Henry Wimshurst (1804–1884)
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Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', No. 129, 9 April 1932. was a 19th-century British

shipbuilder Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to befor ...

. Wimshurst was in business at Ratcliffe Cross Dock in east London. He is remembered primarily as the builder of , the world's first propeller-driven steamship.Smith, p. 70.

Biography

While Wimshurst cannot take credit for ''Archimedes'' revolutionary propulsion system—which was the invention of

Francis Pettit Smith Sir Francis Pettit Smith (9 February 1808 – 12 February 1874) was an English inventor and, along with John Ericsson, one of the inventors of the screw propeller. He was also the driving force behind the construction of the world's first scr ...

—he was an "ardent supporter" of Smith and his technological breakthrough. He would later claim to have proposed an improved, two-bladed version of Smith's original propeller which was subsequently installed on the vessel. After completing ''Archimedes'' in 1839, Wimshurst built a second screw-propelled steamship in 1840, ''Novelty'', described as the world's first screw-propelled cargo ship and the first screw-propelled ship to make a commercial voyage."Calendar of Industrial Pioneers"
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'', No. 110, 19 August 1922. Wimshurst himself had an inventive turn of mind, and filed a number of patents during the course of his career. In 1854, he built an experimental rotary steam engine, which when installed in a 300-ton screw-propelled ship, reportedly achieved an

rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

of 45 and a top speed of 14 mph in tests conducted by the firm of

Boulton & Watt Boulton & Watt was an early British engineering and manufacturing firm in the business of designing and making marine and stationary steam engines. Founded in the English West Midlands around Birmingham in 1775 as a partnership between the Eng ...

. By comparison, a pair of conventional direct-acting engines later installed in the same ship achieved an rpm of 28 and a top speed of only 8 mph. A few years prior in 1850, Wimshurst developed an instrument for measuring the power exerted by a propeller shaft—a forerunner of the

torsion Torsion may refer to: Science * Torsion (mechanics), the twisting of an object due to an applied torque * Torsion of spacetime, the field used in Einstein–Cartan theory and ** Alternatives to general relativity * Torsion angle, in chemistry Bi ...

meter, an instrument for measuring the power transmitted by

turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...

s.Seaton, p. 25. Henry Wimshurst was the father of

James Wimshurst James Wimshurst (13 April 1832 – 3 January 1903) was an English inventor, engineer and shipwright. Though Wimshurst did not patent his machines and the various improvements that he made to them, his refinements to the electrostatic generator led ...

, a late-19th century inventor who developed the

Wimshurst machine The Wimshurst influence machine is an electrostatic generator, a machine for generating high voltages developed between 1880 and 1883 by British inventor James Wimshurst (1832–1903). It has a distinctive appearance with two large contra-ro ...

and an early device for generating

X-rays An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nbs ...

Footnotes

References

* Brooman, R. A. (ed.) (1854): ''The Mechanics' Magazine'', Volume LXI, Robertson, Brooman and Co., London. * Fox, Stephen (2003): ''Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships'', page 146, HarperCollins, . * Seaton, A. E. (1909): The Screw Propeller: and Other Competing Instruments for Marine Propulsion, page 25, Charles Griffin & Co., London, J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. * Smith, Edgar C. (1905): ''A Short history of Naval and Marine Engineering'', printed for Babcock & Wilcox Ltd. by University Press, Cambridge. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wimshurst Henry 1804 births 1884 deaths English shipbuilders 19th-century English businesspeople