Smeaton, JOHN, an eminent civil engineer, was born at Austhorp near Leeds, 8th June 1724, and early showed a bent towards mechanical pursuits. On leaving school, where he excelled in geometry and arithmetic, he entered his father’s office as law clerk; but his heart was not in his work, and about 1750 he removed to London, to commence business as a mathematical instrument maker. In the following year his experiments in mechanical invention were resumed. His improvements on mill-work gained him the
Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1759. In 1753 he was chosen a member of the Royal Society; and in the following year he visited the Netherlands, and inspected the engineering works of that country. In 1755 the second wooden lighthouse on Eddystone (q.v.) rock was destroyed by fire, and the re-erection of the work was entrusted to Smeaton. The new lighthouse was built of stone (1756–59), and this great work, the greatest of its kind hitherto undertaken, remained for 120 years a stable monument of Smeaton's engineering skill, till the erection of the new Eddystone close by (1879–82). Even after his great achievement Smeaton seems to have had little employment, as he applied for and obtained in 1764 the post of 'receiver of the Derwentwater estate;' and this situation he held till 1777, by which time he was in full professional employment. The chief of his other engineering works were Rausgate harbour (1774); the Forth and Clyde Canal; several important bridges in Scotland (Perth, Banff, Coldstream), together with an immense amount of mill-machinery. He also improved Newcomen's steam-engine. He was in constant attendance in parliament during a large portion of his life. In 1783 his health began to decline, and he retired from active business, dying at Austhorp of paralysis, 28th October 1792. In 1781 Smeaton wrote a Narrative of the Construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse. The Society of Civil Engineers published posthumously his numerous professional Reports (3 vols. 1797), which were regarded by his successors 'as a mine of wealth for the sound principles which they unfold, and the able practice they exemplify.'
See a Short Narrative of John Smeaton (1793); and Smiles's Lives of the Engineers (vol. ii.; new ed. 1874).