JOSEPH HENRY (1797–1878)

There are some experimental physicists who might also be classified as engineers. I shall profile a few of these, beginning with the American Joseph Henry. He was born in Albany, the state capital of New York, on 17 December 1797. His father, William Henry, was a sometime day labourer from Argyle, distantly related to the earls of Stirling, while his mother Ann, née Alexander, was a miller's daughter. William Henry died young, and it was chiefly his widow Ann who brought up her son. She was a small woman with rather delicate features who lived to an advanced age. A devout and strict member of the Scottish Presbyterian church, she passed its Calvinist principles on to her son. Before he had turned six she sent him to nearby Galway to live with her stepmother and her twin brother John.

After three years of elementary school, Joseph took a job in a general store where the shopkeeper, an educated man, encouraged him to continue with his education after work. When the boy was approaching 14, he returned home to Albany, where he was apprenticed to a watchmaker and silversmith. After the business had failed, he was released from his apprenticeship but not before he had acquired some practical skills, which were to be useful to him later.