Alexander Kennedy was an English engineer who specialized in the kinematics of mechanisms, which is a theoretical treatment in machine design of relative displacements of machine members, and in laboratory testing of machines as a part of engineering training. The latter half of his life, from 1889, was devoted to engineering aspects of electric power systems.
Background
Alexander Kennedy was born on March 17, 1847, in Stepney, London, England. He was the eldest son of a Congregational minister John Kennedy and Helen Stodart Blackie, both from Aberdeen. His maternal uncle was John Stuart Blackie, a Scottish scholar.
Education
Kennedy attended the City of London School until age sixteen, and then took a short course at the Royal School of Mines.
Kennedy was for ten years concerned with marine steam engine design and construction in their embryonic stages. From 1874 to 1889 he was a professor of engineering at University College, London, where in 1878 he organized the first mechanical testing laboratory intended primarily for the instruction of undergraduate students. During his teaching career, he published his English translation of Franz Reuleaux’s Theoretische Kinematik (1876). Ten years later he published his own textbook of kinematics, in which appeared Kennedy’s law of three centers, which is fundamental to kinematic analysis employing instantaneous centers.
In 1889 Kennedy turned from mechanical to electrical engineering. As a consulting engineer, he quickly became a leading authority in the design and construction of electric generating and distribution systems for both domestic and railway service. He was responsible for the design of numerous systems installed in the principal British cities.
After 1900 Kennedy was a member of several government technical boards and commissions. In 1894 he was president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and in 1906 president of the Institution of Civil Engineers; he was also a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
Kennedy was anxious to give his students experience in the laboratory so that they might recognize the problems and importance of precise measurements and thus use critically the data tabulated in reports and handbooks.
Quotations:
"The essence of science may be rightly summed up in one word 'measurement.'"
Membership
In 1894 Kennedy became a member of Section G (Engineering) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also elected fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Royal Geographical Society.
Personality
Kennedy was an avid mountaineer and a keen amateur photographer.
Interests
photography
Sport & Clubs
mountaineering
Connections
Kennedy married Elizabeth Verralls Smith on September 8, 1874. Together they had one daughter, Elizabeth Helen, and two sons, William Smith, and John MacFarlane. Kennedy's wife died in 1911.