Richard Sutcliffe (26 January 1849 – 23 July 1930) was an Irish mining engineer and inventor, active in England. He was born on a farm in

Tipperary Tipperary is the name of: Places *County Tipperary, a county in Ireland **North Tipperary, a former administrative county based in Nenagh **South Tipperary, a former administrative county based in Clonmel *Tipperary (town), County Tipperary's na ...

and worked at coal mines in Ireland between 1857 and 1885.AAI , Physical Landscape
/ref> He moved to

Barnsley Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough has ...

, England in August 1885. In 1892 he invented the world's first coal cutting machine. In 1905 he invented the world's first underground

conveyor belt A conveyor belt is the carrying medium of a belt conveyor system (often shortened to belt conveyor). A belt conveyor system is one of many types of conveyor systems. A belt conveyor system consists of two or more pulleys (sometimes referred to ...

. This invention revolutionized the mining industry by greatly reducing the amount of labour needed to transport coal. His company, Richard Sutcliffe Ltd., based in

Horbury Horbury is a town in the City of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England. Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is situated north of the River Calder about three miles (5 km) south west of Wakefield and two miles (3 km) to the ...

near

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

pioneered the manufacture of conveyor belts used in the mining and assembly line industries. His company devised many other types of mining equipment. His company also produced four documentaries about the manufacturing industry, directed by

Lindsay Anderson Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for h ...

between 1948 and 1954. After his death, his children took over his business which was later bought out by a larger company. Today, his descendants run a company that manufactures playground equipment.

References and further reading

*Sutcliffe, Richard Joseph Sutcliffe, Edward D. ''Richard Sutcliffe: The Pioneer of Underground Belt Conveying.'' Surrey, UK: R.W. Simpson & Co, 1948

External links

Sutcliffe Play : Playground Equipment - Design and Manufacture
at www.sutcliffeplay.co.uk
"Richard Sutcliffe" - Google Patents
at www.google.com US patents
Esp@cenet results view
at v3.espacenet.com Worldwide patents held 1849 births 1930 deaths Irish mining engineers Irish inventors People from County Tipperary 19th-century Irish engineers 20th-century Irish engineers {{Ireland-engineer-stub