James White (inventor)

James White (1762 – 17 December 1825) was an English civil engineer and inventor. Born in Cirencester, he held an intense interest in mechanics at a young age. Moving to London in the 1780s, he created and patented various inventions, including a differential gear train and a model harbor crane. He moved to Paris in 1792, shortly following the French Revolution, and continued work in designing industrial machinery. Inventions from his period in Paris include an articulated or "serpentine" barge, a new form of turbine, and an automatic wire nail-making machine. He presented a novel straight-line mechanism at the 1801 Exposition des produits de l'industrie française at the Louvre, and was awarded a medal by Napoleon Bonaparte. He returned to England following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and settled in the industrial and manufacturing center of Manchester. He published A New Century of Inventions in 1822, describing in detail over a hundred of his mechanisms from across his career. Notable inventions contained within the work include the earliest known design for a key-driven mechanical calculator. In late 1825, he died at his home in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester.