MEMOIR

OF

MR. PETER NICHOLSON.

THE late Mr. John Rennie, the first civil engineer in this country since the death of Smeaton, Mr. John Brown, perhaps the first scientific and practical agriculturist in Scotland, and Mr. Nicholson, the subject of this Memoir, were all born within half a mile, and within a few years, of each other; they learned to read and write at the same school, and under the same master. The place of their birth was the parish of Prestonkirk, in the county of East Lothian; and the name of their schoolmaster Richardson, the brother of an architect of that name, who published several works, consisting of designs, a treatise on the different Orders of Architecture, &c. Mr. Nicholson was the youngest of the three; when he went to school, Mr. Brown had left, and Mr. Rennie was just about leaving it.

Young Nicholson, at a very early age, even before he went to school, evinced a strong mechanical genius, and also a turn for drawing whatever presented itself to him, whether of animated nature, or of works of art.

On the opposite side of a small river, on the northern bank of which his . father's house stood, was a small mill for dressing barley; and at no great distance, on the same small river, were a saw, flour, and snuff mills; from which the ingenious boy was enabled to model many sorts of machines with considerable exactness and skill.

It is to be regretted, that while every attention is paid to the education of some young persons, who undervalue opportunity and refuse instruction, others, who have both the capacity and inclination to learn, are often deprived of the means, or, at least, but very scantily supplied with them. Young Nicholson was in the latter situation; three years' instruction being the most he ever had at the before-mentioned country school, which he left at the age of twelve. Although his scholastic instructions were very limited, yet being bent on inquiry, and decidedly of a mathematical turn, he made by his own efforts considerable progress. Having borrowed from another boy, much older than himself, a copy of Commandine's Euclid, translated by Cunn, he soon made himself master of the first and second Books, and got as far as the 18th Proposition in the third; but the plate which contained the diagrams to which the demonstrations refer being wanting, he constructed the figures from the problems without the assistance of any copy.

At about the age of twelve, he assisted his father at his business of a stone-mason; but as he never could relish that occupation, his parents had too much good sense and natural affection to force his inclination, and he was, at the end of a year, bound apprentice to a cabinet-maker, in the neighbouring village of Linton, for four years, during which time he employed every spare moment in improving himself.

MEMOIR OF MR. PETER NICHOLSON.

At the expiry of his apprenticeship he went to Edinburgh, to work as a journeyman, where he studied mathematics more generally from Ward's Introduction. As a reference from some of the books he had read excited an uncommon desire to acquire a knowledge of the fluxionary calculus, he went to a then noted bookseller, Mr. Bell, in Parliament-square, and looked over the prefaces and contents of several books, when the Introduction to Emerson's Fluxions determined him to give it the preference; but the scanty wages which he received for his labour being scarcely sufficient for necessaries, he had not the means of paying for it. Mr. Bell, however, wishing to give every encouragement to a young man in pursuit of knowledge, although a mere stranger, told him to take the book, and pay for it at his convenience, which accordingly was done.

Emerson's Treatise on Fluxions has been generally allowed to be the most difficult on this branch of analytical science; it was not long, however, before Mr. Nicholson obtained a complete knowledge of the first principles, and the pleasure which resulted from their application to so many sublime problems, so encouraged him as to make him surmount every other difficulty, in whatever part of the work his inclination led him to study.

Mr. Nicholson came to London about the age of twenty, and for some time pursued his favourite studies of the mathematical sciences at his leisure hours in the evenings; at length, however, he dropped the pursuit of analytical subjects, and continued to study geometry only, as being more congenial to his views.

About his twenty-fourth year he had given such proofs among his fellowworkmen of his knowledge in the geometrical constructions of carpentry and joinery, that many of them solicited to become his pupils; he therefore opened a school in Berwick-street for the instruction of young workmen. His success in teaching soon brought him a very great influx of pupils, raising him above the level of a mere journeyman; and this gave him leisure to invent and arrange the materials for a new and original treatise on carpentry and joinery, called "The Carpenter's New Guide," and published in 1792. The plates of this work were engraved by himself. Besides the improvement in various kinds of groins which are to be found in this work, he introduced the construction of spherical niches, both upon straight and circular plans. Before that publication appeared, no work on the practical parts of building had shown, generally, how the sections and coverings of solids were obtainable from their definitions. The principles went only to find the section of a right cylinder, perpendicular to a given plane, parallel to its axis and to the covering of such a cylinder, and that of the frustrum of a right cone. Some attempts to obtain the same result had, indeed, previously been made, but they were erroneous and abortive; and as they had not succeeded with the plane sections and coverings of simple solids, they could scarcely be expected to give rules for the construction of the intersection of any two surfaces, or curves of double curvature, of which the variety is almost infinite.

