James Brindley was born in the parish of Wormhill in Derbyshire, in 1716. He was the son of a small freeholder, who squandered his property in rustic dissipation, and could scarcely afford to give him even the rudiments of education. His boyhood, therefore, was spent in rural labour: but at the age of seventeen he left his home, to be apprenticed to a millwright at Macclesfield. He soon exhibited an uncommon share of mechanical ingenuity, which enabled him to excel his master in planning and executing orders for machinery more complicated than usual, and caused his services to be eagerly sought and highly prized by those who had once occasion to employ him. At a later period he went into business on his own account, and, by many useful inventions and contrivances, established his reputation throughout the neighbourhood as a skilful mechanic. He gradually obtained a wider range for the exercise of his powers. In 1752 he erected a remarkable engine to drain some coal mines at Clifton, in Lancashire, of which the moving power was a wheel fixed thirty feet below the surface of the earth, and driven by water drawn from the river Irwell, by a tunnel cut for near 600 yards through the rock. In 1755 he was employed to construct portions of the works for a silk mill at Congleton, under the superintendence of an engineer, who proved incompetent to the task which he had in hand. Brindley does not appear ever to have executed machinery of the sort required, and he had not even been permitted to see the general model of the mill: but on the incompetency of his superior being discovered, he came forward and told the proprietors, that if they would let him know what was the effect they wished to have produced, and would permit him to perform the business in his own way, he would finish the mill to their satisfaction. The knowledge which they had of his ability and integrity induced them to repose confidence in this assurance; he accomplished that very curious and complex piece of machinery, in a manner far superior to the expectations of his employers, and with the addition of several new and useful contrivances. He also invented machines for making tooth and pinion wheels, which hitherto had been cut by hand, and with great labour.