Edwin Clark (civil engineer)
| Edwin Clark | |
|---|---|
| Born |
7 January 1814 Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire |
| Died | 22 October 1894 (aged 80) Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England |
| Residence | Observatory House, Honor Oak, Cromwell House, Marlow |
| Known for | Mathematics master [teacher], Civil Engineer, Hydraulic Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Astronomer |
Edwin Clark FRAS (7 January 1814 – 22 October 1894) was an English Civil Engineer, specialising in hydraulics. He is remembered principally as the designer of the Anderton Boat Lift (1875) near Northwich in Cheshire, which links the navigable stretch of the River Weaver with the Trent and Mersey Canal.
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, who appointed him Superintending engineer of the Menai Bridge. Clark, in turn, appointed his brother Josiah Latimer Clark as his Assistant Engineer. When the Menai 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 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. He was also known for his astronomy.
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 and Conwy tubular bridges over the Menai Strait. In 1866 he delivered a lecture on the subject to the Institution of Civil Engineers, 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 for the lecture.
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