John Wyatt
John Wyatt (1700-1766), an English inventor, was born near Lichfield and was related to Sarah Ford, Doctor Johnson's mother.
A carpenter by trade he began work in Birmingham on the development of a spinning machine. In 1733 he was working in the mill at New Forge (Powells) Pool, Sutton Coldfield attempting to spin the first cotton thread ever spun by mechanical means.
His principal partner was Lewis Paul (who was sponsored by the Duke of Shrewsbury) and together they developed the concept of elongating cotton threads by running them through rollers and then stretching them through a faster second set of rollers. They produced the first ever roller spinning machine but it was not successful. Paul took out patents in 1738 and in 1758, the year before he died.
Wyatt went to work for Matthew Boulton at his Soho Manufactory. There he invented and produced a weighing machine and experimented with donkey power to run his spinning machine. In 1761 he assisted Boulton with a water mill installation, using 'frictionless rollers' (a form of roller bearings).[1]
He was brought down by his debts and was made bankrupt.
Despite their failures, their ideas laid the foundations for others who followed, particularly Richard Arkwright.
Wyatt's greatest contribution as an inventor was in the field of weighing machines. In the early 1740s he probably constructed the first true ‘compound lever platform scale’. Machabey provides a sketch of Wyatt's c.1741 weighbridge[2]
Wyatt's inventive talents were employed in a wide range of schemes. In 1736 he unsuccessfully proposed a plan for a single span wooden bridge in the competition for the erection of Westminster Bridge, and in 1757 he was engaged in the use of cylindrical bearings to reduce the friction on wheels.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ 'The Soho Manufactory, Mint and Foundry, West Midlands - Where Boulton, Watt and Murdoch made History' by George Demidowicz, 2022. Liverpool University Press for Historic England, pp.42-3
- ↑ 'A History of Technology & Invention - Progress through the Ages', Vol II, edited by Maurice Daumas, translated from the French by Eileen B. Hennessy, Crown Publishers, New York, 1969: Chapter 14, Techniques of Measurement, by Armand Machabey, p.328