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'The Art of Engineering' by Laurence Scales
2026-01-14 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/London) | LONDON Alan Baxter Gallery, 75 Cowcross St, Clerkenwell, London, EC1M 6EL
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
The Royal Society of Arts began life as the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce rewarding, among other things, inventions and improvements relating to mechanics, manufactures and chemistry.
This lecture introduces the first century of the Society, then passes by way of some history of engineering drawing and drawing instruments to feature some of the professional draughtsmen used by the Society. Along the way, the lecture exhibits a selection of drawings from the archive.
About the Speaker
Laurence Scales has a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering, and subsequently worked for Lloyds Register of Shipping, offshore engineering contractor Brown & Root, and defence electronics manufacturer Thales. Latterly he has been an archive volunteer at both the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the Royal Society of Arts.
Laurence devises and leads London tours themed around the history of science, technology and medicine. His customers have included Imperial College, King’s College London, Purdue University, Ove Arup & Associates, and the FBI.

'The Mercenary River' by Nick Higham
2026-02-11 18:00 - 19:30
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
Today we take water for granted. Turn a tap and the stuff gushes out. But for centuries London struggled to supply its citizens with reliable, clean drinking water.
Nick Higham tells the story of London’s water from the Tudor era to the 20th century. It’s a tale of remarkable technological, scientific and organisational breakthroughs, but also one of greed and complacency, high finance and low politics. London’s 19th century water companies operated a cartel which worked in their interests, not their customers’. The water they supplied was overpriced, deficient in quantity and frequently filthy – described by one scientist as “diluted sewage”. It took the best part of a century of campaigning to bring the water companies to heel.
About the Speaker
Nick Higham is a writer and former journalist who is passionate about history. His first book, The Mercenary River, a history of London’s water supply, was published to excellent reviews in 2022: The Telegraph gave it five stars, The Mail called it “fascinating”, Andrew Marr found it “original and gripping”. The book has made a timely contribution to the current debate about Britain’s water industry and the scandal of untreated sewage discharges, and has been praised by figures as diverse as the campaigner Feargal Sharkey and the chairman of Thames Water.
His second book, Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One, is published by Bloomsbury in October 2025.
Nick spent nearly 30 years as a BBC correspondent, whenever possible smuggling history onto the airwaves in the guise of news.

'Vernacular Practice: Joseph Whitworth’s papers on Flatness & Threads' by John Gardner
2026-03-11 18:00 - 19:30
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
This lecture examines the relationship between workshop practice and standards for threads and flatness by analysing two influential papers by Joseph Whitworth, which achieved a broad readership after being published in the 6d Mechanics’ Magazine in 1841. These papers are:
1. “Plane Metallic Surfaces and the Proper Mode of Preparing Them” (read at the British Association meeting in Glasgow in 1840, published in Mechanics’ Magazine, no. 910, 16 January 1841, pp. 39-42).
2. “A Uniform System of Screw Threads” (read to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1841, published in Mechanics’ Magazine, no. 951, 30 October 1841, pp. 340-344).
The argument is that these papers remain relevant in modern engineering standards. Whitworth’s proposal for standard screw threads significantly contributed to the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851, which was completed in just 190 days using approximately 30,000 nuts and bolts. This was achieved despite there being no standardized thread form until 1905. The contemporary engineer James Nasmyth highlighted the chaos and expense caused by the lack of a standardized thread form, where each bolt and nut was unique, leading to confusion and inefficiency:
‘No system was observed as to “pitch”, i.e., the number of threads to the inch, nor was any rule followed as to the form of these threads. Every bolt and nut was thus a specialty in itself […] all bolts and their corresponding nuts had to be marked as belonging to each other; and any mixing of them together led to endless trouble, hopeless confusion, and enormous expense.’ (James Nasmyth, Engineer: An Autobiography (1883), p.131.)
Whitworth’s proposal advocated for a practical, workshop-based method to promote his thread form, rather than relying solely on theoretical principles.
Research for this talk has involved working with the London Science Museum and the Crystal Palace Museum. Original bolts from the Crystal Palace and towers were examined, measured, and remanufactured establishing that Whitworth’s vernacular thread form was used to build the Palace. The plane metallic surfaces standard that Whitworth helped achieve, which relied on hand-scraping, initially annoyed his workers who thought hand work a retrograde step after using machines. Nevertheless, the method he published on stands to this day as process through which to achieve a high degree of flatness. In this talk, John Gardner will discuss Whitworth’s papers on flatness and threads, their origins in workshop practice, and their legacy in engineering standards.
About the Speaker
John Gardner is Dean of the Doctoral School at Anglia Ruskin University.
John’s recent publications include: ‘Thread form at the Crystal Palace’ (Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology, 2024); The 1830s, with David Stewart (CUP, 2024); ‘Waterloo to Peterloo‘ in The Oxford Handbook to Romantic Prose, ed. by Robert Morrison (OUP, 2024); ‘Liberalism’ in The 1820s, Innovation and Diffusion ed. by Matt Sangster and Jon Mee. (Edinburgh University Press, 2023); ‘Shelley’s Steamship’ Keats-Shelley Journal 71 (2022); and ‘A Dangerous Education; the Early Mechanics’ Institutes’ in Institutions as Networks (CUP, 2022).
John is currently working on a monograph entitled ‘Engineering Romanticism’.

