Education
John Smeaton went to Leeds Grammar School between the ages of 10 and 16.
During the two years after he left, he showed an interest in engineering by having his own workshop at home, where he built himself a lathe (a machine for shaping materials like wood or metal), and where he could also melt metal and forge iron.
At the age of 18, in 1742, John’s father sent him to London to get a legal education at Gray’s Inn.
However, he returned home in the summer of 1744, and went to Austhorpe, Yorkshire, where he developed skills to become a scientific instrument maker.
Career
John Smeaton based his life-long consulting engineering practice at his family home, Austhorpe Lodge in Whitkirk.
As well as civil engineering, John Smeaton enjoyed carrying out scientific experiments, and 18 of his papers were published by the Royal Society, the world’s oldest, independent scientific academy.
The topics he wrote about for the Royal Society included a vacuum pump, the thermal expansion of metals, and the practical measure of horsepower.
However, his most important work was a series of experiments on model water wheels and windmills, in 1752, carried out a year before he built his first waterwheel.
This was the start of a long career in designing millworks. He focussed mainly on watermills, with a few windmills and horse-drawn mills.
John’s civil engineering experience extended beyond millworks.
He designed new canal navigations, consulted on the drainage of land for farming use, and built road bridges, and designed six river dams.
The largest dam, built in 1776 on the river Coquet for ironworks in Northumberland, still exists today.
He also designed steam engines and pumping engines for coalfields, and harbours.