Samuel Brown (civil engineer)

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Sir Samuel Brown (born January 10, 1776 in London , † March 13, 1852 in Blackheath , London) was a British naval officer and engineer and early pioneer of the design, construction and manufacture of chains and chain bridges ( suspension bridges ). In 1820 he designed and built the Union Bridge , the first suspension bridge for vehicle traffic in Great Britain.

Career in the Royal Navy

Brown joined the Royal Navy in 1795 , and initially served on the Newfoundland and North Sea stations . He served as a lieutenant on the HMS Royal Sovereign (1803) and in 1805 was the first lieutenant on the HMS Phoenix . In the following year he was transferred to the HMS Imperieuse , which was followed by periods of service on the HMS Flore and HMS Ulysses .

During his service, he carried out tests on iron chains made of wrought iron . He used them as anchor cables for HMS Penelope on a voyage to the West Indies in 1806. The Admiralty was so impressed that on his return in 1808 they immediately ordered four warships to be fitted with such anchor chains.

In 1808 Brown patented chain connections made from open curved parts and from shackles and rotary locks. While the former were soon abandoned, the latter saw little improvement over the next hundred years.

In 1811 he was promoted to Commander and his chains were introduced for ship anchors. He retired from the Navy in May 1812. Just four years later, the Royal Navy introduced iron chains instead of hemp linen as standard for all new warships. In 1842 he was awarded the rank of retired captain .

Chain manufacture

Brunel in front of the anchor chains for the Great Eastern , made at Brown's Pontypridd iron factory

With his cousin Samuel Lenox he founded a company known as Samuel Brown & Co and also Brown Lenox & Co, originally based in Millwall , east London , from 1812 . Then from 1816 he founded the Newbridge Chain & Anchor Works (Pontypridd) in Ynysangharad in a larger factory (previously a nail factory owned by William Crawshay Brown), which is on the Glamorganshire Canal in Pontypridd in South Wales , near large iron and coal depots was standing.

His company supplied the Royal Navy with chains until 1916, and also made the chains for Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship SS Great Eastern , which Robert Howlett depicted in a famous photograph.

Bridge building

In 1816 he was granted a patent for chain manufacture, and in 1817 another for wrought iron chain links for suspension bridges. In the same year, others built Dryburgh Bridge , the first chain bridge in Britain. Brown had already experimented with suspension bridges with chains as suspension ropes and in 1813 had erected a 32 m spanning experimental structure.

Brown also made unsuccessful offers to build a suspension bridge in Runcorn . In September 1818 he made drawings for the Union Bridge over the River Tweed ; it was completed in 1820.

Brown went on to build other chain bridges, including the Trinity Chain Pier in Newhaven , Edinburgh (1820/1821) and the Chain Pier in Brighton (opened in 1823 but finally destroyed in a storm in 1896). Most of his designs included an unstiffened bridge plate before it was realized that this shape was vulnerable to wind forces and unstable under concentrated loads. His designs have been reviewed and generally approved by eminent engineers such as John Rennie and Thomas Telford . However, Brown's designs were significantly less conservative than those of his contemporaries in that he used more traction on his iron chains.

Bigger bridges

Life

One of his apartment buildings was next to the Brighton Project, No. 48 Marine Parade, now known as the Chain Pier House. In 1833 Brown had the Netherbyres country house built near Eyemouth in Berwickshire . He tore down the old house and built a new one around 1836, which he later sold on March 5, 1852, a few days before he died.

Brown was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on February 7, 1831 . In 1838 he was ennobled by Queen Victoria as a Knight Bachelor .

He died at Vanbrugh Lodge in Blackheath , London on March 13, 1852 , at the age of 75 .

literature

  • Thomas Day: Samuel Brown in North-East Scotland. Industrial Archeology Review, 1985.
  • Thomas Day: The 19th-Century Iron Bridges of Northeast Scotland. Industrial Archeology, 1998.
  • RW Rennison: Civil Engineering Heritage: Northern England. Thomas Telford Publishing, 1996.
  • Gordon Miller: Union Chain Bridge - Linking Engineering. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 159, May 2006, pp. 88-95.
  • BP Cronin: Brown, Sir Samuel (1776-1852). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Obituary, The Gentleman's Magazine 1852, pp. 519-520
  2. ↑ a b c Rhondda Cynon Taf ( Memento from May 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ History And Developement Of Anchor Chain ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nvo.com
  4. ↑ a b Old Chester, PA: Baldt Anchor History ( Memento of the original from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 66.241.199.22
  5. ^ Archive Network Wales
  6. ↑ A Chronology of Glamorgan
  7. ^ Chain Pier Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder, 1990, Brighton & Hove
  8. ↑ Welney suspension bridge ( memento of April 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on welney.org.uk, as of: April 15, 2009, in the Internet Archive at archive.org, viewed July 20, 2011 (English) current website
  9. ^ History of Shoreham
  10. ↑ Kenmare Suspension Bridge ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kenmare.com
  11. ^ Trinity Chain Pier
  12. ↑ Listed Building - Entry . In: Historic Scotland .
  13. ^ Netherbyres ownership
  14. ↑ Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows (PDF file; 487 kB)
  15. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 340.
  16. ^ The London Gazette : 19592, 407 , February 23, 1838.
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British naval officer and engineer and early pioneer of design
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1776
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1852
Place of death Blackheath , London