Robert Mallet was a British civil engineer and scientific investigator. He is regarded by many as the 'Father of Seismology'.
Background
Robert Mallet was born June 3, 1810, in Dublin, Ireland. His father John Mallet, of Devonshire, owned a plumbing business and copper and brass foundry in Dublin, from which he made a large fortune. He emigrated to Dublin at the invitation of his uncle Robert and married Robert’s daughter, Thomasina Mallet. Only three families can trace their descent in the male line from the Norman conquerors, i.e. those who fought at Hastings in 1066. One of these is Malet (or Mallet).
Robert Mallet was at first a weakling child. As he grew, however, he developed a strong constitution and considerable powers of endurance.
Education
Robert Mallet received his early education at Bective House Seminary for Young Gentlemen was located at 2 Great Denmark Street in Dublin. Mallet remained at Bective House until he was nearly sixteen. In 1826, the young Mallet described the deficiencies in the manufacture of pipes, steam engines, etc., in France and exhibited a great enthusiasm for engineering matters.
Mallet had acquired a good grounding in French, and appears to have had a reasonable acquaintance with the German language. During all this time he paid particular attention to engineering matters, but he was equally fond of chemistry, in which he attained marked proficiency at a very early age. When a little over 12 years old he used so much of his time in making all sorts of curious boyish experiments and chemical mixtures, often of anything but a pleasant character, that a small room was set apart as his ‘laboratory’. At Ryder’s Row, he spent a great deal of his time when not at school, and he was fortunate in being able to secure everything he required for the construction of experimental apparatus from his father’s works nearby. So much was this little room his favorite haunt that it was said that whenever it became the stern parent’s duty to correct the boy for mischievous pranks, the punishment that was found most severe was to lock up his ‘laboratory’ for from one to three days, according to the nature of the offense. This laboratory was afterwards provided with ever requisite for chemical and metallurgical investigation, and good use was made of it long before its owner was twenty-five years old.
Having successfully completed the entrance examinations in Greek and Latin, Mallet entered Trinity College, Dublin as a ‘sociorum commensalis’ on 4th December 1826. Mallet’s academic record was not outstanding, indeed he became within a hair’s breadth of being cautioned in the Hilary term of his final year. As an essentially practical young man, academic life must have seemed somewhat tedious to him and this is borne out in his examination records. During his time at College, Mallet received Mathematical instruction from Mr. Friedlezius, a Swedish Professor of Mathematics. This special training in Mathematics must have been of the greatest use to him, not only as an engineer but as one of the earliest seismologists.
Mallet received his Bachelor of Arts degree at the July Commencements of 1830. After he left College, Mallet spent much of his time in his father’s works at Ryder’s Row and also took every opportunity to visit engineering establishments in England. He also found time to take instruction in surveying and levelling from Joseph Byrne, a Land Surveyor and Valuer with a practice at 23 Lower Mount Street in Dublin.
The rapidity with which Mallet acquired practical engineering knowledge was remarkable and was due to a combination of the education he received at Trinity College, practical experiments in his father’s works, and guidance from a relative, Dr. Burton, a well-traveled man of considerable accomplishments.
Career
In 1831, Mallet made an extended tour of the Continent in the Company of Benjamin Purser of Rathmines Castle and Professor Friedlezius, which included a visit to the Mer de Glace, observations of which lead him to present a paper to the British Association meeting in 1837 on glacier mechanisms. On his return he joined his father’s business and rapidly assumed responsibility for the Victoria foundry and its attached fitting and machining shops. The principal work carried on by the firs as the time was brass and copper founding and plumbing of all kinds.
On his son’s marriage, John Mallet first went to live across the road at 97 Capel Street before moving to 5 Drumcondra Terrace, although still keeping a business address in Capel Street. Around 1832 Robert became a full partner in the firm, which now traded as J. & R. Mallet, sometimes found on Ironwork as I. & R. Mallet.
The Victoria foundry in Dublin was greatly extended under Robert’s guidance and secured large contracts for railway plant, permanent way materials, cast-iron bridges, cranes and other ironwork. The engineering work carried out in Ireland between 1830 and 1860 by Mallet’s firm was both extensive and varied, but what brought Mallet into the fill light of the engineering world of his day was his feat of raising, by means of screw jacks, the roof of St. Georges Church in Dublin, thereby enabling the supporting wall to be rebuilt and the roof retained to this day in its original form. This work carried out when Mallet was only 24, earned him a Walker premium from the Institution of Civil Engineers in London in 1842.
