Donald Roderick Macintosh
1922 M.I. Mech.E., Chief Inspector of Steam Boilers and Prime Movers, Town Custom House, Bombay.
1940 Obituary [1]
DONALD RODERICK MACINTOSH was the first chief inspector of steam boilers and smoke nuisances for the Government of the Bombay Presidency, India. In collaboration with the Board of Trade in England he drew up the New Indian Boiler Regulations and he devised the rules and formulae contained in these regulations for the design and construction of boilers. He received the thanks of the Government of India for the completion of this task in 1922.
He was born in 1872 at Inverness and educated there until 1885. He served his apprenticeship first with Mr. Hendry of Inverness, from 1889 to 1890, and then with Messrs. J. and G. Thomson, Ltd., engineers and shipbuilders, of Clydebank, from 1890 to 1894. Here he was employed on the erection and the fitting of engines and boilers and in the steam trials of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and merchant vessels. He remained with this firm until 1896 when he joined the British-India Steam Navigation Company, Ltd., London. He served on the ships of this company first as a fifth engineer, but he eventually attained the rank of second engineer. He gained a Board of Trade certificate of competency at Sydney, New South Wales, in 1897, in 1899 he gained a first-class Board of Trade certificate at Bombay, and in the following year he obtained an extra first-class certificate at Glasgow.
He concluded his service at sea in 1904 and joined the National Boiler and General Insurance Company, Ltd., Manchester, with whom he served for a few months as inspecting engineer. In 1905 he became engineer and ship surveyor to the marine department of the Board of Trade, and he relinquished this position in 1909 to take up his appointment in India. As head of the technical staff of the Bombay Boiler Inspection Department he was responsible for the direction and working of the Boiler Inspection Act in the province of Bombay, and his work also included the survey and inspection of engines, boilers, and ships' materials and equipment. In 1924 he was awarded the Viceroy's prize by the Institution of Engineers (India), of which he was a member, for his paper, "An Examination of the New Indian Boiler Regulations", which he presented before that Institution.
He retired in 1927, and died at his home in Lanarkshire on 18th November 1939. He was elected a Member of the Institution in 1911.