Sir Francis Ronalds

The following sections are included:

• Dedication page
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• FOREWORD
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Who invented the telegraph? If you are American, you will answer ‘Morse’. A British person might say ‘Wheatstone’, and Europeans will probably have another view again. In fact, a man named Ronalds was knighted as ‘the original inventor of the electric telegraph’. He had his strong constitution to thank for the accolade; he was 82 years of age and had witnessed several decades of the credit being given to others — just as it is now.

Sir Francis Ronalds’ earliest surroundings were the City of London, with a backdrop of the Thames and the 600-year-old London Bridge with its 18 irregular arches. They were also the scene of his apprenticeship, and while still a teenager (as he later reminisced): ‘the very severe task of managing a business which then returned at least 150.000£ per annum devolved upon my over-loaded shoulders’.^C375 Frank, to use his familiar name, did not enjoy his years in merchant business and was very glad to be able to leave in 1814 to pursue scientific interests.

Frank’s story has numerous scene changes, just as it has many characters. His mother Jane set up home at nine different places in the years after she was married. It was quite common for merchants in the City of London to acquire a ‘country house’ as their family and wealth grew. Jane did not settle in one such place, but lived to the north, south and west of London as well as in the City itself (Fig. 3.1). Frank took each of these moves with her, apart from the first one before he was born. Most of the locations Jane chose were nearby to either her relatives or those of her husband Francis. As a result, the extended family retained close linkages and had important influences on each other through their lives.

Frank’s father Francis Ronalds was aged 23 and Jane Field just 18 when they married at St Lawrence’s church in 1785. Jane bore 12 children in less than 18 years, with Francis dying when the youngest was 2 and Jane had just turned 40 (Figs. 4.1–4.2).

Science was Sir Francis Ronalds’ first love. More specifically, he strove to understand elements of the physical world and apply his learnings to make things of use. In 1820 electrical and mechanical engineering were not yet professions and even the term ‘scientist’ had not been coined. That year he described his activities by saying: ‘Natl Philosophy was my favourite study and particularly electricity’.^J22 He called himself an ‘Electrician’^C108 in 1842 when commencing at the Kew Observatory, an ‘experimentalist’^J63 in 1846 and, in 1860, a ‘schemer’^C375 in the sense of inventor.

Although the first evidence of Ronalds’ activity in electrical science and engineering dates from around 1810, much of his important work was conducted in a very short period just after he retired from the cheesemonger business in 1814, when he was aged 26–28. He later availed himself of unique circumstances on his Grand Tour to perform additional isolated experiments.

Sir Francis Ronalds is hardly a household name but, if anything is known of him, it is the story of the blunt rejection of his electric telegraph in August 1816. ‘Mr Barrow’ (later Sir John) was the Second Secretary of the Admiralty, while ‘the one now in use’ was an optical communication system — the semaphore. The story gained such notoriety in Ronalds’ time that Sir John’s son felt the need to write to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette to explain that his father acted as ‘the organ of the Board, and not on his own responsibility’. ‘Well might Mr. BARROW’ quipped the Express. The rebuttal had delayed the incorporation of both electricity and rapid communication into the industrial revolution by up to 20 years. A large monument to Sir John Barrow FRS survives at his birthplace of Ulverston.

There was a change in tempo after 1 September 1818, when Ronalds embarked on his extensive overseas tour. His route passed across France to Italy, then down through Sicily and Malta to Egypt and the Holy Land. Turning for home, he travelled via Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and the Balkan coast to Italy and then through Switzerland, Germany and Belgium (Fig. 8.1). He reached London again just a few days before Christmas in 1820, warning his family: ‘Invite me to the Christmas party wherever it is as I cannot invite myself, I’m serious’^C43.

There is an air of mystery about Ronalds’ 1823–24 trip to southern Italy. He and his family left detailed evidence of when, where and how he went, and what he did there, but virtually nothing about why he did it. His autobiographical letter says simply: ‘went again abroad with a very unscientific object in view’^C375 and even this was later scribbled out. It is known that he travelled via Paris and Marseilles to Messina in Sicily where he spent three and a half weeks. He then spent more than four months in Naples before heading for home through Italy and France to Calais (Table 9.1). His journey is included in Fig. 8.1 in the previous chapter.

This next chapter of Ronalds’ life is noteworthy in that it concerns ideas that he himself turned into a business. His tracing instruments also foreshadowed the modern era of precise pictorial recording and, as an aside, generated one of his longest-living but least recognised legacies — the portable tripod stand. He devoted significant time to his drawing instrument business over nearly two decades.

