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Thomas Tredgold
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Thomas Tredgold

English engineer and writer
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Quick Facts
Born:
August 22, 1788, Brandon, near Durham, England
Died:
January 28, 1829, London (aged 40)
Subjects Of Study:
carpentry
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Thomas Tredgold (born August 22, 1788, Brandon, near Durham, England—died January 28, 1829, London) was an English engineer and writer.

Almost entirely self-taught, after some years as a carpenter’s apprentice in Durham and then as a journeyman in Scotland, he published Elementary Principles of Carpentry (1820), which became an enduring classic. It was followed by important treatises on cast iron and other metals (1822), ventilation and warming of buildings (1824), railroads and carriages (1825), and steam engines (1827). His eloquent definition of civil engineering was used as the basis of the 1828 royal charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the world’s first professional engineering body, founded in London in 1818.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.