Sir John Gay Newton Alleyne, 3rd Baronet (8 September 1820 – 20 February 1912) was a British businessman and engineer.

Biography

Alleyne was born in Alleynedale Hall in

Barbados Barbados, officially the Republic of Barbados, is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American ...

, the son of Sir Reynold Abel Alleyne, 2nd Baronet, and his wife Rebecca, daughter of John Alton. He was educated at

Harrow School Harrow School () is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (English boarding school for boys) in Harrow on the Hill, Greater London, England. The school was founded in 1572 by John Lyon (school founder), John Lyon, a local landowner an ...

and in

Bonn University The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Will ...

. His first work was in the sugar industry in his home in Barbados, on his family slave plantation. His father received compensation for the slaves he owned after abolition, and John inherited some of this money. He was Warden of

Dulwich College Dulwich College is a 2-18 private, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...

between 1845 and 1851,ALLEYNE, Sir John Gay Newton’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 200
accessed 2 Sept 2008
/ref> president of the Steel and Iron Institute. Alleyne had joined the

Butterley Company The Butterley Company was an English manufacturing firm founded as Benjamin Outram and Company in 1790. Its subsidiaries existed until 2009. Origins This area of Derbyshire had been known for its outcrops of iron ore which had been exploited at ...

in 1852 as its first manager at a time when highly professional and highly paid managers were being brought into the industry. He served as manager and chief engineer of the iron works for 28 years. It was he who designed the roof of

St Pancras station St Pancras railway station (), officially known since 2007 as London St Pancras International, is a major central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar services from Belgium, F ...

which has a span of 240 feet (73 m) and forged the girders at

Butterley Butterley is a village in the civil parish of Ripley, in the Amber Valley district, in the county of Derbyshire, England. The area is dominated by the now disused site of the Butterley Company and the Butterley Reservoir. It is the headquarte ...

. He also carried out the project of a two-track railway bridge over the Maas at

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, lo ...

in the Netherlands. His addresses were given as

Belper Belper () is a town and civil parish in the local government district of Amber Valley in Derbyshire, England, located about north of Derby on the River Derwent. Along with Belper, the parish includes the village of Milford and the hamlets ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

and Falmouth. Alleyne patented a method in 1861 which allowed hot ingots to be moved around a roller after it had passed by just one person. During the production of steel sections the bar has to be repeatedly put through rollers. Allowing this to happen using just one person provided a substantial increase in productivity. However his most notable invention was probably the two high reversing steel mill patented in 1870, which used two steam engines to allow metal ingots to be repeatedly rolled in order to get the correct size and section.Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology
Lance Day, Ian McNeil, p.14, , accessed 1 September 2008 With this technique the steel did not have to be moved to re-enter the rolling process but merely had to be moved back into the rolling machine once it had passed through. He also devised a method of determining the percentages of

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly Reactivity (chemistry), reactive and are therefore never found in nature. They can nevertheless be prepared ar ...

in steel using a spectroscope. In his spare time he was an amateur astronomer and metalworker in his workshop at home. Alleyne married Augusta Isabella, daughter of Sir Henry FitzHerbert, 3rd Baronet, in 1851. Alleyne died 20 February 1912, aged 91.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alleyne, John 1820 births 1912 deaths Baronets in the Baronetage of Great Britain People from Belper People educated at Harrow School British people of Barbadian descent