|
:: ''This article concerns the Irish-based inventor and lighthouse engineer, not his cousin the shipbuilder John Wigham Richardson''. John Richardson Wigham (15 January 1829 – 16 November 1906) was a prominent lighthouse engineer of the 19th century. ==Early life== Wigham was born to a Quaker family in Newington, Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Henry, operated a mill for the manufacture of shawls. When he was 15 years old he was apprenticed to his brother-in-law Joshua Edmundson in Capel Street, Dublin, Ireland. Edmundson & Co. dealt in iron-mongery, ran a brass foundry, and carried out tin plate working and japanning (metal paintwork). After John joined, they also provided gas generation plants. On 26 January 1848, Joshua unexpectedly died. Though John was only 19 years old, he took over operation of the company and provided for his sister and her children. His sister Eliza Wigham became a leading citizen of Edinburgh leading campaigns for women's rights and abolitionist.〔Lesley M. Richmond, ‘Wigham, Eliza (1820–1899)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed 3 June 2015 )〕 Despite his relative youth and limited education John Wigham proved to be a very successful businessman. He concentrated on the provision of more efficient gas-plants of his own design, and Edmundson & Co prospered. Wigham's relatives, in Scotland, were involved in shipbuilding, and he developed an interest in lighting used as a navigational aid at sea. Initially, buoys only had bells to warn mariners at night: the difficulty lay in designing an oil-lamp which could burn while unattended and not be extinguished by waves and storms. The first successful lighted buoy was patented by John Wigham in 1861. It was installed in the river Clyde. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Richardson Wigham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|