JACOB

See also:

• PERKINS, CHARLES CALLAHAN (1823-1886)
• JACOB PERKINS (1766-1849)

PERKINS (1766-1849)  , American inventor and physicist, was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1766, and was apprenticed to a goldsmith . He soon made himself known by a variety of useful mechanical inventions, and in 1818 came over to England with a plan for engraving bank-notes on steel, which ultimately proved a signal success, and was carried out by Perkins in partnership with the English engraver Heath . His chief contribution to physics lay in the experiments by which he proved the compressibility of water and measured it by a piezometer of his own invention (see Phil . Trans.,1820, 1826) . He retired in 1834, and died in London on the 3oth of July 1849 . His second son, ANGIER MARCH PERKINS (1799?-1881), also born at Newburyport, went to England in 1827, and was the author of a system of warming buildings by means of high-pressure steam . His grandson, LOFTUS PERKINS (1834-1891), most of whose life was spent in England, experimented with the application to steam engines of steam at very high pressures, constructing in 188o a yacht, }t~he " Anthracite," whose engines worked with a pressure of 500 rb to the sq. in .