Fleeming Jenkin
Fleeming Jenkin | |
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Telpherage |
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin
Early life
Background and childhood
Generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his father's patrons, he was born to an old and eccentric family in a government building near
On his father's retirement in 1847, the family moved to
The Jenkins left Paris, and went to
Training as engineer and artist
In 1850, Jenkin spent some time in a Genoese locomotive shop under Philip Taylor of Marseille but on the death of his Aunt Anna, who lived with them, Captain Jenkin took his family back to England, and settled in Manchester, where the lad, in 1851, was apprenticed to mechanical engineering at the works of William Fairbairn, and from half-past eight in the morning until six at night had, as he says, "to file and chip vigorously, in a moleskin suit, and infernally dirty.[5]: page 47
"At home he pursued his studies, and was for a time engaged with Dr. Bell in working out a geometrical method of arriving at the proportions of
"On leaving Fairbairn's he was engaged for a time on a survey for the proposed Lukmanier Railway in Switzerland, and in 1856 he entered Penn's engineering works at Greenwich as a draughtsman, being occupied on the plans of a vessel designed for the Crimean War. He complained about the late hours, his rough comrades, and his humble lodgings, 'across a dirty green and through some half-built streets of two-storied houses.... Luckily, he adds, 'I am fond of my profession, or I could not stand this life.' Jenkin had been his mother's pet until then, and felt the change from home more keenly for that reason. At night he read engineering and mathematics, or Thomas Carlyle and the poets, and cheered his drooping spirits with frequent trips to London to see his mother."[5]: ¶ 12
"Another social pleasure was his visits to the house of Alfred Austin, a barrister, who became permanent secretary to Her Majesty's Office of Works and Public Buildings, and retired in 1868 with the title of CB. His wife, Eliza Barron, was the youngest daughter of a gentleman of Norwich who, when a child, had been patted on the head, in his father's shop, by Dr Samuel Johnson, while canvassing for Mr. Thrale. Jenkin had been introduced to the Austins by a letter from Mrs. Gaskell, and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous manners, without any pretence or affectation. "Each of the Austins," says Stevenson in his memoir of Jenkin, "was full of high spirits; each practised something of the same repression; no sharp word was uttered in the house." The Austins were truly hospitable and cultured, not merely so in form and appearance. It was a rare privilege and preservative for a solitary young man in Jenkin's position to have the entry into such elevating society and he appreciated his good fortune."[5]: ¶ 13
"Annie Austin, their only child, had been highly educated and knew Greek among other things. Though Jenkin loved and admired her parents he did not at first care for Annie. Stevenson hints that she vanquished him by correcting a "false quantity" of his one day; he was the man to reflect over a correction, and "admire the castigator." Jenkin was poor but the liking of her parents for him gave him hope. He had entered the service of Messrs. Liddell and Gordon who were engaged in the new work of submarine telegraphy, which satisfied his aspirations, and promised him a successful career. He therefore asked the Austins for leave to court their daughter. Mrs. Austin consented freely, and Mr. Austin only reserved the right to inquire into his character. Jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness, exclaimed in one of his letters "Are these people the same as other people?" Miss Austin seems to have resented his courtship of her parents first but the mother's favour and his own spirited behaviour saved him and won her consent."[5]: ¶¶ 14, 15
After leaving Penn's, Jenkin became a railroad engineer under Liddell and Gordon, and, in 1857, became engineer to
Cable-laying on the Elba
First voyage
In the spring of 1855, he was fitting out the S.S. Elba at
Another attempt was made the following year, but with no better success. Brett then tried to lay a three-wire cable from the steamer Dutchman; but owing to the deep water (in some places 1500 fathoms or 2700 m) when he came to a few miles from
