Celebrating Engineering Heritage in Australia

Last month the Institution’s Engineering Heritage Awards made their first trip overseas since the very first was awarded in 1984. Yet while the first award, for Dublin’s C.A. Parsons No.5 Generator, only had to make a short trip over the Irish Sea, December saw three of the prestigious plaques make their way to the other side of the world, honouring revolutionary artefacts from the golden age of British engineering that are now spending their retirement in sunny Australia.

The 70th Heritage Award recipient was the Boulton and Watt engine housed in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. Built in 1785, the engine is the oldest rotative steam engine in the world and the first to receive a royal blessing, after James Watt presented it to George III in 1787. After over 100 years of service at the Whitbread Brewery in London, the engine was saved from the scrapheap by Archibald Liversidge, renowned chemist and founder of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, who took it to Sydney.

The 71st Heritage Award winner, Locomotive No.1, was the first locomotive to haul passengers on the Sydney to Parramatta line on 24 May 1855, Queen Victoria’s birthday. One of four locomotives to arrive from the famous Robert Stephenson workshops in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, it has the added honour of being the only James McConnel-designed locomotive remaining in the world.

Finally the third award to go to Australia, and the 72nd Heritage Award, went to the Humphrey Pump, installed in 1927 in Cobdogla for irrigation purposes. The pump was the invention of Herbert Humphrey, an engineer who became so famous in the early part of the 20th century that he featured in Vanity Fair. The main advantage of the Humphrey Pump other than fuel efficiency is its great mechanical simplicity. It therefore can readily handle muddy or sandy water and has the potential for extreme reliability, yet requires very little maintenance. It is the last remaining example of a working Humphrey Pump in the world.

All three awards were handed out by the Professor Isobel Pollock, the Institution’s President Elect and Chair of the Heritage Committee. “These awards are testament to the great skill of the original British engineers who built the Boulton & Watt Engine, the Humphrey Pump and Locomotive No.1,” said Professor Pollock. “I’d like to congratulate Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and the Cobdogla Steam Friends Society for the hugely impressive work they do to preserve these great examples of engineering. These objects link us to our past, inform us of the journey we’ve taken to reach the advances of today and will hopefully play a role in inspiring a new generation of engineers.”