JENKIN, HENRY CHARLES FLEEMING (1833— 1885), British engineer, was born near Dungeness on March 25, 1833, his father being a naval commander and his mother a novelist of some repute. He studied at Genoa university, where he took a first-class degree in physical science. In 1851 he was apprenticed to an engineer in Manchester, and subsequently he entered Newall's submarine cable works at Birkenhead. In 1859 he and W. Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin) began to work on problems connected with cables, to which he applied his re searches on the resistance of gutta-percha. In partnership with Thomson, he was also a consulting telegraph engineer. In 1865 he was elected F.R.S., and was appointed professor of engineering
at University college, London, and in 1868 at Edinburgh university. In 1873 he published a textbook of Magnetism and Electricity, full of original work. R. L. Stevenson's Memoir is a sympathetic tribute to his ability and character. In Stevenson's essay on "Talk and Talkers," Fleeming Jenkin figures as Cockshot. In 1882 Jenkin invented an automatic method of electric transport for goods—"telpherage"--but the details were still incomplete when he died on June 12,1885. A telpher line on his system was subse quently erected at Glynde in Sussex.