John Smeaton

Dates: 1724–1792.

Summary: Often hailed as the founder of civil engineering in Great Britain and the most influential lighthouse designer, John Smeaton made crucial contributions throughout the 18th century to the study of energy using water and wind.

John Smeaton was born on June 8, 1724, at Austhorpe Lodge near the village of Whitkirk, located east of Leeds, England. Austhorpe Lodge had been built by Smeaton’s grandfather and remained the base for his consultancy business throughout his career. John was the eldest of the three children born into the well-off family of William Smeaton, a lawyer, and his wife, Mary Stones. In spite of the family’s high social standing, John’s childhood was a lonely one, as the boy was privately instructed at home by his mother until he was 10. At that age, he started to attend Leeds Grammar School, where he showed his inclination for geometry and arithmetic. Throughout his school years, he also demonstrated a clear interest in mechanics and craftsmanship that worried his father, who had already planned a law career for his son. In 1724, therefore, William sent John to Gray’s Inn in London to study law. However, after only two years, John returned to Austhorpe Lodge and managed to persuade his father that his real career was in making instruments.

In 1748, after a failed marriage proposal, Smeaton left again for London to start his instrument-making career with his father’s approval and financial support. Two years later, he improved his condition from that of a simple apprentice to owner of his own business. In this early phase of his career, Smeaton focused primarily on instruments used for navigation and astronomy. For example, he devised a new mariner’s compass and a device to calculate the rate of travel. These and other instruments were tried on HMS Fortune; Smeaton’s compass was adopted by the Royal Navy and became standard issue. Smeaton’s fame soon spread throughout London’s scientific community as he read papers at the Royal Society, where he became a fellow at only 29 years of age.

In the empiricist vein that characterized his career from its very early stages, Smeaton also carried out several experiments to investigate the power of water and wind to activate mill wheels. Conducted with the use of scale models, these experiments secured for Smeaton the Royal Society’s Copley Medal. Smeaton soon began to put his theoretical ideas into practice, and over the course of his career he designed 49 water mills, six windmills, and two horse-powered mills. He also planned six dams to improve the efficiency of his mills. The majority of Smeaton’s waterwheels belonged to the overshot category, as water poured from the top. They also had the structure first designed by the Roman architect Vitruvius, with a horizontal axle carrying a vertical wheel. To prevent the damage caused by water to timber wheels as it got between the radial spokes, Smeaton introduced cast-iron axles, which were kept in place by two pairs of timber spokes. Although his experiments made clear that an overshot waterwheel is more efficient than an undershot one, Smeaton also designed undershot waterwheels. The largest of these was located under the fifth arch of the Old London Bridge, where it exploited the fast flow of the water in the River Thames to generate as much as 45 kilowatts.

Most Celebrated Achievement

The third iteration of the Eddystone Lighthouse, built between 1765 and 1759, was a turning point in Smeaton’s career and remains his most celebrated achievement. It also represented a turning point in Smeaton’s private life because, while he was working on its construction, he married Ann Jenkinson. Almost half a century before the invention of battery-powered electricity, Smeaton was commissioned to build this lighthouse to keep ships at a safe distance from the Eddystone rocks, southwest of Plymouth. Previous efforts had been unsuccessful, and to the strength of the waves had reduced many ships to mere pieces. Smeaton’s lighthouse, on the contrary, proved resistant to the elements, thanks to an innovative interlocking stone structure and the use of hydraulic materials such as a mixture of limestone and clay that is widely regarded as the forerunner of cement and concrete. In addition, the lighthouse was fitted with one of the first lightning conductors in Britain. The Eddystone Lighthouse would influence the design of lighthouses throughout the 19th century.

Smeaton was aware that the steam engine represented the key technological advancement of the age in terms of power generation. He therefore set out to improve the model designed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen’s engine was itself an improvement of Thomas Savery’s atmospheric steam engine. Newcomen designed an engine that injected water directly into the cylinder and connected the moving piston to a beam swinging up and down. This model was particularly suitable for pumping, and these engines were used to pump water from rivers to houses or to set in motion wheels that, in turn, provided energy to blow furnaces and drive mills. One negative aspect of Newcomen’s engine, however, was its high consumption of fuel. Smeaton managed to make it more economical and efficient. As with his other achievements, Smeaton’s success was built on a long and meticulous series of both observations of the existing engines and experiments on his new model. In 1774, Smeaton’s first pumping engine started operating at Long Benton Colliery in Northumberland, and tests carried out after three months of operation showed that it could produce up to 30 kilowatts. That figure represented a 25 percent improvement on the generation capacity of the most efficient engine in Great Britain at the time. More important commissions followed, and Smeaton’s engines were fitted at the dockyards in Kronstadt near St. Petersburg, at Chacewater mine in Cornwall, at Prosperous Pit near Newcastle, and at Walker Colliery. The steam engine was definitively improved by James Watt with the process of condensation occurring outside the piston cylinder, making it safer and more efficient. The first of these engines was produced in 1776, superseding Smeaton’s model. Smeaton praised Watt’s progress, nominating him for election to the Royal Society.

Smeaton died from a stroke on September 16, 1792, at Austhorpe Lodge. He had continued to work on projects until shortly before his death, and he designed a method for keeping fresh air within a diving bell (a device to allow underwater diving) in 1789.

Bibliography

Knowles, Eleanor. “John Smeaton.” In Engineering Timelines. http://www.engineering-timelines.com/who/Smeaton‗J/smeatonJohn.asp.

Reynolds, Terry S. Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Water Wheel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Skempton, A. W., ed. John Smeaton, FRS. London: Thomas Telford, 1981.