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Sir Francis Ronalds FRS (21 February 17888 August 1873) was an English scientist and inventor, and arguably the first
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. He was knighted for creating the first working electric telegraph over a substantial distance. In 1816 he laid an eight-mile length of iron wire between wooden frames in his mother's garden and sent pulses using
electrostatic generator An electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is an electrical generator that produces ''static electricity'', or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current. The knowledge of static electricity dates back to the earliest ci ...
s.


Upbringing and family

Born to Francis Ronalds and Jane (née Field), wholesale cheesemongers, at their business premises in Upper Thames Street, London, he attended Unitarian minister Eliezer Cogan's school before being apprenticed to his father at the age of 14 through the Drapers' Company. He ran the large business for some years. The family later resided in Canonbury Place and Highbury Terrace, both in
Islington Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ...
, at
Kelmscott House Kelmscott House is Grade II* listed Georgian brick mansion at 26 Upper Mall in Hammersmith, overlooking the River Thames. Built in about 1785, it was the London home of English textile designer, artist, writer and socialist William Morris from ...
in Hammersmith, Queen Square in Bloomsbury, at
Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an exten ...
, and on
Chiswick Chiswick ( ) is a district of west London, England. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth; Chiswick House, a neo-Palladian villa regarded as one of the finest in England; and F ...
Lane. Several of Ronalds' eleven brothers and sisters also led noteworthy lives. His youngest brother
Alfred Ronalds Alfred Ronalds (10 July 180223 April 1860) was an English author, artisan and Australian pioneer, best known for his book ''The Fly-fisher's Entomology''. Life and family Early years He was born at No 1 Highbury Terrace, Highbury, the eleventh ch ...
authored the classic book ''
The Fly-fisher's Entomology ''The Fly-Fisher's Entomology, Illustrated by Coloured Representations of the Natural and Artificial Insect and Accompanied by a Few Observations and Instructions Relative to Trout-and-Grayling Fishing'', first published in 1836 by Alfred Ronalds ...
'' (1836) with Ronalds' assistance before migrating to Australia and their brother Hugh was one of the founders of the city of
Albion Albion is an alternative name for Great Britain. The oldest attestation of the toponym comes from the Greek language. It is sometimes used poetically and generally to refer to the island, but is less common than 'Britain' today. The name for Scot ...
in the American Midwest. His sisters married Samuel Carter – a railway solicitor and MP – and sugar-refiner Peter Martineau, the son of
Peter Finch Martineau Peter Finch Martineau (12 June 1755 – 2 December 1847) was an English businessman and a philanthropist, with particular interest in improving the lives of disadvantaged people through education. Life and family A Unitarian, he was born into th ...
. Another sister Emily epitomised the family's interest in social reform through her collaborations with early socialists
Robert Owen Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh people, Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditio ...
and
Fanny Wright Frances Wright (September 6, 1795 – December 13, 1852), widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, utopian socialist, abolitionist, social reformer, and Epicurean philosopher, who became ...
. Nurseryman Hugh Ronalds was his uncle, and his nephews included chemistry professor Edmund Ronalds, artist
Hugh Carter Hugh Alton Carter (August 13, 1920 – June 24, 1999) was an American politician and businessman from Georgia. He was also the first cousin of US president Jimmy Carter. Early life and education Born in Plains, Georgia, Carter served in World W ...
, barrister
John Corrie Carter John Corrie Carter (29 December 1839 – 5 June 1927) was an English barrister, High Sheriff, author and sportsman. Life and family Born at Islington Row, Birmingham, Corrie Carter was the third son of Maria (youngest sister of inventor Sir Fr ...
and timber merchant and benefactor
James Montgomrey James Montgomrey (1 September 1811 – 4 June 1883) ran a large timber mill in Brentford, Middlesex, that was in the family for 120 years. He also led the development of considerable infrastructure in the town to enhance public amenity. Life and fa ...
. Thomas Field Gibson, a Royal Commissioner for the
Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took pl ...
of 1851, was one of his cousins.


Early electrical science and engineering

Ronalds was conducting electrical experiments by 1810: those on atmospheric electricity were outlined in George Singer's text ''Elements of Electricity and Electro-Chemistry'' (1814). He published his first papers in the
Philosophical Magazine The ''Philosophical Magazine'' is one of the oldest scientific journals published in English. It was established by Alexander Tilloch in 1798;John Burnett"Tilloch, Alexander (1759–1825)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Univer ...
in 1814 on the properties of the
dry pile upright=1.2, Schematic diagram of a copper–zinc voltaic pile. The copper and zinc discs were separated by cardboard or felt spacers soaked in salt water (the electrolyte). Volta's original piles contained an additional zinc disk at the bottom, ...
, a form of battery that his mentor Jean-André Deluc helped to develop. The next year he described the first
electric clock An electric clock is a clock that is powered by electricity, as opposed to a mechanical clock which is powered by a hanging weight or a mainspring. The term is often applied to the electrically powered mechanical clocks that were used before qu ...
. Other inventions in this early period included an electrograph to record variations in atmospheric electricity through the day; an influence machine that generated electricity with minimal manual intervention; and new forms of electrical insulation, one of which was announced by Singer. He was also already creating what would become the renowned Ronalds Library of electrical books and managing his collection with perhaps the first practical card catalogue. His theoretical contributions included an early delineation of the parameters now known as electromotive force and current; an appreciation of the mechanism by which dry piles generated electricity; and the first description of the effects of induction in retarding electric signal transmission in insulated cables.


