21' 



LORD ARMSTRONG. 18101900. 



Lord Armstrong, F.R.S., died December 27, 1900, at the venerable 

 age of 90. The preparation of this brief memoir, by one who was 

 for many years closely associated with him, has been delayed by 

 unavoidable causes. A full biography of him has yet to be published : 

 within the scope of an article like this it is impossible to do more than 

 enumerate the principal episodes in the career of one whose days were 

 so many, whose interests were so various, and the sum of whose 

 achievements was so considerable. 



William George Armstrong was born in Pleasant Row, Shieldfield, 

 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on November 26, 1810. His father belonged 

 to Cumberland, and migrated to Newcastle at the end of the eighteenth 

 century. He must have been a man of character and ability, for he 

 came to the town as a clerk in a corn merchant's office, and from this 

 small beginning rose to commercial independence and municipal 

 importance. After serving for many years as a member of the Town 

 Council he was elected Mayor in 1850. He was also, and the fact is 

 of interest in connection with his son's reputation, equipped with 

 a taste for learning, and was especially fond of mathematics. He 

 helped to found the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, and joined in some mathematical discussions, of which 

 a curious old manuscript record is still extant. Among these trans- 

 actions is to be found a passage where Mr. Armstrong is assailed by 

 a Mr. Howard, with an amazing wealth of invective, upon a question so 

 wanting in excitement to most as the value in algebra and geometry 

 of imaginary quantities. He married Miss Potter, of Walbottle 

 Hall, and two children were born to him, a daughter, who became, 

 in 1826, the wife of William Watson, afterwards a Baron of the 

 Exchequer, and a son, the subject 'of the present sketch. Mr. 

 Armstrong lived to the age of 80, and died in 1857, by which date 

 the renown of his son was established. 



The future engineer, who in early life was a delicate child, was sent 

 in 1826 to the Grammar School at Bishop Auckland, where he boarded 

 with the Rev. R. Thompson. Anecdotes of his boyhood are rare, and 

 possibly apocryphal. He seems soon to have displayed a fondness for 

 mechanical toys, and a curiosity as to the manner in which such toys 

 worked, but there is not much evidence that he showed these charac- 

 teristics in a more marked degree than many boys before and since. 

 However as he grew older his bent towards mechanics became more 



B 2 



