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INVENTOR

William Murdoch

1754 - 1839

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William Murdoch (sometimes spelled Murdock) (21 August 1754 – 15 November 1839) was a Scottish chemist, inventor, and mechanical engineer. Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton & 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, England. Murdoch was the inventor of the oscillating cylinder steam engine, and gas lighting is attributed to him in the early 1790s, as well as the term "gasometer". Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William Murdoch has received more than 4,221,497 page views. His biography is available in 25 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 24 in 2019). William Murdoch is the 196th most popular inventor (up from 206th in 2019), the 1,712th most popular biography from United Kingdom (up from 1,824th in 2019) and the 30th most popular British Inventor.

Memorability Metrics

  • 4.2M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 54.37

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 25

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.15

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.00

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of William Murdoches by language


Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, William Murdoch ranks 196 out of 354. Before him are Narcís Monturiol, Sandford Fleming, Édouard Branly, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Philo Farnsworth, and Oskar Barnack. After him are John Kemp Starley, Yuan Longping, Hovannes Adamian, Lagâri Hasan Çelebi, Lou Ottens, and Wan Hu.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1754, William Murdoch ranks 26. Before him are Jean-Antoine Marbot, Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Vicente Martín y Soler, Joseph Joubert, Pavel Tsitsianov, and Salomon Maimon. After him are Jurij Vega, Alejandro Malaspina, Andrea Appiani, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, Nicolas Baudin, and Claude François de Malet. Among people deceased in 1839, William Murdoch ranks 20. Before him are Ferdinando Paer, Lord William Bentinck, Joseph Anton Koch, Andrew Dũng-Lạc, Aloysia Weber, and Mikhail Speransky. After him are Lady Hester Stanhope, Gaspard de Prony, Duchess Therese of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths, Dorothea von Schlegel, and Denis Davydov.

Others Born in 1754

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Others Deceased in 1839

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, William Murdoch ranks 1,712 out of 7,765. Before him are John Wetton (1949), Rupert Grint (1988), James Connolly (1868), John Kerr (1824), Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild (1936), and Eystein II of Norway (1125). After him are John Kemp Starley (1854), Miranda Richardson (1958), Phil Jones (1992), Geoff Hurst (1941), James Finlayson (1887), and Richard Aldington (1892).

Others born in United Kingdom

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Among INVENTORS In United Kingdom

Among inventors born in United Kingdom, William Murdoch ranks 30. Before him are Jethro Tull (1674), Charles Algernon Parsons (1854), David Edward Hughes (1831), Hubert Cecil Booth (1871), Matthew Boulton (1728), and Sandford Fleming (1827). After him are John Kemp Starley (1854), Oliver Lodge (1851), Henry Maudslay (1771), Robert Watson-Watt (1892), Frederick Scott Archer (1813), and Elihu Thomson (1853).

British born Inventors

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