John Smeaton

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portrait of John Smeaton with the Eddystone Lighthouse in the background

John Smeaton (born June 8, 1724 in Austhorpe near Leeds , West Yorkshire , † October 28, 1792 ibid) was an English engineer and is considered the father of civil engineering , as he laid the appropriate foundations for engineering .

Law and Physics

Smeaton was born in Austhorpe near Leeds in West Yorkshire. After studying at Leeds Grammar School , he joined his father's office, but left again to make mathematical instruments.

He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1753 and won the Copley Medal in 1759 for his work on the mechanics of water and windmills. The investigations described the relationship between pressure and speed of objects moving in air and led to the definition of the Smeaton coefficient .

In the following years up to 1782 he carried out further investigations on this topic, which led him to support the vis viva theory of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , which was an early description of the law of conservation of energy. This brought him into conflict with many members of the scientific establishment who understood this theory to be incompatible with Isaac Newton's conservation of moments ( momentum conservation ). This conflict was aided by nationalist undertones on the part of the establishment.

Civil engineering

Recommended by the Royal Society, Smeaton was commissioned to build the third lighthouse on Eddystone from 1755 to 1759, after the two previous buildings were unable to withstand the harsh weather conditions and exposure to salt. He was a pioneer in the use of hydraulic lime , a type of waterproof binding agent , and thus a forerunner of today's cement . For this purpose, he examined various limes for their suitability by removing the limestone with nitric acid and chemically analyzing the remaining substrate. He found that limes that were well suited for building purposes had a certain amount of clay, which he then added to the limestone in a controlled manner. For the construction, he developed a technique of dovetail mortised stone blocks wedged against each other, which was later used for the Bell Rock lighthouse .

He decided to continue working in the lucrative field of civil engineering and created a large number of buildings:

Because of his knowledge of civil engineering, Smeaton was called in 1782 as an expert witness in a court case over the silting up of a port in Norfolk . He is one of the first technical experts to testify before an English court.

mechanical engineering

Using his skills as a mechanical engineer , he developed a water motor for the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew in 1761 and a water mill in Alston in 1767 . He examined the efficiency of numerous steam engines of the newcomer type by determining the performance of the machines that could convert them with a defined amount of coal. From this he derived the 'optimal' cylinder diameter and the 'optimal' stroke and thereby achieved a doubling of the output for a given amount of fuel.

Another invention that improved the Windmühlenbau was his development of a universal corrugating head for windmills crosses - the Lincolnshire Cross (Engl. Lincolnshire Cross ), named after the area of his greatest distribution. With this cast iron cross , the mill builder had the possibility of theoretically arranging any number of wings (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ...) symmetrically to form a wing cross: with 4, 5, 6 and 8 -Multi-bladed windmills were built accordingly. With this type of attachment, the rods were in one plane.

legacy

Smeaton also founded the English term civil engineer in order to distinguish between military engineers who were trained at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich . In 1771 he founded the Society of Civil Engineers , which was renamed the Smeatonian Society after his death and became the forerunner of the Institution of Civil Engineers founded in 1818 . His students included the canal builders James Brindley and William Jessop and the engineer and architect Benjamin Latrobe .

He died of a stroke while walking in the garden of his house in Austhorpe and was buried in Whitkirk parish church.

literature

Web links

Commons : John Smeaton  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Engineering-timelines.com: John Smeaton
  2. ^ JS Allen: John Smeaton, FRS . Ed .: AW Skempton. Thomas Telford, London 1981, ISBN 0-7277-0088-X , VIII, Steam Engines, pp. 179-194 .
personal data
SURNAME Smeaton, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English engineer
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1724
PLACE OF BIRTH Austhorpe near Leeds , West Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1792
Place of death Austhorpe near Leeds , West Yorkshire