Henry Robinson Palmer

He carried out numerous surveys for Telford, including the Knaresborough Canal and Railway, Burnham Marshes, Archway Road London, Portishead Harbour, and the Isles of Scilly.

On the latter he carried out a series of tests on behalf of Telford, to measure the amount of resistance that horses and locomotives had to overcome to move their loads.

The results of these experiments were quoted in Parliament, when navigation interests opposed the bill to authorise the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, for instance.

Reservations about a bridge over the River Medway, and what to do at Woolwich meant that funding did not materialise, and the scheme folded before a full survey was completed.

The works were substantially finished by 1833, but by the time he left they company in 1835, there were issues with the entrance lock walls, which were resolved by George Rennie and John Smeaton.

The Port Talbot harbour scheme was hampered by inadequate capital, and Palmer diverted flood water to scour out the channel, as he could not employ sufficient labourers.

With several other young engineers, the inaugural meeting of the ICE was held on 2 January 1818, and the aims and objectives which he laid out have stood the test of time, with only the upper age limit being relaxed.

[6] Palmer made a patent application in 1821 for an elevated single rail supported on a series of pillars in an ordinary distance of ten feet, inserted into conical apertures in the ground, with carriages suspended on both sides, hanging on two wheels the one placed before the other.

[10] In 1826 German railway pioneer Friedrich Harkort had a demonstration track of Palmer's system built by his steel factory in Elberfeld, one of the main towns in the early industrialised region of the Wupper Valley.

In his study, Palmer has one of the earliest descriptions of the principle of containerisation: "The arrangement also enables us to continue a conveyance by other means with very little interruption, as it is evident that the receptacles may be received from the one, and lodged on to another kind of carriage or vessel separately from the wheels and frame work, without displacing the goods".