Part 25

At eleven years of age, Brunel's love of tools was so great that he once pawned his hat to buy them; and at the age of twelve he is said to have constructed different articles with as much precision as a regular workman.

Brunel had scarcely left the shores of France when he found that he had lost his passport. This difficulty he, however, got over by borrowing a passport from a fellow-traveller, which he copied so exactly in every particular, down to the very seal, that it was deemed proof against all scrutiny. He had hardly completed his task when the American vessel was stopped by a French frigate, and all the passengers were ordered to show their passports. Brunel, with perfect self-possession, was the first to show his, and not the slightest doubt was aroused as to its authenticity.

The total number of machines employed in the various operations of making a ship's block by this method was forty-four, and 16,000 blocks of various sizes could be turned out in the course of a year.

Dr. Cartwright was the younger brother of Major John Cartwright, the well-known English Reformer of the reign of George III., to whose memory a bronze statue is erected in Burton Crescent, London.

Dr. Cartwright was married twice. His first wife died in 1785, and in 1790 he married the youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. Kearney.

Pursuit of Knowledge, vol. 2.

The other three being Hales, Black, and Priestly.

Highs or Hays was a reedmaker at Leigh, and in 1767 took up the plan of attempting to spin by rollers running at different speeds, previously invented by Lewis Paul in 1738. Highs employed Kay to carry out his plans, from whom Arkwright obtained the requisite information.

Mr. Lee, Mr. Kennedy, and Mr. George Duckworth.

There is an unaccountable mistake of one year in Mr. Crompton's age as engraved on his tombstone.

Memoir, by Dr. T. S. Trail, Encyclopædia, Britannica.

Youngest son of James Watt.

Davy also reduced by voltaic electricity alumina, but aluminium was first obtained in a perfectly separate state by Wohler in 1827.

The meshes or apertures of the wire gauze ought not to be more than one twenty-second of an inch in diameter.--Brougham's Lives of Philosophers.

Called at first Georgium Sidus in honour of George the Third.

This machinery was constructed by John Rennie.--Mechanics' Magazine, Sept. 20, 1861.

20,000l., the reward offered for a chronometer sufficiently exact to correct the longitude within certain limits required by Act of Parliament.

A very interesting account of Maudslay's introduction, &c., to Bramah is given by Mr. Smiles in his 'Industrial Biography.' London 1863. P. 201-3.

See 'Memoir of Bramah.'

In particular may be mentioned Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth.

See 'Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland,' by Sir John Dalrymple, Bart.

For fuller account of Miller and Symington's experiments see 'Memoir of Symington.'

Mechanics' Magazine, September 20, 1861.

Lock's Essays on the Trade and Commerce, Manufactories and Fisheries, of Scotland, 1779. 3 vols.

According to an article published in the Mechanics' Magazine, Sept. 20, 1861, Mr. Rennie appears likewise to have attended the collegiate academy at Perth. The above brief account of his early life is given on the authority of a Memoir furnished by Mr. George Rennie, F.R.S., and published in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

By the invention and employment of what is now well known as the travelling-crane.

This peculiarity of Mr. Ronalds' apparatus is stated in full by Mr. Highton, C.E., in his work on the 'Telegraph,' page 50. London, John Weale.

See also Patrick Miller.