Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 20, 2009

William Murdoch (sometimes spelled Murdock) (21 August 1754 - 15 November 1839) was a Scottish engineer and inventor. It is believed that his name was Anglicised to Murdock when he moved to England.

He was employed by the firm of Boulton and Watt and worked for them in Cornwall as a steam engine erector for ten years, spending most of the rest of his life in Birmingham.

He was the inventor of gas lighting in the early 1790s and coined the term gasometer. He also made a number of innovations to the steam engine, including the sun and planet gear and D slide valve; he invented the steam gun and pneumatic tube message system; he worked on one of the first British paddle steamers to cross the English Channel; he built a prototype steam locomotive in 1784; and he made a number of discoveries in the field of chemistry.

He remained an employee and later a partner of Boulton & Watt until the 1830s. His reputation as an independent inventor has tended to be obscured by the reputations of those two men and the firm they founded.