biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1728–1808)
|
| biography:
| Iron-master and inventor, born in Clifton, Cumbria, NW England, UK. His most important achievement was the invention in 1774 of a cannon-boring machine, considerably more accurate than any in use up to that time. He used this machine to bore more accurate cylinders for steam engines, such as those of Boulton and Watt, to whom he supplied several hundred cylinders over the next two decades. Wilkinson in turn installed a Watt engine in 1776 as a blowing engine at one of his furnaces, the first Watt engine to be used other than for pumping. He was one of the principle promoters of the iron bridge at Coalbrookdale, built by Abraham Darby in 1779. He built an iron-hulled barge (1787), and supplied much of the ironwork for the Paris waterworks. |
|
|
