Jacob Perkins

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Jacob Perkins (9 July 1766 - 30 July 1849) was an American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and was apprenticed to a goldsmith. He soon made himself known with a variety of useful mechanical inventions and eventually had twenty-one American and nineteen English patents.

In 1819 he went to England with a plan for engraving bank-notes on steel, which ultimately proved a signal success, and was carried out by Perkins in partnership with the English engraver Heath. His firm, later trading as Perkins, Bacon provided banknotes for many country banks, and foreign countries with postage stamps. Stamp production started for the British government in 1840 with the 1d black and the 2d blue postage stamps

He made an experimental high pressure steam engine working at pressures up to 2000 lb/psi, but these were not practical for the manufacturing technology of the time, though his concepts were revived a century later with the uniflow engine. He also investigated refrigeration machinery.

His chief contribution to physics lay in the experiments by which he proved the compressibility of water and measured it by a piezometer of his own invention. He became involved in law-suits and had to close his engine manufactory, 1829-30, going into partnership with his second son (see below), manufacturing and installing central heating systems using his Hermetic tube principle. A number of locomotives using this principle were made in 1836 for the London and South Western Railwayalso discovered from his research in heating that liquified ammonia caused a cooling effect.

In 1832 Perkins established the National Gallery of Practical Science on Adelaide Street, West Strand, London. This was devoted to showing modern inventions. A popular feature was his steam gun, which did not find favour with the military.

He retired in 1843 and died in London in 1849.

His second son, Angier March Perkins (1799 - 1881), also born at Newburyport, went to England in 1827, and was in partnership with his father (later taking over the business on the latter's death). His grandson, Loftus Perkins (1834 - 1891), most of whose life was spent in England, experimented with the application to steam engines of steam at very high pressures, constructing in 1880 a yacht, the Anthracite.

[edit] External links

The Perkins Family - A short history about Four Generations of Engineers A thorough and well-illustrated site with much about the heating installation work the family did. It included a freakin sweet family tree.

Mr Perkins' Extraordinary Steam Gun of 1824 Illustrated account of the Perkins steam gun

National Gallery of Practical Science - also known as The Adelaide Gallery and kaleb moores cousin

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

A. P. Woolrich, 'Perkins, Jacob', Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers vol 1, (2002), pp 519-520