William Murdoch

• 1. Introduction

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  William Murdoch walked over 300 miles to ask for a job. In 1777, at age 23, he left Ayrshire on foot and arrived in Birmingham at the workshop of James Watt. He carried a hat he had turned on a lathe of his own design. The hat was made of wood. Watt's partner Matthew Boulton inspected it, recognized the craft behind it, and hired him.

  In the sixty years that followed, Murdoch produced a string of inventions that touched transportation, lighting, chemistry, and marine engineering. Yet his name remains far less familiar than those of Boulton and Watt. His most significant work was often patented in other people's names. The most profitable opportunity he ever had went entirely unpatented. His partnership with the firm shaped what he built and determined, in ways he could not always control, who was credited for it.

• 2. A Millwright's Son

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  William Murdoch was born on the 21st of August 1754 at Bello Mill, near Old Cumnock in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the third of seven children and the first son to survive beyond infancy. His father, John Murdoch, had served as a Hanoverian artillery gunner before becoming a millwright. He tenanted Bello Mill on the estate of James Boswell in Auchinleck. Boswell had visited James Watt's workshop at Soho on several occasions. Through that connection, the Murdoch name was likely not entirely unknown in Birmingham.

  He attended Old Cumnock Kirk School until age ten. After that, he studied at Auchinleck school under William Halbert, the author of a highly regarded arithmetic textbook. Mathematics came easily to him. Much of his practical education, however, took place in the millyard. Around 1763 he and his father built what they called a "wooden horse on wheels," a hand-cranked tricycle. In 1774 John Murdoch built the Craikston Bridge over the Lugar Water; William, by then twenty, would have been part of that work.

  There are also accounts of a young Murdoch heating coal in a copper kettle inside a small cave near the mill. The gas it produced was the subject of his first experiments with what would become his most consequential invention. When he eventually settled in England, he would Anglicise his name to "Murdock," though history has preserved both spellings.

• 3. Cornwall's Engine Wars

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  In September 1779 Murdoch was sent to Redruth in Cornwall as a senior engine erector. His charge was the maintenance and repair of steam engines pumping water from the Cornish tin mines. Boulton and Watt did not sell engines to their clients. Instead they ran them on behalf of investors called "adventurers," collecting fees based on each engine's fuel savings. As Watt described the arrangement: profits arose "not from making the engine, but from a certain proportion of the savings in fuel which we make over any common engine, that raises the same quantity of water to the same height." Murdoch's skill in making each machine as efficient as possible was directly the firm's revenue.

  On his very first solo assignment, at Wanlockhead Mine, he improved the standard Boulton and Watt engine. He rearranged the gears so the steam valve worked automatically from the motion of the exhaust shaft. By 1782 the results were clear to Boulton, who wrote to Watt: "We want more Murdocks, for of all others he is the most active man and best engine erector I ever saw... Murdoch who hath not gone to bed 3 of the nights."

  A colleague's warning captures the risks Murdoch faced in Cornwall: "If he makes an Affidavit against Carpenter or Penandrea, there will be no safety for him in Redruth." Patent violations were common among rival engine men. Innovations were frequently copied through overheard conversations and direct observation. Murdoch signed legal affidavits for Boulton and Watt against competitors. He was also required to inspect rivals' engines, working both sides of the same intelligence war.

  One of the inventions from this period was the sun and planet gear. This mechanism converted the back-and-forth rocking of a steam engine beam into continuous circular rotation. A drawing of the system in Murdoch's hand is dated August 1781. Matthew Boulton, writing to a colleague about Watt's forthcoming patent applications, described it as something he "could have told him of long ago when first invented by William Murdock." The patent was nevertheless filed by James Watt in October 1781 under his own name. Samuel Smiles, who later wrote a biography of Boulton and Watt, attributed the invention to Murdoch. In 1799, with his contract amended to allow it, Murdoch patented an invention in his own name. The device was a steam wheel driven directly by the pressure of steam moving through it, a precursor of the modern turbine.

• 4. Steam on the Road

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  In March 1784, a colleague in Cornwall named Thomas Wilson wrote to James Watt with news of Murdoch's "new scheme." Wilson described it as "no less than drawing carriages upon the road with steam engines," and reported that Murdoch was "positively certain of its answering and that there is a great deal of money to be made by it." Watt was unpersuaded. He saw no future in road locomotion and, worried about losing Murdoch's skills in Cornwall, tried to discourage him.

  Witnesses described seeing the steam carriage run around Murdoch's living room in Redruth in 1784. It was the first recorded example in Britain of a machine moving entirely under its own power. The vehicle stood about a foot high and ran on three wheels. A spirit lamp under the boiler heated the water. The engine sat between the two larger rear wheels, and a tiller steered the smaller front wheel. That original model now stands in Thinktank, the Birmingham Science Museum.

  His 1785 marriage, and the birth of twins in the same year, slowed the project. By August 1786 he had built at least one further model of a different size. He then moved to patent his steam carriage and set out toward London. Boulton intercepted him at Exeter. In a letter to Watt dated the 2nd of September 1795, Boulton wrote that he had "prevailed upon him readily to return to Cornwall." That same evening, in the great room of the King's Head hotel in Truro, Murdoch unpacked his carriage. According to Boulton's letter, it "travel'd a Mile or two in Rivers's great room in a Circle making it carry the fire Shovel, poker & tongs." This demonstration was the first public showing of steam locomotion in Britain.

  One story of this period, which may be accurate, describes a night trial on an open Cornish road. The carriage outpaced Murdoch and ran ahead without him. A local clergyman, confronted by billowing smoke and firelight from an unknown machine, took it to be the devil.