Besides Mr. Nicholson's own inventions, he has both simplified and generalized the old methods, which were only applicable to particular circumstances. His rules for finding the sections of a prism, cylinder, or

MEMOIR OF MR. PETER NICHOLSON.

cylindroid, through any three given points, whether in or out of the surface of the body to be cut, enable workmen to execute hand-rails without difficulty, and from the least possible quantity of material. His principles on the intersection of solids extend to groins and arches of almost every description. The coverings of polygonal and circular domes had been exhibited in several prior publications on Carpentry and Building, but no author had ever shown how these coverings were to be formed without the actual plan, which might be very inconvenient to draw, on account of the great space it required: nor had any method for covering domes upon an elliptic plan been given. The" Carpenter's New Guide" is one of his first and most useful works: it has gone through seven editions, and is, we believe, still as much in request as ever.

The "Student's Instructor" was published immediately after the "Carpenter's New Guide,” and was followed by the " Joiner's Assistant," a work abounding with useful information, either to those who might be employed to make working drawings, or in the superintendence of buildings. Here several of the articles which were slightly treated of in the " Carpenter's Guide," are more fully explained, and extended to sufficient length. Besides the designs of roofs actually executed which it contains, it was the first work that treated on the methods of forming the joints, hinging and hanging doors and shutters. It has now reached to the fourth edition.

The "Principles of Architecture,” in three volumes, octavo, appeared in 1779; till which time, all publications on that subject were greatly deficient in mathematical principles. In the latter publication was introduced a System of Practical Geometry, containing many new problems of great utility to builders.

Mr. Nicholson was the first who noticed, in this publication, that Grecian mouldings are conic sections, and that the volutes of the Ionic capital ought to be composed of logarithnic spirals, for which he accordingly gave rules for the describing of arches, mouldings, and spirals, of so general a nature as to be applicable in all cases. He is considered to have been the first to show how to describe any number of revolutions between any two given points in a given radius, in which the centre of the spiral was given; and thus he generalized the principles of De L'Orme and Goldman, whose methods were limited to three revolutions, and the eye of each of their volutes to one-eighth part of the whole length. This work was also the first that contained universal methods for projecting plans and elevations, with the method of finding their shadows.

Mr. Nicholson returned to Scotland in the year 1800, and, after staying a few months in his native village, went to Glasgow, where he practised with honour and reputation as an architect. Among the numerous edifices executed in and about that city from his designs, and which are esteemed classical models of taste by those who are best qualified to judge, were Carlton Place, an addition to the College Buildings, the wooden bridge over the River Clyde, and the town of Ardrossan, in Ayrshire, designed as a bathingplace at the request of the Earl of Eglinton.

In the year 1808, Mr. Nicholson removed to Carlisle, in Cumberland, having been appointed architect for the new Court Houses, then begun,

MEMOIR OF MR. PETER NICHOLSON.

from designs given by Mr. Telford, the celebrated civil engineer, who recommended him to that situation, and as an architect for the County of Cumberland. Mr. Nicholson returned to London in 1819, when he commenced his "Architectural Dictionary."

His book of "Mechanical Exercises" was produced soon after his return to London, the object of which is to give a familiar description of such parts of a building as are susceptible of being explained without the aid of geometrical lines.

In April, 1814, the Society of Arts voted to Mr. Nicholson their gold Isis medal, for a new improvement in hand-railing; and in May (the same year) that Society rewarded him with the sum of twenty guineas, for the invention of the Centrolinead.

In the year 1815 he was rewarded with the silver medal of the same Society, for the invention of another Centrolinead, which is now brought into general use amongst those artists who make perspective drawings in architecture and machinery.

The numerous articles which his "Architectural Dictionary" contained led him to many curious investigations, and induced him once more to turn his attention to analytical science, the result of which was, that during the publication of that work he produced a small tract on the "Method of Increments," "6 Essays on the Combinatorial Analysis," and his "Rudiments of Algebra," all within the short space of two years. The last of these three works was published on the 1st of July, 1819, and the "Architectural Dictionary" was completed about two months afterwards.

Mr. Nicholson's "Essays on Involution and Evolution" were honoured with the approbation of the French Institute and Royal Academy of Sciences. That work, and his " Analytical and Arithmetical Essays," were published in the year 1820.

Mr. Nicholson's latest production is entitled, "The Builder and Workman's New Director," from a Memoir prefixed to which we have extracted our present brief notice of the ingenious author. This work was called for by the great improvements that have been recently made in every branch of architecture with regard to geometrical construction, and is one of his ablest and most complete performances. It embodies as much of Geometry, Conic Sections, Trigonometry, Projection, and Perspective, as will enable the student to comprehend with facility, and represent with accuracy, all the constructive departments of building, with the application of those principles to Masonry, Carpentry, Joinery, and Hand-railing.

The whole of Mr. Nicholson's active and scientific labours have been directed towards applying science to useful purposes-an object beyond all praise, being generally too much neglected by men who are given to study.

Mechanics' Magazine,

MUSEUM, REGISTER, JOURNAL, AND GAZETTE.

No. 85.]

SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1825.

[Price 3d.

"If we examine our own feelings, and judge of Science by its influence on ourselves, we shall be obliged to confess, that although less obviously, it is, in fact, as much recommended to us by the pleasures to which it ministers, as those Arts that we regard as entirely devoted to the excitement of agreeable emotions."-Ferro on the Fine Arts.