William Murdoch was a Scottish engineer and inventor. Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton & Watt and worked for them in Cornwall, as a steam engine erector for ten years, spending most of the rest of his life in Birmingham, England.
William Murdock, a Scottish inventor, the first to make extensive use of coal gas for illumination and a pioneer in the development of steam power.
William Murdoch was born in Lugar near Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, a son of John Murdoch, a former Hanoverian artillery gunner and a Millwright, he was educated until the age of ten at the Old Cumnock Kirk School before attending Auchinleck school under William Halbert, author of a highly regarded arithmetic textbook. Murdoch excelled in mathematics. Murdoch also learned the principles of mechanics, practical experimentation and working in metal and wood by assisting in his father’s work. Together with his father, he built a “wooden horse” about 1763. His “Wooden Horse on Wheels” was a tricycle propelled by hand cranks. There are reports that in his youth Murdoch was responsible for the construction of one of the bridges over the River Nith; in which William would have been involved.
In 1777 Murdock entered the engineering firm of Matthew Boulton and James Watt in their Soho works at Birmingham and about two years later was sent to Cornwall to supervise the fitting of Watt’s steam engines. At his home in Redruth, Cornwall, he experimented in distilling coal and in 1792 lit his cottage and offices with coal gas. After returning to Birmingham about 1799, he perfected further practical methods for making, storing, and purifying gas.
Murdock also made important improvements in the steam engine. He was the first to devise an oscillating engine, of which he made a model about 1784; in 1786 he was busy with a steam carriage or road locomotive that was unsuccessful; and in 1799 he invented the long D slide valve. He is generally credited with devising the so-called Sun-and-planet motion, a means of making a steam engine give continuous revolving motion to a shaft provided with a flywheel. Watt, however, patented this motion in 1781. Murdock also experimented with compressed air and in 1803 constructed a steam gun. He retired from business in 1830.