Jacob Perkins

Jacob Perkins (9 July 1766 – 30 July 1849) was an American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist.

Life

Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Perkins was apprenticed to a goldsmith. He soon made himself known with a variety of useful mechanical inventions^[1] and eventually had twenty-one American and nineteen English patents.^{[citation needed]}

In 1819 he went to England with a plan for engraving banknotes on steel, which ultimately proved a signal success, and was carried out by Perkins in partnership with the English engraver Heath.^[1] His firm, later trading as Perkins, Bacon provided banknotes for many country banks, and foreign countries with postage stamps.^[2] Stamp production started for the British government in 1840 with the 1d black and the 2d blue postage stamps.^{[citation needed]}

He made an experimental high pressure steam engine working at pressures up to 2000 psi, but these were not practical for the manufacturing technology of the time, though his concepts were revived a century later. In 1827 he became the first person in England to use a Uniflow steam engine. A locomotive on the South Eastern Railway was converted to the Uniflow system in 1849.^{[citation needed]}

His chief contribution to physics lay in the experiments by which he proved the compressibility of water and measured it by a piezometer of his own invention.^[1] He became involved in lawsuits and had to close his engine manufactory, 1829-30, going into partnership with his second son (see below), manufacturing and installing central heating systems using his hermetic tube principle. He also investigated refrigeration machinery after discovering from his research in heating that liquified ammonia caused a cooling effect.^{[citation needed]}

Perkins also applied the Hermetic tube system to steam locomotive boilers and a number of locomotives using this principle were made in 1836 for the London and South Western Railway. The Hermetic tube seems to have been a very early ancestor of the ultra-high pressure circuit used in LMS 6399 Fury.^{[citation needed]}

In 1832 Perkins established the National Gallery of Practical Science on Adelaide Street, West Strand, London. This was devoted to showing modern inventions. A popular feature was his steam gun, which did not find favour with the military.^[3]

He retired in 1843 and died in London in 1849.^[1]

His second son, Angier March Perkins (1799–1881), also born at Newburyport, went to England in 1827, and was in partnership with his father (later taking over the business on the latter's death). His grandson, Loftus Perkins (1834–1891), most of whose life was spent in England, experimented with the application to steam engines of steam at very high pressures, constructing in 1880 a yacht, the Anthracite.^[1]

References

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

• Obituary:
  • Scientific American, 8 September 1849

• [Anon.] (1911) "Jacob Perkins", Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Bathe, D. & Bathe, G. (1943). Jacob Perkins: His Inventions, His Times and His Contemporaries. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 
• Ferris, F. J. (2002). The Perkins Family: A Short History about Four Generations of Engineers. Heritage Group Website for The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. Retrieved on 2007-08-14.
• McConnell, A. (2004) "Perkins, Angier March (1799–1881)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 14 Aug 2007 (subscription required)
• Morus, I. R. (1998). Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691059527. 
• Woolrich, A. P. [2002] "Perkins, Jacob", in Skempton, A. W. (ed.) (2002). Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland: 1500-1830, vol.1, London: Thomas Telford Ltd, 519–520. ISBN 072772939X. 

External links

• Mr Perkins' Extraordinary Steam Gun of 1824 Illustrated account of the Perkins steam gun
• National Gallery of Practical Science - also known as The Adelaide Gallery
• Uniflow Steam Engines
• Heat Pipes

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