Record

Authorised form of name	Perry; John (1850 - 1920); electrical engineer and mathematician
Dates	1850 - 1920
Nationality	Irish
Place of birth	Garvagh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Europe
Date of birth	14 February 1850
Place of death	25 Stanley Crescent, Bayswater, London, England
Date of death	04/08/1920
DatesAndPlaces	Burial: Wendover churchyard, Buckinghamshire, England, next to his wife (8 August 1920)
Occupation	electrical engineer and mathematicianelectrical engineer and mathematician
Research field	Mathematics
Research field	Engineering
Activity	Education: Model school, Belfast (1860–64); Queen's College, Belfast (1870) Career: Mathematics master at Clifton College, Bristol (1870-1874) where he established the first first physics laboratory and the second mechanics workshop in an English school; honorary assistant to Professor Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (FRS 1851), the brother of James Thomson (FRS 1877), at the University of Glasgow (1874); received Sir William’s support in winning a professorship in civil engineering at the Imperial College in Tokyo (1875-1879); collaborated with William Edward Ayrton (FRS 1881), resulting in the communication of papers to British scientific journals; the active period he spent in Japan aroused his interest in seismological studying of the nation’s endemic earthquakes; employed to reorganise the machinery of Clark and Muirhead's telegraphic works, and also by the City and Guilds Institute as its national examiner in mechanical engineering (1881); appointed mechanical engineer at Finsbury Technical College (1881-1896); resumed collaboration with Ayrton which resulted in a number of inventions such as the electric tricycle and speculative plans for ‘seeing by electricity’ (1889) and of their innovative measuring instruments, the ammeter and voltmeter were among the most widely adopted but as they failed to patent their clock-based domestic power-meter, the partnership lost a substantial fortune; their magnifying springs for accurate proportional calibration of electrical measurement devices (1883) and their block system for the safe management of multi-vehicle electrical haulage and traction (1882) enjoyed successful patents; worked with Ayrton as a consultant for the Faure Accumulator Company, arranging the lighting of the Grand Hotel at Charing Cross, and with Fleeming Jenkin, co-founded the Telepherage Company; professor of mathematics and mechanics at the Royal College of Science and School of Mines in London (1896-1913) where he sought to reform teaching of mathematics.
Membership category	Fellow
Date of election	04/06/1885
Age at election	35
Proposer	William Edward Ayrton; David Edward Hughes; William Henry Preece; Frederick Guthrie; Herbert McLeod; John Hall Gladstone; John Hopkinson; Arthur Schuster; Henry Woodward; Henry Clifton Sorby; Henry Edward Armstrong
Proposer	John Tyndall; John William Strutt; William Thomson; James Thomson; Thomas Andrews; Joseph David Everett; Fleeming Jenkin; George Carey Foster; Robert Bellamy Clifton
Relationships	Parents: Samuel Perry and his Scottish-born wife. Spouse: Alice Jowitt of Sheffield (died 1904) (1879)
PublishedWorks	RCN 25707 RCN 11505 RCN R66948 RCN 58715 RCN R78160 RCN 17758 RCN 58717 RCN 58718 RCN 58716 RCN 21881 RCN 57653
OtherInfo	At Finsbury he and Ayrton had developed the pragmatic use of squared paper and mechanical models to teach elementary calculus to engineering students who had little prior knowledge of geometry or algebra.
Source	Sources: Bulloch's Roll; DNB Obituaries: Proc Roy Soc Series A 1926 vol 111 pp i-vii, plate, signed by H T T References: Sir Brian Pippard, FRS, 'Schoolmaster-Fellows and the campaign for science education' in NR 2002 vol 56 pp 63-81, plate N R Ingram, 'All that you can't leave behind' in NR 2003 vol 57 pp 177-184
Code	NA5509

Archives associated with this Fellow

RefNo	Title	Date
MM/14/178	Letter from John Perry, 13 Brunswick Square, to Sir Alfred Ewing	13 December 1890
EC/1885/15	Perry, John: certificate of election to the Royal Society
IM/000998	Perry, John	September 1899
NLB/37/627	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J [John] Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	14 April 1908
NLB/40/497	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J [John] Perry FRS	15 June 1909
NLB/2/908	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	15 December 1888
NLB/5/958	Copy letter from an unknown correspondent, to Messrs West, Newman & Company	24 November 1891
NLB/7/539	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 March 1893
NLB/5/383	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to [John William Strutt] Lord Rayleigh, [Royal Society]	1 June 1891
NLB/5/420	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	5 June 1891
NLB/5/433	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 June 1891
NLB/5/606	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor Michael Foster, [Royal Society]	22 July 1891
NLB/5/737	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to [John William Strutt] Lord Rayleigh, [Royal Society]	1 October 1891
NLB/5/928	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	18 November 1891
NLB/5/1171	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	20 January 1892
NLB/13/642	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Messrs Harrison & Sons	26 October 1896
NLB/12/869	Copy letter from Michael Foster, to Francis Galton, [Fellow of the Royal Society]	21 May 1896
NLB/12/372	Copy letter from Herbert Rix, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 February 1896
RR/15/68	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'A three limbed linkage mechanism for converting circular into straight line motion' by F J Jervis-Smith	2 April 1900
RR/15/115	Referee's report by Hugh Longbourne Callendar, on the Bakerian Lecture 'The specific heat of metals and the relation of specific heat to atomic weight. (with an addendum by Prof. Perry)' by Professor William Augustus Tilden	February 1900
