Alexander Mitchell (engineer)
Alexander Mitchell ( born April 13, 1780 in Dublin, † June 25, 1868 in Glen Devis in Belfast) was an Irish engineer. Mitchell, who totally blind at the age of 22 years, was a brick factory owner who made multiple inventions of machines in this area. But he became famous for the invention of the screw carrier ( engl. screw pile ) for lighthouses.
Mitchell wanted to find a way lighthouses were built on dangerous sandbanks and in estuaries with tion modifiers leads help where the unstable ground the construction of these buildings made it impossible in traditional style. In the summer of 1833 he made with the help of his son attempts in the Bay of Dublin, where he screwed a wooden pole in the sand and examined whether this would loosen up by the tide. The experiments were successful and the bolt carrier was logged in London for a patent. In 1838 he was by his friend, the engineer James Walker, who worked on the development of the Port of Belfast, prompted the construction of the lighthouse on the Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary. This was the first lighthouse (Screw - pile lighthouse ) was built on the basis of the invention Mitchell. Mitchell then worked on the construction of the lighthouse, Wyre Light in the mouth of the River Wyre in the Morecambe Bay off Fleetwood in Lancashire.
The construction principle has now been brought to a whole series of lighthouses in Ireland and England and the coast of North America used and further developed by Alexander Mitchell's son John. Alexander Mitchell was awarded in 1848 the Telford Medal of the British Institution of Civil Engineers and was also honored at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855 for his invention.
Swell
- Alexander Mitchell (1780 - 1868) Belfast 's blind engineer on History Ireland.
- F. J. Bigger, Alexander Mitchell, the famous blind engineer of Belfast, Belfast, in 1907.
- Alan J. Lutenegger, Historical development of iron screw- pile foundations, 1836-1900 In: International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology ( Newcomen Society ) 81, January 2011, p.108 - 28th