Boulton

Boulton, MATTHEW, a celebrated English engineer, was born 3d September 1728, at Birmingham, where his father had made a considerable fortune as a silver stamper and piercer. On his death in 1759, Matthew carried on the business of the manufactory with great energy, and extended it by the purchase of a piece of land, then a barren heath, at Soho, near his native town, his works there being opened in 1762. Here he improved not only the workmanship, but the artistic merit of his work. One of his first inventions was a new mode of inlaying steel. He entered into partnership with James Watt (q.v.), who had obtained a patent for the great improvements in the steam-engine which have immortalised his name, and they established a manufactory of steam-engines in 1769. After eighteen years of anxious labour, this department of the business began to be remunerative. They jointly contributed also to the improvement of coining machinery, and so to the perfection of the coinage itself. It was only in 1882 that a Boulton press, at the Mint, Tower Hill, was finally discarded. Boulton obtained a patent in 1797 for his method of raising water by impulse. Boulton died at Soho, 18th August 1809. His long life was devoted to the promotion of the useful arts and of the commercial interests of his native country. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and member of the Lunar Society, and was on terms of friendship with the chief scientific and literary men of his time; he was a man of extremely pleasing conversation, and of a most generous disposition. See Smiles's Lives of Boulton and Watt (1865).