“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 5000_l._, 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 15,000_l._ a mile. The heavy works on the
Caledonian line were completed at less than 16,000_l._ 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 30,000_l._ 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 300,000_l._, 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.
---------------------
Footnote 99:
Smiles’s _Lives of the Engineers_, vol. iii.
Footnote 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.
Footnote 101:
_Saturday Review._
Footnote 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.
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