Electric telegraph

Ronalds' most remembered work today is the electric telegraph he created at the age of 28. He established that electrical signals could be transmitted over large distances with eight miles of iron wire strung on insulators on his mother's lawn in Hammersmith. He found that the signal travelled immeasurably fast from one end to the other (but still believed the speed was finite). Foreshadowing both a future electrical age and mass communication, he wrote:
electricity, may actually be employed for a more practically useful purpose than the gratification of the philosopher's inquisitive research… it may be compelled to travel... many hundred miles beneath our feet... and... be productive of... much public and private benefit... why... add to the torments of absence those dilatory tormentors, pens, ink, paper, and posts? Let us have ''electrical conversazione'' offices, communicating with each other all over the kingdom... give me materiel enough, and I will electrify the world.
He complemented his vision with a working telegraph system built in and under his mother's garden at Hammersmith. It was infamously rejected on 5 August 1816 by
Sir John Barrow Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1764 – 23 November 1848) was an English geographer, linguist, writer and civil servant best known for term as the Second Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804 until 1845. Early life Barrow was born ...
, Secretary at the
Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...
, as being "wholly unnecessary". Commercialisation of the telegraph only began two decades later in the UK, led by
William Fothergill Cooke Sir William Fothergill Cooke (4 May 1806 – 25 June 1879) was an English inventor. He was, with Charles Wheatstone, the co-inventor of the Cooke-Wheatstone electrical telegraph, which was patented in May 1837. Together with John Ricardo he f ...
and Charles Wheatstone, who both had links to Ronalds' earlier work.


Grand Tour

The period 1818–20 was Ronalds' "
Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tut ...
" to Europe and the Near East. Embarking on his trip alone, he met up with numerous people along the way, including his friend Sir Frederick Henniker, archaeologist
Giovanni Battista Belzoni Giovanni Battista Belzoni (; 5 November 1778 – 3 December 1823), sometimes known as The Great Belzoni, was a prolific Italian explorer and pioneer archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities. He is known for his removal to England of the seven-ton ...
, artist Giovanni Battista Lusieri, merchant Walter Stevenson Davidson, Revd George Waddington, Italian numismatist Giulio Cordero di San Quintino and Spanish geologist Carlos de Gimbernat. Ronalds' travel journal and sketches have been published on the web. On his return, he published his atmospheric electricity observations made in
Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its ...
, Sicily, and near the erupting crater of
Vesuvius Mount Vesuvius ( ; it, Vesuvio ; nap, 'O Vesuvio , also or ; la, Vesuvius , also , or ) is a somma-stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of ...
.


Mechanical design and manufacture

Ronalds next focused on mechanical and civil engineering and design. Two
surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ...
tools he designed and used to aid the production of survey plans were a modified
surveyor's wheel A surveyor's wheel, also called a clickwheel, hodometer, waywiser, trundle wheel, measuring wheel or perambulator is a device for measuring distance. Origin The origins of the surveyor's wheel are connected to the origins of the odometer. W ...
that recorded distances travelled in graphical form and a double-reflecting sector to draw the angular separation of distant objects. He also invented a forerunner to the fire finder patented in 1915 to pinpoint the location of a fire and various accessories for the
lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, and turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece ...
. Some of these devices were manufactured for sale by toolmaker Holtzapffel. There is some evidence to suggest that he assisted Charles Holtzapffel in the early stages of preparing the Holtzapffel family's renowned treatise on turning.


Perspective machines and tripod stand

On 23 March 1825, he patented two drawing instruments for producing perspective sketches; numerous engravings and lithographs survive that he made using the machines. The first instrument produced a perspective view of an object directly from drawings of the plan and elevations. The second machine enabled a scene or person to be traced from life onto paper with considerable precision; he and Dr Alexander Blair used it to document the important Neolithic monuments at
Carnac Carnac (; br, italic=no, Karnag, ) is a commune beside the Gulf of Morbihan on the south coast of Brittany in the Morbihan department in north-western France. Its inhabitants are called ''Carnacois'' in French. Carnac is renowned for the C ...
, France, with "almost photographic accuracy". He also created the ubiquitous portable tripod stand with three pairs of hinged legs to support his drawing board in the field. He manufactured these instruments himself and several hundred of them were sold. One of his first customers was mining engineer John Taylor. In 1840, he applied his understanding of perspective in developing more complex apparatus to aid the accurate depiction of cylindrical panoramas, which were a popular exhibition at that time.


Kew Observatory

Ronalds set up the Kew Observatory for the
British Association for the Advancement of Science The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chi ...
in 1842 and he remained Honorary Director of the facility until late 1853. It was through the quality of his achievements there that the Kew Observatory survived its early years and it went on to become one of the most important meteorological and geomagnetic observatories in the world. This was despite ongoing efforts by George Airy, Director of the Greenwich Observatory, to undermine the work at Kew.


