For the Canad

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

ian politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

, see James H. Howden

James H. Howden

James Henry Howden was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as a member of the Conservative Party from 1903 to 1915, and was a cabinet minister in the government of Rodmond P. Roblin....

James Howden (29 February 1832 – 21 November 1913) was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 engineer and inventor who is noted for his invention of the Howden forced draught system for steam boilers.

Life

Howden was born in Prestonpans

Prestonpans

Prestonpans is a small town to the east of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the unitary council area of East Lothian. It has a population of 7,153 . It is the site of the 1745 Battle of Prestonpans, and has a history dating back to the 11th century...

, East Lothian

East Lothian

East Lothian is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and a lieutenancy Area. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Midlothian. Its administrative centre is Haddington, although its largest town is Musselburgh....

, in 1832, the son of James Howden and his wife, Catherine Adams, and was educated at the local parish school. His first marriage was to Helen Burgess Adams, and his second to Allison Moffat Hay, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. His two wives both predeceased him, and he died in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 in 1913.

Career

Howden served as an apprentice from 1847 with James Gray & Co., a Glasgow engineering firm, passing through the various departments and eventually becoming chief draughtsman

Technical drawing

Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....

. Having finished his apprenticeship he started work first with Bell and Miller, the civil engineers, then with Robert Griffiths, who designed marine screw propellers.

In 1854 Howden launched himself as a consultant engineer and designer, his first major invention being a rivet

Rivet

A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or pre-drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked A rivet...

-making machine. The selling of the patent rights to a company in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

 for this secured him financially and James Howden & Co. was established as a manufacturer of marine equipment. In 1857 Howden began work on the design and supply of boilers and steam engines for the marine industry; his first contract was with Hendersons to supply the Anchor Liner Ailsa Craig with a compound steam engine and water boilers, using steam at 100 lb pressure. That same year, together with Alexander Morton of Glasgow, he was awarded a patent for the "invention of improvements in obtaining motive power." On 28 February 1859 he applied for a patent for the "improvements in machinery, or apparatus for cutting, shaping, punching, and compressing metals." In 1860 he patented a method of preheating combustion air; his patent was granted for the invention of "improvements in steam engines and boilers, and in the apparatus connected therewith". In 1862 he decided to construct main boilers and engines to his own design and started manufacturing in his first factory on Scotland Street in Glasgow's Tradeston

Tradeston

Tradeston is a district in the Scottish city of Glasgow adjacent to the city centre on the south bank of the River Clyde.-Geography:Tradeston is bounded by the River Clyde to the north, the Glasgow to Paisley railway line on the east and south and the Kingston Bridge and M8 motorway to the west...

 district. A breakthrough came in 1863 when he introduced a furnace mechanical draught system which used a steam turbine driven axial flow fan.
Howden is chiefly remembered as the inventor of the Howden forced draught system, which forced heated waste gases into the combustion chamber by means of a fan and ductwork and which appeared in the 1880s. This system dramatically reduced the amount of coal used in ships' boilers. Howden patented this device in 1882 as the 'Howden System of Forced Draught' and during the 1880s more than 1000 boilers were converted to this specification or constructed to Howden's patent. The first vessel to use the system was the New York City, built in 1885. Amongst the liners to use the Howden system in their boilers were the Lusitania

RMS Lusitania

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907 and continued on the line's heavily-traveled passenger service between Liverpool, England and New...

and Mauretania

RMS Mauretania (1906)

RMS Mauretania was an ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Wallsend, Tyne and Wear for the British Cunard Line, and launched on 20 September 1906. At the time, she was the largest and fastest ship in the world. Mauretania became a favourite among...

, the fastest liners in the world when they were built.

Howden's original Glasgow factory being too small for his expanding operation, he had a new, larger one designed by Nisbet Sinclair at 195 Scotland Street, down the road from his original factory. This opened in 1898 and featured overhead cranes, handling equipment and central-heating (a rarity at the time). As a result of an overflowing order book, the factory was enlarged, first in 1904, and again in 1912, to a design by Bryden & Robertson. As of 2009, this redbrick factory – "one of the last remaining Victorian heavy engineering works in Glasgow", and the place where the tunnel boring machine

Tunnel boring machine

A tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...

s used in the excavation of the Channel Tunnel

Channel Tunnel

The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...

 were made – lies empty.
In the 1900s Howden designed a fully enclosed high-speed marine steam engine. This was later modified for use in land-based systems as the Howden-Zoelly steam turbine. At the onset of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, a year after Howden's death, the Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 ruled that all ships were to be fitted with Howden "blowers" so that they could outrun U-boats.

Amongst the projects that Howden worked on were assisting the St Helena Whaling Company, quarrying marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 and working on the design of a recoilless gun

Recoilless rifle

A recoilless rifle or recoilless gun is a lightweight weapon that fires a heavier projectile than would be practical to fire from a recoiling weapon of comparable size. Technically, only devices that use a rifled barrel are recoilless rifles. Smoothbore variants are recoilless guns...

 for the Admiralty.

Howden was the last surviving founder member of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland

Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland

The Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland is a professional body for engineers and shipbuilders in Scotland.-Founding:The inaugural meeting of the Institution of Engineers in Scotland was held on 1 May 1857...

, founded in 1857. Although he was a lifelong Liberal

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

, he took no part in politics or public life.

External links

• Official website of the Howden Group