, 1749. Died January 26, 1823.
Edward Jenner, who by his discovery of vaccination has pre-eminently acquired a right to the title of the "Benefactor of Mankind," was born at the vicarage house of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, and was the third son of the Rev. Stephen Jenner, rector of Rockhampton, and vicar of Berkeley. Jenner's father died when he was only five years old, leaving him to be brought up under the care of his uncle. At eight years of age he was put to school at Wotton-under-Edge, from whence he was removed shortly afterwards to the care of Dr. Washborn, at Cirencester. Jenner early displayed that taste for natural history which afterwards formed so marked a feature in his character. Before he was nine years old he had made a collection of the nests of the dormouse, and when at Cirencester used to spend his hours of recreation in searching for the fossils which abound in that district.