Bennet Woodcroft
| Benet Woodcroft | |
|---|---|
by William Walker c.1860
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| Born | 20 December 1803 Heaton Norris, Lancashire |
| Died | 7 February 1879 (aged 75) |
| Nationality | British |
| Engineering career | |
| Discipline | Mechanical engineer |
Bennet Woodcroft FRS (20 December 1803 – 7 February 1879) was an English textile manufacturer, industrial archaeologist, pioneer of marine propulsion, a leading figure in patent reform and the first clerk to the commissioners of patents.
Woodcroft was born in Heaton Norris, Lancashire. He was the founder of the Patent Office Library, now part of the British Library, and of the Patent Museum, whose collections are now in the Science Museum.
Woodcroft was later Professor of Machinery at University College London.
He married Agnes Bertha Sawyer (7 September 1833 – 10 March 1903) in Hampstead in the September Quarter of 1866. She was born in Bosworth, Leicestershire. At this time he was 63 and she 33. They had no children. On the 1871 census they lived alone with servants, on the 1881 census she is widowed living with the cook only.
Woodcroft died in 1879 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.[1] His portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Woodcroft patented fundamental improvements in textile machinery and ship propulsion, and this in turn led to an absorbing interest in the history of the patent procedure. As a result of a reorganization of the British Patent Office in 1852, he became Superintendent of Specifications. This gave him the opportunity to develop a private collection of historical machinery.
When the South Kensington Museum was being planned in the mid-1850s, the Patent Office, through Woodcroft, was invited to assemble a collection of industrial devices for display. When the Museum opened in 1857, the building incorporated a separate Patent Office Museum and Woodcroft remained its driving force until his retirement in 1876.
A born collector Woodcroft, displayed a passion for securing notable items of historical machinery. 1862 was a particularly fruitful year, when due to his efforts, his museum secured Puffing Billy the world’s oldest surviving steam railway locomotive (1814), Stephenson’s Rocket (1829), which set the design standard for locomotives, and the engine of Henry Bell’s Comet (1812), the first steamship to be operated commercially in Europe.
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