In October 1833, Robert Mallet was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and in the space of a few years enriched the proceedings of that body with several important papers of metallurgical and geological topics. In addition, he had begun to write on the nature of earthquakes and associated phenomena. His contributions to the Journal of the Geological Society of Dublin, of which Society he was three times President, show a remarkable grasp of the complex nature of crustal and glacial movements, and in 1848 he proposed the general adoption of a new and uniform principal for laying down geological sections. In 1846, on the first occasion of his election to the Presidency of the Geological Society of Dublin, Mallet had a painstaking approach to the investigation of any matter.
In May 1839, Mallet was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, proposed by the leading consultant, Sir William Cubitt, and seconded by Thomas Rhodes, the Engineer to the Shannon Commissioners, and Francis Bramah. He had joined the Irish Society of Civil Engineers in 1836 and became a life-long supporter of both professional bodies. Mallet was transferred to the class of Member of the London Institute in 1842 on the recommendation of Burgoyne, William Fairbairn, a leading structural and mechanical engineer, and Vignoles, who, with Sir John Macneil, had laid the basis for the development of the railway system in Ireland.
During the previous year, Mallet, together with Sir Robert Kane, had advocated that a Technical School should be set up in Dublin to provide instruction in engineering subjects. When the Board of Trinity College Dublin realized that this development was likely to be supported, it approved a submission from Dr Humphrey Lloyd, Professor of Natural Philosophy, for founding a School of Engineering within the walls of the College and, in 1842, the creation of the Chair of Civil Engineers, whose first occupant was Sir John Macneil. Mallet also applied for the Chair and asked Macneil for a reference. Macneil declined on the grounds that Mallet’s references from the eminent engineer William Cubitt and James Apjohn, the Professor of Chemistry in Trinity College were far more suitable than any Macneil himself could offer.
Mallet presented his first and albeit somewhat unusual contribution to the British Association meeting in Dublin in 1835, the same year that the engineering profession in Ireland formed themselves into a society and the British Association set up a separate Mechanical Section. His report was on the application of a series of magnets for the atomic separation of brass and iron borings and filings. He had also begun an extensive series of investigations into the corrosion of iron. Some idea of the output of his scientific writings amidst all the business of managing the Victoria works may be gained from noting over fifty papers on diverse topics listed by the Royal Society in their Catalogue of Scientific Publications between 1835 and 1858.
Mallet patented a number of devices and techniques during a lifetime of engineering and scientific study. The earliest patent, taken out in 1841, was for methods of protecting metals from corrosion or oxidation and preventing the fouling or iron ships or buoys, a direct application of his research work on corrosion of iron, but probably his most widely applied invention was that for buckled plates, first taken out in 1852. These and other patents are referred to in other papers.
Mallet had fully expected to obtain the contract of the Dublin Corporation for the water pipes and other castings connected with the waterworks, but, unfortunately for the trade of the city and its workmen, the contract went to Scotland. If the Dublin firm had secured this contract, it is not unlikely that J. & R. Mallet would have carried on business for several more years. Around £300-£400 were paid weekly by the firm in wages to the workmen. Furthermore Mallet was by now spending most of his time in London attending to his growing consultancy and his scientific writings, and his father was in his eighties. It was therefore decided to close the Victoria Foundry, the business being placed in the hands of Wheatley, Kirk & Price, a firm of engineering valuers, for eventual winding up.
Having moved permanently to London, Mallet lodged, whilst looking for a suitable residence, with a Mrs. Dial, to whose daughter he became attached and subsequently married in 1861. Apart from individual papers, Mallet was a regular contributor to the discussions at meetings of both the Institutions of Civil Engineers in London and Dublin throughout his professional career. Environmentalists may be amused by Mallet’s contribution to the discussion on Denton’s paper to the Institutions of Civil Engineers in 1861 in ‘Discharge from Under-Drainage’.
In 1866, Mallet was elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, having served on the Council and as a Vice-President for many years. He had, in fact, refused the Presidency the previous year on account of his residence and duties being in London but was persuaded to change his mind and accept what was regarded as an honour bestowed on him by the Institution in recognition of his achievements. As President he suggested that the Institution should become a chartered body.
