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The
increasing ethnic diversity of British society means it is
difficult to define what makes someone British. |
British
achievements.
William Murdock
| William Murdoch
(August 21, 1754 - November 15, 1839) was a Scottish engineer and inventor.
He was employed by the firm of Boulton and Watt and worked for them in Cornwall
as a steam engine erector for ten years, spending most of the rest of his
life in Birmingham. He was the inventor of gas lighting in the early 1790s
and coined the term gasometer. In addition to gas he made a number of innovations
to the steam engine, including the sun and planet gear and D slide valve,
invented the steam gun and pneumatic tube message |  |
system, worked on
one of the first British paddle steamers to cross the English Channel, built a
prototype steam locomotive in 1784 and made a number of discoveries in the field
of chemistry. He remained an employee and later a partner of Boulton & Watt until
the 1830s and his reputation as an independent inventor has tended to be obscured
by the reputations of those two men and the firm they founded.
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