  In 1797 and 1798, Richard Trevithick moved to Redruth and lived next door to Murdoch. Murdoch's son John later recalled Trevithick and Andrew Vivian visiting the house around 1794. They came to see the wheel carriage model in working order. Trevithick went on to develop the full-size steam locomotive commercially. Watt distrusted the high-pressure steam that such an engine required, and without his employers' backing, Murdoch could not pursue the work himself.

• 5. Gas and Its Consequences

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  At Redruth in 1792, Murdoch began experimenting with coal gas. He heated different materials and studied how to capture, transport, purify, and burn what they produced. By 1794 he was piping gas through a three or four-foot iron tube, then through an old gun barrel, igniting it for light. His house in Redruth was the first domestic residence in the world to be lit by gas.

  Jean-Pierre Minckelers, the Dutch-Belgian academic, had published on coal gasification in 1784 and lit his auditorium at the University of Leuven from 1785. Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald, had also used gas to light his family estate from 1789. Murdoch's particular contribution lay in the systematic development of the production and purification process for large-scale use. William Fairbairn left a vivid account of Murdoch improvising a lantern from a gas bladder on a dark winter evening: Murdoch "went to the gasworks where he filled a bladder which he had with him, and, placing it under his arm like a bagpipe, he discharged through the stem of an old tobacco pipe a stream of gas which enabled us to walk in safety."

  In 1802, as part of the public celebrations of the Peace of Amiens, Murdoch illuminated the exterior of the Soho Foundry with gas. In 1805 he completed the lighting of the Philips and Lee cotton mill in Manchester. It was the first industrial factory to be fully lit by gas. The installation had started with 50 gas lights; it finished with 904. Murdoch purified the gas with lime to remove the smell. He also determined the optimal temperature for heating coal to maximize gas production.

  James Watt Junior had advised him that gas lighting was not patentable. His earlier patent of 1791 for an early form of aniline dye had returned nothing commercially, making him wary. Without a patent, the entire gas lighting industry lay open to others. His former assistant Samuel Clegg and Frederick Albert Winzer moved into the gap. Boulton and Watt lobbied Parliament until May 1809 to block a charter for the National Heat and Light Company, their only serious rival. Having blocked it until 1812, the firm then failed to expand either the technology or the market. In 1814 they abandoned the gas business entirely. Within a few decades, most towns in Britain had their own gasworks.

  Coal tar, a byproduct of coal gas production, was found in 1853 by Charles Gerhardt to contain acetylsalicylic acid, now known as aspirin. William Henry Perkin used coal tar in 1856 to produce mauve, the first synthetic dye. Phenol, another byproduct, was later identified as a disinfectant and as a component of bakelite. Bakelite, invented in 1910, was the first synthetic plastic. The word "gasometer," which entered the language to describe the storage tanks of manufactured gas, is also attributed to Murdoch.

• 6. Chemistry, Credit, and Late Work

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  In 1795 Murdoch developed a replacement for isinglass, the precipitate made from Russian sturgeon used to clarify beer. Russian isinglass cost 25 shillings a pound and had to be imported. Murdoch made a substitute from dried cod. The chemist Sir Humphry Davy later testified in a court case that it was "the same substance as Isinglass." The Committee of London Brewers paid £2,000 for the right to use the invention.

  Murdoch had also developed an iron cement from sal ammoniac and iron filings. He noticed the discovery accidentally: the two materials had mixed in his tool bag and formed a solid mass. The cement was used to harden and seal the joints of steam engines. He also developed the pneumatic message system, using compressed air to drive a sealed cylinder through a tube. The London Pneumatic Despatch Company developed this commercially, and Harrods used the system in its retail operations until at least the 1960s.

  In 1807, Murdoch was the principal engineer behind the engine Boulton and Watt supplied to Robert Fulton. Fulton used it in the North River Steamboat, the first commercial steamboat on the Hudson River, later known as the Clermont. James Watt Junior purchased the paddle steamer The Caledonia in 1817. Murdoch directed its refit and sea trials despite suffering from fever and rheumatism. During trials on the route from Surrey Commercial Docks to Gravesend, his adjustments raised the vessel's speed from 8 to 12 miles per hour. The rival steamboat company on the same route, the Sons of Commerce, challenged The Caledonia to a race. The Caledonia won twice, by a wider margin the second time. The owners of the Sons of Commerce then placed an order with Boulton and Watt for a new engine. Between 1813 and 1825, the firm built marine engines totalling more than 3,000 horsepower, used in an estimated 40 to 60 vessels.

  In 1808 Murdoch presented a paper to the Royal Society, titled "Account of the Application of Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes." In the same year the Royal Society awarded him the Rumford Gold Medal. The citation praised him for "both the first idea of applying, and the first actual application of gas to economical purposes." The house he built outside Birmingham in 1817 included gas lighting and a compressed-air doorbell. It also featured a hot air heating system, described by the engineer Joshua Field. In 1815 he designed and installed the first gravity-fed piped hot water system since classical times, at the Royal Pump Rooms in Leamington Spa.

  In September 1830, at age 76 and in declining health, his partnership with Boulton and Watt came to an end. He had been receiving £1,000 a year. Murdoch died in 1839, aged 85, and was buried at St. Mary's Church in Handsworth. At the centenary of gas lighting in 1892, Lord Kelvin unveiled a bust of Murdoch at the Wallace Monument in Stirling. In 2007, the town of Redruth hosted the first public journey of a full-size working reproduction of his steam carriage. In 2019, he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.