In March, 1859, Mallet delivered an important paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers on the coefficients of elasticity and rupture in wrought iron, in particular reporting on results obtained from work on mass forging. He was awarded a Telford Medal for the paper, but from the discussion it is clear that not everyone agreed with his conclusions. Clay of the Mersey Steel Co. said that, although the author possessed such eminent qualifications and great practical experience, he had been led to draw erroneous conclusions. George Hemans also disagreed.
Around 1850, Mallet gave far more attention to the problems associated with constructing heavy ordnance. For at least two centuries the advantage of cutting spiral grooves in the inside of barrels of small-arms had been known. Rifling the barrel gave the projected shell a rotation about an axis parallel to that if the gun and increased the range and accuracy of the shots. Experiments with larger bore guns invariably ended with the barrel of the gun bursting and progress was barred by the difficulty of obtaining canon of sufficient strength to bear charges of power proportionate to the weight of projectile, until the principle of ringed ordnance was communicated by Mallet to a meeting of the Irish Royal Academy on the 25th June 1855. The principle involved increasing the bursting strength of the mortar by building up the whole thickness using superimposed lamina or rings with initial tension and could be likened to present-day pre-tensioning of structural components. This method later became universally employed in the manufacture of large rifled cannon. The mathematical theory of ringed ordnance was developed by a Trinity College Professor, Dr. Andrew Searle Harte, who taught the principles of mechanics to engineering students in the 1850’s. This lengthy paper to the Academy was subsequently published in 1856 in book form by Longmans and formed the basis for most of the later books on ordnance and on casting and founding. The book contains information on the resistance of cylinders to internal pressure, the molecular constitution of crystalline bodies, the physical conditions induced in casting and forging, especially on a large scale, the effects of fluid or gaseous pressure, expansion by heat, and numerous questions relating to metallic alloys, the action of repeated strains and the determination of the strength of metals and alloys.
War had broken out in the Crimea in October 1853 and Mallet was keen to proceed with building and testing a monster mortar of 36” calibre in order that similar mortars could be used to break the Russians hold on the fortress town of Sevastopol. Mallet’s claim to be the prior inventor of ringed ordnance was contested by Captain T. A. Blakely and the lengthy arguments and counter-arguments can be followed in the pages of the Irish Royal Academy Proceedings for 1855. My own impression is that Mallet just about won the day and relied mainly on his reputation as a scientific investigator to silence his critics.
Mallet had laid his original designs before Government in February 1851, but the ordnance authorities reported decisively against his proposition. While accepting the resulting destructive power of such shells, they did not believe that a mortar could be built to fire them. Dealing with the red tape at the War Office was not something he relished, but fortunately, Mallet had the opportunity to express his views personally to the Prince Consort and Lord Palmerston and, with their assistance and encouragement was able to design and have constructed two 36” mortars.
The contract for these mortars was signed in August 1855, with C. J. Mare, with whom Mallet was to have dealings during the construction of the Westminster Bridge in London. The construction and subsequent trials of these monster mortars may be traced in the Proceedings of the Ordnance Select Committee and in the pages of the Engineer. An engraving depicts the mortars in the Thames Ironworks of C. J. Mare at Blackwall. Their competition was delayed until after the Crimean war was concluded due to Mare becoming bankrupted by the contract for building the foundations of the New Westminster Bridge. By April 1857, the mortars were in an advanced state of construction and were conveyed down the Thames from Blackwall to the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and thence conveyed in pieces to the practice ground on Plumstead Marshes. A platform was erected on which the mortars were mounted for firing and on the 19th October 1857, the Ordnance Select Committee witnessed the firing of seven rounds with varying weights of charge, the greatest range achieved being 2644 yards. The spherical mines in some cases penetrated up to 30 feet into the ground. The mortar was damaged and had to be dismantled, and a Sub-Committee was set up to report on the state of the mortar after firing. A further trial was carried out on 18th December and again one of the rings was found to be defective and sent to The Thames Ironworks for repair.
Working from his office in Westminster, Mallet had in 1855 also designed a floating battery for conveying his mortars to the Crimea, but peace was concluded a few months after the fall of Sevastopol and it was never constructed. Around the same time, Mallet designed a 70 Ton capacity wrought-iron sheer legs for the Victoria Docks then building in London, and considered to be the best docks in the world at the time. Sheer legs were employed in the dockyards for masting and demisting ships in addition to lifting heavyweights. They were erected by the assignees of the late firm of C. J. Mare under the direction of George Bidder, Engineer-In-Chief to the Dock Company. The legs were formed of hollow tubes of boilerplate riveted together, each tube having the form of a parabolic spindle.
