Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/316

 ingenuity. He was a member, and at one time president, of the Smeatonian Society, the precursor of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 1762 he devised a self-acting pneumatic brake for preventing accidents to the men employed in working wheel cranes, for which the Society of Arts awarded him a gold medal (Trans. Soc. Arts, iv. 183). A full description is given in W. Bailey's ‘Description of the Machines in the Repository of the Society of Arts’ (1782, i. 146). The brake was fitted to several cranes on the Thames wharves, and an account of an inspection of one at Billingsgate, by a committee of the Society of Arts, is given in the ‘Annual Register,’ 1767, pt. i. p. 90. It is recorded in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ June 1765, p. 296, that Messrs. Pinchbeck and Norton had made a complicated astronomical clock for ‘the Queen's House,’ some of the calculations for the wheelwork having been made by James Ferguson, the astronomer. There is no proof that Pinchbeck and Norton were ever in partnership, and there are two clocks answering to the description now at Buckingham Palace, one by Pinchbeck, with four dials and of very complicated construction, and the other by Norton.

Pinchbeck took out three patents, in all of which he is described as of ‘Cockspur Street in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, toyman and mechanician.’ The first (No. 892), granted in 1768, was for an improved candlestick, with a spring socket for holding the candle firmly, and an arrangement whereby the candle always occupied an upright position, however the candlestick might be held. In 1768 (No. 899) he patented his ‘nocturnal remembrancer,’ a series of tablets with notches to serve as guides for writing in the dark. His patent snuffers (No. 1119, A.D. 1776) continued to be made in Birmingham until the last forty years or so, when snuffers began to go out of use. The contrivance inspired an ‘Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck, upon his newly invented Candle Snuffers’ by ‘Malcolm MacGreggor’ (i.e. William Mason), a fifth edition of which appeared in 1777. In 1774 he presented to the Society of Arts a model of a plough for mending roads (Transactions, i. 312;, Description of Machines, &c. ii. 21). Pinchbeck's name first appears in the ‘London Directory’ for 1778, when it replaces that of ‘Richard Pinchbeck, toyman,’ of whom nothing is recorded. Christopher Pinchbeck was held in considerable esteem by George III, and he figures in Wilkes's ‘London Museum,’ ii. 33 (1770), in a ‘list of the party who call themselves the king's friends,’ and also as a member of ‘the Buckingham House Cabinet.’ He is called ‘Pinchbeck, toyman and turner.’ He seems in fact to have been a butt for the small wits of the day, and a writer in the ‘London Evening Post,’ 19–21 Nov. 1772, p. 4, suggests that ‘if the Royal Society are not Scotchified enough to elect Sir W. Pringle their president, another of the king's friends is to be nominated—no less a person than the noted Pinchbeck, buckle and knick-knack maker to the king.’ In 1776 there appeared anonymously ‘An Elegiac Epistle from an unfortunate Elector of Germany to his friend Mr. Pinchbeck,’ almost certainly by William Mason. The king is supposed to have been kidnapped and carried to Germany, and he begs Pinchbeck to assist him in regaining his liberty, suggesting among other devices that Pinchbeck should make him a pair of mechanical wings. He is also mentioned in ‘Pro-Pinchbeck's Answer to the Ode from the Author of the Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers,’ 1776, probably also by William Mason. He died on 17 March 1783, aged 73 (Ann. Reg. 1783, p. 200; Gent. Mag. liii. 273), and was buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. His will, which is very curious, is printed in full in the ‘Horological Journal,’ November 1895. One of his daughters married William Hebb, who was described as son-in-law and successor to the late Mr. Pinchbeck, at his shop in Cockspur Street’ (imprint on Pinchbeck's portrait), and whose son, Christopher Henry Hebb (1772–1861), practised as a surgeon in Worcester (ib. new ser. xi. 687). In a letter preserved among the Duke of Bedford's papers (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. p. 14), Lord Harcourt says that in 1784 he ‘bought at Westminster from Pinchbeck's son, who had bought in some of his father's trumpery,’ portraits of Raleigh and of Prior for a guinea each.

There is a portrait of Christopher Pinchbeck the younger by Cunningham, engraved by W. Humphrey.

 PINCK or PINK, ROBERT (1573–1647), warden of New College, Oxford, eldest son of Henry Pink of Kempshot in the parish of Winslade, Hampshire, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Page of Sevington, was baptised on 1 March 1572-3, and was admitted to Winchester College in 1588. Pink matriculated at New College, Oxford, on 14 June 1594, aged 19, was elected fellow in 1596, graduated B.A. on 27 April 1598, and M.A. on 21 Jan. 1601-2. In 1610 he