Bicentenary of a “modern magician”

On Friday, 26 November 2010, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Victorian inventor William George Armstrong.

He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a corn merchant, and made his fortune with the invention and manufacture of the Armstrong gun, the first piece of large rifled artillery, which replaced the centuries old cast iron cannon.

A grateful government took out patents on his design, preventing their reproduction to avoid them falling into the hands of foreign powers. This led Armstrong to be knighted in 1859 and, in 1887, he was made Baron Armstrong of Cragside, the first engineer to be ennobled.

Armstrong realised that the reliance of industry on coal was using up a finite natural resource, and predicted that Britain would cease to be a coal producing power within 200 years. He also predicted that solar power would one day replace the steam engine, even though he had no ideas for means of harnessing this energy.

Despite being a rich and famous industrialist, Armstrong had a fascination with renewable energy — almost unheard of in the 19th century. He was first aware of the power of water in his youth while watching an overshoot water wheel during a fishing trip. He decided to harness Debdon Burn, which ran through the grounds of his home, Cragside.

Damming the burn provided him with a head of water to supply his home, and he invented a remarkable collection of hydraulically powered labour-saving devices, including a spit-turner, a servant’s lift and even a dishwasher.

But what really stood Cragside apart from other estates was the installation of a water-powered electricity generator, with its electric dinner gong and internal telephone system.

For Christmas 1880 the arc lighting system was upgraded with the world’s first installation of the incandescent bulb system designed by his friend, the pharmacist Joseph Swan from Sunderland. The house was described by one visitor as “the palace of a modern magician”.

Armstrong died at Cragside aged 90 years in December 1900.