Whilst carrying out his consulting practice Mallet devoted an increasingly greater amount of his time to writing. At all times a most prolific contributor to engineering and technical papers, he was, because of his great gift of clear description and concise summary employed by the Government and others to prepare reports. During his association with the Practical Mechanics Journal, (he was editor from 1861 to 1867) he edited the ‘Record of International Exhibition, 1862’ and contributed to it a masterly introduction which is a history of exhibitions from the earliest times up to 1862, and the interesting and suggestive article ‘Retrospect - the Future.’ In section G9 at the Exhibition, Mallet had traced the history of machine tools and suggested a method of classifying them by function. In the same year, Mallet was honoured by Trinity College at the Winter Commencements with the honorary degree of Master of Engineering (MAI), along with Richard Griffith, John Macneil, and Samuel Downing. Two years later, Trinity bestowed on him an honorary Legum Doctor degree. During his association with the Practical Mechanics Journal, Mallet published a series of major articles on iron founding and ordnance.
Mallet went to Paris in April 1867 to report for the journal The Engineer on the French International Exhibition. He found that the French had made great strides since the 1851 London Exhibition, but English Exhibitors represented only about 5% of industrial strength. Having been officially opened inauspiciously on April Fool’s Day, there were considerable delays in mounting many of the exhibits. Mallet’s reports on ‘The Artillery and other war material produced at the International Exhibition, Paris’ were reproduced as a series of twenty-four substantial articles, and represent an invaluable source of information for the military historian.
Mallet, writing to Joseph Holmes from 7 Westminster Chambers on 2nd August 1867, on his return from Belfast, complains of being overburdened with work.
Another diversion which Mallet became involved with at the Dublin exhibition of 1865 and Paris of 1867 was that of acting on Committees to adjudge competitions to find a burglar-proof safe at a time when robberies were very prevalent. These ‘Battles of the Safes’ as they were styled attracted great attention from the business community and were prone to all manner of partisan wheelings and dealings. It is amusing to read the accounts of the intense rivalry between, for instance, Chatwood of Britain and Herring of America. There are illustrations giving some idea of the atmosphere surrounding these events, in some cases apparently biased in favour of Britain, as seen through the eyes of a London publisher.
Continuing his outpouring of useful scientific commentaries, between 1867 and 1870, Mallet revised or added notes to a number of texts on subjects close to his heart. Writing with authority, based on his years of practical experience, Mallet’s primary objective was to bring the texts up-to-date with the rapidly changing practices of the day, but he could not resist the temptation to being biased in favour of his own investigations and patents, particularly in the notes added by him as an appendix to Law’s ‘Civil Engineering’, published in 1869. In these notes, he defends his own improvements to the atmospheric railway system, lateral transferring of carriages from rail to road, and improvements to graving docks, the latter two being the subject of patents taken out by Mallet. He took issue with Law on the matter of the corrosion of iron in sea-water and referred readers to the four reports to the British Association of his extensive investigations carried out in Dublin in the 1830s.
Mallet’s close association with the War Office and military engineering is reflected by his honorary membership of the Royal Artillery and United Services Institutions, and his being asked to translate a memoir by Baron von Weber, entitled ‘Our Railway System viewed in reference to invasion’. As the original memoir was only some 40 pages, Mallet’s ‘introduction’ of some 60 pages may be regarded as a significant contribution to the subject. Von Weber was a celebrated and respected railway engineer who had handled the complicated and difficult arrangements for the movements by railway of nearly the whole of the armies of the South German Kingdoms. The main principle enunciated for preparing the railway systems for the rapid movement of large numbers of troops and equipment was standardization of rolling stock and operational procedures. Mallet dedicated the book to Burgoyne. Field Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne, who was Chairman of the Irish Board of Works, had founded the Society of Civil Engineers of Ireland, died an old man the following month. Mallet had, a few years earlier, contributed to the latest edition of a small work on Macadamised Roads, the third part having been written by Burgoyne prior to 1845.
