Thomas Edmondson (30 June 1792 in Lancaster,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

– 22 June 1851 in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, England) was the

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 ...

of the

Edmondson railway ticket The Edmondson railway ticket was a system for recording the payment of railway fares and accounting for the revenue raised, introduced in the 1840s.Farr, M (1997). "Edmondson, Thomas". In: Simmonds and Biddle (1997), Page 141 It is named after ...

. He was a member of the

Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

and originally worked at the Gillow

cabinet making A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves and/or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood (s ...

business in Lancaster. While working as a station master at Milton (later

Brampton Brampton ( or ) is a city in the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. Brampton is a city in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and is a List of municipalities in Ontario#Lower-tier municipalities, lower-tier municipalit ...

) on the

Newcastle and Carlisle Railway The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway (N&CR) was an English railway company formed in 1825 that built a line from Newcastle upon Tyne on Britain's east coast, to Carlisle, on the west coast. The railway began operating mineral trains in 1834 between ...

, he devised the idea of a new type of railway ticket: a small piece of cardboard, pre-printed with journey details (as opposed to the then current hand-written paper bill). The tickets would be numbered by hand, and validated by a separate date-stamping press when purchased. He also invented and built a foot-operated version of the latter device. When the

Manchester and Leeds Railway The Manchester and Leeds Railway was a British railway company that built a line from Manchester to Normanton where it made a junction with the North Midland Railway, over which it relied on running powers to access Leeds. The line followed the ...

opened in 1839, Edmondson became the company's chief booking clerk at Manchester. The invention which made Edmondson's fortune was his final development: a machine which would print tickets in batches complete with the serial numbers. He patented the machine and was able to charge a royalty to railway companies amounting to ten

shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...

s per annum per mile of a company's routes. His machines and their improved successors quickly became the standard for British and other railways. He died a wealthy man, and members of his family carried on the business for many years afterwards. The

South Tynedale Railway The South Tynedale Railway is a preserved, narrow gauge heritage railway in Northern England and at 875ft is England's second highest narrow gauge railway after the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway in north Devon. The South Tynedale line runs fro ...

, based at

Alston, Cumbria Alston is a town in Cumbria, England, within the civil parish of Alston Moor on the River South Tyne. It shares the title of the 'highest market town in England', at about above sea level, with Buxton, Derbyshire. Despite its altitude, the tow ...

, operates an 0-4-0 Henschel-designed steam locomotive, which was named after Thomas Edmondson on the 125th anniversary of his card ticket invention. The STR also uses Edmondson tickets for travel. The Norwegian State Railways (Norges Statsbaner - NSB) used Edmondson Card Ticket until the late 1990’s, some small stations in the Oslo local traffic area being the last to sell them. The Norwegian Railway Club «inherited» the NSB’s last two ticket printing presses. , one of them was still in working order, being used to print tickets for Norwegian heritage railway lines.

Bibliography

References

External links

Birthplace of Thomas Edmondson
corner of Moor Lane, Lancaster
Biography and photographs of old Edmondson tickets
by Charlie Hulme, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. {{DEFAULTSORT:Edmondson, Thomas 1792 births English inventors People from Lancaster, Lancashire People educated at Ackworth School English Quakers 1851 deaths British railway pioneers 19th-century British businesspeople