SIR WILLIAM ARMSTRONG.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5337, 22 March 1879, Page 3

SIR WILLIAM ARMSTRONG.

(VMM "celebwties at home," in the "world.") Sir "WiLtiAitf Armstboug is a born Northumbrian, and, what is more, a Genuine Newcastle 'lad,' both in the town which boasts the finest street m England, and educated at that famous grammar-school around which yet clings the memory of the sons of Scott the fitter, Lords Stowell and Eldon, of Mark Akenside the poet, and of many other celebrities of Tyneside. A Newcastle lad in his speech, he is also & genuine Tynesider in his quiet force of character, and patience in waiting for opportunity, while working fiercely that the opportunity may not be lost by being unprepared for. Yet, to judge from the outside, from simple sight and sound, he is the mildest manneredandmostgentleof Northumbrian sons. Ashe shakes the visitor's hand, the same sensation is experienced asm the case of akindred spirit, Sir Joseph Whitworth— one has the idea that, although there is ~ no mistake in the heartiness of the grasp, it dwells, as it were, as if the host, like a blind man, were feeling whom it was. It is merely the touch of the artifex, ac- _ customed to inspect every bit of workmanship brought before him, the delicate tentative manner suggestive of palmistry. This kind of delicate sensibility, not always present in the votaries of pure science, as it is called, is thoroughly characteristic of the inventor, # and is ol a piece with the quiet unassuming manner which is so bad a card in playing for stakes with society, that the hardened, ignorant, blatant agent's services are made absolutely necessary. . . . Orioinally destined for the law, he, like the°excellent son he was, bowed so far to the wish of his father, a Cumberland man from Wreay, who had settled in Newcastle and become its mayor, as to go seriously through the probation allotted to young solicitors. First in the office of Mr Armorer Donkin of Newcastle, and then in London, he completed his legal education and then became a member of the firm of Donkin, Stable and Armstrong. His thirteen years of legal life were drawing to an end when a walk among the Yorkshire hills gave purpose and direction to the mechanical genius which had all along struggled against the dry detail of law. In 1836 Mr Armstrong visited the delightful district of Craven. His attention was there attracted by various mountain rills which, descending the slopes, expended their energy in the production of streaks of foam, thereby adding to the beauty of the landscape, but fulfilling no purpose of utility. In one particular instance he observed that an overshot water-wheel employed about twenty feet of the fall of one of these small streams, while several feet of the entire descent remained unproductive. It occurred to him that if the stream were conducted in a pipe from the highest available point, and the pressure of the contained column were caused to act mechanically at the bottom, the power afforded might be increased in proportion to the greater fall brought into operation. Having thought out the subject, he made a design and sent it to the Mechanics' Magazine, wherein it was fully described just 40 years ago. The sketch shared the usual fate of pen-and-ink inventions ; and the author, finding nobody else inclined to make a working model of his hydraulic machine, determined to make one himself, and within a year tried it, first at Newcastle and then at Gateshead, by connecting it with the town water-pipes. The result of this experiment was so satisfactory that Mr Armstrong was induced to extend the area of his investigations, and to advocate the general employment of hydraulic power. He underwent the usual fate of the genuine inventor, for his invention had been preceded only by the Bramah press. Not a soul would have anything to do with his crane : the matter fell flat and thus remained, until in 1845 he, being associated in his legal capacity with a \ company for bringing a new supply of water into Newcaßtle-upon-Tyne, imag ined that this circumstance might facilitate its introduction. In December of that year he exhibited his models, and delivered a lecture upon them, to the Literary and Philosophical Society of that town. Shortly afterwards a few friends agreed to join him in erecting a crane for actual use on Newcastle Quay. The crane was completely successful, and caused much excitement in the engineering world. It will be recollected that there was one marked distinction between the International Exhibition held at London in 1851 and again in 1862. At the first great outpouring of industrial brotherhood it was solemnly proclaimed that the age of war and fighting was at an end, and that that of peace and goodwill was duly inaugurated. There were men, however, and among them such utterly dissimilar persons as the late Duke of Wellington and Colonel Sibthorp, doubted the millennium, and their judgment was vindicated at the Great Show held' at South Kensington in 1862. In Hyde Park, eleven years before, the most martial object was the colossal ' Amazon by Kisz, all else being of the peaceful type. In 1862 a change had come over industrial exhibitors and other sons of men ; and instead of the Crystal Fountain, the cynosure of neighboring eyes was the Armstrong gun. Threshing and reaping machines of the land destined for other than human harvest were passed by needlessly, but none overlooked the queerly-shaped gun with massive breechpiece. During the preceding years this weapon had made no little noise in the world ; and after having passed through a S3ries of crucial tests, had been reported on favorably by the Rifle-Cannon Committee, and adopted by the Government. For a while it was accepted in this country as the best weapon known, although the canon raye had helped materially to win the battles of Magenta and Solferino, and the leadencoated bolt hurled from a breech-loador was thought the most terrible of projectiles. Owing, however, most probably to some imperfections in the earlier specimens of the Elswick gun, the artillery- ' men employed in serving it suffered from the scattering of lead when it was fired, and a reaction set in against the Armstrong breech-loader which haß almost driven it from our service. The favorite of recent authorities has been a muzzleloader constructed on tho so-called "Woolwich system," a modification of the canon raye, and according to recent experience not a complete success. Not a few skilled artillerists regret that Sir William Armstrong and Sir Joseph Whitworth were set aside by our Government in favor of military persons, who, clever enough in firing it, know little or nothing of the construction of a gun. The result of this preference of military mediocrity to civilian genius is that at a critical period of our history we find our ships and armies furnished with Woolwich