#telpher

“In mechanical arts, the craftsman uses his skill to produce something useful, but his sole merit lies in skill. In the fine arts the student uses skill to produce something beautiful. He is free to choose what that something shall be, and the layman claims that he may and must judge the artist chiefly by the value in beauty of the thing done. Artistic skill contributes to beauty, or it would not be skill; but beauty is the result of many elements, and the nobler the art the lower is the rank which skill takes among them."

– Attributed to Fleeming Jenkin, in John Munro’s Heroes of the Telegraph.

Professor Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin represents both the craftsman and the artist of the early nineteenth century. This renaissance man of Edinburgh was born on 25 March 1833. His prolific career as an electrical engineer and professor glitters with a variety of accomplishments. He is known as the engineer of the telpher, or aerial tramway. In addition to engineering, he crossed over into the business and academic work; his writing topics extended into over 35 British patents, and over 40 published papers.

Fleeming Jenkin won medals during his professional career from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his graphical method to calculate strains in bridges; yet he also drew portraits, wrote about artistry, and contributed to commentary on popular literature in his time.

Electricity and magnetism formed one of Fleeming Jenkin’s major passions; he participated in the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and determined a convenient unit and standard of electrical resistance with a committee.

”I’m flying with the clouds…”