Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/370

 in the field, together with the medal for the Indian Mutiny campaign and the clasp for Lucknow. After commanding a battery of horse artillery at home from 1872 to 1876, he was, on promotion to regimental lieutenant-colonel, put in command of two batteries at Barrackpur. From 1877 to 1881 he was deputy inspector-general and from 1881 to 1886 inspector-general of ordnance, Madras. During his tenure of these posts expeditions were sent to Malta, Afghanistan, and Upper Burmah, and he received the thanks of the Madras government, which were endorsed by the viceroy. He retired in October 1886 with the rank of lieutenant-general, being made C.B. for his services during the Indian Mutiny and receiving the reward for distinguished service. All under whom he served, including Sir James Outram [q. v.], Sir Harry Lumsden [q. v. Suppl. I], and Sir Thomas Harte Franks [q. v.], eulogised his soldierly qualities.

Chamier was a good musician and played the violincello. He graduated Mus. Bac. of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1874. He died after a long illness at his residence, Brooke House, Camberley, on 9 June 1910. On 4 Sept. 1858 he married, at Dinapore, Dora Louisa, daughter of George Tyrrell, Esq., M.D., county Down, and by her had six daughters and three sons. His widow survived him with two daughters and one son, George Daniel, C.M.G., lieutenant-colonel of the royal artillery.

 CHANCE, JAMES TIMMINS, first baronet (1814–1902), manufacturer and lighthouse engineer, born at Birmingham on 22 March 1814, was the eldest of the six sons of William Chance (1788–1856), merchant and glass manufacturer, of Spring Grove, Birmingham (high bailiff 1829-30), by his wife Phoebe (d. 1865), fourth daughter of James Timmins of Birmingham. From a private school at Totteridge James passed to University College, London, where he gained high honours in languages, mathematics, and science. At seventeen he entered his father's mercantile business, but finding the work distasteful began to study for holy orders. In 1833 he matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he made mathematics his chief study, won a foundation scholarship, and graduated B.A. as seventh wrangler in 1838, after losing a year through insomnia brought on by overwork; he proceeded M.A. in 1841, and M.A. ad eundem at Oxford in 1848. Changing his views as to a profession, he became a student at Lincoln's Inn, but he ultimately joined his uncle and father in their glass works at Spon Lane near Birmingham. Here he devoted himself to the manufacturing side of the business and to its scientific developments.

Whilst still at Cambridge he had invented a process for polishing sheet glass so as to produce 'patent plate,' the machinery for which still remains in use. But it was the manufacture and perfection of dioptric apparatus for lighthouses which came to absorb Chance's attention. This difficult manufacture, originally a French invention, was first carried on in England by Messrs. Cookson & Co. of South Shields from 1831 to 1845, when it became again the monopoly of two firms in Paris. About 1850 the manufacture was taken up by Chance's firm. M. Tabouret, a French expert, was engaged for its superintendence, but he left the Chances' service in 1853. Two years later the manufacture began in earnest under James Chance's direction. Royal commissioners had been appointed in 1858 to inquire into the state of the lights, buoys, and beacons of the United Kingdom, and had soon detected grave defects in the existing dioptric apparatus. On 23 Dec. 1859 the commissioners thoroughly examined the works at Spon Lane, under the guidance of James Chance, who placed his mathematical and technical knowledge at their disposal. At the request of the commissioners, Sir George Airy, the astronomer royal, consulted with Chance and examined at Spon Lane, on 2 and 3 April 1860, a large apparatus under construction for the government of Victoria. New principles formulated by Airy were first tried upon an apparatus which the firm was constructing for the Russian government. In the autumn of 1860 Chance joined Professor Faraday, acting for the Trinity House, in experimenting with the firm's apparatus at the Whitby southern lighthouse. Faraday acknowledged deep indebtedness to Chance 'for the earnest and intelligent manner in which he has wrought with me in the experiments, working and thinking every point out,' and he announced that the manufacturer could henceforth be relied upon to adjust the apparatus perfectly. One tiling that Chance discovered at Whitby was that for the adjustment by 'internal observation' it was not necessary to see the horizon itself, but that a graduated staff at a short distance from 