Alexander Mitchell (engineer)
Alexander Mitchell (born April 13, 1780 in Dublin , † June 25, 1868 in Glen Devis near Belfast ) was an Irish engineer. Mitchell, who became completely blind at the age of 22, was a brickworks owner who made many inventions on machines in this field. But he became famous for the invention of the screw pile for lighthouses.
Mitchell wanted to find a method by which lighthouses could be erected on dangerous sandbanks and in estuaries where the unstable subsoil made it impossible to build these structures in the traditional way. In the summer of 1833, with the help of his son, he made experiments in Dublin Bay, in which he screwed a wooden post into the sandy bottom and examined whether it would loosen with the tides . The experiments were successful and the screw carrier was registered for a patent in London . In 1838 he was asked to build the lighthouse on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary by his friend, engineer James Walker, who was working on the development of Belfast Harbor . This was the first screw-pile lighthouse built on the basis of Mitchell's invention. Mitchell then worked on the construction of the Wyre Light lighthouse in the mouth of the River Wyre in Morecambe Bay off Fleetwood in Lancashire .
The construction principle has now been used on a number of lighthouses in Ireland and England and also on the coast of North America and further developed by Alexander Mitchell's son John. Alexander Mitchell received the Telford Medal of the British Institution of Civil Engineers in 1848 and was also honored for his invention at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855 .
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- Alexander Mitchell (1780-1868) Belfast's blind engineer on History Ireland .
- FJ Bigger, Alexander Mitchell, the famous blind engineer of Belfast , Belfast, 1907.
- Alan J. Lutenegger, Historical development of iron screw-pile foundations, 1836-1900 in: International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology (Newcomen Society) 81, January 2011, pp. 108-28.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mitchell, Alexander |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Irish engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 13, 1780 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dublin |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 25, 1868 |
| Place of death | Glen Devis near Belfast |