James Brindley was born in the year 1716, at Tunsted, within the county of Derby. His father had reduced himself to extreme poverty by habits of dissipation and extravagance. Accordingly, any education that Brindley received at school was, no doubt, of the very slightest and most limited description. It appears, however, that the statement of his inability to read and write is quite incorrect; several specimens of his penmanship having been produced. He is said never to have been instructed even in the first principles of mechanics, but was able by a peculiar process of his own invention, to make most accurate calculations. Besides, his memory adhered with amazing tenacity to any facts or information committed to its keeping: and by such means did this unquestioned benefactor of his kind countervail his deficiency of early training and scientific knowledge. Having passed a few years in agricultural operations――plying with the flail or whistling at the plow――he was, at the age of seventeen, apprenticed to a millwright at Macclesfield, in Cheshire. In this situation his ideas were rapidly enlarged, and his faculties sharpened by experience in the trade which he had selected, probably from feeling that it would accord better with his tastes than the labors of the husbandman had done. His mechanical genius now began to develop itself, and to become perceptible; and so apparent was his progress in obtaining a knowledge of the business, that his employer frequently when absent from the mills, left him to execute pieces of work without finding it necessary to give any instruction in regard to them. Moreover, the different millers by whom they were employed soon discovered his superiority, and infinitely preferred his services to those of the master or any of the workmen belonging to the establishment. On approaching manhood, Brindley himself felt that he was destined for higher matters; and vague presentiments of better days in store occupied and agitated his powerful mind as he resolutely pursued his daily labors. Little could he imagine that he, the poor journeyman of a rural millwright, should, ere long, be the instrument of contributing materially to the national wealth; but it was ordered that it should be so. Meantime his employer became so advanced in years, that he was incapable of working with effect. Brindley wisely seized the opportunity of applying his skill and ingenuity to the business, proved quite equal to the occasion, and exerted himself with so much success, that he not only kept it up against all competitors, but rendered it so flourishing a concern, that the old man and his family were enabled to live in comfortable circumstances. Indeed the apprentice was now the more skillful mechanic of the two, and he about this time gave proof of such being the case.