'A plain substantial piece of workmanship: the marine compound engine & the tramp ship in 19C Britain' by Dr Oliver Carpenter
2026-04-15 18:00 - 19:30
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
The ‘tramp’ ship was created and constructed as a distinct type of merchant vessel in the 1870s and 1880s by shipbuilders and shipowners operating predominantly out of ports and rivers in the North East of England.
To explain the construction of tramp shipping in this period, this lecture explores the key technology that really made ‘tramping’ across the oceans a viable, economical and profitable venture.
Dr Oliver Carpenter‘s argument is that the adoption and use of the marine compound engine by shipowners created the ‘tramp’ class of merchant steam ships for the first time in a new and rapidly-growing sector in British shipping.
About the Speaker
Dr Oliver Carpenter is Curator of Infrastructure & Built Environment at the Science Museum in London. He is responsible for the national collections of Building Construction; Civil Engineering; Docks & Diving; Electricity Supply; Firefighting; Gas Industry; Heating, Cooling & Ventilation; Lighting; Locks & Fastenings; Nuclear Energy and Sewerage & Sanitation.
Oliver was Lead Curator of Energy Revolution at The Adani Green Energy Gallery – a major new permanent gallery about the low-carbon energy transition, which opened at the Science Museum in 2024. Before joining the Science Museum in 2015, he was a Collections Research Volunteer at Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and Associate Lecturer in History of Science, Technology and Medicine at University of Kent.
Oliver has a PhD in History of Technology and has published on the history of the British merchant shipping industry in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. He is a member of the Newcomen Society Council.

'The Dickinson Memorial Lecture' by Bridget Eickhoff
2026-05-13 18:00 - 19:30
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of the Julia Elton Collection
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
The Historical & Current Challenges of Gauging & their Impact on the Operations of Railways & Canals
Bridget Eickhoff will start this presentation with some of the concerns regarding tunnels for the early railway builders and look at some of the magnificent structures that these engineers produced.
She will then consider the challenges that have emerged in more recent times, from 1970s to the present day, both in Great Britain and internationally, and how railway gauging engineers have been continually innovating to rise to these challenges.
Bridget will also look briefly at the different but related issues with gauging of canals.
About the Speaker
Bridget Eickhoff is Principal Infrastructure Engineer at Rail Safety and Standards Board and Honorary Professor of Railway Interface Engineering at the University of Birmingham (Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education) where she supports the MSc programmes.
She has extensive experience in railway vehicle-track interaction and wheel-rail contact, including the study of derailment mechanisms, track forces and deterioration, gauge clearance methods, related standards and approval processes.
Bridget has been involved in the development of GB and international standards in associated areas as well as supporting a number of research and innovation projects. She is also a past Chair of the IMechE Railway Division.

'An Extraordinary 250 Years of Waterpower at the Strutts’ Belper Mills' by Ian Jackson
2026-10-14 18:00 - 19:30
Image Credit: Reproduced with permission of Jim Bell
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
Famed for its innovative ‘fire-proof’ iron-framed cotton mill, the Belper Mill complex in Derbyshire also incorporated innovative developments in waterpower.
William Strutt’s improvements of the waterwheel, waterpower control and management of the River Derwent, enabled the mass manufacturing of textile thread at the complex, which today sits at the heart of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. Recent, award-winning research has uncovered examples of responsible stewardship of the rivers by Georgian proprietors of the mills along Britain’s waterways, including the management of floods and distribution of salmon.

The use of water to generate hydroelectric power, c.1900, encouraged the new owners of the Belper Mills, the Lancashire based English Sewing Cotton Company, to invest in their Derbyshire Derwent Valley businesses. Whilst most industrial sites on the Derwent stopped producing hydroelectric power in the mid-20th century, choosing instead to connect to the coal-fired national grid, the Belper site continued to invest in new hydro turbines.
The 18th century weir, mill leats and wheel pits are still in use today (harnessing the power of the river, almost continuously, for 250 years), supplying the national grid with renewable energy.

Other sites across Britain offer similar opportunities, not only to generate renewable energy, but with reinstatement of floodgates and sluices, to improve our stewardship of our waterways.
About the Speaker
Ian Jackson is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer who has worked in multinational manufacturing businesses for 35 years, latterly as an independent ESOS Lead Assessor, and now as a waterpower researcher.

In 2012, he set up Amber and Derwent Valley Community Energy to try to reinstate Hydroelectric Power (HEP) at a former industrial site, at the heart of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. In 2014, it was a feasible project but changes in government support and EA requirements halted the project in 2018.

