John Smeaton

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John Smeaton

Library of Congress

[b. Leeds, England, June 8, 1724, d. Austhorpe, England, October 28, 1792]

Smeaton gave up law to become a mathematical instrument maker. He investigated windmills and water wheels and pioneered the application of cast iron in machinery. He is regarded as the father of civil engineering in Britain. Among his chief works are the redesign and construction of Eddystone Lighthouse, several substantial bridges, and the Forth and Clyde canal.

The English civil engineer John Smeaton (1724-1792) transformed the handicraft of engineering into a profession by applying experimental science to architectural and mechanical problems.

John Smeaton was born on June 8, 1724, at Austhorpe in Yorkshire. His father was an attorney. As a boy, Smeaton made his own hand tools, casting and forging them himself, and made a small lathe for turning wood. He also made a steam engine, which had the dubious success of pumping dry his father's fish pond.

At 16 Smeaton joined his father's office, where he began legal studies. Two years later he journeyed to London to formally enter the legal profession. However, he was more interested in the mechanical crafts and finally obtained his father's consent to become an instrument maker, a profession which roughly corresponded in terms of mechanical skill to that of a toolmaker of today but which also implied some knowledge of science. In 1750 he opened his own instrument shop.

Smeaton's scientific training came from reading and from attending the meetings of the Royal Society of London. He became a fellow of the Society in 1753 and began contributing articles to the Philosophical Transactions. In 1759 he received the Copley Gold Medal for an experimental investigation into windmills and water mills in which he showed how maximum efficiency of waterwheels could be obtained. Later he designed and constructed many water-wheels; his work represented the culmination of the development of this traditional source of water power. Not until the waterwheel was replaced by the turbine was Smeaton's work superseded.

About 1756 Smeaton began his first and most famous engineering project: the reconstruction of the Eddystone Lighthouse in the English Channel. Great Britain was becoming a major naval power, and navigational aids along and in its coastal waters were of vital importance. Eddystone was one of the most important sites. It was a half, and sometimes wholly, submerged reef which was the location of many storms and a frequent cause of shipwrecks. Two previous lighthouses there had been destroyed.

Smeaton decided to make the new lighthouse entirely of stone, a radical departure. He built a scale model of the structure, the rigidity of which was enhanced by dovetailing the courses into one another and into the reef itself. He also developed a cement that solidified and held under seawater. The lighthouse was built between 1757 and 1759. It was replaced in 1877 because that portion of the reef on which it stood had been undermined by the seas of the intervening century.

Smeaton also investigated that machine so essential to the industrial revolution - the steam engine. He was the first engineer to analyze the operation of a steam engine experimentally and to try to increase its efficiency. By about 1770 he doubled the engine's original efficiency, and he later almost tripled it. The efficiency was still very low; nevertheless, by his attention to design he created the best steam engine until James Watt placed his own on the market.

A great many technical innovations were due to Smeaton such as the extensive use of cast-iron parts in moving machinery and the introduction of the use of a diving bell for the construction of bridges and harbor works. He sought to transform what had been the handicraft tradition of engineering, which was based upon practices handed down from master to apprentice, into a profession which applied experimental science to a craft. He was one of the first to call himself a civil engineer. In 1771 he helped establish the first engineering society in the world - the Society of Civil Engineers, also called the Smeatonian Society, which in 1818 became the Institution of Civil Engineers. He died at Austhorpe on Oct. 28, 1792.

Further Reading

John Smeaton's Diary of His Journey to the Low Countries, 1755 was published in 1950. There is no biography of Smeaton, but a sometimes unreliable account is in Samuel Smiles, Lives of the Engineers, vol. 2 (1891). Many references to Smeaton's work can be found in H. W. Dickinson, A Short History of the Steam Engine (1939), and throughout Charles Singer and others, eds., A History of Technology (5 vols., 1958).

Additional Sources

John Smeaton, FRS, London: T. Telford, 1981.

Smeaton, John (1724-92). One of the founders of the civil engineering profession. Born in Leeds, where his father was a lawyer, Smeaton demonstrated a practical aptitude which won him rapid recognition as a craftsman and instrument-maker. He was commissioned to rebuild the lighthouse on Eddystone Rock, 15 miles south of Plymouth, and completed this in 1759 with a remarkably innovative design which set the pattern for all subsequent offshore lighthouses. In 1771 he took the lead in establishing the Society of Civil Engineers, the first professional institution for engineers.

