Sir Thomas Tassell Grant KCB FRS (1795-15 October 1859) was a notable inventor in the 19th century. He was born in

Portsea, Portsmouth Portsea Island is a flat and low-lying natural island in area, just off the southern coast of Hampshire in England. Portsea Island contains the majority of the city of Portsmouth. Portsea Island has the third-largest population of all th ...

, the son of a namesake and his wife Ann (née Tassell) of

Soberton Soberton is a village in the Meon Valley, Hampshire, England, east of the A32 and a few miles south of the village of Droxford. It appears in the Domesday Book as "Sudbertone" or "Sudbertune". For administration, it is in the Hampshire County C ...

, Hampshire.http://www2.royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqSearch=%28Surname=%27grant%27%29&dsqPos=8 In 1829 he invented steam-powered machinery for making ship's biscuits that were stamped into hexagonal shapes, thereby ensuring that there was no waste. This process speeded up the production process and substantially reduced its costs. Other government departments copied the invention, saving the British taxpayer a great deal of money. As a reward Grant was given a £2,000 grant by parliament and received a medal from the French king,

Louis Philippe Louis Philippe (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France. As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary War ...

, and a gold medal from the

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. In 1834 he invented a desalination plant which distilled fresh water at sea and was described by the Times in 1859 as "the greatest benefit ever conferred on the sailor, materially advancing the sanitary and moral condition of the navy". Installed on '' HMS Wye'' it produced 10,000 gallons a day during the Crimean War. According to the Oxford

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

, Grant's other inventions included "a naval fuel (briquettes known as Grant's Patent Fuel), and a steam kitchen, which was given its first trials in the warship

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. He also constructed a new type of lifebuoy, and a feathering paddle wheel. He became a prominent member of the

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, having been elected a Fellow in 1840. In 1850 he was promoted to the comptrollership of the Admiralty's victualling and transport service. The outbreak of the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

in 1854 tested Grant a great deal. However, his inventions helped to offset the widely condemned shortcomings of the war-time supply arrangements for the forces. Grant was knighted for his achievements, and

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

presented him with a gold and silver vase. He died of cancer in London on 15 October 1859. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography remarked, "Despite the marked improvements they bestowed on the quality of the beneficiaries' lives, Grant's inventions were perhaps too homely to receive the mention they deserved in the histories of technology." He died at his house in Regents Park, London. He had married Emma. They had two sons: Vice-admiral William Burley Grant and Richard Tassell Grant. His granddaughter Hilda Lucy Grant married

Sir Charles Seely, 2nd Baronet Sir Charles Hilton Seely, 2nd Baronet, VD, KGStJ (7 July 1859 – 26 February 1926) was a British industrialist, landowner and Liberal Unionist (later Liberal Party) politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lincoln from 1895 to 190 ...

in 1891.

Other

List of Fellows of the Royal Society G,H,I About 8,000 fellows have been elected to the Royal Society of London since its inception in 1660. Below is a list of people who are or were Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional socie ...

References

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

(19 Oct 1859) * Oxford

, Oxford University Press, 2004 * * The Gentlemans Magazine and Historical Review, 1859 {{DEFAULTSORT:Grant, Sir Thomas Tassell 1795 births 1859 deaths People from Portsea, Portsmouth Fellows of the Royal Society