Sir William Fairbairn, a British civil engineer and machinist, born in Kelso on the Tweed, Feb. 19, 1789. He learned engineering at the Percy main colliery, Newcastle, where he remained seven years. In 1817 he commenced business in Manchester as a machine maker, and for upward of 20 years his firm was the most important of the kind in that town. Among the improvements he introduced may be mentioned simpler contrivances for driving the machinery of factories, modifications in the valves of steam engines, the double-fiued boiler, the use of ventilated buckets in water wheels, and the invention of the riveting machine. In 1830-31, his attention having been drawn to the advantage of iron as a material for building ships, he constructed a small iron vessel, which was successfully launched, and was one of the first of its class in England. He afterward constructed at Millwall many large vessels of the same material. He was also one of the first to attempt buildings of iron. His experience in the iron manufacture caused him to be consulted with regard to the construction of the tubular bridge over the Menai strait; and in connection with Mr. Hodgkinson he engaged in a number of experiments, the result of which has been to introduce into general use wrought-iron plate girders in ordinary building operations, as well as in railway engineering.

He delivered lectures in 1858 on the Resistance of Tubes to Collapse," on the "Floating Corn Mill for the Navy," on the "Progress of Mechanical Science," etc. He has published Cast and Wrought Iron for Building Purposes" (London, 1852; New York, 1854);

Useful Information for Engineers" (1856);

Iron, its History and Manufacture" (Edinburgh, 1863); Mills and Mill Work (2 vols., London, 1864-'5); and "Iron Ship Building" (1865). He was made a baronet in 1869.-See Smiles'sLives of Engineers."