Living in the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site and trying to identify HEP opportunities, led to his research into the historic use of waterpower, the primary energy source for the early industrial revolution. Seeing the untapped HEP resource in the valley, and his role on the strategy board of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, led to an approach to the University of Nottingham.
Ian started a full time PhD in 2020, titled ‘Climate Change mitigation: Learning from the past to unlock the hydropower potential of the Derbyshire Derwent catchment’, graduating in July 2025. The award-winning thesis (Association for Industrial Archaeology dissertation award) is available for download on the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site

'Better than Steam? Davy, Faraday, the Brunels & the Gaz Engine, 1823-1833' by Professor Frank James
2026-11-18 18:00 - 19:30
Image Credit: Crown copyright, photograph by Frank James
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
In early March 1823, laboratory assistant Michael Faraday, at the Royal Institution, unintentionally subjected chlorine to a very high pressure and, much to his surprise, found that it turned into a liquid – the first time that a gas had been liquefied.
Aside from the scientific achievement, very quickly this phenomenon came to be seen as having the potential to be a new source of power. Steam-power was not necessarily seen as inevitably replacing wind or water-power. This is illustrated by the large amount of effort devoted by savants, including Faraday and Davy, during the 1820s to exploit gas liquefaction practically in what was termed the ‘gaz engine’. Furthermore, the engineers Marc Brunel and his son Isambard Brunel also devoted considerable effort to render gaz engines feasible. The Admiralty, then beginning to use steam-powered vessels, was also very interested in gaz engines and provided limited support for later stages of the research.
Following repeated failures to develop a practical engine, at the start of the 1830s work ceased on the project. In modern terms, what was being attempted of course was to obtain more energy from a gaz engine than was required to liquefy the gas in the first place, that is a form of perpetual motion. Once the laws of thermodynamics had been formulated during the 1840s, the pursuit of such a source of power was seen as clearly impossible. Before then it was not clear, even to leading savants and engineers, that what they were doing was seeking to build a perpetual motion machine.
The story illustrates just how invisible perpetual motion could be.
About the Speaker
Professor Frank James, a former President of the Newcomen Society, is Professor of the History of Science at University College London. His main research centres on the physical sciences in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and how they relate to other areas of society and culture, for example art, literature, business, media, religion, engineering and the military.
Frank edited the Correspondence of Michael Faraday, published in six volumes between 1991 and 2012, served as an advisory editor for the four volume Collected Letters of Humphry Davy (2020) and was a Co-I on the AHRC funded Humphry Davy Notebooks Project. His Michael Faraday: A Very Short Introduction was published in 2010 by OUP who the following year also published his sesquicentenary edition of Faraday’s Chemical History of a Candle.
His current research concentrates on writing and researching a biographical study of Humphry Davy focussing on his practical work including nitrous oxide, agricultural chemistry, mineralogy, the miners’ safety lamp, analysis of ancient Roman pigments and his attempts to unroll chemically the papyri excavated from Herculaneum.

'Metroland - Engineering, Economy & Social Change 1863-2026' by Dr Mark Pegg
2026-12-08 18:00 - 19:30
Image Credit: Lecturer’s copyright
This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.
Dr Mark Pegg discusses how one railway line changed London social and economic life by connecting city workers with the Chiltern Hills and beyond. The talk explores the civil, mechanical and electrical engineering challenges of the steam powered and electric rolling stock, that enabled trains to carry passengers and goods on steep gradients from London to Buckinghamshire while supplying the rapidly growing London market with coal, fresh food and dry goods.
Metroland was made more famous by Sir John Betjeman who wittily observed the change the railway brought to new London suburbs that grew up to provide homes in a rural environment with smoke-free air for London’s rapidly growing population, particularly the workers who commuted daily into the heart of the City.
The phrase ‘Live in Metroland’ was coined by the Metropolitan Railway to promote the line in 1915 used until it became part of the London Transport Board in 1933.
Opened in 1863, the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street to Farringdon was the first underground railway in the world, extending to Aldgate in 1876. At first, it was strictly an inner-city line, extension to Aylesbury in 1898 transformed the line into rural Buckinghamshire, also sharing tracks with the Great Central’s ‘London Extension’ which ran into London Marylebone. Electrification went live to Rickmansworth in 1925 and later to Amersham and Chesham in 1961. Metroland is still changing today with more homes and the construction of HS2 and East-West the revival of the old Oxford to Cambridge ‘Varsity’ line.
About the Speaker
Dr Mark Pegg read history at Oxford University where his published doctoral thesis was British Broadcasting and Society 1918-1939.
He worked in the UK coal mining industry in deep mines and headquarters where he was the Chairman’s personal assistant and also researched the modern coal mining history. After working as a management consultant, Mark became a Director of a Business School and CEO of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. He has extensive experience in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Far East and Africa with clients including central governments, Rolls-Royce plc and the UK Senior Civil Service.
Mark is a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
