Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet (21 December 1803 – 22 January 1887) was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist.

He was the son of Charles Whitworth, a teacher and Congregational minister, and at an early age developed an interest in machinery.

He was educated at Idle, near Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire; his aptitude for mechanics became apparent when he began work for his uncle.

[7] After leaving school Whitworth became an indentured apprentice to his uncle, Joseph Hulse, a cotton spinner at Amber Mill, Oakerthorpe in Derbyshire.

He returned to Openshaw, Manchester, in 1833 to start his own business manufacturing lathes and other machine tools, which became renowned for their high standard of workmanship.

[8] In 1853, along with his lifelong friend, artist and art educator George Wallis (1811–1891), he was appointed a British commissioner for the New York International Exhibition.

In 1850, then a President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he built a house called 'The Firs' in Fallowfield in south Manchester designed by Edward Walters.

He supplied four six-ton blocks of stone from Darley Dale quarry, for the lions of St George's Hall in Liverpool.

In January 1887 at the age of 83, Sir Joseph Whitworth died in Monte Carlo where he had travelled in the hope of improving his health.

This soon became the first nationally standardised system; its adoption by the railway companies, who until then had all used different screw threads, led to its widespread acceptance.

However, the new bore design was found to be prone to fouling and it was four times more expensive to manufacture than the Enfield, so it was rejected by the British government, only to be adopted by the French Army.

Whitworth also designed a large rifled breech-loading gun with a 2.75 inches (69.85 mm) bore, a 12 pounds 11 ounces (5.75 kg) projectile and a range of about 6 miles (10 km).

[21] Since 2006, a Whitworth Senior Scholarship was agreed by the trustees to support Postgraduate Research leading to a MPhil, PhD or EngD.

They chose to spend more than a fifth of the money on support for Owens College, together with the purchase of land now occupied by the Manchester Royal Infirmary.

In 1897, Christie personally assigned more than £50,000 for the erection of the Whitworth Hall, to complete the front quadrangle of Owens College.

He was president of the Whitworth Institute from 1890 to 1895 and was much interested in the medical and other charities of Manchester, especially the Cancer Pavilion and Home, of whose committee he was chairman from 1890 to 1893, and which later became the Christie Hospital.