Sarah Guppy

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Title page of her book Mrs. Guppy's Dialogues for Children

Sarah Maria Guppy , née Beach (born November 5, 1770 in Birmingham , † August 24, 1852 in Clifton, Bristol ) was a British inventor .

Life and accomplishments

Sarah Guppy came from a family in Birmingham who had become wealthy in the sugar trade in the Caribbean . Her parents were Richard and Mary Beach. She had been married to the likewise wealthy merchant Samuel Guppy from Bristol since 1795 . The couple held a prominent social position in Bristol. The marriage had six children, including the engineer Thomas Richard Guppy (1797-1882), the assistant to Isambard Kingdom Brunel (later he was a senior engineer at the Great Western Steamship Company, in which Brunel was a consultant).

After the death of her husband (1830), she married Richard Eyre-Coote, who was around 30 years younger than Richard Eyre-Coote in 1837 at the age of 67. a. got through with horse betting . Her old house in Arnos Court in Brislington is now a hotel. She had to sell it and moved to Richmond Hill in Bristol (Clifton), where a plaque commemorates her (the property opposite she left the city as a park). Her husband died a year after her, leaving only a fortune of £ 200.

Professional activities

Sarah Guppy's Bridge Patent (1st page) from 1811 in English.

As an inventor, she patented a pile anchorage for suspension bridges and allowed the first builders of suspension bridges, Thomas Telford ( Menai Suspension Bridge , opened 1826) and Isambard Kingdom Brunel ( Clifton Suspension Bridge , construction start in 1836, completion with long interruptions in 1864) to use them free of charge . The 1811 patent for suspension bridges was her first of 10 patents, and she received her last patent in 1844. She even designed a suspension bridge over the Avon near Bristol and handed her plans to Brunel, who was planning the Clifton Bridge at the time. In engineering circles, the patents were not known by her name, but that of the guppy family (as a woman, she could not register a patent herself, but had to use her husband for it).

A method she invented to build ship hulls in such a way that barnacles did not accumulate won her or her family an order from the British Admiralty worth 40,000 pounds. In general, however, it did not pursue the goal of making money with the patents.

She had good contacts with the builder of the Great Western Railway Isambard Kingdom Brunel and recommended the fortification of the railway embankments against erosion and slope slide by planting poplar trees and willows. Another invention was a kind of samovar for tea, in which you could boil eggs in steam and keep the toast warm in a niche. She invented a method of sealing wooden boats and ships, a candle holder that extended the life of candles, a precursor to the cooker hood, and a bed that also contained fitness devices. She also wrote children's books (Dialogues for Children).

Awards

To mark the 200th anniversary of Brunel's birth , a play about Sarah Guppy entitled An Audience With Sarah Guppy by Sheila Hannon was performed in Bristol .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SARAH MARIA GUPPY née BEACH (1770-1852) BOILS AN EGG. In: talltalesfromthetrees.blogspot.de. Retrieved January 14, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Birmingham, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538–1812, Sarah Beach, In: Ancestry.com
  3. ↑ BBC - Bristol - Entertainment - Shows of strength. In: www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved January 14, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Guppy, Sarah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guppy, Sarah Maria (full name); Beach, Sarah (maiden name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION British inventor
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Birmingham
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1852
Place of death Clifton, Bristol