John Smeaton, an English civil engineer, born at Austhorpe, near Leeds, May 28, 1724, died there, Oct. 28, 1792. Before he reached his 15th year he had made mechanical inventions and discoveries. He began to study law, but in 1750 took up the business of a mathematical instrument maker, and in 1751 invented a machine for measuring a ship's way at sea. He made valuable improvements in hydraulic machinery, and in 1759 read a paper on this subject before the royal society, for which he received the Copley gold medal. The Eddy-stone lighthouse being destroyed by fire in 1755, Smeaton rebuilt it. (See Lighthouse.) He afterward built canals and locks on the Derwentwater estate, constructed the great canal from the Forth to the Clyde, improved the Calder navigation, supplied Greenwich and Deptford with water, erected the Spurn lighthouse, preserved the old London bridge, and erected several bridges in Scotland. About 1783 he withdrew from business. He published a volume on the Eddystone lighthouse (1791), and his professional reports were published by the institution of civil engineers (3 vols. 4to, 1812-'14).- See Smiles's "Lives of the Engineers".