English civil engineer and inventor of Scots descent. He travelled on the Continent in 1754 to study canals and harbours, and in 1755–6 he designed his Eddystone Lighthouse, near Plymouth, Devon, using a system of dovetailing the stones together, including the courses and the foundations in the rock. The building was completed in 1759, but was replaced in 1877–82. He designed several bridges, the best of which are in Scotland, including those at Banff, Coldstream, and Perth, using segmental arches, and with circular perforations in the spandrels. He also designed the Forth and Clyde Canal (begun 1768, completed 1790).

Bibliography

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
• Skempton et al. (eds.) (1981)
• Smeaton (1813, 1837)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

This article is about the 18th century civil engineer. For the baggage handler involved in the 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack, see John Smeaton (baggage handler)

John Smeaton
Portrait of John Smeaton, with the Eddystone Lighthouse in the background
Born	8 June 1724 (1724-06-08) Austhorpe, Leeds, England
Died	28 October 1792 (1792-10-29) (aged 68) Austhorpe, Leeds, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Civil engineer

John Smeaton, FRS, (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was an English civil engineer – often regarded as the "father of civil engineering" – responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a more than capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. He was associated with the Lunar Society. He was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer.

Contents 1 Law and physics 2 Civil engineering 3 Mechanical engineer 4 Legacy 4.1 Smeaton coefficient 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Law and physics

He was born in Austhorpe, Leeds, England. After studying at Leeds Grammar School, he joined his father's law firm, but then left to become a mathematical instrument maker (working with Henry Hindley), developing, among other instruments, a pyrometer to study material expansion and a whirling speculum or horizontal top (a maritime navigation aid).

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1753, and in 1759 won the Copley Medal for his research into the mechanics of waterwheels and windmills. His 1759 paper "An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Natural Powers of Water and Wind to Turn Mills and Other Machines Depending on Circular Motion" addressed the relationship between pressure and velocity for objects moving in air, and his concepts were subsequently developed to devise the 'Smeaton Coefficient'.^[1]

However, over the period 1759-1782, he performed a series of further experiments and measurements on waterwheels that led him to support and champion the vis viva theory of German Gottfried Leibniz, an early formulation of conservation of energy. This led him into conflict with members of the academic establishment who rejected Leibniz's theory, believing it inconsistent with Sir Isaac Newton's conservation of momentum. The debate was sadly marred by unfortunate nationalistic sentiments on the establishment's part.^{[citation needed]}

Civil engineering

Recommended by the Royal Society, Smeaton designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse (1755-59). He pioneered the use of 'hydraulic lime' (a form of mortar which will set under water) and developed a technique involving dovetailed blocks of granite in the building of the lighthouse. His lighthouse remained in use until 1877 when - with the rock underlying the structure's foundations beginning to erode - it was dismantled and partially rebuilt at Plymouth Hoe where it is known as Smeaton's Tower [1]. He is important in the history, rediscovery of, and development of modern cement, because he identified the compositional requirements needed to obtain "hydraulicity" in lime; work which led ultimately to the invention of Portland cement.

Deciding that he wanted to focus on the lucrative field of civil engineering, he commenced an extensive series of commissions, including:

• the Calder and Hebble Navigation (1758-70)
• Coldstream Bridge over the River Tweed (1762-67)
• Improvements to the River Lee Navigation (1765-70)
• Perth Bridge over the River Tay in Perth (1766-71)
• Ripon Canal (1766-1773)
• Smeaton's Viaduct, which carries the A616 road (part of the original Great North Road) over the River Trent between Newark and South Muskham in Nottinghamshire (1768-70)^[2][3]
• the Forth and Clyde Canal from Grangemouth to Glasgow (1768-77)
• Banff harbour (1770-75)
• Aberdeen bridge (1775-80)
• Peterhead harbour (1775)
• Nent Force Level (1776-77)
• Harbour works at Ramsgate (retention basin 1776-83; jetty 1788-1792)
• Hexham bridge (1777-90)
• the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal (1782-89)
• St Austell's Charlestown harbour in Cornwall (1792)

Because of his expertise in engineering, Smeaton was called to testify in a court for a case related to the silting-up of the harbour at Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk in 1782. He is considered to be the first expert witness to appear in an English court. He also acted as a consultant on the disastrous 63-year-long New Harbour at Rye, designed to combat the silting of the port of Winchelsea. The project is now known informally as "Smeaton's Harbour", but despite the name his involvement was limited and occurred more than 30 years after work on the harbour commenced^[4].

