Richard Lovell Edgeworth (31 May 1744 – 13 June 1817) was an
Anglo-Irish politician, writer and
inventor. He had 22 children.
Biography
Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street,
Bath, England, son of Richard Edgeworth senior, and great-grandson of Sir
Salathiel Lovell through his mother, Jane Lovell, granddaughter of Sir Salathiel. The Edgeworth family came to Ireland in the 1580s. Richard was descended from Francis Edgeworth, appointed joint
Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper in 1606, who inherited a fortune from his brother
Edward Edgeworth,
Bishop of Down and Connor.
A
Trinity College, Dublin and
Corpus Christi College, Oxford alumnus, he is credited for creating, among other inventions, a machine to measure the size of a plot of land. He also made strides in developing
educational methods. He anticipated the
caterpillar track with an invention that he played around with for forty years but that he never successfully developed.[3] He described it as a "cart that carries its own road".
He was married four times, including to
Honora Sneyd and to
Frances Beaufort, older sister of
Francis Beaufort of the Royal Navy. Edgeworth and Francis Beaufort installed a
semaphore line for Ireland. Edgeworth was a member of the
Lunar Society, an informal organisation of Birmingham-based industrialists, scientists and intellectuals that met regularly to discuss and share ideas relating to their fields of interest. Other members included
Erasmus Darwin,
Josiah Wedgwood and
James Watt.
^Barbe, L. (2010), Francis Ysidro Edgeworth : A Portrait with Family and Friends, translated from Catalan by M.C. Black. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited