Career
He went into the trade first with George Priestley in Street Giles-in-the-Fields who died around 1812, and worked then with Priestley"s widow. He took a particular interest in the study of architecture. In 1823 he issued a bibliographical Catalogue of on Architecture and the Fine Arts, of which a new edition appeared in 1854.
He followed the Catalogue in 1849-1850 with a Rudimentary Dictionary of Terms used in Architecture, Building, and Engineering, a work which reached a fifth edition in 1876.
Weale died in London on 18 December 1862. Weale was on good terms with many men of science, and published cheap literature for technical education.
His Rudimentary Series (over 130 works, usually selling at one shilling) and other educational series comprised standard works, both in classics and science. They were suggested initially by William Reid, and were continued after his death, first by James Sprent Virtue.
Source: Lists at end of the publications.
The series was later taken on by the publisher Crosby Lockwood, who added volumes while retaining the system of reference numbers (across editions). John George Swindell, Well-digging, Boring, and Pump-work
Edmund Beckett Denison, Clock and watch making
Joseph Glynn, On the construction of cranes, and machinery for raising heavy bodies
Joseph Glynn, On the power of water, as applied to drive flour mills, and to give motion to turbines and other hydrostatic engines
Alan Stevenson, On the history, construction, and illumination of lighthouses
William Snow Harris, On Galvanism
Thomas Roger Smith (1861) Acoustics.