William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, CB Kt FRS (26 November 1810 – 27 December 1900) was an English engineer and industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing concern on Tyneside. He was also an eminent scientist, inventor and philanthropist. In collaboration with the architect Richard Norman Shaw, he built Cragside in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. He is regarded as the inventor of modern artillery.
Armstrong was knighted in 1859 after giving his gun patents to the government. In 1887, in Queen Victoria's golden jubilee year, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Armstrong of Cragside.
Early life
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Armstrong was born in Newcastle upon Tyne at 9 Pleasant Row, Shieldfield, about a mile from the city centre. Although the house in which he was born no longer exists, an inscribed granite tablet marks the site where it stood.[1] At that time the area, next to the Pandon Dene, was rural. His father, also called William, was a corn merchant on the Newcastle quayside, who rose through the ranks of Newcastle society to become mayor of the town in 1850. An elder sister, Anne, born in 1802,[2] was named after his mother, the daughter of Addison Potter.[3]
Armstrong was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, until he was sixteen, when he was sent to Bishop Auckland Grammar School. While there, he often visited the nearby engineering works of William Ramshaw. During his visits he met his future wife, Ramshaw's daughter Margaret, six years his senior.[2]
Armstrong's father was set on his following a career in the law,[4] and so he was articled to Armorer Donkin, a solicitor friend of his father's. He spent five years in London studying law and returned to Newcastle in 1833. In 1835 he became a partner in Donkin's business and the firm became Donkin, Stable and Armstrong. Armstrong married Margaret Ramshaw in 1835, and they built a house in Jesmond Dene, on the eastern edge of Newcastle.[2] Armstrong worked for eleven years as a solicitor, but during his spare time he showed great interest in engineering, developing the "Armstrong Hydroelectric Machine" between 1840 and 1842.[2][5]
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