Background
The youngest son of engineer Robert Stevenson, and brother of the lighthouse engineers Alan and David Stevenson, between 1854 and 1886 he designed many lighthouses, with his brother David, and then with David"s son David Alan Stevenson.
engineer meteorologist civil engineer
The youngest son of engineer Robert Stevenson, and brother of the lighthouse engineers Alan and David Stevenson, between 1854 and 1886 he designed many lighthouses, with his brother David, and then with David"s son David Alan Stevenson.
University of Edinburgh. Royal High School.
His designs, celebrated as ground breaking, ushered in a new era of lighthouse creation. James Melville Balfour trained under Doctorate. & T. Stevenson and then emigrated to New Zealand, where he was first the marine engineer for Otago Province before he appointed Colonial Marine Engineer. Maggie Balfour was the older sister of James Balfour.
Thomas Stevenson was a devout and regular attender at Saint Stephen"s Church in Street Stephen"s Place, Silvermills, at the north end of Street Vincent Street, Edinburgh.
He was involved in regrettable efforts to rubbish the inventions of John Richardson Wigham. In 1869, as a successful experiment into using the newly invented electric light for lighthouses, Stevenson had an underwater cable installed from the eastern part of Granton Harbour, and a light on the end of the Trinity Chain Pier was controlled from half a mile away by an operator on the harbour.
He examined wind and wave effects, and his analysis is the first quantitative discussion of wave height as a (square root) function of fetch. His paper is one of the first quantitative studies of windspeeds in the planetary boundary layer.
Motivated by practical applications, these are fundamental contributions.
He died in Edinburgh and is buried in the Stevenson family plot in New Calton Cemetery. Whalsay Skerries (1854)
Out Skerries (1854)
Muckle Flugga (1854)
Davaar (1854)
Ushenish (1857)
South Rona (1857)
Kyleakin (1857)
Ornsay (1857)
Sound of Mull (1857)
Cantick Head (1858)
Bressay (1858)
Ruvaal (1859)
Corran Point (1860)
Fladda (1860)
McArthur"s Head (1861)
Street Abb"s Head (1862)
Butt of Lewis (1862)
Holborn Head (1862)
Monach Islands (1864)
Skervuile (1865)
Auskerry (1866)
Lochindaal (1869)
Scurdie Ness (1870)
Stour Head (1870)
Dubh Artach (1872)
Turnberry Point (1873)
Chicken Rock (1875)
Lindisfarne (1877, 1880)
Fidra (1885)
Oxcar (1886)
Ailsa Craig Lighthouse (1886).
Royal Society of Edinburgh.