Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/396

 ing graduated M.A., he remained in Dublin as a private tutor, studying especially oriental languages and astronomy. His proficiency in the latter subject gave him some hope of succeeding his friend and patron, Ussher; but the appointment of Dr. John Brinkley in 1792 led to his devoting himself to the career of a family tutor, an occupation he followed for many years. Two of his pupils, Lords Lanesborough and Bolton, in course of time assigned him a pension, which enabled him to give all his time to study. In 1811 Bishop Cleaver gave him the rectory of Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog, and in 1814 he was presented by Lord Crewe to the vicarage of Madeley, Shropshire. In December 1818 he exchanged Llanarmon for the rectory of Halkin, Flintshire, but soon after settling there died of apoplexy on 21 May 1819. His monument in the church styles him ‘in legibus, moribus, institutis, annalibus, poesi, musica gentis Cambro-Britannicæ instructissimus.’

His chief works were: 1. ‘Harmony of the Epistles,’ published by the Cambridge University Press, 1800. 2. ‘Christianity Vindicated’ (in answer to Volney's ‘Ruins’), 1800. 3. ‘Sketch of the Early History of the Cymry,’ London, 1803. 4. ‘Chronicle of the Kings of Britain,’ a translation of one of the Welsh versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, with illustrative dissertations, London, 1811. 5. ‘Cambrian Popular Antiquities,’ London, 1815. 6. ‘History of Oswestry,’ published anonymously in 1815. Other works were published by him on the origin of constellations, the art of correspondence, prophecy, and the church of Rome. Roberts was a scholar of wide reading but inferior judgment. The ‘Cambrian Popular Antiquities,’ dealing with Welsh rustic customs and superstitions, is his most valuable contribution to letters.

[Cambrian Plutarch, by J. H. Parry; Thomas's Hist. of the Diocese of St. Asaph, pp. 463–4; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816; Williams's Eminent Welshmen; Gent. Mag. 1819, ii. 181.] 

ROBERTS, RICHARD (1789–1864), inventor, the son of a shoemaker at Carreghova, in the parish of Llanymynech, Montgomeryshire, was born on 22 April 1789. At an early age he became a quarryman, occupying his leisure with practical mechanics. He subsequently became a pattern-maker at Bradley, near Bilston, Staffordshire, under John Wilkinson, ironmaster, and kinsman of Dr. Priestley, and worked at various mechanical trades at Birmingham and at the Horsley ironworks, Tipton, Staffordshire. Drawn in his own county for the militia, he sought to avoid serving by removing successively to Liverpool, Manchester, and Salford, where he became a lathe and tool maker. Hearing that the militia officers were still in search of him, he took refuge in London, where he found employment with Messrs. Maudslay. He settled in Manchester about 1816.

Roberts now became known as an inventor of great ability. Among his earlier inventions were the screw-cutting lathe, an oscillating and rotating wet gas-meter, the planing machine, which is now at South Kensington in the machinery and inventions department, and improvements in the machine for making weavers' reeds, the slide-lathe, and other machines. He also claimed to have been the first to observe the curious phenomenon of the adherence of a disc to an aperture from which a stream of air is issuing, an observation almost always attributed to Clément-Désormes (d. 1842). Roberts showed the experiment to Désormes on the occasion of a visit of the latter to Manchester (see Roberts's letter and Hopkins's paper read to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester in 1827, in Mech. Mag. 1842, xxxvii. 171). A firm—Sharp, Roberts, & Co.—was soon established in Manchester to develop Roberts's inventions commercially. He was the acting director of the manufacturing machinery. On a strike of cotton-spinners in 1824, the manufacturers of Hyde, Stalybridge, and the adjoining districts induced him to attempt the construction of a self-acting mule. In four months he succeeded, and his invention was patented in 1825. His partners are said to have spent 12,000l. in perfecting this machine. In 1826 he went to Mulhouse in Alsace to design and arrange machinery for André Koechlin & Co. In 1832 he invented the radial arm for winding on in the self-acting mule, and other improvements in the cotton manufacture. Ten years later he severed his connection with Sharp, Roberts, & Co., and his financial affairs gradually grew embarrassed.

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway attracted Roberts to a new field of mechanical invention. He experimented on the nature of friction on railroads, and invented a means of communicating power to either driving-wheel of a locomotive; he also devised a steam-brake, and a system of standard gauges, to which all his work was constructed. In 1845 he gave evidence before the railway-gauge commission, and recommended the making of a national survey to be adopted by all railway projectors (Report, p. 268). On a strike of workmen employed on the Conway tubular bridge in 1848, he constructed, at the request of the