12 Facts About William Fairbairn

Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet of Ardwick was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer and shipbuilder.

William Fairbairn moved to Manchester in 1813 to work for Adam Parkinson and Thomas Hewes.

William Fairbairn was a lifelong learner and joined the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1830.

William Fairbairn conducted many tests on prototypes in his Millwall shipyard and at the site of the bridge, showing how such a tube should be constructed.

William Fairbairn himself developed wrought iron trough bridges which used some of the ideas he had developed in the tubular bridge.

William Fairbairn drew on his experience with the construction of iron-hulled ships when designing the Britannia Bridge and Conwy Railway Bridges.

William Fairbairn experimented with glass cylinders and was able to show that the hoop stress in the wall was twice the longitudinal stress.

William Fairbairn was one of the first engineers to conduct systematic investigations of failures of structures, including the collapse of textile mills and boiler explosions.

William Fairbairn built large-scale testing apparatus for the studies, and was partly funded by the Board of Trade.

William Fairbairn conducted experiments on pressurized cylinders of glass and was able to show that the highest stress in the wall occurs around the diameter.

William Fairbairn's work was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and was of great help in analysing failures in steam boilers and pipes.

William Fairbairn is one of several notable engineers to be buried in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, Prestwich.