Thomas Thorp (1850–1914) was an English manufacturer of scientific instruments credited with inventing the first practical coin-in-the-slot gas meter, with innovations in the field of photography, including that involving colour, and for producing an early example of what has since been developed into the modern spectrohelioscope. He began his working life as an apprentice to a firm of architects and ended it as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, having had a keen interest in astronomy since childhood.
Early life Thomas Thorp was born on 26 October 1850, the son of a farmer who worked land around Narrow Lane (now known as Victoria Avenue), Besses o' th' Barn, Whitefield, Lancashire. He was educated first at the local Park Lane School and subsequently at Manchester Grammar School, following which he was apprenticed to Maycock and Bell, a firm of architects and surveyors in Manchester. During his apprenticeship, he had a role in the town-planning of New Brighton, which was then rising as a Victorian resort town. He had an interest in the practical application of scientific knowledge, as did his inventive father, and a consequence of this trait was an inclination towards civil and mechanical engineering. Later in life Thorp was to be the appointed engineer for both the Local Board of Whitefield and also its District Council.
Engineering As early as 1872, while still working for Maycock and Bell, he was sole patentee of a mechanism for tap valves. In 1875, he was jointly named with A. P. Bell, architect, on a patent application regarding improvements to the automation of gas lighting, and continued to design items for the gas industry thereafter. In 1880 he established a business for the manufacture of his designs, originally known as Thomas Thorp & Co., with premises at Narrow Lane, Whitefield.
One significant innovation was the design, patented in 1889, for the first practical mechanism that allowed gas to be dispensed by insertion of a penny into a meter, an early point-of-use prepayment system. Although frequently attributed as being his invention alone, the patent was jointly held with Thomas Gardiner Marsh. The device was a major advance and, for example, the Manchester Institution of the Association of Gas Engineers and Manufacturers reported in 1898 that The consumption of gas has been greatly increased by the introduction of coin meters among the working class, who previously had rarely burned gas, and who but for the introduction of this class of meter, never would have done so. To people of this class, a supply of gas by coin meters is a great boon, and much appreciated. It is very much safer than lighting by oil, which it is rapidly superseding; and the cost in most cases is less. Despite its practicality, the meter design of Thorp and Marsh was rapidly superseded and by 1894 J. Nasmith was reporting that it was "practically out of the running". The Edinburgh-based William Cowan and the Manchester business of Sawyer and Purves were among those who had been granted patents for improvements to the mechanism by that time. Around the same time, Thorp and Marsh were among the many people experimenting with the possibilities of using acetylene gas as an alternate to coal gas. Acetylene – produced by mixing calcium carbide and water – was thought to produce a better quality of light but there were practical difficulties to overcome. They discovered that adding the carbide to the water was less dangerous than adding the water to the carbide, and they surmounted problems related to gradual "choking" of the burners when in use by mixing air with the product. They also invented a safety valve that they claimed cut off the burner outlet in the not unusual event that the supply to it was interrupted, thus preventing unlit gas from being emitted when the supply was restored. This valve was capable of use in both acetylene and coal gas installations. Thorp also invented the rotary gas meter in 1902, and, what his obituary describes as "a tiny device ... for economical regulation of gas delivery [that] has been very widely employed by manufacturers and public authorities." Other inventions included a push-tap for water and improvements to gas lamps and pneumatic tools. Thorp retired from business at the age of 50 to devote more time to his scientific studies. An advertisement of 1906 shows Marsh as chairman of the Manchester-based Rotary Meter Company Ltd and director of a similarly named business in New York. The latter had bought the sole US and Canadian manufacturing rights for all products regarding which Thorp held or might in future hold US patents.
Scientific instruments Thorp was a "scientific and mechanical genius". In pursuit of his childhood interest in astronomy, he developed considerable skills in the manufacture of optical glass and both reflector and refractor telescopes. He also created celluloid diffraction grating replicas, polarising solar eyepieces and prominence spectroscopes that were widely used, as well as objective prisms. His high resolution diffracting grating replicas were significant advances of the ideas developed by Henry Rowland, whilst his multi-slit spectroscope was the first to enable the showing of both celestial and terrestrial objects and has formed the basis for the present day spectrohelioscope. Father Aloysius Cortie, of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, was one whom achieved good results from an example of the objective prisms. Eventually owning houses in Whitefield and also in Prestatyn, North Wales, he constructed observatories at each of these and favoured the 8 inches (200 mm) Cooke equatorial telescope for his own observations. This device was fitted with a photo-visual objective, a spectroscope and other attachments that enabled it to be used for photography.
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