superseded all others. Among his other minor
inventions may be mentioned his improved method of constructing and
sledging carriage-wheels, and his improved method of laying
water-pipes. In his specification of the last-mentioned invention, he
included the application of water-power to the driving of machinery of
every description, and for hoisting and lowering goods in docks and
warehouses,--since carried out in practice, though in a different
manner, by Sir William Armstrong.[7] In this, as in many other
matters, Bramah shot ahead of the mechanical necessities of his time;
and hence many of his patents (of which he held at one time more than
twenty) proved altogether profitless. His last patent, taken out in
1814, was for the application of Roman cement to timber for the purpose
of preventing dry rot.

Besides his various mechanical pursuits, Bramah also followed to a
certain extent the profession of a civil engineer, though his more
urgent engagements rendered it necessary for him to refuse many
advantageous offers of employment in this line. He was, however, led
to carry out the new water-works at Norwich, between the years 1790 and
1793, in consequence of his having been called upon to give evidence in
a dispute between the corporation of that city and the lessees, in the
course of which he propounded plans which, it was alleged, could not be
carried out. To prove that they could be carried out, and that his
evidence was correct, he undertook the new works, and executed them
with complete success; besides demonstrating in a spirited publication
elicited by the controversy, the insufficiency and incongruity of the
plans which had been submitted by the rival engineer.

For some time prior to his death Bramah had been employed in the
erection of several large machines in his works at Pimlico for sawing
stone and timber, to which he applied his hydraulic power with great
success. New methods of building bridges and canal-locks, with a
variety of other matters, were in an embryo state in his mind, but he
did not live to complete them. He was occupied in superintending the
action of his hydrostatic press at Holt Forest, in Hants--where upwards
of 300 trees of the largest dimensions were in a very short time torn
up by the roots,--when he caught a severe cold, which settled upon his
lungs, and his life was suddenly brought to a close on the 9th of
December, 1814, in his 66th year.

His friend, Dr. Cullen Brown,