Ronalds , Sir , Francis , 1788-1873 , Knight , Electrical engineer and meterologist

Born, London 1788; Sir Francis Ronalds was the son of a London merchant. His father died when he was nineteen and he became responsible for the family business although Ronalds was more interested in carrying out chemical experiments which he conducted at home. 1814 he met the Swiss natural philosopher Jean-Andre De Luc who was engaged on experiments with dry piles of gilt paper and laminated zinc; Ronalds constructed a dry column of 1,000 pairs of elements to which he added a ratchet and pawl arrangement by which the pile produced rotation of a pointer round a dial. 1816 he demonstrated his electric telegraph; he offered it to the Government but it was rejected by the Admiralty. Ronalds published a booklet describing the telegraph, 1823; a single-wire telegraph operated by frictional electricity, it was practical but never tried out on a commercial scale; travelled to Europe and the Near East, 1816-1823. On a sketching tour of Sicily with Sir Frederick Henniker he realised the need for mechanical sketching instruments. Ronalds devoted himself to designing perspective instruments, 1824-1828; he took out a patent for 'Apparatus for tracing from Nature', 1825; published 'Mechanical Persepctive', 1828. Ronalds was asked to exhibit at the Polytechnic Institution in London; these exhibits indicate the scope of Ronalds' inventions: a new fore-bed carriage, a semi-transparent sundial showing mean time, perspective instruments and a fire alarm. Appointed first Honorary Director and Superintendent of the British Association's Meteorological Observatory at Kew, 1843; he improved the apparatus and methods of measurement relating to atmospheric electricity and also devised a system of applying photography to self-registration of meteorological and magnetic observations. Similar apparatus were installed in observatories at Toronto, Madrid and Oxford. In 1852 left Kew and spent a number of years abroad mainly in France and Italy, compiling a bibliography of electricity and magnetism and collecting books and pamphlets on these subjects; knighted, 1870. This honour came at the end of a protracted campaign by his friends to secure some credit for Ronalds for his pioneering work in relation to the development of the electric telegraph. Died, 1873, Battle, Sussex.