Edwin Clark FRAS (7 January 1814 – 22 October 1894) was an English

Civil Engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

, specialising in

hydraulics Hydraulics () is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counterpart of pneumatics, which concer ...

. He is remembered principally as the designer of the Anderton Boat Lift (1875) near

Northwich Northwich is a market town and civil parish in the Cheshire West and Chester borough of Cheshire, England. It lies on the Cheshire Plain, at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane, east of Chester, south of Warrington and south of Ma ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...

, which links the navigable stretch of the River Weaver with the

Trent and Mersey Canal The Trent and Mersey Canal is a canal in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire in north-central England. It is a "narrow canal" for the vast majority of its length, but at the extremities to the east of Burton upon Trent and north of Middl ...

Early life and work

Clark was at one time a mathematical master at Brook Green, then became a Surveyor in the west of England. In 1846 Clark went to London where he met

Robert Stephenson Robert Stephenson , (honoris causa, Hon. causa) (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of hi ...

, who appointed him Superintending engineer of the

Britannia Bridge Britannia Bridge () is a bridge in Wales that crosses the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and city of Bangor, Gwynedd, Bangor. It was originally designed and built by the noted railway engineer Robert Stephenson as a tubular bridge of ...

. Clark, in turn, appointed his brother

Josiah Latimer Clark Josiah Latimer Clark FRS FRAS (10 March 1822 – 30 October 1898), was an English electrical engineer, born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Biography Josiah Latimer Clark was born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and was the younger bro ...

as his Assistant Engineer. When the Britannia Bridge opened on 5 March 1850, Clark published a book ''The Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (3 vols)'', and by August of that year he had moved on to become an Engineer with the Electric and International Telegraph Company, where he took out the first of several patents for telegraph apparatus; the

London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the LNWR was the largest joint stock company in the world. Dubbed the "Premier Line", the LNWR's main line connec ...

used Clark's telegraph between London and Rugby from 1855. Stephenson bequeathed him £2000 which he used to build a telescope on top of his house in

Honor Oak Honor Oak is an inner suburban area principally of the London Borough of Lewisham, with part in the London Borough of Southwark. It is named after the oak tree on One Tree Hill that Elizabeth I is reputed to have picnicked under. Overview One ...

. He was also known for his

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

Thames Hydraulic Lift Graving Dock

In 1857 Clark became Engineer to the Thames Graving Dock Limited, for which he designed a graving dock in which the ships to be repaired were lifted from the water by hydraulic presses, based on his experience of lifting the tubular sections of Stephenson's

Britannia The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...

and

Conwy Conwy (, ), previously known in English as Conway, is a walled market town, community and the administrative centre of Conwy County Borough in North Wales. The walled town and castle stand on the west bank of the River Conwy, facing Deganwy ...

tubular bridges over the

Menai Strait The Menai Strait () is a strait which separates the island of Anglesey from Gwynedd, on the mainland of Wales. It is situated between Caernarfon Bay in the south-west and Conwy Bay in the north-east, which are both inlets of the Irish Sea. The s ...

. In 1866 he delivered a lecture on the subject to the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a Charitable organization, charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters ar ...

, after the lift had been successfully used for about seven years and had raised 1055 ships at a cost of £3 per ship. He was awarded a

Telford Medal The Telford Medal is a prize awarded by the British Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) for a paper or series of papers. It was introduced in 1835 following a bequest made by Thomas Telford, the ICE's first president. It can be awarded in gold ...

for the lecture.

Clark's boat lifts

Clark was an experienced

Hydraulic Engineer Hydraulic engineering as a sub-discipline of civil engineering is concerned with the flow and conveyance of fluids, principally water and sewage. One feature of these systems is the extensive use of gravity as the motive force to cause the move ...

with the firm of Clark, Stansfield & Clark, consulting engineers of Westminster, when he was called upon in 1870 by

Edward Leader Williams Sir Edward Leader Williams (28 April 1828 – 1 January 1910) was an English civil engineer, chiefly remembered as the designer of the Manchester Ship Canal, but also heavily involved in other canal projects in north Cheshire. Early life W ...

to design a boat lift to raise boats 50 feet from the

River Weaver The River Weaver is a river, navigable in its lower reaches, running in a curving route anti-clockwise across west Cheshire, northern England. Improvements to the river to make it navigable were authorised in 1721 and the work, which included ...

to the Trent and Mersey Canal. Clark designed the original hydraulic structure opened in 1875, which was later replaced by a wire rope and pulley system from 1908 to 1983 before being returned to hydraulic operation in 2002. He went on to design other boat lifts in other European countries. In 1879, he presented a project to the Belgian government that included four of his lifts. This project received governmental approval in 1882, but it was 1917 before it was totally operational. When the canal was modernised in the 1960s, the original plan was to demolish the old installations and to redevelop the land. Local objections, and wishes to maintain the installations, were upheld after a long period and in 1988, the whole site of the Canal du Centre became a

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

. In 2007, the restoration work at all but one of the four Belgian Clark lifts was almost finished.

Legacy

Clark appears in the painting ''Conference of Engineers at the Menai Straits Preparatory to Floating one of the Tubes of the Britannia Bridge'' by John Lucas, and is also remembered in the name of the public trip boat that operates on the Anderton Boat Lift.

References

External links

Scientist of the Day-Edwin Clark
at

Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, on the grounds of a urban arboretum. It claims to be the "largest independently funded public library of sc ...