Background
He was born at Brandon, County Durham, on 22 August 1788.
He was born at Brandon, County Durham, on 22 August 1788.
After some elementary education at the village school, he was apprenticed at 14 to a cabinet-maker in Durham. He remained with him six years, studying also mathematics, architecture, and perspective.
In 1808 he went to Scotland, and after working there as a journeyman for five years, obtained employment in London with an architect. He began to practice as a civil engineer on his own account in 1823, but much of his time was devoted to the preparation of his engineering text-books, which gained a wide reputation. They included Elementary Principles of Carpentry (1820), almost the first book of its kind in English; Practical Treatise on the Strength of Cast Iron and other Metals (1824); Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings (1824); Practical Treatise on Railroads and Carriages (1825); and The Steam Engine (1827). He died in London on the 28th of January 1829.
Tredgold gave an influential definition of civil engineering, on which the charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers based itself in 1828: "A Society for the general advancement of Mechanical Science, and more particularly for promoting the acquisition of that species of knowledge which constitutes the profession of a Civil Engineer; being the art of directing the great sources of power in Nature for the use and convenience of man, as the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal trade, as applied in the construction of roads, bridges, aqueducts, canals, river navigation, and docks, for internal intercourse and exchange; and in the construction of ports harbours, moles, breakwaters, and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by artificial power, for the purposes of commerce; and in the construction and adaptation of machinery, and in the drainage of cities and towns. "
