James Howden

James Howden (29 February 1832 – 21 November 1913) was a Scottish engineer and inventor who is noted for his invention of the Howden forced draught system for steam boilers.

Howden was born in Prestonpans, East Lothian, in 1832, the son of James Howden and his wife, Catherine Adams, and was educated at the local parish school. His first marriage was to Helen Burgess Adams, and his second to Allison Moffat Hay, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. His two wives both predeceased him, and he died in Glasgow in 1913.

Howden served as an apprentice from 1847 with James Gray & Co., a Glasgow engineering firm, passing through the various departments and eventually becoming chief draughtsman. Having finished his apprenticeship he started work first with Bell and Miller, the civil engineers, then with Robert Griffiths, who designed marine screw propellers.

In 1854 Howden launched himself as a consultant engineer and designer, his first major invention being a rivet-making machine. The selling of the patent rights to a company in Birmingham for this secured him financially and James Howden & Co. was established as a manufacturer of marine equipment. In 1857 Howden began work on the design and supply of boilers and steam engines for the marine industry; his first contract was with Hendersons to supply the Anchor Liner Ailsa Craig with a compound steam engine and water boilers, using steam at 100 lb pressure. That same year, together with Alexander Morton of Glasgow, he was awarded a patent for the "invention of improvements in obtaining motive power." On 28 February 1859 he applied for a patent for the "improvements in machinery, or apparatus for cutting, shaping, punching, and compressing metals." In 1860 he patented a method of preheating combustion air; his patent was granted for the invention of "improvements in steam engines and boilers, and in the apparatus connected therewith". In 1862 he decided to construct main boilers and engines to his own design and started manufacturing in his first factory on Scotland Street in Glasgow's Tradeston district. A breakthrough came in 1863 when he introduced a furnace mechanical draught system which used a steam turbine driven axial flow fan.

Howden is chiefly remembered as the inventor of the Howden forced draught system, which forced heated waste gases into the combustion chamber by means of a fan and ductwork and which appeared in the 1880s. This system dramatically reduced the amount of coal used in ships' boilers. Howden patented this device in 1882 as the 'Howden System of Forced Draught' and during the 1880s more than 1000 boilers were converted to this specification or constructed to Howden's patent. The first vessel to use the system was the New York City, built in 1885. Amongst the liners to use the Howden system in their boilers were the Lusitania and Mauretania, the fastest liners in the world when they were built.

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