It was to recover the lost cable of these expeditions that the Elba was got ready for sea. Jenkin had fitted her out the year before for laying the Cagliari to Malta and Corfu cables but on this occasion she was better equipped. She had a new machine for picking up the cable, and a sheave or pulley at the bows for it to run over, both designed by Jenkin, together with a variety of wooden buoys, ropes, and chains. Liddell, assisted by F. C. Webb and Fleeming Jenkin, was in charge of the expedition. Jenkin had nothing to do with the electrical work, his care being the deck machinery for raising the cable but it was a responsible job. He reported the expedition in letters to Miss Austin and in diary entries.[6]
During the latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid and two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the mast-head and fore-yard tackle. Photographs of this raveled cable were exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of Newall & Co.'s shop in The Strand. By 5 July the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered and a portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit for use, owing to its twisted condition. On the evening of the 2nd the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari. Jenkin's knowledge of languages made him useful as an interpreter but, in mentioning this incident to Miss Austin, he writes, For no fortune would I be a doctor to witness these scenes continually. Pain is a terrible thing.[5]: ¶ 32
Future partners
"Early in 1859 he met
On 26 February, during a four days' leave, Jenkin married Miss Austin at Northiam in Sussex, returning to his work the following Tuesday. He was strongly attached to his wife and his letters reveal a warmth of affection which a casual observer would never have suspected in him. In 1869 he wrote, People may write novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of marriage. Five weeks before his death he wrote to her, Your first letter from Bournemouth gives me heavenly pleasure – for which I thank Heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on earth.[5]: ¶ 35
Second voyage
During the summer he took another telegraph cruise in the Mediterranean. This time the Elba was to lay a cable from the
Entrepreneur and academic
Partnership with Forde
"In 1861, Jenkin left the service of Newall & Co. and entered into partnership with H. C. Forde, who had acted as engineer under the British Government for the Malta-Alexandria cable, and was now practising as a civil engineer. For several years, business was bad."[5]: ¶ 44
Domestic life
In 1859 he married Ann Austin.[8]
With a young family coming, it was an anxious time but he bore his troubles lightly. Robert Louis Stevenson says in his memoir of Jenkin that it was his principle to enjoy each day's happiness as it arises, like birds and children.[citation needed]
In 1863 his first son was born and the family moved to a cottage at Claygate near Esher. Though ill and poor, he kept up his self-confidence. The country, he wrote to his wife, will give us, please God, health and strength. I will love and cherish you more than ever. You shall go where you wish, you shall receive whom you wish, and as for money, you shall have that too. I cannot be mistaken. I have now measured myself with many men. I do not feel weak. I do not feel that I shall fail. In many things I have succeeded, and I will in this.... And meanwhile, the time of waiting, which, please Heaven, shall not be so long, shall also not be so bitter. Well, well, I promise much, and do not know at this moment how you and the dear child are. If he is but better, courage, my girl, for I see light.[5]: ¶ 45
He took to gardening, without a natural liking for it, and soon became an ardent expert. He wrote reviews and lectured or amused himself in playing charades and reading poetry. James Clerk Maxwell was among his visitors. During October 1860, he superintended the repairs of the Bona-Spartivento cable, revisiting Chia and Cagliari, then full of Garibaldi's troops. The cable, which had been broken by the anchors of
In 1865, on the birth of their second son, Mrs. Jenkin was very ill, and Jenkin, after running two miles for a doctor, knelt by her bedside during the night in a draught. He suffered from rheumatism and sciatica ever afterwards.[5]: ¶ 47 It nearly disabled him while laying the cable from Lowestoft to Norderney in Germany for Paul Reuter in 1866. This line was designed by Forde & Jenkin, manufactured by Messrs. W. T. Henley & Co., and laid by the Caroline and William Cory. Clara Volkman, a niece of Reuter, sent the first message, with the telegraph engineer C. F. Varley holding her hand.
