Murdock, William

Murdock, William (1754-1839), inventor, b. Bellow Mill, near Auchinleck, Ayrshire, Scotland.

One day in 1783, Matthew Boulton of the firm of Boulton and Watt met a young engineer who wanted a job. He was wearing a most unusual hat which he had made himself out of a block of wood. The young man was William Murdock and he got the job.

He was sent to Cornwall to install steam-driven pumps in mines, and he made a number of improvements to the steam engine.

In 1792, he began to experiment with lighting from coal-gas and he lit his cottage at Redruth with gas-light.

In 1802, he installed gas-lighting in the foundry of Boulton and Watt's works in Birmingham. Then four years later, he installed it in the largest factory in England, Phillips and Lee's spinning mill in Manchester.

See Mary Rosetta Parkman Conquests of Invention: Cyrus H. Mccormick, Elias Howe, Thomas a. Edison, William Murdock, Robert Fulton, Guglielmo Marconi, Charles Goodyear, George Westinghouse, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell