THE WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 187, 9 August 1930, Page 8

THE WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

AUGUST- 9—BIRTH OF THOMAS TELFORD.

(Copyrighted.)

One hundred and seventy-three years ago, on August 9, 1757, Thomas Telford, who was destined to become one of the most illustrious of British civil engineers, was born at Westerkirk, in the Scottish County of Dumfries, his father being a shepherd. He received a rudimentary education at the local parish school, and in the. summer time, when he worked as a shepherd's boy, he devoted his leisure to studying from books borrowed from friends. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a. stonemason, with whom he remained for seven years, and during this period, and also while following his trade in Edinburgh, London and several provincial towns, he continued to study assiduously, with the result that he gained a wide knowledge of. engineering and architecture, as well as an acquaintance with several foreign languages. At the age of thirty he was appointed surveyor of public works in the County of Salop, and six years later he commenced _ the first of his great enterprises —the construction of the Ellesmere Canal, which established his reputation as a civil engineer. The two aqueducts, built of cast-iron plates, which he designed to carry the canal over river valleys at elevations of 120 and 70 feet respectively, were regarded as one of the most remarkable engineering achievements of that period. In 1801 he was commissioned by the British Government to make a survey in Scotland with a view to improving the means of communication in that country, and as a result of his report he was entrusted with the task of constructing the Caledonian Canal, to form a direct connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, and a number of new roads. The locks on the canal were the largest ever constructed up to that time, while the building of the roads,*which had a total length of over 900 miles and traversed long stretches of mountainous and stormy country, necessitated the erection of about 1200 bridges and viaducts. Telford's finest piece of work—the suspension bridge Avhich spans the Menai Strait, one hundred feet C above high-water mark, and connects Carnarvonshire and the island of Anglesey, was commenced in 1820. This bridge, which forms part of the'road constructed by him between Shrewsbury and Holyhead, is a monument to his boldness in design and his practical skill, and its fairy lightness is heightened by contrast with the massive Britannia Bridge, a short distance away, which was built over the strait by Robert Stephenson, at a later date. While the fame of Telford rests mainly on Iris canal and road building and the erection of the many bridges which this work involved, he also accomplished a considerable amount of other remarkable engineering work, notably in the construction of harbours and docks in various parts of Britain, and the drainage of forty-eight thousand .acres of land in the fen district. His construction of the Gotha Canal in Sweden gained for him an order of knighthood from the Swedish sovereign, while the advice which he pave to the Government of Kussia regarding the building of canals and roads in that country was acknowledged by the gift of a, magnificent diamond ring from the Emperor Alexander. He was the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh. He died on September 2, 1834, at the age of 77, and was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, where his genius is commemorated by a statue. A few days before his death he made the final corrections in his instructive autobiography, in which are to be found detailed accounts of his many engineering achievements.