Thomas Tredgold

Thomas Tredgold (1788–1829) was an English engineer and author, known for his early work on railroad construction.

He was born at Brandon, County Durham, on 22 August 1788. After some elementary education at the village school, he was apprenticed at 14 to a cabinet-maker in Durham. He remained with him six years, studying also mathematics, architecture, and perspective. In 1808, after his apprenticeship had expired, he went to Scotland, where he worked for five years as a joiner and journeyman carpenter.

Later Tredgold went to London, where he entered the office of his uncle William Atkinson the architect, with whom he lived for six years, and whom he served for longer. He read on architecture and engineering; and taught himself French.

In 1823, the demands of his writing led Tredgold to resign his position in Atkinson's office. He died on 28 January 1829, and was buried in St. John's Wood chapel cemetery.

Tredgold left a widow, three daughters, and a son Thomas, who held the post of engineer in the office of stamps of the East India Company at Calcutta, where he died on 4 May 1853.

In 1820, Tredgold published Elementary Principles of Carpentry (London), on making floors, roofs, bridges, and other structures. He appended an essay on the nature and properties of timber. Apart from Peter Barlow's Essay on the Strength of Timber and other Materials in 1817, Tredgold's work was the first serious attempt in England to deal practically and scientifically with the data of resistance; before his time engineers relied mainly on the formulæ and results found in Count Buffon and Peter van Musschenbroek's Physicæ Experimentales et Geometricæ (Leyden, 1729); some of Tredgold's results were taken from Gabriel Pierre Martin Dumont's Parallèle de plans des plus belles salles de spectacles d'ltalie et de France (Paris, 1767). Several editions of Tredgold's work were published, one by Edward Wyndham Tarn appearing in 1886 (London). This work was followed in 1822 by A Practical Essay on the Strength of Cast Iron and other Metals (London; 5th edit., by Eaton Hodgkinson, London, 1860–1), which is mainly founded on the work of Thomas Young. Tredgold lacked the mathematics of the theory of elasticity; he was inaccurate, and often obscure.

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