Sir Joseph Whitworth | |
|---|---|
 By unknown artist, Whitworthc. 1846 | |
| Born | (1803-12-21)21 December 1803 Stockport, Cheshire, England,United Kingdom |
| Died | 22 January 1887(1887-01-22) (aged 83) Monte Carlo, Monaco |
| Engineering career | |
| Institutions | Royal Society Institution of Mechanical Engineers |
| Significant advance | Whitworth standardisedscrew threads |
| Awards | Albert Medal (1868) |
Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet (21 December 1803 – 22 January 1887) was an Englishengineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist.[2] In 1841, he devised theBritish Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard forscrew threads.[3] Whitworth also created theWhitworth rifle, often called the "sharpshooter" because of its accuracy, which is considered one of the earliest examples of asniper rifle, used by some Confederate forces during the American Civil war.
Whitworth was created abaronet byQueen Victoria in 1869.[4][5][6] Upon his death in 1887, Whitworth bequeathed much of his fortune for the people ofManchester, with theWhitworth Art Gallery andChristie Hospital partly funded by Whitworth's money.Whitworth Street andWhitworth Hall in Manchester are named in his honour.
Whitworth's company merged with the W.G. Armstrong & Mitchell Company to becomeArmstrong Whitworth in 1897.
Whitworth was born in John Street,Stockport, Cheshire, where the Stockport Courthouse is today. The site is marked by a blue plaque on the back wall of the courthouse. He was the son of Charles Whitworth, a teacher andCongregational minister, and at an early age developed an interest inmachinery. He was educated atIdle, near Bradford,West Riding of Yorkshire; his aptitude for mechanics became apparent when he began work for his uncle.[7]
After leaving school Whitworth became anindenturedapprentice to his uncle, Joseph Hulse, a cotton spinner at Amber Mill,Oakerthorpe in Derbyshire. The plan was that Whitworth would become a partner in the business. From the outset he was fascinated by the mill's machinery. Soon, he mastered the techniques of the cotton spinning industry. Even at this age, however, he noticed the poor standards of accuracy and was critical of the milling machinery. This early exposure to the mechanics of the industry forged in him the ambition to make machinery with much greater precision. His apprenticeship at Amber Mill lasted for a four-year term after which he worked for another four years as a mechanic in a factory inManchester. He then moved to London where he found employment working forHenry Maudslay, the inventor of thescrew-cutting lathe, alongside such people asJames Nasmyth (inventor of thesteam hammer) andRichard Roberts.
Whitworth developed great skill as a mechanic while working for Maudslay, developing various precision machine tools and also introducing a box casting scheme for the iron frames of machine tools that simultaneously increased their rigidity and reduced their weight.
Whitworth also worked forHoltzapffel & Co (makers of lathes used primarily forornamental turning) andJoseph Clement. While at Clement's workshop he helped with the manufacture ofCharles Babbage's calculating machine, theDifference engine. He returned toOpenshaw, Manchester, in 1833 to start his own business manufacturinglathes and other machine tools, which became renowned for their high standard of workmanship. He was elected to membership of theManchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 22 January 1839.[8] Whitworth is attributed with the introduction of thethou in 1844.[9] In 1853, along with his lifelong friend, artist and art educatorGeorge Wallis (1811–1891), he was appointed a British commissioner for the New York International Exhibition. They toured around industrial sites of several American states, and the result of their journey was a report 'The Industry of the United States in Machinery, Manufactures and Useful and Applied Arts, compiled from the Official Reports of Messrs Whitworth and Wallis, London, 1854.'[10]
Whitworth received many awards for the excellence of his designs and was financially very successful. In 1850, then a President of theInstitution of Mechanical Engineers, he built a house called'The Firs' in Fallowfield in south Manchester designed byEdward Walters. In 1854 he boughtStancliffe Hall in Darley Dale, Derbyshire and moved there with his second wife Louisa in 1872. He supplied four six-ton blocks of stone from Darley Dale quarry, for the lions ofSt George's Hall in Liverpool. He was conferred with Honorary Membership of theInstitution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1859.[11] He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1857.[1]
A strong believer in the value oftechnical education, Whitworth backed the newMechanics' Institute in Manchester (laterUMIST) and helped found theManchester School of Design. In 1868, he founded theWhitworth Scholarship for the advancement of mechanical engineering. He donated a sum of £128,000 to the government in 1868 (approximately £6.5 million in 2010) to bring "science and industry" closer together and to fund scholarships.[12] In 1869,Queen Victoria made Whitworth abaronet.
In January 1887 at the age of 83, Sir Joseph Whitworth died inMonte Carlo where he had travelled in the hope of improving his health. He was buried at St Helen's Church,Darley Dale, Derbyshire. A detailed obituary was published in the American magazineThe Manufacturer and Builder.[13] He directed his trustees to spend his fortune on philanthropic projects, which they still do to this day.
Whitworth popularised thethree-plates method for producing accurate flat surfaces (seeSurface plate) during the 1830s, usingengineer's blue andscraping techniques on three trial surfaces. Up until his introduction of the scraping technique, the same three-plate method was employed using polishing techniques, giving less accurate results. This led to an explosion of development of precision instruments using these flat-surface generation techniques as a basis for further construction of precise shapes.
