Beauchamp Tower (13 January 1845 – 31 December 1904) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and railway

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

who is chiefly known for his discovery of full-film or

hydrodynamic In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and ...

lubrication Lubrication is the process or technique of using a lubricant to reduce friction and wear and tear in a contact between two surfaces. The study of lubrication is a discipline in the field of tribology. Lubrication mechanisms such as fluid-lubric ...

Early life

Beauchamp Tower was born the son of Robert Beauchamp Tower, rector of Moreton, Essex and educated at

Uppingham School Uppingham School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for pupils 13-18) in Uppingham, Rutland, England, founded in 1584 by Robert Johnson, the Archdeacon of Leicester, who also established Oakham School. The headma ...

Rutland Rutland () is a ceremonial county and unitary authority in the East Midlands, England. The county is bounded to the west and north by Leicestershire, to the northeast by Lincolnshire and the southeast by Northamptonshire. Its greatest len ...

. He decided at the age of 16 that he wanted to become an engineer and received early training at the Armstrong Works at Elswick, where he stayed for a few months as a draughtsman after completing his four-year

apprenticeship Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners ...

Inventions

Beauchamp Tower held several patents regarding an apparatus for maintaining a constant plane in a floating vessel. The apparatus is based on the gyroscopic principle. One of the possible applications of this patent was steadying guns on shipboard. In 1977, he was named by

Duncan Dowson Duncan Dowson (31 August 1928 – 6 January 2020) was a British engineer and Professor of Engineering Fluid Mechanics and Tribology at the University of Leeds. Biography Dowson's father, Wilfrid Dowson, was an ornamental blacksmith, and as ...

as one of the 23 "Men of Tribology".

Influence

Tower's work on lubrication influenced many other engineers, including

Osborne Reynolds Osborne Reynolds (23 August 1842 – 21 February 1912) was an Irish-born innovator in the understanding of fluid dynamics. Separately, his studies of heat transfer between solids and fluids brought improvements in boiler and condenser design. ...

, who acknowledged Tower in his 1886 paper on lubrication and the viscosity of olive oil.

Lord Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 182417 December 1907) was a British mathematician, Mathematical physics, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy (Glasgow), Professor of Natural Philoso ...

credited Tower with the idea of a chain and pulleys as part of his

Tide-predicting machine A tide-predicting machine was a special-purpose mechanical analog computer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constructed and set up to predict the ebb and flow of sea tides and the irregular variations in their heights – which chan ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tower, Beauchamp 1845 births English railway mechanical engineers English inventors 1904 deaths People from Epping Forest District Tribologists