This is the story of William Smith, the development of geology and the first geological map. 26/10/2023
1815 A map delineation of the strata of England wales and parts of Scotland by William Smith culminated in the work of Darwin who developed the theory of evolution. . This map was one of the great projects taht can be compared to the creation of the Oxford Dictionary, Manhattan Project and solving the Human Genome.William Smith imagined the underside of the whole country.
He was the orphaned son of the village blacksmith from Churchill Oxfordshire yet soon after the map was made he was in financial ruin. This was a consequence of his being working class. Eventually he was acknowledged as the founding father of the new science of Geology.
1819 in London alone there were 20 debtors' prisons and he was in Southwark.
1650 James Isshuir the Irish Prelat declared that the world had been born at 9am. Monday morning October 4004BC This dogma was accepted when Smith started his work. The origin of the planet and mankind was accepted as incomplete and divinely inspired. Now Smith's discoveries triggered a collision between religious belief and scientific method and led to Charles Darwin theories.
1769 Ja1839 mes Watt received the patent for his steam engine as well as Josiah Wedgewood potting and Richard Arkwright's cotton spinning frame. There was a mania for canal building brought on by the coal and iron industry.
1755 Samuel Johnson's great dictionary came out.
1787 the Enclosure Act was passed so that farming methods improved at an extreme rate but with industrialization Britain could no longer feed herself..
Oxfordshire pound stones this was a deep sea fossil that dairymaids used. Smith saw these and it was realized that they had been living creatures.
1759 The Duke of Bridgewater built a canal of 42 miles from his mine to the Mersey, reducing the cost of his coal by 50%. . A single horse putting a barge could pull 80 times the weight of a horse pulling a cart.
1792 South Welsh coal developed and could float to Bristol . Smith worked in the geology of the coal mines and the canals and saw that the pattern of rocks was always the same from top to bottom. Noting the fossils he found in the different strata and he could predict that there was a universal phenomenon. He was first employed as a surveyor on the Somerset Coal Canal to get coal out of Wales. From what he saw above ground he could predict what was underground. The science of Stratigraphy was born. Fossil collecting had become a fashion and many gentlemen of leisure went into it. As the beds go up we first see primitive creatures, higher up they are more developed. This system worked all over the nation and so did the rest of the world. Thus one could predict what rocks were to be found, others were using these ideas and proving them correct.
1799William Smith was fired from the Somerset coal Company. This was a job that paid him 450 pounds per year. After this he would never have full time employment. He had contract jobs and looked to build canals on beds of impermeable rocks . He came into demand by farmers, who needed help to drain swamplands. At the same time Smith travelled the whole country to map it geologically.
Thomas Coke of Holkham took over running his estate and breeding better pigs.
John Farey became Smith's first apprentice .
Benjamin Richardson warned Smith that if he did not publish his ideas others would steal them. so a book called Accurate Definition of Strata was to be published by John Debrettte whose company went broke in 1802. So Smith's book was not published. Debretts Book of Peerage was first published in 1769.
Jurassic Oolites are rocks ideal for sculptors Other Jurassic sandstones are ideal for building. Stonefield slate, Here the rock is exposed by removing the pemble that covers it. The first frost of the season caused the slate to shatter apart for quarrying, otherwise it is covered till next year. Smith's map took 14 years to complete. He had the reputation of wandering the country with scholarship and brio and his nickname was Strata. The Geological Society were snobs and did not accept him or Farey, a farmer's son, as members..
1778 Sir Joseph Banks was one of his supporters. Banks was the one who encouraged the Bounty Expedition of Captain William Bligh to Tahiti and the first to bring the mango to England..
1807 Smith bought an old quarry in Combe to work oolite limestone but the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo followed with a recession and this cut demand for building and he went bankrupt.
1815 400 copies of the map were printed today there are about 40 still in existence.. It took till 1865 till the Geological Society finally made amends and recognized that all the work and credit belonged to Smith.
The London Natural History Museum in Kensington London has more than 9 million fossils.
Debtors Prison, this was meant to be a deterrent . Men of means signed bills .Those for whom they signed knew that they could land in prison if the bill was unpaid. These prisons were usually populated by middle classes.. Despite his reputation he was penniless , homeless and out of work.
1817 William Fitten heled Smith get his reputation back. The Scarborough philosophical Society finances the paleontology of Yorkshire and build the City Museum there which Smith designed showing the progress of fossil development.
1920 Smith finally became a member of the Geographical Society with the help of William Vernon
.1831 Smith received the Wollaston medal as the father of English Geology given at the Oxford Sheldonian theatre. King William IV granted Smith a pension of 110 pounds a year. This pension also covered his wife when he died in 1839 and was buried in St. Peters Church ,Northampton . All Geological maps are based on his work.
John Carey published maps from 1783 and was commissioned by the Postmaster General to publish maps of British Roads. 1805 he produced the ordnance survey. He collaborated with Smith who drew his maps on Careys maps.
Charles Lyell a Scottish geologist publish his major books called "Principles of Geology" between 1830 and 1833
Geological Time
65 million years ago. Death of the dinosaurs
140 Cretaceous.
201 Jurassic south coast east of Cornwall
245 Triassic
290 Permian lifeless rocks
360 Carboniferous coal a period of thick rainforests
420 Devonian From Devon age of fishes.
440 Silurian
500 Ordovician part of Wales.
540 Cambrian means Wales
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