Edgeworthstown House, IrelandLibrary at Edgeworthstown House 1888Edgeworth's proposedoptical telegraph for use in Ireland. The rotational position of each one of the four indicators represented a number 1-7 (0 being "rest"), forming a four-digit number. The number stood for a particular word in a codebook.[2]
Richard Lovell Edgeworth (31 May 1744 – 13 June 1817) was anAnglo-Irish politician, writer andinventor. He had 22 children.
Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street,Bath, England, son of Richard Edgeworth senior, and great-grandson of SirSalathiel Lovell through his mother, Jane Lovell, granddaughter of Sir Salathiel. The Edgeworth family came to Ireland in the 1580s. Richard was descended from Francis Edgeworth, appointed jointClerk of the Crown and Hanaper in 1606, who inherited a fortune from his brotherEdward Edgeworth,Bishop of Down and Connor.
ATrinity College, Dublin andCorpus Christi College, Oxford alumnus, he is credited for creating, among other inventions, a machine to measure the size of a plot of land. He also made strides in developingeducational methods. He anticipated thecaterpillar track with an invention that he played around with for forty years but that he never successfully developed.[3] He described it as a "cart that carries its own road".
He was married four times, including toHonora Sneyd and toFrances Beaufort, older sister ofFrancis Beaufort of the Royal Navy. Edgeworth and Francis Beaufort installed asemaphore line for Ireland. Edgeworth was a member of theLunar Society, an informal organisation of Birmingham-based industrialists, scientists and intellectuals that met regularly to discuss and share ideas relating to their fields of interest. Other members includedErasmus Darwin,Josiah Wedgwood andJames Watt.
^Barbe, L. (2010),Francis Ysidro Edgeworth : A Portrait with Family and Friends, translated from Catalan by M.C. Black. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
