Person

Stuart, Herbert Akroyd (1864 - 1927)

Born
2 January 1864
Halifax, Yorkshire, England
Died
19 February 1927
'Akroydon', Claremont, Western Australia, Australia
Occupation
Mechanical engineer
Alternative Names
  • Stuart, Akroyd

Summary

Akroyd Stuart was the inventor of the very successful Hornsby-Akroyd hot-bulb heavy-oil engine. His invention patented in 1890, was two years earlier than that of Rudolf Diesel, although the diesel engine name has persisted.

He migrated to Western Australia in 1900 to join his brother Charles and together with Frank Saunders formed the firm Saunders & Stuart Ltd, engineers and manufacturers' agents, mining and agricultural machinery and supplies.

He experimented towards chemically and mechanically treating the sulphide ores of Western Australia, and interested in gas producers, he designed a successful unit operating on the downdraft system, using wood as fuel.

Before coming to Australia, Stuart studied at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, UK, and then worked there as an assistant in the mechanical engineering department. He left the College to become Engineer and later Manager of Bletchley Iron and Tinplate Works - his father's company.

His 1890 patents (Nos. 7146 and 15994) cover, respectively, the automatic ignition engine with injection at the end of compression, and the engine subsequently built by Hornsby and Sons, Grantham, as the Hornsby-Akroyd engine. In all, 32,417 Hornsby-Akroyd engines were built at the Grantham factory alone.

Skip to

Details

Akroyd Stuart left instructions that after his death, all his papers, drawings, and models were to be destroyed, and that instruction was duly carried out by the executors of his will.

In his will, he bequeathed funds to the universities of Western Australia (£500) and Nottingham (£500); and to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (£500), the Royal Aeronautical Society (£700) and the Institute of Marine Engineers (£700), London, to promote and provide lectures on "The origin and development of heavy oil engines".

The University of Nottingham has hosted the Akroyd Stuart Memorial Lecture on occasional years since 1928; similarly the Royal Aeronautical Society has hosted an Akroyd Stuart Memorial Lecture since 1930; the University of Western Australia has hosted an Akroyd Stuart Lecture since 1931; the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, has awarded the Herbert Akroyd Stuart Prize since 1930; and the Institution of Marine Engineers, London, has awarded the Akroyd Stuart Award since 1935.

He also commissioned Professor Robinson to compile and publish "Heavy oil engines of the Akroyd type"

Chronology

1901
Career event - Member (MIMechE), Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London

Published resources

Books

  • Robinson, William, Heavy-oil engines of Akroyd type; being developments of compression-ignition oil engines, including modern applications to land purposes, marine and airship propulsion, and railway traction (London: Blackie and Son Ltd, 1931), 142 pp. Details

Book Sections

Journal Articles

Newspaper Articles

Resources

See also

Rosanne Walker; Ken McInnes

Created: 30 June 1997, Last modified: 12 December 2024

EOAS ID: biogs/P002634b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P002634b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260