Henry Bell

Henry Bell (7 April 1767 – 14 March 1830) was a Scottish engineer who helped to pioneer the development of the steamship. He is mostly widely known for introducing the first successful passenger steamboat service on earth in 1812. Early career Bell was born at Torphichen, near Bathgate, West Lothian in 1767. He was the fifth son of Patrick Bell and Margaret Easton, themselves members of a family well known at the time as millwrights, builders and engineers. He grew up at the local mill in Torphichen, where developed a working knowledge of water power. Work carried out by members of the Bell family included the design and construction of harbours, bridges, etc., in Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom. Henry Bell was educated at the local parish school and was apprenticed to a stonemason between 1780 and 1783. Three years later, he was briefly apprenticed to his uncle, a millwright. In 1786, he went to work Borrowstounness and learned ship modelling. In 1787, he pursued his interest in ship mechanics in Bellshill with the engineer Mr James Inglis, which was then followed by several years working in London under the engineer John Rennie the Elder. He returned to Scotland around 1790, and moved to Glasgow, where he worked as a house-carpenter. His ambition was to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and become a civil engineer, and to this end, he joined the Glasgow corporation of wrights on 20 October 1797. He was unsuccessful, apparently due to either lack of money, or lack of application or skill on his part. According to one contemporary: "Bell had many of the features of the enthusiastic projector; never calculated means to ends, or looked much farther than the first stages or movements of any scheme. His mind was a chaos of extraordinary projects, the most of which, from his want of accurate scientific calculation, he never could carry into practice. Owing to an imperfection in even his mechanical skill, he scarcely ever made one part of a model suit the rest, so that many designs, after a great deal of pains and expense, were successively abandoned. He was, in short, the hero of a thousand blunders and one success." Interest in steam power for shipping The idea of propelling vessels by means of steam early took possession of his mind.