Biography
Latimer Clark was born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and was younger brother to Edwin Clark (1814–1894), inventor of the Clark hydraulic lift graving dock. Latimer Clark studied chemistry at an early age. His first connection with technical work was in the chemical manufacturing industry in a large Dublin establishment. However in 1848 Clark began working in his elder brother's civil engineering practice and became assistant engineer at the Menai Strait bridge. Two years later, when his brother was appointed engineer to the Electric Telegraph Company, he again acted as his assistant, and subsequently succeeded him as chief engineer. In 1854 he took out a patent "for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum," and later was concerned in the construction of the London Pneumatic Despatch Company which built a tube between the general post office and Euston station, London.
About the same period he was engaged in experimental researches on the propagation of the electric current in submarine cables, on which he published a pamphlet in 1855, and in 1859 he was a member of the committee which was appointed by the government to consider the numerous failures of submarine cable enterprises.
Latimer Clark paid much attention to the subject of electrical measurement, and besides designing various improvements in method and apparatus and inventing the Clark standard cell, he took a leading part in the movement for the systematization of electrical standards, which was inaugurated by the paper which he and Sir CT Bright read on the question before the British Association in 1861. With Bright also he devised improvements in the insulation of submarine cables. In the later part of his life he was a member of several firms engaged in laying submarine cables, in manufacturing electrical appliances, and in hydraulic engineering.
Clark married Margaret Helen Preece (Sir William Preece's sister) in 1854. They had two children. He later divorced her for good cause in 1861.
Clark died in London on 30 October 1898.
Read more about this topic: Josiah Latimer Clark
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