His next innovation, in 1840, was a measuring technique called "end measurements" that used a precision flat plane and measuring screw, both of his own invention. The system, with a precision of one millionth of an inch (25 nm), was demonstrated at theGreat Exhibition of 1851.
In 1841 Whitworth devised a standard for screw threads with a fixed thread angle of 55° and having a standard pitch for a given diameter. This soon became the first nationally standardised system; its adoption by the railway companies, who until then had all used different screw threads, led to its widespread acceptance. It later became aBritish Standard, "British Standard Whitworth", abbreviated to BSW and governed by BS 84:1956.
Whitworth was commissioned by theWar Department of the British government to design a replacement for the calibre .577-inchPattern 1853 Enfield, whose shortcomings had been revealed during the recentCrimean War. TheWhitworth rifle had a smaller bore of 0.451 inches (11.455 mm) which was hexagonal, fired an elongated hexagonal bullet and had a faster rate of twist rifling [one turn in twenty inches] than the Enfield, and its performance during tests in 1859 was superior to the Enfield's in every way. The test was reported inThe Times on 23 April as a great success. However, the new bore design was found to be prone to fouling and it was four times more expensive to manufacture than the Enfield, so it was rejected by the British government, only to be adopted by theFrench Army. An unspecified number of Whitworth rifles found their way to theConfederate states in theAmerican Civil War, where they were called "Whitworth Sharpshooters". The rifles were capable of sub-MOA groups at 500 yards.[14] It was often called the "sharpshooter" because of its accuracy, which is considered one of the earliest examples of asniper rifle.[15][16][17][18][19]
Queen Victoria opened the first meeting of theNational Rifle Association atWimbledon, in 1860 by firing a Whitworth rifle from a fixed mechanical rest. The rifle scored a bull's eye at a range of 400 yards (366 m).
Whitworth also designed a largerifled breech-loading gun with a 2.75 inches (69.85 mm) bore, a 12 pounds 11 ounces (5.75 kg) projectile and a range of about 6 miles (10 km). The spirally-grooved projectile was patented in 1855. This was rejected by the British Army, who preferred the guns fromArmstrong, but was used in the American Civil War.
While trying to increase the bursting strength of his gun barrels, Whitworth patented a process called "fluid-compressed steel" for casting steel under pressure and built a new steel works near Manchester. Some of his castings were shown at the Great Exhibition inParisc. 1883.
One of the most prominent forms of his generosity was his development of the Whitworth Scholarships with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Still running to this day, this provides financial opportunities for young engineers with a strong blend of academic and practical abilities. The Whitworth Scholarship programmes still exist with 10-15 scholarships being awarded each year.[20] The scholarships are directed at outstanding engineers who, like Sir Joseph Whitworth, have excellent academic and practical skills and the qualities needed to succeed in industry, who are wishing to embark/or have already commenced on an engineering degree-level programme of any engineering discipline. As of 2018, the Scholarship pays up to £5,450 per year for up to four years[21] in the case of a full time undergraduate. The handling and administration of the awards is now carried out by theInstitution of Mechanical Engineers.[22] Since 2006, a Whitworth Senior Scholarship was agreed by the trustees to support Postgraduate Research leading to aMPhil,PhD orEngD.
Richard Copley Christie was a friend of Whitworth's. By Whitworth's will, Christie was appointed one of threelegatees, each of whom was left more than half a million pounds for their own use, 'they being each of them aware of the objects' to which these funds would have been put by Whitworth. They chose to spend more than a fifth of the money on support forOwens College, together with the purchase of land now occupied by theManchester Royal Infirmary. In 1897, Christie personally assigned more than £50,000 for the erection of theWhitworth Hall, to complete the front quadrangle of Owens College. He was president of the Whitworth Institute from 1890 to 1895 and was much interested in the medical and other charities of Manchester, especially the Cancer Pavilion and Home, of whose committee he was chairman from 1890 to 1893, and which later became theChristie Hospital.[23] Part of his bequest was used to construct theWhitworth Institute in Darley Dale.
The university'sWhitworth Art Gallery (formerly the Whitworth Institute) and adjacentWhitworth Park were established as part of his bequest to Manchester after his death. NearbyWhitworth Park Halls of Residence also bears his name, as doesWhitworth Street, one of the main streets inManchester city centre, running from London Road to the south end of Deansgate. Near 'The Firs' a cycleway behindOwens Park is called Whitworth Lane. In Darley Dale is another Whitworth Park. In recognition of his achievements and contributions to education in Manchester, the Whitworth Building on theUniversity of Manchester's Main Campus is named in his honour.
In 1923, theWhitworth Society was founded byProf. Hele-Shaw FRS, then president of theInstitution of Mechanical Engineers to support all Whitworth Scholars and to promote engineering in the UK.[20] The Society brings together those Whitworth Scholars who have benefited from Sir Joseph Whitworth's generosity.
| Professional and academic associations | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | President of theInstitution of Mechanical Engineers 1856–1857 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1865–1866 | Succeeded by John Penn |
| Baronetage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Baronet (of The Firs) 1869–1887 | Extinct |