Continuously recording camera

Ronalds' most noteworthy innovation at Kew, in 1845, was the first successful camera to make continuous recordings of an instrument 24 hours per day. The British Prime Minister Lord John Russell gave him a financial award in recognition of the importance of the invention for observational science. He applied his technique in electrographs to observe atmospheric electricity,
barograph A barograph is a barometer that records the barometric pressure over time in graphical form. This instrument is also used to make a continuous recording of atmospheric pressure. The pressure-sensitive element, a partially evacuated metal cylinde ...
s and
thermo-hygrograph A thermo-hygrograph or hygrothermograph is a chart recorder that measures and records both temperature and humidity (or dew point). Similar devices that record only one parameter are a thermograph for temperature and hygrograph for humidity. T ...
s to monitor the weather, and magnetographs to record the three components of geomagnetic force. The magnetographs were used by
Edward Sabine Sir Edward Sabine ( ; 14 October 1788 – 26 June 1883) was an Irish astronomer, geophysicist, ornithologist, explorer, soldier and the 30th president of the Royal Society. He led the effort to establish a system of magnetic observatories in ...
in his global geomagnetic survey while the barograph and thermo-hygrograph were employed by the new
Met Office The Meteorological Office, abbreviated as the Met Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and is led by CEO Penelop ...
to assist its first weather forecasts. Ronalds also supervised the manufacture of his instruments for other observatories around the world (the Radcliffe Observatory under
Manuel John Johnson Manuel John Johnson, FRS (23 May 1805 – 28 February 1859) was a British astronomer. He was born in Macao, China, the son of John William Roberts of the East India Company and was educated at Mr Styles' Classical Academy in Thames Ditton and at ...
and the Colaba Observatory in India are two examples) and some continued in use until late in the 20th century.


Meteorological instruments and observations

Further instruments created at Kew included an improved version of Regnault's aspirated
hygrometer A hair tension dial hygrometer with a nonlinear scale. A hygrometer is an instrument used to measure the amount of water vapor in air, in soil, or in confined spaces. Humidity measurement instruments usually rely on measurements of some other q ...
that was employed for many years; an early meteorological kite; and the storm clock used to monitor rapid changes in meteorological parameters during extreme events. To observe atmospheric electricity, Ronalds created a sophisticated collecting apparatus with a suite of electrometers; the equipment was later manufactured and sold by London instrument-makers. A dataset of five years' duration was analysed and published by his observatory colleague William Radcliffe Birt. The phenomenon now known as geomagnetically induced current was observed on telegraph lines in 1848 during the first sunspot peak after the network began to take shape. Ronalds endeavoured to employ his atmospheric electricity equipment and magnetographs in a detailed study to understand the cause of the anomalies but had insufficient resources to complete his work.


Last years

Ronalds' final foreign sojourn in 1853–1862 was to northern Italy, Switzerland and France, where he assisted other observatories in building and installing his meteorological instruments and continued collecting books for his library. Some of his ideas documented in this period concerned electric lighting and a combined rudder and propeller for ships that was honed in the 20th century. He died at
Battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and for ...
, near Hastings, aged 85, and is buried in the cemetery there. The Ronalds Library was bequeathed to the newly formed Society of Telegraph Engineers (soon to become the Institution of Electrical Engineers and now the Institution of Engineering and Technology) and its accompanying bibliography was reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2013. Ronalds had a very modest and retiring nature and did little to publicise his work through his life. During his last years, however, his key accomplishments became well known and revered in the scientific community, aided in particular by his friends Josiah Latimer Clark and
Edward Sabine Sir Edward Sabine ( ; 14 October 1788 – 26 June 1883) was an Irish astronomer, geophysicist, ornithologist, explorer, soldier and the 30th president of the Royal Society. He led the effort to establish a system of magnetic observatories in ...
and his brother-in-law Samuel Carter. He was knighted at the age of 82. Colleagues at the Society of Telegraph Engineers regarded him as "the father of electric telegraphy", while his continuously recording camera was noted to be "of extreme importance to meteorologists and physicists, and… employed in all first-rate observatories". His portrait was painted by
Hugh Carter Hugh Alton Carter (August 13, 1920 – June 24, 1999) was an American politician and businessman from Georgia. He was also the first cousin of US president Jimmy Carter. Early life and education Born in Plains, Georgia, Carter served in World W ...
. Commemorative plaques have been installed on two of his former homes in Highbury and
Hammersmith Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London ...
, and a road was named after him in Highbury.
Ronalds Point Ronalds Point is the rocky point on the north coast of Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica situated just east of the terminus of Snellius Glacier. The area was visited by early 19th century sealers.A. Gurney. ''Below the C ...
in
Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...
is named after him.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ronalds, Francis 1788 births 1873 deaths English electrical engineers English inventors Experimental physicists English meteorologists 19th-century English photographers English archaeologists Fellows of the Royal Society Knights Bachelor Scientists from London Engineers from London Photographers from London British scientific instrument makers English Unitarians