If George Stephenson was primarily associated with steam
engineering then William George Armstrong (1810-1900) by comparison
was a `Jack of All Trades'. Armstrong was just as much a scientist
as a scholar or an engineer but was also very much an enterprising
industrialist with the advantage of an open enquiring mind as
demonstrated by the following lines once quoted by the man
himself;
"However high we climb in the pursuit of knowledgewe shall
still see heights above us, and the more we extend our view, the
more concious we shall be of the immensity which lies
beyond."
Armstrong was born in the Shieldfield area of Newcastle on the
26 November 1810. His father was the proprietor of a corn merchants
business on the Newcastle Quayside and had a strong interest in
Natural History, Mathematics and was a member of the Literary and
Philosophical Society.
Young William trained to be a solicitor and although he became a
partner in a legal practice he had inherited similar interests to
his father, particularly in the field of science and engineering.
Armstrong gave knowledgeable lectures on these subjects at the
Newcastle Lit and Phil and in 1842 he constructed a Hydro Electric
generator. This was constructed with the knowledge gained following
the accidental discovery of a discharge of static electricity from
a colliery boiler by an engineman at a Northumberland coal
mine.
Around 1846 Armstrong's interests shifted from Hydro Electricity
to Hydraulics and he persuaded wealthy Newcastle men to back him in
the development of hydraulic cranes for Newcastle which were
powered with the assistance of the town's Whittle Dene Water
Company. The scheme was such a great success that in 1847 Armstrong
gave up his legal practice to establish the Newcastle Cranage
company at Elswick which later became known as `Armstrong's
Factory' as immortalised in the `Blaydon Races'
Following the Crimean War in the 1850s Armstrong became
increasingly involved with the manufacture of armaments and his
eighteen pound breach loadfing gun was one of many Armstrong
weapons recognised as the best in the world. Such devices, often
tested on the moors of Allendale, were ordered by armies and navies
all over the the world from Russia and Japan to the United States.
In fact Armstrong supplied both armies in the American Civil
War.
From 1863 onward Armstrong became less and less involved in the
day to day running of his company affairs and began to pursue other
interests. He became particularly noted for his succesful pursuits
in the field of landscape gardening. This was initially carried out
in Newcastle's beautiful Jesmond Dene most of which he owned and
where he had built a house for himself and his wife in the 1830s.
Jesmond Dene was donated by Armstrong to the people of the city of
Newcastle upon Tyne in 1883.
The later years of Armstrong's life were spent in his
magnificent parkland mansion of Cragside near Rothbury in
Northumberland. Cragside was of course the first house in the world
to be lit by Hydro Electric power
