Background
Jacob Perkins was born on July 9, 1766 at Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States.
Jacob Perkins was born on July 9, 1766 at Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States.
Jacob went to school in Newburyport until he was twelve and then was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Newburyport named Davis.
Perkins made himself known by a variety of useful mechanical inventions, and in 1818 came over to England with a plan for engraving bank-notes on steel, which ultimately proved a signal success, and was carried out by Perkins in partnership with the English engraver Heath.
Perkins also experimented with high-pressure steam boilers.
He retired in 1834, and died in London on the 30th of July 1849.
About 1790 Perkins built a machine to cut and head nails in one operation and devised a method of bank-note engraving that made counterfeiting extremely difficult.
His chief contribution to physics lay in the experiments by which he proved the compressibility of water and measured it by a piezometer of his own invention.
In 1823 devised means to attain working steam pressure of 800–1400 psi. He built a Woolf-type steam engine (1827), designed an improved paddle wheel (1829), and invented a means for the free circulation of water in boilers (1831), which led to the design of modern water-tube boilers. He was awarded a medal by the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for his method of ventilating ships’ holds.
He is also known as the father of the refrigerator.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1813.
Jacob was married on November 11, 1790 to Hannah Greenleaf of Newbury and together they had nine children.
His second son, Angier March Perkins (1799 - 1881), also born at Newburyport, went to England in 1827, and was the author of a system of warming buildings by means of high- pressure steam. His grandson, Loftus Perkins (1834 - 1891), most of whose life was spent in England, experimented with the application to steam engines of steam at very high pressures, constructing in 1880 a yacht, the "Anthracite, " whose engines worked with a pressure of 500 lb to the sq. in.
