Old Photograph Innerwick Scotland

Old photograph of Innerwick located five miles from Dunbar, Scotland. Innerwick Castle was originally a Stewart stronghold, then passed to a grandson of Walter Fitz Gilbert de Hamilton, and remained in the Hamilton family, until its destruction. Alongside nearby, Thornton Castle, a fortalice owing allegiance to the Earls of Home, it was destroyed after a siege by the invading forces of the Duke of Somerset, during the Rough Wooing. James William Hunter was born at Thurston Manor near Innerwick in Eastin 1783, the son of Robert Hunter of Thurston Manor and his wife Isabella Ord. The family was related to the Hunters of Hunterston. From around 1798 he served in India then returned to Scotland to run the family estates following the death of his father.His main claim to fame is the improvement to the mechanical odometer in 1827, creating a single-handed and single-wheeled device, setting a series of three 100-tooth cogs against 101-tooth cogs, attached to a wheel of circumference either 6 or 10 feet.[1] This created a very convenient apparatus for land measurement, and is still the basis for modern day mechanical surveying odometers. The larger version was attached to the rear of a carriage and was the first known instrument calculating total vehicle distance travelled in a precise and visually clear way. In 1820 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He died in Leamington (where the family held a second estate) on 3 December 1844.



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