Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/356

H renamed ‘The Gentleman and Lady's Palladium,’ 1750, ‘The Gentleman's and Lady's Palladium and Chronologer,’ 1754, ‘The Gentleman's and Lady's Military Palladium,’ 1759, ‘The Palladium Extraordinary,’ 1763, ‘The Palladium Enlarged,’ 1764, ‘The Palladium of Fame,’ 1765, and ‘The British Palladium,’ 1768. Heath conducted his own paper with greater care than that he had expended on the ‘Diary,’ and suggested some useful schemes, which through lack of subscribers were never carried out. He proposed to reprint the original ‘Ladies' Diaries,’ a project fulfilled subsequently by both Charles Hutton (1775) and Thomas Leybourn (1817). He absurdly tried to establish a Palladium Society, having for its mark a ‘Palladium button,’ to be obtained from him. His journal ceased in 1778. He died in 1779.

According to De Morgan, ‘Heath was a person who made noise in his day, and in so doing established a claim to be considered a worthless vagabond.’ But as editor of mathematical periodicals he did something to popularise the study of mathematics in England. His works include, besides those already mentioned: 1. ‘The Practical Arithmetician,’ 1750. 2. ‘The Ladies' Chronologer,’ No. I. 1754 (amalgamated with the ‘Palladium’ of 1755). 3. ‘The Ladies' Philosopher,’ No. I. 1752, II. 1753, III. 1754. 4. ‘Astronomia Accurata; or the Royal Astronomer and Navigator,’ 1760. 5. ‘General and Particular Account of the Annular Eclipse of the Sun which happened on Sunday, April 1, 1764.’ 

HEATH, THOMAS (fl. 1583), mathematician, born in London, was admitted probationer fellow of All Souls, Oxford, in 1567, and proceeded B.A. 1569, and M.A. 1573 (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 270). Wood dates his master's degree in 1579 (Fasti, i. 213). Heath won considerable repute for his knowledge of astronomy and physics, and denounced the astrological predictions of Richard Harvey [q. v.] in his ‘Manifest and Apparent Confutation of an Astrological Discourse lately published to the discomfort (without cause) of the weak and simple sort.’ With that ‘Confutation’ was bound up his ‘Brief Prognostication or Astronomical Prediction of the Conjunction of the two superiour Planets Saturn and Jupiter, which shall be in 1583, April 29,’ London, 1583. Both parts were dedicated to Sir George Carey, ‘knight marshal of the queen's household.’ Heath was a friend of John Dee [q. v.] and Thomas Allen (1542–1632) [q. v.] 

HEATHCOAT, JOHN (1783–1861), inventor, son of Francis Heathcote, a farmer of Long Whatton, Leicestershire, by Elizabeth Burton, was born at Duffield, near Derby, on 7 Aug. 1783. After a moderate education he was apprenticed to a hosiery manufacturer named Swift, but the situation not being found suitable his indentures were cancelled, and he was then apprenticed to William Shepherd, a maker of Derby-ribbed stockings and a frame-smith, at Long Whatton. As a journeyman he afterwards worked with Leonard Elliott, frame-smith and setter-up of machinery at Nottingham; soon purchased the goodwill of the business, and carried it on upon his own account. His attention was early turned to the construction of a lace-making machine. About 1803 he removed to Hathern with the object of constructing a machine which would do the work of the pillow, the multitude of pins, the thread and bobbins, and the fingers, and would supersede them in the production of lace, as the stocking-loom had superseded the knitting-needle. Analysing the component threads of pillow-lace, he classified them into longitudinal and diagonal. The former he placed on a beam as warp. The remainder he reserved as weft, each thread to be working separately, and to be twisted round a warp-thread, and then to cross diagonally its appropriate neighbour thread, and thus close the upper and lower sides of the mesh. Finally he contrived the needful mechanical arrangements: the bobbins to distribute the thread, the carriage and grooves in which they must run, their mode of twisting round the warp and travelling from side to side of the machine. Marc Isambard Brunel said of this machine: ‘It appears to me one of the most complete mechanical combinations, in which the author displays uncommon powers of invention.’ A patent, No. 3151, taken out in 1808, and known as the ‘horizontal pillow,’ led after further experiments to the construction of the machine patented in 1809, No. 3216. Thus at the age of twenty-four Heathcoat became the acknowledged inventor of the most complicated machine ever produced. The first square yard of plain net was sold from the machine at 5l.; the average price in 1890 is five pence. The annual average returns of the trade are 4,000,000l., giving employment