Jacob Perkins

In 1790, at the age of 24, in Byfield, he created machines for cutting and heading nails. In 1795, he was granted a patent for his improved nail machines and started a nail manufacturing business on the Powwow River in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

During the War of 1812 he worked on machinery for boring out cannons.

He worked on water compression and invented a bathometer or piezometer to measure the depth of the sea by its pressure.[1]

The Perkins D Cylinder Printing Press

Perkins created some of the best steel plates (as noted from English Engravers) for engraving, and started a printing business with engraver Gideon Fairman. They began with school books, and also made bank notes that were difficult to counterfeit. In 1809 he bought the stereotype technology (an aid in large-batch printing of bank notes that were difficult to counterfeit) from Asa Spencer, and registered the patent, and then employed Asa Spencer. Perkins made several important innovations in printing technology, including new steel engraving plates. Using these plates he made the first known steel engraved USA books (The Running Hand, school books, 8 pages each). He then made notes for a Boston Bank, and later for the National Bank. In 1816 he set up a printing shop and bid on the printing of currency for the Second National Bank in Philadelphia.

His quality printing of American bank notes attracted the attention of the Royal Society who were busy addressing the problem of the widespread forging of English notes. In 1819, with his printing business partner, Gideon Fairman, they employed Asa Spencer and went to England at Charles Heath's urging in an attempt to win the £20,000 reward for "unforgable notes". Sample notes were shown to the Royal Society president Sir Joseph Banks. They set up shop in England, and spent months on example banknotes, but unfortunately for them, Banks thought that the inventor should be English by birth.

Printing English notes ultimately proved a success and was carried out by Perkins in partnership with the English engraver-publisher Charles Heath[1] and his associate Gideon Fairman. Together they formed the partnership Perkins, Fairman and Heath. Heath and Perkins also had support from their brothers.[1] Perkins, Fairman and Heath was later renamed, when his son-in-law, Joshua Butters Bacon, bought out Charles Heath and the company was then known as Perkins, Bacon. Perkins Bacon provided banknotes for many banks, and foreign countries with postage stamps.[5] Stamp production started for the British government in 1840 with the 1d black and the 2d blue postage stamps,[6] which incorporated an anti-forgery measure in the form of a complicated background produced by means of the rose engine.[7] Their stamps were the first known preglued stamps.

Also concurrently, Jacob's brother ran the American printing business, and they made money on important fire safety patents. Charles Heath and Jacob Perkins worked together and independently on some concurrent projects.

Jacob Perkins has patents for Heating and Air Conditioning technology. In 1829–30, he went into partnership with his second son Angier March Perkins, manufacturing and installing central heating systems using his hermetic tube principle. He also investigated refrigeration machinery after discovering from his research in heating that liquefied ammonia caused a cooling effect.

In 1816, Jacob Perkins had worked on steam power with Oliver Evans in Philadelphia. In 1822 he made an experimental high pressure steam engine working at pressures up to 2,000 psi (14 MPa).[8] This was not practical for the manufacturing technology of the time, though his concepts were revived a century later. Perkins' boiler was the first example of a flash boiler and one of the first examples of a contra-flow heat exchanger.[8] The water-tube boiler consisted of heavy cast iron straight, square-section water-tubes across the firebox, joined by unheated pipes outside it. These tubes were arranged in three layers, with water pumped into the upper layer and steam extracted at the lower, giving that contra-flow arrangement. In 1927, Loftus P. Perkins, a descendant, lectured on these boilers and displayed a 1⁄8 in (3.2 mm) copper pipe, apparently from a 40 bhp (30 kW) engine of a type that was in use up until 1918.[8]

Perkins' high-pressure steam technology was also used in another invention, the steam gun. This was an early fully automatic machine gun, powered by steam rather than by gunpowder. Although not the first automatic firearm, it was the first to also have a high magazine capacity of more than a handful of rounds. It operated with musket balls at a cyclic firing rate of 1,000 rounds per minute. It is reported to have been rejected by the Duke of Wellington as 'too destructive'.[8]

In 1827 he became the first person in England to use a uniflow steam engine. A locomotive on the South Eastern Railway was converted to the Uniflow system in 1849, although it is not known whose idea this was.[9]

Perkins applied his Hermetic tube system to steam locomotive boilers and a number of locomotives using this principle were made in 1836 for the London and South Western Railway. This was a very early example of a high pressure steam locomotive.

In 1832 Perkins established the National Gallery of Practical Science on Adelaide Street, West Strand, London. This was devoted to showing modern inventions. A popular feature was his steam gun, which did not find favour with the military.[10]

Portrait of Perkins, American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge 1835

Perkins is credited with the first patent for the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle, assigned on August 14, 1834[11] and titled, "Apparatus and means for producing ice, and in cooling fluids". The idea had come from another American inventor, Oliver Evans, who conceived of the idea in 1805 but never built a refrigerator. The same patent was granted in both Scotland[12] and England separately.[13]