Professor at London and Edinburgh
"In 1866, Jenkin was appointed as professor (chair[9]) of engineering at University College London. Two years later his prospects suddenly improved. The partnership began to pay and he was selected to fill the newly established Regius Chair of Engineering at Edinburgh University. He wrote to his wife: 'With you in the garden (at Claygate), with Austin in the coach-house, with pretty songs in the little low white room, with the moonlight in the dear room upstairs—ah! it was perfect; but the long walk, wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting railway, and the horrid fusty office, with its endless disappointments, they are well gone. It is well enough to fight, and scheme, and bustle about in the eager crowd here (in London) for a while now and then; but not for a lifetime. What I have now is just perfect. Study for winter, action for summer, lovely country for recreation, a pleasant town for talk.'"[5]: ¶ 48
"The following June he was on board the
Partnership with Thomson and Varley
"Jenkin's position at Edinburgh led to a partnership in cable work with Varley and Thomson, whom he always admired. Jenkin's practical and businesslike abilities were of assistance to Thomson, relieving him of routine and sparing his time for other work. In 1870 the
"In 1873 Thomson and Jenkin were engineers for the
"During the next two years the
Pioneer of the supply and demand graphic
In 1870, Jenkin published the essay "On the Graphical Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand and their Application to Labour,"[10] in which he "introduced the diagrammatic method into the English economic literature" – an early published instance of supply and demand curves.[11] His treatment extended beyond earlier treatments on the Continent (not apparently known by him), complete with comparative statics (a change in equilibrium from a shifts of a curve), welfare analysis, application to the labour market, and market-period and long-run distinctions.[12] It was later popularised by Alfred Marshall and remains arguably the most famous graphic in economics.[citation needed]
Sanitary protection associations
In 1878 Jenkin made a contribution to public health with his pamphlet Healthy Houses.[13] "This was not a completely new interest, for sewerage systems were part of the degree course which he taught, and he had already contributed on the subject to the Sanitary Record."[1]: 165
The suggestion was made by William Fairbairn that house inspection by an association of competent individuals would protect homeowners from incompetent tradesmen and outline clearly work necessary for sanitary protection. Jenkin noted, "In respect of Domestic Sanitation the business of Engineer and that of the medical man overlap." With the assent of Robert Christison, the concept took hold in Edinburgh and Saint Andrews, then in Newport, USA. The report by Alexander Fergusson[14] noted two associations in London in 1882, and sixteen globally.[15][16]
"Jenkin acted as
Personality and assessment
Jenkin was a clear, fluent speaker, and a successful teacher. He is described as being of medium height, and very plain, with an unimposing manner. His class was always in good order, for he instantly spotted and disciplined anyone who misbehaved. His experimental work was not strikingly original. At Birkenhead he made some accurate measurements of the electrical properties of materials used in submarine cables. Sir William Thomson noted that he was the first to apply the absolute methods of measurement introduced by Gauss and Weber. He also investigated the laws of electric signals in submarine cables. As Secretary to the British Association Committee on Electrical Standards he played a leading part in providing electricians with practical standards of measurement. His Cantor lectures on submarine cables, and his treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, published in 1873, were notable at the time, including the latest developments in the subject. He was associated with Thomson in an ingenious 'curb-key' for sending signals automatically through a long cable; but it was never adopted. His most important invention was telpherage, a means of transporting goods and passengers to a distance by electric panniers supported on a wire or conductor, which supplied them with electricity. It was patented in 1882, and Jenkin spent his last years on this work, expecting great results from it; but before the first public line was opened for traffic at Glynde, in Sussex, he was dead.[5]: ¶¶ 54, 55
In mechanical engineering his graphical methods of calculating strains in bridges, and determining the efficiency of mechanism, were valuable, and won him the
He could draw a portrait with astonishing rapidity, and had been known to stop a passer-by for a few minutes and sketch her on the spot. His artistic side also shows itself in a paper on 'Artist and Critic,' in which he defines the difference between the mechanical and fine arts. 'In mechanical arts,' he says, 'the craftsman uses his skill to produce something useful, but (except in the rare case when he is at liberty to choose what he shall produce) his sole merit lies in skill. In the fine arts the student uses skill to produce something beautiful. He is free to choose what that something shall be, and the layman claims that he may and must judge the artist chiefly by the value in beauty of the thing done. Artistic skill contributes to beauty, or it would not be skill; but beauty is the result of many elements, and the nobler the art the lower is the rank which skill takes among them.'[5]: ¶ 58
