"The Third Man"
by John Griffiths
William Murdoch, who invented Gas Lighting in 1792, was one of the
Industrial Revolutions most creative figures. In that heady springtime
of technology, this Scottish millers son, born and bred on the estate of
James Boswell's father, made his way on foot to Mathew Boulton's palatial
new Soho Manufactory in Birmingham, where the steam engine patented by
James Watt was being produced.
William Murdoch longed for a chance to get his hands on this thrilling
piece of machinery; and granted that chance, he was at once in his element.
He worked for the rest of his life for Boulton and Watt - for many years
as chief engineer and installer of the steam-engines they sold to the copper
mines in Cornwall, England, and then back at the manufactory where he managed
the Soho foundry.
He was (said one who worked for him) "the men's pride and joy ...Ah,
he was a wonderful man. He was the best turner who ever lived."
In 1830 James Nasmythe wrote "Not less interesting (than James Watt)
to my mind was the memory of that incomparable mechanic, William Murdoch,
a man of indomitable energy, and Watt's right-hand man in the highest practical
sense. Murdoch was the inventor of gas for lighting purposes; and yet he
always kept himself in the background, for he was excessively modest ....indeed
he was a man whose memory ought to be held in the highest regard by all
true engineers and mechanics."
Thomas Middleton, who worked as William Murdoch's 'boy' wrote "He could
turn anything ......when he wanted to show us some new fitting or anything
of that sort he wanted making he used simply to pick up a piece of chalk
and draw it on the door. He could draw a steam engine in that way so all
the parts would be as right as possible"
And he invented as freely as he could draw with his white chalk.
To Watt's steam-engine patent William Murdoch added the D-slide valve
and Sun & Planet Gearing; he invented tools and new ways of using them;
he invented the oscillating marine engine; he invented the sending of messages
by compressed air; he invented pneumatic elevators; he invented the harnessing
of gas for the purpose of lighting factories, houses and streets thereby
making the towns and cities far safer places to live in.
The invention of gas lighting should have earned him fame at least equal
to that of Watt.
The reasons why it did not lie partly with William's class - he was
"only" an artisan; partly in his temperament - he found reward in doing
what he did, bothering little about how it was received; and largely in
the jealous attitude of Watt's son regarding his father's genius as an
inventor, which led to the deliberate suppression of evidence proving the
existence of a gift which rivalled that genius.
One of William Murdoch's least known inventions, but probably the most
important, is the steam carraige locomotive. 101 years before the petrol
engined Benz, there was Murdoch's little "Steam-Devil"
which was tested and ran on the roads of Cornwall in 1784, the first time
a self propelled vehicle had done so on the roads of Great Britain, (only
the French Cugnot of 1769 precedes Murdoch's little model chariot in the
history of the "automotive").
The story of "The Steam-Devil" is little known;
a story from the cradle of the Industrial Revolution; a story of how road
transport could have happened a lot sooner but for the jealous intervention
of James Watt.
Profile by John Griffiths
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