Short answers, pulled from the story.
Joseph Bramah (the 13th of April 1748 - the 9th of December 1814) was an English inventor and locksmith. He is best known for improving the flush toilet, inventing the hydraulic press, and creating a highly pick-resistant lock. Along with William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, he is considered one of the two fathers of hydraulic engineering.
The Bramah Challenge Lock went unpicked for over 67 years. It was displayed in the window of the Bramah Locks shop from 1790, and was finally opened at the Great Exhibition of 1851 by American locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs. Hobbs required 51 hours of work spread across 16 days to accomplish the feat.
The Bramah hydraulic press, patented in 1795, operates on Pascal's principle that pressure change throughout a closed system is constant. It uses two cylinders and pistons of different cross-sectional areas; force applied to the smaller piston is translated into a larger force on the bigger piston. The press is still known as the Bramah Press and remains in use industrially today.
Joseph Bramah obtained 18 patents between 1778 and 1812. His patents covered inventions including a flushing toilet, the Bramah lock, a hydraulic press, a beer engine, a planing machine, a paper-making machine, a banknote serial-number printing machine, and an extrusion process for lead pipes.
Bramah employed Henry Maudslay from the age of 18, and together they developed innovative machines for precision manufacturing. Bramah also taught Cornish engineer Arthur Woolf to machine engines to close tolerances, which enabled Cornish engines to run on high-pressure steam. Steam engine output grew from roughly 15 HP around 1800 to 450 HP by 1835.
Bramah died on the 9th of December 1814 at Holt Forest in Hampshire. He caught a cold while supervising one of his last inventions, a hydrostatic press used to uproot trees, and the cold developed into pneumonia. He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary on Paddington Green Church.