INVENTOR

William Murdoch

1754 - 1839

Photo of William Murdoch

Icon of person William Murdoch

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 4,217,844 page views. His biography is available in 30 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 25 in 2019). William Murdoch is the 160th most popular inventor (up from 196th in 2019), the 1,413th most popular biography from United Kingdom (up from 1,707th in 2019) and the 24th most popular British Inventor.

Memorability Metrics

  • 4.2M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 56.79

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 30

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.91

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.14

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of William Murdoches by language

Over the past year William Murdoch has had the most page views in the with 38,857 views, followed by Spanish (4,114), and German (3,876). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Cornish (445.71%), Malagasy (118.52%), and Swahili (65.40%)

Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, William Murdoch ranks 160 out of 426. Before him are Gideon Sundback, Peter Henlein, Heinrich Göbel, Fausto Veranzio, Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, and Garrett Morgan. After him are Hovannes Adamian, Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse, Royal Rife, Angelo Moriondo, Lucien Olivier, and Siegfried Marcus.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1754, William Murdoch ranks 26. Before him are Jean-Antoine Marbot, Salomon Maimon, Franz Xaver von Zach, Joseph Joubert, Pavel Tsitsianov, and Jurij Vega. After him are Vicente Martín y Soler, Andrea Appiani, Nikolay Rumyantsev, Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey, Alejandro Malaspina, and Louis Claude Richard. Among people deceased in 1839, William Murdoch ranks 14. Before him are Princess Marie of Orléans, Pehr Henrik Ling, William Smith, Joseph Fesch, Milan Obrenović II, Prince of Serbia, and Charlotte Bonaparte. After him are Lord William Bentinck, Ferdinando Paer, Mikhail Speransky, Adolphe Nourrit, Andrew Dũng-Lạc, and Joseph Anton Koch.

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 1,413 out of 8,785. Before him are Vinnie Jones (1965), William Robert Brooks (1844), Christine McVie (1943), Constantine II of Scotland (801), Geezer Butler (1949), and Duncan Haldane (1951). After him are Alice Bailey (1880), Wallace Hartley (1878), Michael Redgrave (1908), Dan McCafferty (1946), Timothy Spall (1957), and Richard Henderson (1945).

Others born in United Kingdom

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Among INVENTORS In United Kingdom

Among inventors born in United Kingdom, William Murdoch ranks 24. Before him are Edmund Cartwright (1743), Samuel Crompton (1753), W. O. Bentley (1888), John Kay (1704), Charles Algernon Parsons (1854), and Robert Stirling (1790). After him are Elihu Thomson (1853), Matthew Boulton (1728), James Dyson (1947), Sandford Fleming (1827), Jethro Tull (1674), and David Edward Hughes (1831).

British born Inventors

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