Jenkin was a clear and graphic writer. He read selectively, preferring the story of David, the
Though admired and liked by his intimates, Jenkin was never popular with associates. His manner was hard, rasping, and unsympathetic. 'Whatever virtues he possessed,' says Mr. Stevenson, 'he could never count on being civil.' He showed so much courtesy to his wife, however, that a Styrian peasant who observed it spread a report in the village that Mrs. Jenkin, a great lady, had married beneath her. At the Savile Club, in London, he was known as the 'man who dines here and goes up to Scotland.' Jenkin was conscious of this churlishness, and latterly improved. 'All my life,' he wrote,'I have talked a good deal, with the almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of my tongue. It appeared to me that I had various things to say, and I had no malevolent feelings; but, nevertheless, the result was that expressed above. Well, lately some change has happened. If I talk to a person one day they must have me the next. Faces light up when they see me. "Ah! I say, come here." " Come and dine with me." It's the most preposterous thing I ever experienced. It is curiously pleasant.'[5]: ¶ 60
Jenkin was a good father, joining in his children's play as well as directing their studies. The boys used to wait outside his office for him at the close of business hours; and a story is told of little Frewen, the second son, entering in to him one day, while he was at work, and holding out a toy crane he was making, with the request, 'Papa you might finiss windin' this for me, I'm so very busy to-day.' He was fond of animals too, and his dog Plate regularly accompanied him to the university. But, as he used to say, 'It's a cold home where a dog is the only representative of a child.'[citation needed]
In the
His parents and parents-in-law had come to live in Edinburgh, but they all died within ten months of each other. Jenkin had showed great devotion to them in their illnesses, and was worn out with grief and watching. His telpherage, too, had given him considerable anxiety; and his mother's illness, which affected her mind, had caused him fear. He was planning a holiday to Italy with his wife to recuperate, and had a minor operation on his foot, which resulted in blood poisoning. There seemed to be no danger, and his wife was reading aloud to him as he lay in bed, when his mind began to wander. He probably never regained his senses before he died.[citation needed]
At one period of his life Jenkin was a freethinker, holding all dogmas as 'mere blind struggles to express the inexpressible.' Nevertheless, as time went on he returned to Christianity. 'The longer I live,' he wrote, 'the more convinced I become of a direct care by God—which is reasonably impossible—but there it is.' In his last year he took Communion.[citation needed]
Darwin and evolution
In June 1867, Jenkin reviewed Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), in The North British Review.[17] Jenkin criticized Darwin's evolutionary theory by suggesting that Darwin's interpretation of natural selection couldn't possibly work, as described, if the reigning hypothesis of inheritance, blending inheritance, was also valid. Though Gregor Mendel's theory of particulate inheritance had been already published two years earlier (and would eventually be adopted as the dominant theory of inheritance), neither Jenkin nor Darwin would ever read it, and it would still be several decades before the blending inheritance model would be overturned in the scientific community. In this interim, Jenkin provided a mathematical argument, the swamping argument, that showed that under the blending inheritance model any advantageous mutations which might arise in a species would be quickly diluted out of any species after just a few generations. By contrast, Darwin's interpretation of natural selection required hundreds, if not thousands of generations of passing down such mutations in order to work. Jenkin thus concluded that natural selection could not possibly work if blending inheritance were also true. Despite Jenkin's argument containing a mistake, as A.S. Davis pointed out in 1871,[18] it did not affect Jenkin's conclusion, nor mitigate the damage of Jenkin's criticisms of Darwin's ideas during the few decades when blending inheritance was still widely accepted.[19]
Jenkin also referred to Lord Kelvin's recent (incorrect) estimation of the age of the earth. Kelvin had calculated that Fourier's theory of heat and the actions of tides on the earth's rotation allowed for an earth no more than 100 million years old and doubted in so far the case for evolution based on the chronology.[20] Criticism by Jenkin and A.W. Bennett, in fact, led Darwin to investigate and discuss the mechanism of inheritance more thoroughly. Darwin avoided a direct confrontation (as well in the case of chronology), but confessed that some of Jenkin's arguments were troubling—so troubling, in fact, that Darwin largely abandoned blending inheritance as the potential mechanism for his own inheritance model, pangenesis, in favor of a competing model of inheritance that derived from Lamarckism.[21]
Selected works of Fleeming Jenkin
- 1868: The Atomic Theory of Lucretius, North British Review, link from Wikisource.
- 1868. "Trades Unions: How Far Legitimate?" North British Review, March. (see Papers, Literary, Scientific &c, volume 2).
