Person Perry; John (1850 - 1920); electrical engineer and mathematician Perry John electrical engineer and mathematician 1850 - 1920 Irish Male Garvagh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Europe 14 February 1850 18500214 25 Stanley Crescent, Bayswater, London, England 04/08/1920 19200804 Burial: Wendover churchyard, Buckinghamshire, England, next to his wife (8 August 1920)

10 Penywern Road, South Kensington, London, SW (1883)

electrical engineer and mathematicianelectrical engineer and mathematician Mathematics Engineering 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. Parents: Samuel Perry and his Scottish-born wife. Spouse: Alice Jowitt of Sheffield (died 1904) (1879) 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. Fellow 04/06/1885 35 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 John Tyndall; John William Strutt; William Thomson; James Thomson; Thomas Andrews; Joseph David Everett; Fleeming Jenkin; George Carey Foster; Robert Bellamy Clifton 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 International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) - Ottawa 1996 ISBN 0-9696035-3-3 National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorRaw=Perry%2C+John RCN 25707 RCN 11505 RCN R66948 RCN 58715 RCN R78160 RCN 17758 RCN 58717 RCN 58718 RCN 58716 RCN 21881 RCN 57653 14 Feb 1850 - 4 Aug 1920 The past Fellows entries are under continuous revision. If you have queries or additional information to contribute, please contact Library@royalsociety.org. Content in external sources is not controlled by the Royal Society and historical sources may include content that is now unacceptable. Reviewed on 06/03/2024 as part of the Name Authority Project update. NA5509 21/11/2001 Andyg Pmab 08/03/2024 RS_NET\JonathanB Yes e096d52a-8785-4128-937c-9ebb0c54b487