John Whitehurst FRS (10 April 1713 – 18 February 1788) of Cheshire, England was a clockmaker and scientist, and made significant early contributions to geology. He was an influential member of the Lunar Society.
Life and work
Whitehurst was born in Congleton, Cheshire, to a clockmaker, the elder John Whitehurst. In 1722 he invented the "pulsation engine", a water-raising device that was the precursor of the hydraulic ram. In 1736 Whitehurst moved to Derby. In 1774, he obtained a post at the Royal Mint in London, receiving the title "Stamper of the Money Weights" in 1775.1 In 1778 Whitehurst published his theory on geological strata in An Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 13 May 1779. Some have suggested that Whitehurst is the model for Wright's picture of a philosopher lecturing on the Orrery.2
Selected writings
- Whitehurst, John (1787). An Attempt Towards Obtaining Invariable Measures of Length, Capacity, and Weight, From the Mensuration of Time, Independent of the Mechanical Operations Requisite to Ascertain the Center of Oscillation, or the True Length of Pendulums. London: W. Bent.
References
- ^ "Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History".
- ^ Bygonederbyshire.co.uk
Further reading
- Craven, Maxwell (1996). John Whitehurst of Derby: Clockmaker and Scientist 1713-88. Derbyshire: Ashbourne.
- Hutton, Charles (1792). The Works of John Whitehurst, F.R.S. with Memoirs of His Life and Writings. London: W. Bent.
- Andrew Graciano, “‘The Book of Nature is Open to All Men’: Geology, Mining and History in Joseph Wright’s Derbyshire Landscapes” The Huntington Library Quarterly (68: 4, 2005), 583-600.
- Andrew Graciano, ed., Visualising the Unseen, Imagining the Unknown, Perfecting the Natural: Art and Science in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
External links
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