John Smeaton
John Smeaton ( born June 8, 1724 in Austhorpe in Leeds, † October 28, 1792 ) was an engineer and is considered the father of civil engineering, he laid the necessary groundwork for the engineering sciences.
Jura and physics
Smeaton was born in Austhorpe near Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. After studying at Leeds Grammar School, he joined the law firm of his father, but left it again to make mathematical instruments.
He was elected in 1753 as a member of the Royal Society and won the 1759 Copley Medal for his work on the mechanics of water and wind mills. The studies described the relationship between pressure and speed of moving objects in air and led to the definition of a ' Smeaton coefficient '.
In the following years until 1782, he led more tests on this subject, which led him to the vis viva to support the theory of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was an early description of the energy conservation law. This brought him into conflict with many members of the scientific establishment, who understood this theory as incompatible with momentum conservation rate of Isaac Newton ( conservation of momentum ). This conflict was supported by nationalist undertones on the part of the establishment.
Civil Engineering
Through the Royal Society recommended that Smeaton was the contract for construction of the third lighthouse on the Eddystone 1755-1759 issued after the two previous buildings could not withstand the harsh weather conditions and the salt load. He was a pioneer in the use of ' hydraulic lime ' a kind of waterproof mortar, thus a forerunner of today's concrete. He examined to various limes on their suitability by the remote lime with nitric acid and the remaining substrate analyzed chemically. The Court stated that for building highly suitable limes possessed a certain amount of sound he zusetzte henceforth controlled the lime. To build he developed a technique of using dovetails and mortised against each other wedged blocks of stone, which was also used later in the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
He decided to continue working on the lucrative field of civil engineering and created a large number of buildings:
- The lighthouse on Eddystone ( 1755-59 ) - the third lighthouse at this point. He remained for over 100 years in operation.
- The Calder and Hebble Navigation ( 1758-70 ), a channel system in West Yorkshire.
- The Coldstream Bridge over the Tweed ( 1762-67 )
- Improvements to the River Lea Navigation ( 1765-70 )
- The Perth Bridge over the River Tay ( 1766-71 )
- The ' Ripon Canal ' (1766-1773)
- The Newark Viaduct over the Trent in Nottinghamshire ( 1768-70 )
- The ' Forth and Clyde Canal ' from Grangemouth to Glasgow ( 1768-77 )
- The port of Banff ( 1770-75 )
- The Aberdeen Bridge ( 1775-80 )
- Peterhead Harbour (1775 )
- Port facilities in Ramsgate ( retention basin 1776-83; investors from 1788 to 1792 )
- The Hexham Bridge ( 1777-90 )
- The ' Birmingham and Fazeley Canal - ' ( 1782-89 )
- St. Austell Charlestown Harbour Cornwall ( 1792)
Because of his knowledge in engineering Smeaton was established in 1782 as an expert witness in a court case because of the silting up of the harbor in Norfolk. He is thus one of the first technical experts who testified before an English court.
Engineering
Using his skills as a mechanical engineer in 1761, he developed a water engine for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1767 and a water mill in Alston. He examined the efficiency of numerous steam engines of Newcomen type by stating that the performance of the machines that could transpose this with a defined amount of coal. From this he derived the optimal ' cylinder diameter and the optimal ' hub and thereby reached a doubling of performance for a given amount of fuel.
Another invention that improved the Windmühlenbau, was his development of a universal Well head for windmill blades crosses - the Lincolnshire Cross (English Lincolnshire Cross), named after the area of its greatest distribution. With this cross made of cast iron the millwright had the opportunity to a theoretically unlimited number of blades ( 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ..) to arrange symmetrically to a wing cross, with 4 -, 5 -, 6 - and 8 -beam wing crosses were built corresponding multi-leaf windmills. In this type of fastening the rods were in a plane.
Legacy
Smeaton also founded the English term ' civil engineer ' to illustrate a distinction between military engineers who were trained at the ' Royal Military Academy ' in Woolwich. He founded in 1771 the ' Society of Civil Engineers', after his death, the ' Society of Civil Engineers' was in ' Smeatonian Society ' renamed and became the forerunner of the Institution of Civil Engineers, founded in 1818. His students included the canal builder James Brindley and William Jessop and the engineer and architect Benjamin Latrobe.
He died of a stroke during a walk in the garden of his house in Austhorpe and was buried in the parish church of Whitkirk.