Richard Tangye
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Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye |
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By Frank Hewett
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| Born |
24 November 1833 Illogan, Cornwall |
| Died | 14 October 1906 (aged 72) |
| Education | Sidcot School |
| Engineering career | |
| Discipline | Mechanical engineer |
| Projects | |
Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye (24 November 1833 – 14 October 1906) was a British manufacturer of engines and other heavy equipment.
Richard Tangye was born at Illogan, near Redruth, Cornwall, the son of a farmer. As a young boy he worked in the fields, but when he was eight years old he was incapacitated from further manual labour by a fracture of the right arm. His father then determined to give him the best education he could afford, and young Tangye was sent to the Quaker Sidcot School in the Mendip Hills near the village of Winscombe, Somerset, where he progressed rapidly and became a pupil-teacher.
Tangye was not long contented with this position, and through an advertisement in The Friend obtained a clerkship in a small engineering firm in Birmingham, where two of his brothers, skilled mechanics, subsequently joined him. Here Richard Tangye remained four years, obtaining a complete mastery of the details of an engineering business, and introducing the system of a Saturday half-holiday which he had supported on its introduction by John Frearson, the radical Birmingham Engineer. It was subsequently adopted in many English industrial works.
In 1856, Tangye started business in a small way in Birmingham as a hardware factor and commission agent. His first customers were the Cornish mine-owners in the Redruth district.
In March 1857, Richard Tangye, with brothers James and Joseph, started a manufacturing business in Mount Street under the title of James Tangye and Bros. Principally manufacturing hydraulic appliances and particularly lifting jacks, on 31 January 1858, their jacks were successfully employed in the launching of Brunel's steamship SS Great Eastern. Tangye said of the project:
We launched the Great Eastern and she launched us
In 1859, brothers Edward and George joined, together with George Price. The company acquired the patent of the differential pulley-block in 1861, and in 1862 James Tangye invented the Tangye Patent Hydraulic Jack. This resulted in the 1862 purchase and demolition of Soho-located Smethwick Hall, on the site of which was built the Cornwall Works. In 1867 the patent for a new type of Direct-acting Steam Pump was acquired, and in 1870 the company commenced the manufacture of steam engines.
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