INVENTOR

William Murdoch

1754 - 1839

Photo of William Murdoch

Icon of person William Murdoch

William Murdoch (sometimes spelled Murdock) (21 August 1754 – 15 November 1839) was a Scottish chemist, inventor, and mechanical engineer. Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton & Watt and worked for them in Cornwall, as a steam engine erector for ten years, spending most of the rest of his life in Birmingham, England. Murdoch was the inventor of the oscillating cylinder steam engine, and gas lighting is attributed to him in the early 1790s, as well as the term "gasometer". However the Dutch-Belgian Academic Jean-Pierre Minckelers had already published on coal gasification and gas lighting in 1784, and had used gas to light his auditorium at the University of Leuven from 1785. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. William Murdoch is the 184th most popular inventor (down from 160th in 2019), the 1,858th most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 1,414th in 2019) and the 29th most popular British Inventor.

Memorability Metrics

Loading...

Page views of William Murdoch by language

Loading...

Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, William Murdoch ranks 184 out of 426Before him are Émile Baudot, Artur Fischer, Harold Eugene Edgerton, Matthew Boulton, Lagâri Hasan Çelebi, and Gunther von Hagens. After him are Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse, Fausto Veranzio, Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff, Johann Jacob Schweppe, Arnold Orville Beckman, and Lucien Olivier.

Most Popular Inventors in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1754, William Murdoch ranks 30Before him are Jean-Antoine Marbot, Pavel Tsitsianov, Vicente Martín y Soler, Andrea Appiani, Joseph Joubert, and Wilhelm, Duke of Oldenburg. After him are Alejandro Malaspina, Louis Claude Richard, Karl Wilhelm, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, Claude François de Malet, Nikolay Rumyantsev, and Pierre Charles L'Enfant. Among people deceased in 1839, William Murdoch ranks 16Before him are William Smith, Joseph Fesch, Pehr Henrik Ling, Ferdinando Paer, Aloysia Weber, and Hugues-Bernard Maret, duc de Bassano. After him are Mikhail Speransky, Milan Obrenović II, Prince of Serbia, Adolphe Nourrit, Joseph Anton Koch, Andrew Dũng-Lạc, and Lord William Bentinck.

Others Born in 1754

Go to all Rankings

Others Deceased in 1839

Go to all Rankings

In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, William Murdoch ranks 1,858 out of 8,785Before him are Ida Lupino (1918), Alice Keppel (1868), Arthur Young (1741), Alvin Lee (1944), Peter Collins (1931), and David Jacobs (1888). After him are Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1884), Richard Aldington (1892), John Guillermin (1925), Pasquale Anfossi (1727), John Ball (1338), and Elvis Costello (1954).

Among INVENTORS In United Kingdom

Among inventors born in United Kingdom, William Murdoch ranks 29Before him are Robert Stirling (1790), Oliver Lodge (1851), Robert Watson-Watt (1892), Charles Algernon Parsons (1854), Sandford Fleming (1827), and Matthew Boulton (1728). After him are James Dyson (1947), David Edward Hughes (1831), Jethro Tull (1674), Elihu Thomson (1853), Hubert Cecil Booth (1871), and Robert Whitehead (1823).