STEVENSON, ROBERT, a Scotch engineer, was born at Glasgow, June 8, 1772. His father, who was a merchant connected with the West India trade, died during his infancy; and his mother having (1786) married Mr. Thomas Smith, the first engineer of the light-house board, young Stevenson was led to devote himself to the study of engineering, in which his progress was so rapid that in 1791 he was intrusted by Mr. Smith with the erection of a light-house in Little Cumbrae, In 1769 lie succeeded his father-in hiw as engineer and inspector of light-houses; and during his 47 years' tenure Of that office, he planned and constructed no fewer than 23 light-houses round the Scottish coasts; employing the catoptric system of illumination, and his valuable invention' of " intermittent " and " " lights. The most remarkable of these erections was that on the Bell Rock (q.v.), for which he had been sketching plans for some time, when the wreck of the York, a 74-gun ship, on this reef drew general attention to the same subject. The enterprise was quite unprecedented in light-house for in the only instance at all analagous—the Eddystone light-house---the rock was barely sub merged at flood, while the Bell Rock was never uncovered except at very low ebb tides.
In 1814, Stevenson was accompanied in his tour of inspection by sir Walter Scott, and while the former was projecting another light-house on the Skerryvore (q.v,) near Tires, the latter was doubtless laying up ample materials for those minute descriptions of the w. coast of Scotland and its islands which were afterward embodied in the Lord of the Stevenson was also in great request as a consulting engineer in the matter of roads, bridges, harbors, canals, and railways, introduced many improvements in their construc tion, and occasionally co-operated with Rennie, Telford, and others. He died in Edin burgh, July 12, 1850. Like most eminent practical men, Stevenson has left few lit erary remains; these being merely four volumes of professional printed reports, a large work on the Bell Rock light-house, some articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and in the Edinburgh Encyclopeedia, and a series of letters on the engineering works of the Netherlands in the Scots _Magazine (1817). See his Life by his son, David Stevenson, C.E. (1878).