In 1870, Mallet considerably revised and rewrote a text by George Field on Colours and Colouring, the chapters on the Theory of natural Colours and Oils, Dryers & Varnishes being written wholly by him. In the latter case, Mallet refers his readers for more information back to his original researches carried out in the 1840’s for the British Association.
The series of articles by Mallet on the practice of iron founding witch appeared in the Practical Mechanics Magazine Between December 1865 and March 1867, together with the articles in the Engineer on related topics and his extensive writings on ordnance over a long period, combine to form a form a library output indicating that Robert Mallet was a mechanical engineer in the widest sense and a metallurgist in the narrower sense, with a specific interest in the application of engineering science to the development of ordnance.
In his introductory sketch of 78 pages (the original work only ran to 57 pages!) to Professor Palmieri’s treatise on the 1872 Eruption of Vesuvius, Mallet described the present position of terrestrial vulcanicity, and traced the outlines and relations of the two branches of scientific investigation-vulcanology and seismology. The preparation, with his son professor J.W. Mallet of the University of Virginia, of an earthquake map of the World, had ‘demanded visits to the chief libraries of Europe and the collating of some thousands of authors in various languages and of all time, and was a work of great and sustained labour.’
After a life of unusually sound health and active occupation, in the Winter of 1871-1872 Mallet's eyes suffered from a severe attack, which gradually impaired and, after some time, practically destroyed his sight for all other purposes than merely guiding his movements, although he continued to accomplish much mental work with the aid of an amanuensis. In November 1880 Mallet was attacked by diffuse cystitis and, after a year of much pain, patiently and courageously borne, with continuous confinement to bed, he died peacefully on the 6th November 1881, 69 and was laid to rest in Norwood Cemetery near his home in South London.
Views
Mallet was strongly pro-Ireland if not pro-Irish and never passed up an opportunity to pinpoint Ireland’s problems and suggest solutions. He was firm of the opinion that the then-available technology should have been imported and Ireland less dependent on agriculture.
Mallet had referred in his paper to the experimental work carried out by him in 1856 in connection with the construction of large mortars and reported that he had declined a further grant to continue the experiments. This subject of heavy ordnance had occupied Mallet’s thoughts for many a year. As early as 1832, on a visit to the continent, Mallet had witnessed the effects produced at the siege of Antwerp by 24” calibre shells thrown by the French, had observed that causes of their apparent failure and proceeded to investigate the whole question of the relative powers of demolition of shot and shells and relative relationships to calibre and weight. Mallet decided that the minimum diameter of an effective shell in siege conditions should be around 36”. The mortars mostly in use at the time were of 13” calibre (based on the old French standard Paris Foot).
Mallet expressed the opinion that, though Government factories and foundries are a necessity, the construction of ordnance is essentially a work of mechanical engineering.
Mallet warned Britain not to fall behind Europe and America in the matters of technological innovation and education lest ‘the tortoise beat the hare at last.’
Mallet’s desire to bring the scientific and technical advancements of other countries to the attention of English readers is well illustrated by noting his translation of Professor Palmieri’s treatise on the 1872 Eruption of Vesuvius, Mallet used as a frontispiece a quotation from Goethe’s “Kunst und Alterthum” - ‘the Translator should look upon himself as a Merchant in the Intellectual Exchange of the world, whose business it is to promote the interchange of the produce of the mind.’
Quotations:
"To the popular mind, Volcanoes and Earthquakes are only isolated items of curiosity amongst “the wonders of the world” - few geologists even appear to realise how great and important are the relations of vulcanicity to their science, viewed as a whole. Yet of vulcanicity it is not too much to say, that in proportion as its nature and doctrines come to be known and understood as parts of the cosmos, the nearer will it be seen to lie at the basis of all Physical Geology."
Personality
Mallet had a most remarkable capacity for at once perceiving the essential elements of any set of problems placed before him or the fundamental principles upon which any question depended. The previous identical experience was not at all necessary to him. The law involved its application were the first and immediately succeeding thoughts upon the presentation of any question or project. Owing to this capacity he was enabled, as shown in many of his papers, to state and elucidate a question or subject in the clearest manner. He possessed extraordinary inductive powers, and his generalizations proved themselves to be very accurate. Of his store of knowledge upon almost every scientific subject, none but those who knew him, and enjoyed his intimate acquaintance, could form an adequate conception. In social and private file, Mallet was beloved for the kindness, geniality, and humour of his disposition, for his readiness in conversation, and for his uniform good temper.