SMEATON, (Joan,) in biography, an eminent civil engineer, was born the 28th of May, 1724, 0. S. at Austhorpe, near Leeds, in a house built by his grandfather, and where his family have resided ever since. The strength of his understanding and the originality of his genius appeared at an early age ; his playthings were not the playthings of children, but the tools which men employ ; and he appeared to have greater entertainment in seeing the men in the neighbourhood work, and asking them questions, than in any thing else. One day he was seen, to the distress of his family, on the top of -his father's barn, fixing up something like a windmill. Another time he attended some men fix ing a pump at a neighbouring village, and observing them cut off a piece of bored pipe, he was so lucky as to procure it, and he actually made with it a working pump that raised water. These anec dotes refer to circumstances that are said to have happened while he was in petti coats, and most likely before he attained his sixthyear.
About his fourteenth and fifteenth year he had made for himself an engine for turning, and wrought several presents for his friends of boxes in ivory or wood, very neatly turned. He forged his iron and steel, and melted his metal ; he had tools of every sort, for working in wood, ivory, and metals. He had made a lathe, by which he had cut a perpetual screw in brass, a thing little known at that day, which was the invention of Mr. Henry Hindley, of York, with whom Mr. Smea ton soon became acquainted ; and they spent many a night at Mr. Hindley's house till day-light, conversing on those subjects. Thus had Mr. Smeaton, by the strength of his genius, and indefatigable industry, acquired, at the age of eighteen, an extensive set of tools, and the art of working in most of the mechanical trades, without the assistance of any master. A part of every day was generally occupied in forming some Ingenious piece of me chanism.
Mr. Smeaton's father was an attorney, and desirous of bringing him up to the same profession ; Mr. Smeaton therefore
came up to London in 1742, and attended the courts in Westminster Hall ; but find ing, as his common expression was, that the law did not suit the bent of his ge nius, be wrote a strong memorial to his father on that subject ; whose good sense from that moment left Mr. Smeaton to pursue the dictates of his genius in his own way.
In 1751, he began a course of experi ments to try a machine of his invention to measure a ship's way at sea, and also made two voyages in company with Dr. Knight, to try it, and a compass of his own invention and making, which was made magnetical by Dr. Knight's artifi cial magnets. The second voyage was made in the Fortune sloop of war, com manded at that time by Captain Alexander Campbell. ' In 1753, he was elected member of the Royal Society : the number of papers published in their Transactions will show the universality of his genius and know ledge.
In 1759, he was honoured by an unani mous vote, with their gold medal, for his paper, entitled "An experimental Inquiry concerning the natural Powers of Water and Wind to turn Mills, and other Ma chines depending an a circular Motion." This paper, he says, was the result of ex periments made on working models in the year 1752 and 1753, but not commu nicated to the Society till 1759; before which time he had an opportunity of pot ting the effect of these experiments into real practice, in a variety of cases, and for various purposes, so as to assure the Society he had found them to an swer.
In December, 1755, the Eddystone light-house was burnt down. Mr. Wes ton, the chief proprietor, and the others, being desirous of rebuilding it in the most substantial manner, inquired of the Earl of Macclesfield, then President of the Royal Society, whom he thought the most proper to rebuild it ; his Lordship re commended Mr. Smeaton. Mr. Smeaton undertook the work, and completed it in the summer of 1759. Of this Mr. Smeaton gives an ample description, in the volume he published in 1791.