WILSON, ALEXANDER, M.D. late Professor of Practical Astronomy in Glasgow College, was a younger son of Patrick Wilson, town-clerk of St. Andrews, and was born there in 1714.
Having received the usual education at the ferent schools, he entered the College of St. Andrews, where he made great proficiency in lite rature and the sciences, and, after completing a regular course of studies, he was admitted to the degree of :Master of Arts in his nineteenth year.
Upon his leaving the college, he was put as an apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary in his na tive city, with a view of following that profession. At this period he became more particularly known to Dr. Thomas Simson, professor of medicine in the university, who ever after treated him with much kindness and friendship.
In 1537 Mr. Wilson departed from St. Andrews, and by the advice of his friends went to London, in order to seek for employment as a young person who had been bred to the medical profession. Soon after his arrival there, he engaged himself with a French refugee, a surgeon and apothecary of good character, who received him into his family, giving him the charge of his shop, and of some of his patients, with a small annual salary. About twelve months after he had been fixed in this new situation, Mr. David Gregory, professor of mathematics at St. Andrews, coming to London, introduced him to Dr. Charles Stewart, physician to Archibald, Duke of Argyle, then Lord Isla.
A circumstance of a very accidental nature oc curred, which gave a new direction to his genius, and which in the end led him to an entire change of his profession. This was a transient visit which he happened one day to make to a letter-foundry, along with a friend uho wanted to purchase some printing types. In the course of seeing the com mon operation of the workmen usually shown to strangers, he was much captivated with the curious contrivances made use of in that business. Some short while afterwards, when reflecting upon what had been shown in the letter-foundry, he was led to imagine that a certain great improvement of the art might possibly be effected, and of a kind, too, that, if successfully accomplished, promised to re ward the inventor with considerable emolument.
His ideas upon that subject he presently imparted to a friend a little older than himself, who had also come from St. Andrews, and who was possessed of a considerable share of ingenuity, constancy, and enterprize. The consequence of this was, a resolution on the part of both these young adven turers to relinquish, as soon as it could be done with propriety, all other pursuits, and unite their exertions in prosecuting the business of letter founding upon an improved plan.
It was not long ere they were enabled to carry into effect this resolution, and they first establish ed a small type-foundry at St. Andrews, and one on a larger scale, two years afterwards, at Camla chic, a village near Glasgow.
In this situation Mr. Wilson had contracted habits of intimacy and friendship with several per sons of the most respectable character, particularly with the professors belonging to the university of Glasgow, and with Messrs. Robert and Andrew Foulis, university printers. The growing reputa tion of the university press, conducted by these gentlemen, gave additional scope to Mr. Wilson to exert his abilities in constructing their types, and being now left entirely to follow his own judgment and taste, his talents as an artist became every year more conspicuous. When the design was formed by the gentlemen of the university, together with Messrs. Foulis, to print splendid editions of the Greek classics, he, with great alacrity, undertook to execute new types upon a model highly im proved. This he accomplished at an expense of time and labour which could not be recompensed by any profits arising from the sale of the types themselves.
Though he thus continued to prosecute letter founding as his chief business, yet, from his great temperance, domestic habits, and activity, he was enabled now and then to command intervals of leisure, which he never failed to fill up by some useful or ingenious employment. One of these in which he took great delight was the constructing of reflecting telescopes; an art which he cultivated with unwearied attention, and in the end with much success.