SMEATON, John (1724-1792), English civil engineer, the son of an attorney, was born at Austhorpe Lodge, near Leeds, on 8th June 1724. He received a good education at the grammar-school of Leeds, displaying special proficiency in geometry and arithmetic. At a very early age he evinced a great liking for the use of mechanical tools, and in his fourteenth or fifteenth year contrived to make a turning-lathe. On leaving school in his sixteenth year he was employed in his father’s office, but, after attending for some months in 1742 the courts at Westminster Hall, he earnestly requested to be allowed to follow some mechanical profession. He became apprentice to a philosophical instrument maker, and in 1750 set up in business on his own account. Besides improving various mathematical instruments used in navigation and astronomy, he carried on several experiments in regard to other mechanical appliances, amongst the most important being a series on which he founded a paper—for which he received the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1759—entitled An Experimental Inquiry concerning the Native Powers of Water and Wind to turn Mills and other Machines depending on a Circular Motion. In 1754 he made a tour of the Low Countries to study the great canal works of foreign engineers. Already by his papers read before the Royal Society and his intercourse with scientific men his abilities as an engineer had become well known, and in 1756 application was made to him to reconstruct the Eddystone lighthouse, which had been burnt down in December of the previous year (see Lighthouse, vol. xiv. p. 616). Smeaton now began to be much consulted in regard to all kinds of important engineering projects, including river navigation, the drainage of fens, the designing of harbours, and the ...