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Thomas Wright Hill (24 April 1763 in Kidderminster – 13 June 1851 in Tottenham) was a mathematician and schoolmaster. He is credited as inventing the single transferable vote in 1819. His son, Rowland Hill, famous as the originator of the modern postal system, introduced STV in 1840 into the world's first public election, for the Adelaide City Council, in which the principle of proportional representation was applied. In 1791, Thomas Wright Hill courageously tried to save the apparatus of Dr Joseph Priestley from a mob in the Birmingham 'Church and King' riots of 1791—the offer was declined. He was interested in astronomy, being a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in computers, as is shown by a letter of his to Charles Babbage, dated March 23, 1836, among the Babbage manuscripts at the British Library, returning some logarithm tables that he had borrowed and adding "How happy I shall be when I can see such a work verified and enlarged by your divine machine". == Hill and education == He started work as a brassfounder, but was more interested in intellectual pursuits, so in 1802 he bought a boys' school on Lionel Street, Birmingham moving it to Hill Top, Gough Street. In 1819, it moved again to a new purpose-built school designed by Rowland at Hazelbrook called Hazelwood on Hagley Road in Edgbaston.〔Colin G. Hey, ''Rowland Hill: Victorian genius and benefactor'', Quiller Press, 1989. ISBN 1-870948-32-7〕 From the start the school seems to have been out of the ordinary. In its original prospectus Hill says that "he will make it his study to excite (pupils' ) reasoning powers, and to induce in them habits of voluntary application ... he will always endeavour, by kindness and patience, to secure for himself their affection and esteem"; perhaps not revolutionary aims nowadays, but this was more than 25 years before Thomas Arnold became headmaster of Rugby or Charles Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickleby. It is also noteworthy that he was offering "instruction in art and science". How many schools at that date would have thought of including science in their curriculum? At Hazelwood School, with his sons now bearing a full share in its running, it became a school in which the rules were formed by a committee of the boys, elected by the boys, and enforced by the boys' own law court. Whether or not that is a good way to run a school, the amazing thing is that it existed at all at that time. In 1827 a London branch of the school was opened at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, and within a few years all the Hazelwood students had transferred to Bruce Castle, which had been taken over almost entirely by his sons. Hazelwood then became the home of Francis Clark and his wife Caroline (daughter of Thomas Wright Hill) and their large and growing family. They remained there for fifteen years before emigrating to South Australia.〔Brown, Robert and Martin/Clark Committee ''The Hatbox Letters'' Published by the authors, Adelaide 1999. ISBN 0-646-36207-0〕 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「Thomas Wright Hill」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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