STONEY, FRANCIS GOOLD MORONEY

Engineer and inventor of the 'Roller Sluice'. Francis Stoney, third son of George Stoney, of Kyle Park, Co. Tipperary, and elder brother of EDWARD WALLER STONEY EDWARD WALLER STONEY , was born in April 1837.(1) He studied engineering at Queen's College, Belfast, and was subsequently articled to Sir JOHN MACNEILL JOHN MACNEILL , remaining with him for some years. He next became manager of the Dundalk Iron Works, leaving to join the staff of the Clyde shipbuilders John Elder & Co. in May 1865.

From 1865 onwards Stoney lived and worked outside Ireland. He pursued his career, which was interrupted by periods of ill-health, in Peru, in India, in Scotland and in England. It was while he was working for the Madras Navigation & Canal Company in the late 1860s that he first became interested in sluice design. His research into the construction of absolutely watertight sluices resulted in the invention and patenting of the 'roller sluice' and the 'double door roller sluice'. The first of his large roller sluices were erected for the Lough Erne drainage scheme in the summer of 1883. In all 180 sluices were built to his designs, at locations which included the Manchester Ship Canal, the River Rhone at Geneva, the Thames at Richmond, and the Clyde at Glasgow. The sluices were manufactured by Ransomes & Rapier of Ipswich, of which Stoney became manager in 1887.

Stoney died at Neuenahr, Germany, on 7 August 1897. He had married in 1865 Annie Elizabeth (d. 1923), only daughter of Alexander Duncan, CE, by whom he had a son.

ICEI: elected member, 1864; delivers paper, 'On the construction of large sluices', 5 May1875.(3)
Inst.CE: elected member 6 March 1883.

See WORKS, BIBLIOGRAPHY. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from the obituary of Stoney in Min.Proc.Inst.CE130 (1896-97, Pt. IV), 316-318, which see for further details of his life and career, and Burke's Irish Family Records (1976), 1063.

(1) The date is given as 5 Apr in Min.Proc.Inst.CE and as 29 Apr in Burke's Irish Family Records.
(2) TICEI lists of members.
(3) TICEI 10 (1870-74), 24-39; noted in IB 17, 15 May 1875, 138.

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