George Sorocold
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Sorocold was an engineer in Derby in the eighteenth century.
He was born in Lancashire in 1660 and studied at Cambridge University, settling in Derby in 1684.
In 1687, he took on the job of rehanging the bells in All Saints Church, now the Cathedral. In 1692, he constructed the town's first waterworks, using a waterwheel to pump through some four miles of pipe made of elm trunks. For thse he developed a boring machine, which he later patented, This waterworks lasted nearly a hundred years, and he constructed others around the country. Among these was a rebuilt works at London Bridge. In 1695 and 1699, he produced plans for improving navigation of the River Derwent.
He built the first silk mill in Derby to the instruction of Thomas Cotchett, who had worked with the silk weavers of Spitalfields in London, and realised the benefit of applying power to the spinning process. He copied machines that were already in use by the Dutch spinners. Perhaps because they were less efficient than the Italian ones, or perhaps for business reasons, the project failed.
The idea was taken up by John Lombe who, with his brother Thomas, engaged Sorocold to build a new, larger mill, based on the Italian pattern, on the site of the old one, completed in 1722. For Sorocold, who had previously been engaged with pumps and water wheels, this was something of a challenge. He had, however grown up in an area of Lancashire noted for its clockmakers and locksmiths. The machinery when finished contained 10,000 spindles, with 25,000 spinning reel bobbins, nearly 5000 star wheels, over 9000 twist bobbins and 46,000 winding bobbins, all to be drven by a single water wheel.
It was very nearly the death of him. One day, while escorting a group of visitors to the mill, he missed his footing on the walkway and fell into the sluice. The force of the water carried him into the wheel between two of the paddles, one of which fortunately gave way, ejecting him into the mill-tail.
He also improved the drainage systems for mines, achieving national fame, the first non-military person to be styled "engineer."
He died in 1718.
