Gunpowder and Geometry. Benjamin Wardhaugh

      

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

      Copyright © Benjamin Wardhaugh 2019

      Cover illustrations: engraved illustrations of Artillery Carriages © bauhaus1000/Getty Images; engraving of Charles Hutton © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo.

      Benjamin Wardhaugh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Source ISBN: 9780008299958

      Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008299972

      Version: 2019-01-11

       Dedication

      In memory of Jackie Stedall

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

1 Out of the Pit

2 Teacher of Mathematics

3 Author

4 Professor

       5 Odd-Job Man

       6 Foreign Secretary

       7 Reconstruction

       8 A Military Man

       9 Utility and Fame

       10 Securing a Legacy

       11 Controversies Old and New

       12 Peace

       Epilogue

       Notes

       Select Bibliography

       Image Credits

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       1

       Out of the Pit

      

      August 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne. In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight, or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour.

      Three hundred feet underground, young Charles Hutton is at the coalface. Cramped, choked with dust, wielding a five-pound pick by candlelight. Eighteen years old, he has been down the pits on and off for more than a decade, and now it looks like a life sentence. No unusual story, although Charles is a clever lad – gifted at maths and languages – and for a time he hoped for a different life.

      Many hoped. Charles Hutton, astonishingly, would actually live the life he dreamed of. Twenty years later you would have found him in Slaughter’s coffee house in London, eating oysters with the president of the Royal Society. By the time he died, in 1823, he was a fellow of scientific academies in four countries, while the Lord Chancellor of England counted himself fortunate to have known him. Hard work, talent, and no small share of luck would take Charles Hutton out of the pit to international fame, wealth, admiration and happiness. The pit boy turned professor would become one of the most revered British scientists of his day.

      This book is his incredible story.

      Newcastle upon Tyne occupies a fine site for a town: a long south-facing slope, down towards the river. The Great North Road runs through it: 90 miles north to Edinburgh, 250 south to London. And the river joins the town to the world. As the old song goes,

       Tyne river, running rough or smooth,

       Brings bread to me and mine;

       Of all the rivers north or south

       There’s none like coaly Tyne.

      By the time coaly Tyne passes under the bridge at Newcastle it has seen the Pennines and the wild country of Northumbria: land fought over by the Romans and the Picts, the English and the Scots. If the water had once been dyed with their blood, by now it was dyed with coal.

      The town was spacious and populous.