Matthew Murray was an English steam engine and machine tool manufacturer, who designed and built the first commercially viable steam locomotive, the twin cylinder Salamanca in 1812.
30 Facts About Matthew Murray
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Matthew Murray was an innovative designer in many fields, including steam engines, machine tools and machinery for the textile industry.
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Matthew Murray was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1765.
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Matthew Murray left school at fourteen and was apprenticed to be either a blacksmith or a whitesmith.
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The installation included new flax-spinning machines of his own design, which Matthew Murray patented in 1790.
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In 1793 Matthew Murray took out a second patent on a design for "Instruments and Machines for Spinning Fibrous Materials".
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Matthew Murray's patent included a carding engine and a spinning machine that introduced the new technique of "wet spinning" flax, which revolutionised the flax trade.
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Matthew Murray maintained the machinery for Marshall's mills and made improvements that pleased his employer.
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At this stage it seems that Matthew Murray was the chief engineer in the mill.
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Therefore, in 1795, Matthew Murray went into partnership with David Wood and set up a factory at Mill Green, Holbeck.
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Matthew Murray was the technical innovator and in charge of obtaining orders; Wood was in charge of day-to-day running of the works; Fenton was the accountant.
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Matthew Murray wanted to make them simpler, lighter, and more compact.
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Matthew Murray wanted the steam engine to be a self-contained unit that could readily be assembled on site with pre-determined accuracy.
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One problem that Matthew Murray faced was that James Pickard had already patented the crank and flywheel method of converting linear motion to circular motion.
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Matthew Murray ingeniously got round this difficulty by introducing a Tusi couple hypocycloidal straight line mechanism.
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However, Matthew Murray ceased to use this type of motion as soon as Pickard's patent expired.
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Matthew Murray improved the working of these valves by driving them with an eccentric gear attached to the rotating shaft of the engine.
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Matthew Murray patented an automatic damper that controlled the furnace draft depending on the boiler pressure, and he designed a mechanical hopper that automatically fed fuel to the firebox.
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Matthew Murray was the first to adopt the placing of the piston in a horizontal position in the steam engine.
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Matthew Murray expected very high standards of workmanship from his employees, and the result was that Fenton, Murray and Wood produced machinery of a very high precision.
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Matthew Murray designed a special planing machine for planing the faces of the slide valves.
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Matthew Murray designed this himself, and produced a huge three-storeyed circular building known as the Round Foundry.
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In both cases, Matthew Murray had made the mistake of including too many improvements together in the same patent.
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Salamanca was so successful that Matthew Murray made three more models.
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Matthew Murray made important improvements to the machinery for heckling and spinning flax.
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Matthew Murray's heckling machine gained him the gold medal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1809.
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In 1814 Matthew Murray patented a hydraulic press for baling cloth, in which the upper and lower tables approached each other simultaneously.
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Matthew Murray improved upon the hydraulic presses invented by Joseph Bramah, and in 1825 designed a huge press for testing chain cables.
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Matthew Murray died on 20 February 1826, at the age of sixty.
30.
Matthew Murray's tomb was surmounted by a cast iron obelisk made at the Round Foundry.