RR/15/296	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper on a paper 'Experimental researches on drawn steel. - Part I. The influence of changes of temperature on magnetism. Part II. Resistivity, elasticity and density, and the temperature coefficients of resistivity and elasticity' by J R Ashworth	March 1902
RR/15/187	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'The elastic equilibrium of circular cylinders under certain practical systems of load' by Louis Napoleon George Filon	June 1901
NLB/21/407	Copy telegram from an unknown correspondent, to Professor John Perry, 34 palace Gardens Terrace, W.	14 November 1900
NLB/15/231	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to T E Davies, Royal College of Science, South Kensington, S.W.	20 July 1897
NLB/15/783	Copy letters sent from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	8 December 1897
NLB/16/201	Copy letter from Michael Foster, to John P Mellor, Assistant Solicitor to H.M. Treasury	21 February 1898
NLB/16/202	Copy letter from Michael Foster, to the Secretary to H.M. Office of Works, 12 Whitehall Place. S.W.	21 February 1898
NLB/17/500	Copy letter from Michael Foster, to Professor John Perry, [Fellow of the Royal Society]	11 November 1898
NLB/17/331	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, [Fellow of the Royal Society]	12 October 1898
NLB/17/570	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to the Secretary, Her Majesty's Office of Works	18 November 1898
NLB/19/589	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	6 November 1899
NLB/19/65	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, [Fellow of the Royal Society]	12 June 1899
NLB/19/362	Copy letter from the Secretary of the Royal Society, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society, Royal College of Science, South Kensington, S.W.	28 August 1899
NLB/18/354	Copy letter from Arthur William Rucker, to [Professor J] Perry	Undated
NLB/19/211	Copy letter from Arthur William Rucker, to Professor George Carey Foster, Fellow of the Royal Society	13 July 1899
NLB/19/343	Copy letter from Joseph Lister, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	15 August 1899
NLB/19/854	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	8 January 1900
NLB/21/258	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	13 October 1900
NLB/21/311	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	26 October 1900
NLB/20/785	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 July 1900
NLB/23/2/404	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to The Secretary, Joint Scholarships Board, 37 Norfolk Street, Strand W.C.	11 December 1903
NLB/23/2/165	Copy letter from Sir Michael Foster, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	15 February 1902
NLB/23/2/266	Copy letter from unknown correspondent, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	2 December 1902
NLB/30/683	Copy letter from Theodore E James, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society, Royal College of Science, South Kensington, S.W.	[8 May 1905]
NLB/23/1/720	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	9 January 1902
NLB/24/450	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor [John] Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society, Royal College of Science, S.W.	22 May 1902
NLB/38/40	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society, Imperial College of Science and Technology, South Kensington, S.W.	[June 1908]
NLB/30/622	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	18 April 1905
NLB/30/490	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	1 April 1905
NLB/31/452	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	21 September 1905
NLB/31/523	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	5 October 1905
NLB/33/815	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	7 November 1906
NLB/33/101	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	28 June 1906
NLB/33/501	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	14 September 1906
NLB/32/522	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	26 March 1906
NLB/33/429	Copy letter from Theodore E James, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	29 August 1906
NLB/32/599	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	11 April 1906
NLB/37/95	Copy letter from [Joseph] Larmor to Professor J [John] Perry FRS	24 January 1908
NLB/36/494	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	4 November 1907
NLB/36/766	Copy letter from Joseph Larmor, to Professor John Perry, [Fellow of the Royal Society]	12 December 1907
NLB/39/154	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J [John] Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	3 December 1908
NLB/39/335	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to The Secretary, The Joint Scholarships Board	5 January 1909
NLB/38/803	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	9 November 1908
NLB/43/158	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 November 1910
NLB/43/656	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	4 March 1911
NLB/43/629	Copy letter from Joseph Larmor, to Professor John Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	28 February 1911
NLB/54/453	Copy letter from [Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society]; to Professor [John] Perry, FRS	17 May 1917
NLB/47/219	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J [John] Perry FRS	18 December 1912
NLB/45/517	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J [John] Perry FRS	20 March 1912
NLB/47/800	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison to Professor J Perry FRS	15 April 1913
NLB/48/237	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor [John] Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	3 June 1913
NLB/21/104	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor George Carey Foster, Fellow of the Royal Society	28 July 1900
NLB/55/153	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [John] Perry, FRS	21 December 1917
NLB/53/278	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [John] Perry, FRS	27 June 1916
NLB/54/601	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [John] Perry, FRS	29 July 1917
