Peter Ewart
Encyclopedia
Peter Ewart was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

 who was influential in developing the technologies of turbine
Turbine
A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work.The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they move and...

s and theories of thermodynamics
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...

.

He was son of the Church of Scotland
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....

 minister of Troqueer near Dumfries
Dumfries
Dumfries is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth. Dumfries was the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South...

, and was one of eleven children. His brother Joseph Ewart
Joseph Ewart
Joseph Ewart was a Scottish diplomatist.Ewart was the eldest son of the minister of Troquear in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, was born on 30 April l759. He was educated at Dumfries and at Edinburgh University, and then acted as travelling tutor to Macdonald of Clanronald...

 became British ambassador to Prussia; John, a doctor, became Chief Inspector of East India Company hospitals in India; and William, father of William Ewart
William Ewart
William Ewart was a British politician, born in Liverpool on 1 May 1798. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining the Newdigate prize for English verse. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1827, and the next year entered Parliament for the borough of Bletchingley in...

. was business partner of Sir John Gladstone, father of William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

, whose godfather he was and whom he was named after.

After graduating from the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, he was apprenticed to millwright
Millwright
A millwright is a craftsman or tradesman engaged with the construction and maintenance of machinery.Early millwrights were specialist carpenters who erected machines used in agriculture, food processing and processing lumber and paper...

 John Rennie. His work with water wheel
Water wheel
A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of free-flowing or falling water into useful forms of power. A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface...

s led him to work with Matthew Boulton
Matthew Boulton
Matthew Boulton, FRS was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on the state of the art, making possible the...

 and James Watt
James Watt
James Watt, FRS, FRSE was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.While working as an instrument maker at the...

 for whom by 1790 he was agent in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

. At the same time as acting as agent he was also trading on his own account as a millwright
Millwright
A millwright is a craftsman or tradesman engaged with the construction and maintenance of machinery.Early millwrights were specialist carpenters who erected machines used in agriculture, food processing and processing lumber and paper...

, enabling him to provide the complementary shafts, gears and other necessities to harness the power of the Boulton & Watt steam engines.

In 1792, frustrated in administering the immature and, as yet, unreliable machinery, he left Boulton and Watt to work in partnership
Partnership
A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.Since humans are social beings, partnerships between individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments, and varied combinations thereof, have always been and remain commonplace...

 with Samuel Oldknow
Samuel Oldknow
thumb|Samuel OldknowSamuel Oldknow was an English cotton manufacturer.Samuel Oldknow Jnr, the eldest son of Samuel Oldknow Sr and Margaret Foster, was born 5 October 1756 in Anderton, near Chorley, Lancashire, and died 18 September 1828 at Mellor Lodge, Derbyshire. He had an elder sister named...

 in a cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

 bleaching and calico
Calico
-Animals:* Calico butterfly, a genus of brush-footed butterflies commonly called the Crackers, Calicoes, or Clicks*Calico cat, a domestic cat with the common three- or four-colored coat pattern calico -Animals:* Calico butterfly, a genus of brush-footed butterflies commonly called the Crackers,...

 printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

 venture. He anticipated this being a profitable concern but the partnership was dissolved within a year and he returned to engineering. In 1798 he went into partnership with Samuel Greg
Samuel Greg
Samuel Greg was a British entrepreneur and pioneer of the factory system at Quarry Bank Mill.He was born in Belfast, Ireland as the second son of a successful merchant. At the age of eight, he went to live with his uncle, Robert Hyde, at Ardwick Hall, Manchester...

, installing an innovative water wheel at Greg's Quarry Bank Mill
Quarry Bank Mill
Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, England, is one of the best preserved textile mills of the Industrial Revolution and is now a museum of the cotton industry. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building.-Water mill:...

 on the River Bollin
River Bollin
The River Bollin is a major tributary of the River Mersey in the north-west of England.It rises in Macclesfield Forest at the western end of the Peak District, and can be seen in spring form, from the Buxton to Macclesfield road. The stream then descends the through Macclesfield and Wilmslow where...

 in Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

. As a standby, he installed a Watt steam engine
Watt steam engine
The Watt steam engine was the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to drive the piston helped by a partial vacuum...

.

By 1811, Ewart had abandoned the venture with Greg to concentrate on his own manufacturing business but also his scientific work. He became, along with John Dalton
John Dalton
John Dalton FRS was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness .-Early life:John Dalton was born into a Quaker family at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, Cumberland,...

, a vice-president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, popularly known as the Lit & Phil, is a learned society in Manchester, England.Established in 1781 as the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, by Thomas Percival, Thomas Barnes and Thomas Henry, other prominent members have included...

 and became active in the contemporary controversies about heat
Heat
In physics and thermodynamics, heat is energy transferred from one body, region, or thermodynamic system to another due to thermal contact or thermal radiation when the systems are at different temperatures. It is often described as one of the fundamental processes of energy transfer between...

, work
Mechanical work
In physics, work is a scalar quantity that can be described as the product of a force times the distance through which it acts, and it is called the work of the force. Only the component of a force in the direction of the movement of its point of application does work...

 and energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

. Motivated by a paper of John Playfair
John Playfair
John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Scottish scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is perhaps best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth , which summarized the work of James Hutton...

 and encouraged by Dalton, in 1813 he published On the measure of moving force in which he defended the nascent ideas of the conservation of energy
Conservation of energy
The nineteenth century law of conservation of energy is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. The total energy is said to be conserved over time...

 championed by John Smeaton
John Smeaton
John Smeaton, FRS, was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist...

. The paper was strongly to influence Dalton's pupil James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule FRS was an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work . This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The...

. A vocal advocate of the application of scientific knowledge in engineering, he was one of the founders of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute.

Ewart took up the post of Chief Engineer and Chief Inspector of Machinery with the Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 in 1835 and died on 15 September 1842 at Woolwich Dockyard
Woolwich Dockyard
Woolwich Dockyard was an English naval dockyard founded by King Henry VIII in 1512 to build his flagship Henri Grâce à Dieu , the largest ship of its day....

when a chain snapped as he was supervising the removal of a boiler.
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