Mechanical engineer

Employing his skills as a mechanical engineer, he devised a water engine for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1761 and a watermill at Alston, Cumbria in 1767 (he is credited by some for inventing the cast iron axle shaft for waterwheels). In 1782 he built the Chimney Mill at Spital Tongues in Newcastle upon Tyne, the first 5-sailed smock mill in Britain. He also improved Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine, erecting one at Chasewater mine in Cornwall in 1775.

In 1789, Smeaton applied an idea by Denis Papin, by using a force pump to maintain the pressure and fresh air inside a diving bell.^[5][6] This bell, built for the Hexham bridge project, was not intended for underwater work. In 1790 the design was updated to enable it to be used underwater on the breakwater at Ramsgate Harbour.^[6]

Legacy

To understand the significance of Smeaton's work in the context of the development of thermodynamics, see timeline Edit

Highly regarded by other engineers, he contributed to the Lunar Society and founded the Society of Civil Engineers in 1771. He coined the term civil engineers to distinguish them from military engineers graduating from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. After his death, the Society was renamed the Smeatonian Society, and was a forerunner of the Institution of Civil Engineers, established in 1818.

His pupils included canal engineer William Jessop and architect and engineer Benjamin Latrobe.

He died after suffering a stroke while walking in the garden of his family home at Austhorpe, and was buried in the parish church at Whitkirk, West Yorkshire.

John Smeaton lends his name to John Smeaton Community College, a secondary school in the suburbs of Leeds, adjacent to the Pendas Fields estate near Austhorpe. He is also mentioned in the song "I Predict a Riot" (as a symbol of a more dignified and peaceful epoch in Leeds history; and in reference to a Junior School House at Leeds Grammar School, which lead singer Ricky Wilson attended) by the indie rock band Kaiser Chiefs, who are natives of Leeds. He is also commemorated at the University of Plymouth, where the Mathematics and Technology Department is housed in a building named after him.

He also has a viaduct named after him, which forms an important piece of Leeds' new £50m inner ring road.

Smeaton coefficient

The lift equation used by the Wright brothers was due to John Smeaton. It has the form:^[7]

where:

L is the lift

k is the Smeaton coefficient- 0.005 (the drag of a 1-square-foot (0.093 m²) plate at 1 mph) was the value as determined by Smeaton, later corrected to 0.0033 by the Wright brothers

C_l is the lift coefficient (the lift relative to the drag of a plate of the same area)

A is the area in square feet

The Wright brothers determined with wind tunnels that the Smeaton coefficient was incorrect and should have been 0.0033.^[8] In modern analysis, the Lift coefficient is normalized by the dynamic pressure instead of the Smeaton coefficient.

See also

UK Waterways portal

• Canals of the United Kingdom
• History of the British canal system

References

1. ^ Centennial of flight: Smeaton's Coefficient
2. ^ Biff Vernon: "Smeaton's viaduct"
3. ^ Geograph Photo
4. ^ Rye Museum website
5. ^ Davis, RH (1955). Deep Diving and Submarine Operations (6th ed.). Tolworth, Surbiton, Surrey: Siebe Gorman & Company Ltd. p. 693. 
6. ^ ^{a b} Acott, C. (1999). "A brief history of diving and decompression illness.". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6004. Retrieved 2009-03-17. 
7. ^ Lift equation of the early 1900s
8. ^ Dodson, MG (2005). "An Historical and Applied Aerodynamic Study of the Wright Brothers' Wind Tunnel Test Program and Application to Successful Manned Flight". US Naval Academy Technical Report USNA-334. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/3585. Retrieved 2009-03-17. 

External links

• John Smeaton information at Structurae
• Structure Details: Chimney Mill
• Smeaton's profile at the BBC
• John Smeaton: The Aviation History Online Museum

Awards and achievements
Preceded by John Dollond	Copley Medal 1759	Succeeded by Benjamin Wilson

Persondata
NAME	Smeaton, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	June 8, 1724
PLACE OF BIRTH	Austhorpe, Leeds, England
DATE OF DEATH	October 28, 1792
PLACE OF DEATH	Austhorpe, Leeds, England

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