Samuda, Joseph d'Aguilar

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Railways and locomotives

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b. 21 May 1813 London, England

d. 27 April 1885 London, England

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English shipbuilder and promoter of atmospheric traction for railways.

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Joseph Samuda studied as a engineer under his elder brother Jacob and formed a partnership with him in 1832 as builders of marine steam engines. In 1838, with Samuel Clegg, they took out a patent for an atmospheric railway system. In this system a cast-iron tube, with a continuous sealed slot along the top, was laid between the rails; trains were attached to a piston within the tube by an arm, the slot being opened and resealed before and behind it. The tube ahead of the piston was exhausted by a stationary steam engine and the train propelled by atmospheric pressure. The system appeared to offer clean, fast travel and was taken up by noted contemporary railway engineers such as I.K. Brunel and C.B. Vignoles, but it eventually proved a failure as no satisfactory means of sealing the slot could at that time be found. It did, however, lead to experiments in the 1860s with underground, pneumatic-tube railways, in which the vehicle would be its own piston, and Samuda Bros, supplied cast-iron tubes for such a line. Meanwhile, Samuda Bros, had commenced building iron steamships in 1843, and although Jacob Samuda lost his life in 1844 as the result of an accident aboard one of the earliest built, the firm survived to become noted London builders of steamships of many types over the ensuing four decades. Joseph Samuda became a founder member of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1860, and was MP for Tavistock from 1865 to 1868 and for Tower Hamlets from 1868 to 1880.

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Bibliography

1838, jointly with Jacob Samuda and Samuel Clegg, British patent no. 7,920 (atmospheric traction).

1861–2, "On the form and materials for iron plated ships", Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 21.

Further Reading

Obituary, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 81:334 (provides good coverage of his career).

C.Hadfield, 1967, Atmospheric Railways, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles (includes a discussion of his railway work).

PJGR