James Smith (3 January 1789, Glasgow – 10 June 1850, Kingencleuch near Mauchline, age 61)Obituary, '' Gentleman's Magazine'', 1850, pp. 333-35 was a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

inventor whose inventions include a

reaping machine A reaper is a farm implement or person that reaps (cuts and often also gathers) crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reapers that were used in Ro ...

, a subsoil plough and the first endless chain of flats for

carding Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver (textiles), sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving su ...

. Smith's father, a self-made Glasgow businessman, died when he was two months old; his mother went to live with her brother, a friend and pupil of

Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as t ...

, and managing partner of cotton-works at Deanston. Smith attended Glasgow University before entering his uncle's factory and becoming manager aged 18. Aged 24, his invention of a reaping machine won him a medal from the Imperial Agricultural Society of St Petersburgh. In 1823 Smith came into possession of his uncle's farm, and set about systematically draining the soil and working it with a subsoil plough. In 1831 he published his agricultural recommendations as a small pamphlet, ''Thorough Draining and Deep Working'', which attracted attention in the agricultural crisis of 1834. Smith also introduced mechanical innovations in

spinning Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning * Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis * Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...

: in 1834 he improved Archibald Buchanan's self-stripping card, filing a patent (British patent no. 6560) for fixing the flat cards on an endless chain, allowing them to be regularly cleaned. Smith was appointed by

Robert Peel Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer ...

to the Commission into the sanitation and health of manufacturing towns, which led to the 1848 Public Health Act: Smith pressed to make liquid manure useful to agriculture. Smith was also an active member of the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland, and a member of the Glasgow Philosophical Society, contributing papers to their ''Transactions''.

References

1789 births 1850 deaths Scottish inventors Scottish agriculturalists Spinning 19th-century British businesspeople {{UK-business-bio-stub