Abstract
AT meetings of the Newcomen Society held almost simultaneously in London and New York on April 22, a paper by Prof. R. S. Kirby of Yale University was read entitled “William \Veston and his Contribution to Early American Engineering”. Weston was an Englishman, possibly born in Oxford in 1753, who before he was forty years of age had gained a reputation as a civil engineer sufficiently high for him to be engaged to go to the United States as engineer to the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Co., of Pennsylvania, which proposed to connect the Susquehanna by canal with the Schuylkill, and canalise the Schuylkill from Reading to Philadelphia. He sailed from Falmouth on November 23, 1792, and arrived at Philadelphia early in January 1793. The researches of Prof. Kirby have brought to light much information about Weston's connexion with the above schemes and with the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, the Middlesex canal connecting the Merri-mack with Boston, the Potomac River Locks, the Western Inland Lock Navigation, the Schuylkill River Bridge and lastly the New York City water supply. Weston returned to England probably in 1799 or 1800. The only English work of his of which there is certain knowledge is the bridge over the Trent at Gainsborough, built in 1787-91; but strangely enough, practically nothing is at present known of his early career or of the activities of his later years. He inspired confidence in those with whom he came into contact in America and, says Prof. Kirby, he had a considerable influence on American engineering.
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William Weston and Early American Engineering. Nature 137, 733 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137733b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137733b0