- 1870. "The Graphical Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand, and their Application to Labour," in Alexander Grant, ed., Recess Studies, ch. VI, pp. 151–85. Edinburgh. Scroll to chapter link.
- 1872. On the principles which regulate the incidence of taxes, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1871-2, pp. 618–30.
- 1877: (with J.A. Ewing) On Friction between Surfaces moving at Low Speeds, Philosophical Magazine Series 5, volume 4, pp 308–10, link from Biodiversity Heritage Library.
- 1887: James Alfred Ewing editors, Papers, Literary, Scientific, &c, volume 1, preview from Google Books.
- 1887: S.C. Colvin & J.A. Ewing editors, Papers, Literary, Scientific, &c, v. 2
- 1873: Electricity and Magnetism (first edition), link from HathiTrust, other editions in 1876,79,80,81,85,87,1914.
- 1873 (editor) Reports of the Committee on Electrical Standards appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science link from HathiTrust.
- undated: "History of Bridges", Encyclopædia Britannica[9]
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7546-0079-4.
- ^ "Centenary Celebrations: Department of Engineering Science 1908-2008" (PDF). Newsletter. Department of Engineering Science, Oxford University. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 June 2013. Retrieved 10 May 2014.
- ^ a b c Robert Louis Stevenson, Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, (1901), New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, Chapter II. 1833–1851.
- ^ Henrietta Jenkin, Wikisource
- ^ ISBN 978-0-585-00791-5.
- ^ s:Fleeming Jenkin accounts of the voyages of the Elba, from Munro, ¶¶ 20 to 30
- ^ s:Fleeming Jenkin accounts of the voyages of the Elba
- ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ a b Scientific American. Munn & Company. 11 July 1885. p. 16.
- ^ Fleeming Jenkin, 1870. "The Graphical Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand, and their Application to Labour," in Alexander Grant, ed., Recess Studies, Edinburgh. ch. VI, pp. 151–85. Edinburgh. Scroll to chapter link.
- ^ A.D. Brownlie and M. F. Lloyd Prichard, 1963. "Professor Fleeming Jenkin, 1833–1885 Pioneer in Engineering and Political Economy," Oxford Economic Papers, NS, 15(3), p. 211.
- ^ Thomas M. Humphrey, 1992. "Marshallian Cross Diagrams and Their Uses before Alfred Marshall," Economic Review, Mar/Apr, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, pp. 16–21.
- ^ F. Jenkin (1878) Healthy Houses
- ^ Alexander Fergusson (1887) Note on the Work of Fleeming Jenkin in connection with Sanitary Reform, page clix, Papers Literary, Scientific, &c of Fleeming Jenkin
- ^ The Sanitary Record, March 18, 1878
- ^ Ian H. Adams (1978) The Making of Urban Scotland
- ^ Jenkin, Fleeming, Review of 'The origin of species', The North British Review, June 1867, 46, pp. 277-318.
- ISSN 1476-4687.
- .
- ISBN 9780226080437.
- ISBN 9780385081412.
References
Obituaries
- Professor Fleeming Jenkin, LL.D., FRS, obituary in Nature 32: 153,4 (18 June 1885).
- Death of Fleeming Jenkin, in The Electrician and Electrical Engineer (August 1885), link from Google Books.
- Death of Fleeming Jenkin, in Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 85: 365 to 77, link from Google Books.
- Jstor(subscription).
Biographies
- Barkley, G. E., 2004. "Jenkin, (Henry Charles) Fleeming (1833–1885)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 3 September 2007 (subscription or UK public library membershiprequired)
- Brownlie, A. D., and M. F. Lloyd Prichard (1963). "Professor Fleeming Jenkin, 1833–1885 Pioneer in Engineering and Political Economy," Oxford Economic Papers, NS, 15(3), p p. 204-16.
- Collison Black. R.D. (1987 [2008]). "Jenkin, Henry Charles Fleeming," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 2 pp. 1007–08.
- ISBN 978-0-7546-0079-4.
- Munro, J. (1891). Heroes of the Telegraph. London: The Religious Tract Society. ISBN 978-0-585-00791-5.
- ISBN 978-0-585-01142-4. Archived from the originalon 23 September 2004.