NLB/54/876	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [John] Perry, FRS	26 October 1917
NLB/55/927	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [John] Perry, FRS	28 October 1918
RR/8/147	Referee's report by William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, on a paper 'The contact theory of voltaic action.—Paper No. III' by William Edward Ayrton and John Perry	29 October 1878
RR/22/116	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'The electrical ignition of gases below atmospheric pressure' by W M Thornton	June 1915
NLB/59/263	Copy letter from Edwin Deller, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to [Messrs Harrison & Sons]	7 August 1920
RR/14/151	Referee's report by John Perry, on the Bakerian Lecture 'The crystalline structure of metals' by James Alfred Ewing and Walter Rosenhain	nd [July 1899]
RR/13/211	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the thermal conductivities of single and mixed solids and liquids and their variation with temperature' by Charles Herbert Lees	14 January 1898
RR/13/240	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On contact electricity of metals' by J Erskine Murray	8 March 1898
RR/14/160	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'Experimental researches on the deflections of bent beams' by Louis Napoleon George Filon	nd [October 1899]
RR/14/210	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the recovery of iron from overstrain' by James Muir	nd [February 1899]
RR/13/272	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the passage of heat between metal surfaces and liquids in contact with them' by Thomas Edward Stanton	3 May 1897
RR/15/93	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'The tempering of iron hardened by overstrain' by James Muir	November 1900
RR/15/116	Referee's report by Michael James Stewart Dewar, on the Bakerian Lecture 'The specific heat of metals and the relation of specific heat to atomic weight. (with an addendum by Prof. Perry)' by Professor William Augustus Tilden	March 1900
NLB/69/461	Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Prof. [Herbert Hall] Turner, FRS	22 April 1926
RR/9/351	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'Effects of stress and magnetisation on the thermoelectric quality of iron' by James Alfred Ewing	20 April 1886
MC/20/275	Letter from John Perry, 34 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, to the Royal Society	6 July 1905
RR/12/92	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the whirling and vibration of shafts' by Stanley Dunkerley	16 November 1893
NLB/68/325	Copy letter from James Hopwood Jeans, Secretary of the Royal Society; to Professor [Henry Edward] Armstrong, FRS	18 June 1925
CD/31/1	Letter from John Perry, Board of Education, Royal College of Science, London, South Kensington, to the Secretary of the Royal Society	8 January 1902
RR/15/104	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'Underground temperature at Oxford in the year 1899 as determined by five platinum resistance thermometers' by Arthur Alcock Rambaut	5 June 1900
NLB/16/210	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor [Arthur] Schuster	22 February 1898
NLB/19/340	Copy letter from Arthur William Rucker, to the Secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury	12 August 1899
NLB/18/444	Copy letter from an unknown author, to Professor J Perry, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 March 1899
NLB/34/755	Copy letter from Archibald Geikie, to Professor Herbert Hall Turner, Fellow of the Royal Society	5 March 1907
RR/10/173	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the specific resistance of mercury' by Richard Tetley Glazebrook and T C Fitzpatrick	24 August 1888
RR/11/5	Referee's report by James Thomson Bottomley, on a paper 'Quadrant electrometers' by William Edward Ayrton, John Perry and W E Sumpner	3 July 1891
NLB/15/781	Copy letters sent from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Michael Foster [Secretary, Royal Society]	7 December 1897
NLB/18/362	Copy letter from Arthur William Rucker, to the Secretary, H.M. Office of Works, Storey's Gate, Westminster, S.W.	28 February 1899
NLB/20/784	Copy letter from Robert William Frederick Harrison, to Professor William Edward Ayrton, Fellow of the Royal Society	10 July 1900
RR/10/388	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the causes of terrestrial magnetism' by Henry Wilde	17 May 1890
RR/11/152	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On the measurement of the magnetic properties of iron' by Thomas Gray	13 July 1892
RR/12/139	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'Propagation of magnetization of iron as affected by the electric currents in the iron' by John Hopkinson and E Wilson	18 June 1894
AP/76/5	Unpublished paper, 'Explosions of mixtures of coal-gas and air in a closed vessel' by Leonard Bairstow and A D Alexander	1905
RR/11/4	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'The passive state of iron and steel. Part III' by Thomas Andrews	10 May 1891
PP/19/13	Paper, 'Transformers' by John Perry	1892
PP/4/27	Paper, 'A new form of spring for electric and other measuring instruments' by W E [William Edward] Ayrton and John Perry	1884
RR/14/276	Referee's report by John Perry, on a paper 'On a rotary converter' by E Wilson	24 April 1899
MC/20	Volume 20 of miscellaneous correspondence regarding business matters, sent to the Royal Society	1905
MC/19/678	Letter from John Perry, 34 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, to the Secretaries of the Royal Society	28 October 1904
MC/19/677	Letter from John Perry, Board of Education, Royal College of Science, London, to [Joseph] Larmor	1 June 1904
MC/17	Volume 17 of miscellaneous correspondence regarding business matters, sent to the Royal Society	1897-1899
MC/20/274	Letter from John Perry, Royal College of Science, London, South Kensington, [Joseph] Larmor	6 February 1905
MC/19	Volume 19 of miscellaneous correspondence regarding business matters, sent to the Royal Society	1904

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