BRAM A H (Joseen), a practical Engineer and Machinist, was born at Stainborough in Yorkshire, on the 13th of April 1749. His father rented flirm on the estate of Lord Strafford, and, being the eldest of five children, he was intended for the same employment. He exhibited, at a very early age, an unusual talent for the mechanical suc ceeded, when he was quite a boy, in making two violoncellos, which were found to be very tolerable instruments, and in cutting a single block of wood into a violin, chiefly by means of tools which were forged for him by a neighbouring smith, whom, at a subsequent period of his 'life, he induced to assist him in London as one of his principal workmen. Notwithstanding the ingenuity which he had thus displayed, his destination in life might have preclud ed its further cukivation, had he me,' fortunately for himself and for the public, been incapacitated, when he was about sixteen, by an accidental lameness in his ancle, for the pursuit of agricultural labour. He was then apprenticed to a Carpenter and Joiner, who seems, however, to have contributed but little to his improvement in mechanical knowledge.
When the term of his engagement was expired, he obtained employment for some time in the work shops of a Cabinetmaker in London, and soon after established himself as a principal in that business. Another accidental confinement left his mind- at li berty for a time to occupy itself with reflection and invention; and he employed his involuntary leisure in the improvement of some of the most humble, but not the least useful, of domestic conveniences. He obtained a patent for his inventions, and esta blished a manufacture of these and other similar ar ticles in Denmark Street, Soho ; where be continued to simplify and improve the arrangement of the pumps and pipes subservient to his principal pur pose. He procured, in 1788, a palest for a water cock, intended to allow the fluids mere emintemapt ed passage through it, than was practicable in the ordinary construction. He afterwards removed to Piccadilly, and established the various branches or his manufactory in some extensive premises at Pita. lico.
In 1784, Mr Brattish took out a patent for his improvement in locks, which certainly appear to be of very material importance : their peculiar character depends on the arrangement of a number of levers of sliders in such a manner, as to preserve, when at rest, a uniform situation, and to be only pressed down by the key to certain unequal depths, *hick nothing but the key can ascertain ; the levers not having any stop to retain them in their required seen don, except dist which forms a part of the key. The
construction is more particularly detailed in tbe speci fication of the patent (Repertory V Arts, V.217.), at i well as in the Dissertation on Locks, Svo; and some additional modifications, allowing the key to be varied at pleasure, are described in a patent, dat ed in 1798. It is eat easy to say why the appheatioa for an act of Parliament to prolong the privilege woo unsuccessful, unless it was supposed that the laves tor had been already sufficiently repaid for the share of ingenuity which his contrivance exhibited; but the report, that one of these locks had been readily opened, before a committee of the House of Com. mons, by means of a common quill, was a gross mil. representation of the fact ; the quill having in real• ty been previously cut into the required shape from the true key; and the experiment only served to show the perfection of the workmanship, so little force being required to overcome the resistance, when properly applied..
For different modifications of pumps and fir•en gime, Mr Bramah took out three successive tents, the two last dated in 1790 and 1798. pertory, II. III.) His 66 rotative principle" cassias is making the part, which acts immediately on the we ter, in the form of a slider, sweeping round a cylin• dread cavity, and kept in its place by moans of an eccentric groove ; a constructive Irhicli was very possibly suggested by his own inventive mind, but which had been before described, in a form nearly similar, by Ramelli, Canned, Amontons, Prince Rupert, and Dr Hooke. The third patent related chiefly to the attachment of a considerable reservoir of water to the fire-engine, in a cylindrical form, and to the furnishing it with wheels of its own, of a proper size and strength to allow it to be convenient ly worked.