Bramah, Joseph (1748–1814)

A photograph of Joseph Bramah's ‘unpickable’ lock, which he patented in 1784, and which bears his name. Bramah was a most creative inventor, and among his many patents he included a machine for printing numbered banknotes, improvements in steam engines and papermaking machinery, and the beer engine for drawing beer.

English inventor of a flushing water closet (1778), an ‘unpickable’ lock (1784), and the hydraulic press (1795). The press made use of Blaise Pascal's regulation (that pressure in fluid contained in a vessel is evenly distributed) and employed water as the hydraulic fluid; it was used in cotton baling and in forging.

Bramah took out patents for 18 inventions, but his training of a whole generation of engineers in the craft of precision engineering and the manufacture of machine tools at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution was probably an even greater legacy.

Bramah was born near Barnsley, Yorkshire. On completing his apprenticeship with a cabinetmaker, he set up his own business in London. One of his assistants was Henry Maudslay.

In 1785 he suggested the locomotion of ships by means of screws; in 1790 and 1793 he constructed the hydraulic transmission of power. Among Bramah's other inventions were a beer pump and machines for numbering banknotes, for making paper, and for the manufacture of aerated water and pen nibs.