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A Victorian Scientist and Engineer: Fleeming Jenkin and the Birth of Electrical Engineering

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Fleeming Jenkin was one of the early British electrical engineers,  instrumental in the successful laying of many submarine telegraph cables.   His career began in 1857 at Newall and Co., during the period in which the company was making the first Atlantic Cable.  He was subsequently in partnership with William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and  C.F. Varley, developing many of the theories of submarine cable working, and supplying instruments and consulting services to most of the cable-laying companies.

Jenkin received 37 patents between 1860 and 1886; and continued his electrical engineering work while a professor at Edinburgh University.  He published papers in many other fields including civil engineering, economics, speech research, and the theatre.  He was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Jenkin's first biography in 1887, shortly after Jenkin's death; this was more of a personal memoir and did not do justice to Jenkin's many technical achievements.

Cookson and Hempstead's biography of Jenkin is an excellent view of his life in all its aspects.  Extensively researched from many primary sources, it gives details of the work of the electrical engineering pioneers of the Victorian era and provides a clear picture of the birth of a major industry.