Edwin Hill (engineer)
November 25, 1793|
|Died||November 6, 1876
St. Mark's Square, London
|Occupation||Inventor, Controller of Stamps|
|Known for||Inventing first letter scale and a machine to fold envelopes|
Edwin Hill (25 November 1793 - 6 November 1876) was a Victorian postal official, the older brother of Rowland Hill, who invented a mechanical system to make envelopes and who campaigned for legal and political change.
Hill was born in Birmingham and educated at a school run by his father Thomas Wright Hill where he also taught when older. Later he worked at the Assay Office in Birmingham and then at a Birmingham brass-rolling mill where he became the manager.
In 1819 he married Anne Bucknall and they had ten children.
The Stamp Office
In 1840 Hill became the first British Controller of Stamps and he remained in that position until 1872.
Hill was an inveterate inventor of equipment to help the stamp department. He invented a mechanical system to make envelopes which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the patent for which was bought by Warren de la Rue to whom the machine was attributed. On his retirement a Treasury minute praised Hill's "...resourcefulness and considerable mechanical ability which had contributed so much to the success of the new postage scheme".
Hill was one of the signatories to the notice calling a meeting on 22 January 1817 to petition for parliamentary reform and he campaigned for changes to the law relating to the handling of stolen property.
- I.D. Hill, "Hill, Edwin (1793–1876)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
- Hill, W.E. An account of the Julian Hill family. London, 1938. (privately printed)
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