Around 1830 Ronalds took on another interest, turning his hand to archaeology. He travelled once again to France in pursuit of his new hobby in 1834, this time with his friend Dr Alexander Blair. Their target was the megalithic monuments near Carnac in Brittany. With Blair’s nature being pivotal to how their work was (not) completed, and little being known of him, we start with a somewhat detailed sketch of his life and talents. The remainder of the chapter describes the pair’s activities in Brittany and after they returned home, the manner in which their work was gradually discovered and how it was received. We finish by referring to some recent expert remarks on the enduring value of their achievements.

The tracing instruments in Chapter 10 mark the beginning of a long line of inventions that are categorised here loosely as ‘mechanical’. This was more than a discipline change from electricity. Ronalds had also chosen to leave the rather rarefied atmosphere of traditional scientific enquiry, written up in learned publications, for a more practical and potentially anonymous new world. Mechanical engineering was burgeoning in support of the steam engine and all it generated, plus myriad other facets of the manufacturing economy, and numerous inventors were developing new ideas and products.

This chapter, and the next two, concern Ronalds’ activities at the Kew Observatory. Robert Scott FRS, Director of the UK Meteorological Office, wrote in his 1885 history of the observatory:

While the previous chapter outlined the overall evolution of the Kew Observatory, these next two chapters focus on Ronalds’ scientific work in two particular areas – meteorology (and particularly atmospheric electricity) and photographic registration. We start with details of the Electro-Meteorological Observatory he established. The long Secs. 14.2 and 14.3 on Electrometers and Meteorological Equipment, which cover the many instruments he invented for the observatory, may be passed over if desired. Next follows descriptions of the observations taken and the results and ideas deduced from them. He also put much effort into encouraging and assisting others to conduct atmospheric electricity studies, both in the UK and abroad, to help delineate the global features of the phenomenon and to explore its relationship with terrestrial magnetism; these endeavours are outlined in the penultimate section, prior to some concluding remarks.

We have seen that when the Kew Observatory was established, a large international science investigation was underway in geomagnetism and meteorology. The development of self-registering instruments to ease the load on observers and improve data consistency was therefore a key goal. It was mentioned in the initial prospectus for Kew and the observatory’s first grant from the British Association (BAAS) was to build such an apparatus.

Ronalds lived for another 20 years after he had left the Kew Observatory. He spent nearly half of this time on the Continent, while his last years were passed in south east England. Two threads run through these periods that continued well beyond his death — the Ronalds Library, and increasing recognition of his achievements — and friends and family had close involvement in both. The major contributors were his baby sister Maria Carter and her family, but they were assisted by nephew Dr Edmund, cousin Thomas Field Gibson, nieces Julia Ronalds and Sarah née Martineau, and her husband Charles Flower. Colleagues including Edward Sabine^* and Latimer Clark^* and family friend Mary Sharpe^* also lent a hand. Ronalds himself had little interest in personal renown and would be less recognised today without the efforts of these influential people. A brief analysis of what he accomplished through his long life concludes the book.

The following sections are included:

• Professor Sir George Biddell AIRY FRS (1801–92)
• Professor William Thomas BRANDE FRS (1788–1866)
• Sir David BREWSTER FRS (1781–1868)
• Dr Charles BROOKE FRS (1804–79)
• (Josiah) Latimer CLARK FRS (1822–98)
• Professor John Frederic DANIELL FRS (1790–1845)
• General Joseph-Antoine DE GOURBILLON and his Family
• Jean-André DE LUC FRS (1727–1817)
• Professor Michael FARADAY FRS (1791–1867)
• John Peter GASSIOT FRS (1797–1877)
• James GLAISHER FRS (1809–1903)
• Professor Thomas GRAHAM FRS (1805–69)
• Sir Frederick HENNIKER Bart (1793–1825) and his Family
• Sir John Frederick William HERSCHEL Bart FRS (1792–1871)
• Charles HOLTZAPFFEL (1806–47) and his Family
• Manuel John JOHNSON FRS (1805–59) and his Family
• Dr John LEE FRS (1783–1866)
• General Sir John Henry LEFROY FRS (1817–90)
• François-Napoléon-Marie MOIGNO (1804–84)
• John Bowyer NICHOLS (1779–1863) and his family
• Richard B. NICKLIN (c.1809–54)
• Professor John PHILLIPS FRS (1800–74)
• Revd Dr Joseph PRIESTLEY FRS (1733–1804)
• Sir John RENNIE FRS (1794–1874) and his Family
• Henry Crabb ROBINSON (1775–1867)
• Revd Dr (John) Thomas Romney ROBINSON FRS (1792–1882)
• General Sir Edward SABINE FRS (1788–1883)
• Samuel SHARPE (1799–1881) and his Family
• George John SINGER (1786–1817)
• Sir James SOUTH FRS (1785–1867)
• Earl STANHOPE and his Family
• Charles Vincent WALKER FRS (1812–82)
• Professor Sir Charles WHEATSTONE FRS (1802–75)
• Dr William WOLLASTON FRS (1766–1828) and his Family

The following sections are included:

• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX