Samuel Clegg

Engraving by Samuel Clegg in Mechanics' Magazine in 1835

Samuel Clegg (born March 2, 1781 in Manchester , † January 8, 1861 in Haverstock Hill , Middlesex ) was a British chemist and engineer.

Clegg received scientific training from a Dr. Dalton and was an apprentice at Boulton & Watt's Soho Manufactory in Birmingham . He also learned from William Murdoch's inventions for lighting with town gas . He then set up the lighting for Henry Lodge's cotton mills in Sowerby Bridge and invented the cleaning of city gas by washing it with lime milk. In London he had success in 1813 with the lighting of the house of the publisher Rudolph Ackermann and was hired by the Chartered Gas Company . In 1815 and 1818 he patented gas meters he had invented and he improved the gas lighting industry through further inventions and advised on the construction of new gas works. He was unlucky with a job in an engineering firm in Liverpool, where he lost his fortune, and went to Portugal, where he worked as an engineer for the government, including rebuilding the mint. Back in England he was in the attempts of the Samuda Brothers for atmospheric railway involved. The failure was a severe blow to Clegg. He then went on to work for the government checking gas bills and writing a handbook on town gas that his son published in 1850.

In 1829 he became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers .

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989

Web links

• Dictionary of National Biography, Wikisource