William Armstrong was born on 26 November 1810 in a three storey terrace house in Shiedfield on the edge of Pandon Dene not far from the expanding Newcastle.
William Armstrong was a native of the hills surrounding Newcastle where he had become entranced by the power of water. He was by training a solicitor. His biographer, Henrietta Heald, tells how he followed this, rather than his first love of engineering, to please his father. William attended first Newcastle and then Bishops Aukland Grammar Schools from which he took articles with his father's friend Armorer Donkin and went on to qualify as a solicitor working for a further ten years. Engineering, though, was ever present. Armorer Donkin was an early member of Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society which perhaps encouraged an interest in science in the young William.
Walks on the hills of his native Northumberland had sown seeds of how the power of water may be employed in industry. This led to experiments in hydraulics. James Rendel, a civil engineer who had studied under Thomas Telford, was reputed to be one of the foremost hydraulic engineers of his day, and he encouraged William Armstrong to follow his passion and set up WG Armstrong & Company with a manufactory for the production of hydraulic machines. This he did at Elswick near Newcastle. Heald describes the well-ordered site, the men who worked with Armstrong and the worry the economics of the business placed on him. He had no trouble getting orders for his machines, but worried greatly at the need to raise capital to finance the business.
Fortunately, associates with the relevant financial expertise and connections were to hand. It seems to be all about connections. James Rendel had been in partnership with Nathaniel Beardmore. I immediately thought of William Beardmore, the Glasgow engineer, but could find no close family connection. Another of Armstrong's associates was Thomas Sopwith, whom, I found, was the grandfather of the pioneering aviation engineer who produced the Sopwith Camel in the First World War. In exploring Armstrong, I looked at hydraulics more generally and encountered Joseph Bramah, the machine tool manufacturer who invented the hydraulic press which took the place of the steam hammer in heavy engineering. Bramah had begun life as a carpenter, but then applied his skills to develop a more secure lock; the company that bears his name is still trading. One of Bramah's associates was Henry Maudslay, who had been a storeman at the Woolwich Arsenal, of whose career as a foremost machine tool maker I tell more elsewhere. Cyril Mausdlay wrote an account of Henry's life; Cyril was one of the founders of the Maudslay Motor Company. Henry had set up shipbuilder Maudslay Sons & Field, after he left Bramah. It is all connected.
William Armstrong's first order had been for the Newcastle Chronicle to power its printing press. Another, much larger, early order was from the Albert Dock in Liverpool, first for warehouse lifts and then for cranes. Isambard Kingdom Brunel ordered hydraulic turntables for his new GWR Paddington Station. Armstrong made hydraulic lock gates for the docks at Great Grimsby, and also provided hydraulic power to sluices and cranes on the docks from a 300ft water tower ‘built in the style of Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy’. Other major orders followed. The use of the power of water was of massive benefit to these operations which need to move heavy bulk with ease. Another of Armstrong’s early orders was from the Manchester machine tool maker, Joseph Whitworth & Co.
I write about Whitworth in this link. There is little evidence of close contact between the two men or their companies. Their clash came in relation to rifled artillery. The Crimea had shown how woefully inadequate British artillery was. If sufficiently powerful it was too big; in any event if was grossly inaccurate and this was the case for both the army and navy. The same was true of the enemy's armaments but men like Krupp were working hard. A shell spinning from the rifled barrel of a gun proved more accurate. Whitworth devised a gun firing an hexagonal shell which had the draw back of having to use particular ammunition. Both Armstrong and Whitworth were faced with the problem of achieving a perfectly straight barrel, albeit with a rifled surface, and gun metal strong enough to withstand ever more powerful explosions.
For Armstrong, Hydraulics gave way to armaments and I tell in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World how his rifled big gun was adopted by the War Office in preference to designs by both Whitworth and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This paved the way to an influential role in Britain's armaments industry. He was regarded as one of the 'deadly triumvirate' alongside Krupp of Germany and Schneider of France. Heald quotes quotes William Manchester's biography of Krupp. 'Over the next eighty years they were to be celebrated first as shields of national honour and later, after their slaughtering machines were hopelessly out of control, as merchants of death.'
Lord Armstrong, as he became, was President of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society from 1860 to 1900. He created a fascinating house at Cragside just outside Newcastle which boasted all manner of gadgets run by hydraulic power. On a grander scale he restored Bamburgh Castle on the Northumberland coast.
Further reading:
Henrietta Heald: William Armstrong - Magician of the North (Northumbria Press)
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