Abstract
William Murdock (1754–1839) ON November 15, 1839, William Murdock, the colleague of Boulton and Watt, died at his house, Sycamore Hill, Handsworth, at the age of eighty-five. He was buried in Handsworth Church, and his bust by Chantrey was placed there side by side with the memorials to Watt and Boulton. Murdock was born at Lugar, Ayrshire, on August 21, 1754, and after being trained as a millwright by his father, in 1777, at the age of twenty-three, entered the famous Soho works, Birmingham. In 1779 he was sent to Cornwall as an erector of pumping engines, and he remained there until 1798. Much of the success of the firm in the county was due to him. He was a man of fine physique, cool-headed, frugal, ingenious and resourceful. In those days only the principal parts of the engines were made at Soho and much remained to be done at the mine. Boulton spoke of Murdock as the finest erector he ever saw. In Cornwall, too, at Redruth, Murdock made his historic little model steam vehicle, and carried out his pioneering work on gas lighting. The latter formed the subject of a contribution by him to the Royal Society in 1808, for which he was awarded the Rumford Medal.
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Science News a Century Ago. Nature 144, 842 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144842a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144842a0