Fleeming Jenkin

Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin FRS FRSE LLD (; 25 March 1833 – 12 June 1885) was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer, economist, lecturer, linguist, critic, actor, dramatist and artist. His descendants include the engineer Charles Frewen Jenkin and through him the Conservative MPs Patrick, Lord Jenkin of Roding and Bernard Jenkin. Early life Background and childhood Generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his father's patrons, he was born to an old and eccentric family in a government building near Dungeness, Kent, England, his father, Captain Charles Jenkin, at that time being in the coast-guard service. His mother, Henrietta Camilla (Cora) Jenkin (born Jackson) was a published author. His mother was responsible for Fleeming's education. She took him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at Barjarg, she taught him drawing and allowed him to ride his pony on the moors. He went to school at Jedburgh, Borders, and afterwards to the Edinburgh Academy, where he won many prizes. Among his school fellows were James Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait. On his father's retirement in 1847, the family moved to Frankfurt, partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's education. Here Jenkin and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry. At thirteen, Jenkin had produced a romance of three hundred lines in heroic couplets, a novel, and innumerable poems, none of which are now extant. He learned German in Frankfurt and, on the family migrating to Paris the following year, he studied French and mathematics under a M. Deluc. While there, Jenkin witnessed the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848 and heard the first shot, describing the action in a letter written to an old schoolfellow.