JAMES, a man celebrated for mechanical inventions, and particularly skilful in planning and conducting inland navigation, was born in 1716, at Tunstead in Derbyshire. Through the mismanagement of his father, his education was totally neglected; and at seventeen he bound himself apprentice to a mill-wright, near Macclesfield in Cheshire. After completing his apprenticeship, he began the world on his own account, and by various inventions and contrivances carried the business of the mill-wright to a degree of perfection which it had not previously attained. His fame as an ingenious mechanic spreading widely, his genius was no longer confined to the business of his profession. In 1752 he erected a very extraordinary water-engine at Clifton in Lancashire, for the purpose of draining coal mines; and in 1755 he was employed to execute the larger wheels for a new silk-mill at Congleton in Cheshire. The potteries of Staffordshire were also about this time indebted to him for several valuable additions to their mills for grinding flintstones. In 1756, he undertook to erect a steam-engine upon a new plan, near Newcastle-under-Lyme; and it is believed that he would have brought this engine to a great degree of perfection, if some interested engineers had not opposed him.

His attention, however, was soon after called off to another object, which in its consequences has proved of high importance to trade and commerce; namely, the projecting and executing of artificial canals. The Duke of Bridgewater, having at Worsley, about seven miles from Manchester, a large estate abounding with coal, which had hitherto lain useless because of the expense of land-carriage, perceived the necessity of constructing a canal from Worsley to Manchester. Brindley was consulted on the matter; and having declared the scheme practicable, an act for this purpose was obtained in 1754 and 1758. But as it was afterwards discovered that the navigation would be more beneficial if carried over the river Irwell to Manchester, another act was obtained to vary the course of the canal agreeably to the new plan, and likewise to extend a side branch to Longford Bridge in Stretford. Brindley, in the mean time, had begun these great works, the first of the kind ever attempted in England with navigable subterraneous tunnels and elevated aqueducts; and, in order to preserve the level of the water, and free it from the usual obstructions of locks, he carried the canal over rivers and many large and deep valleys. When it was completed as far as Barton, where the Irwell is navigable for large vessels, he proposed to carry it over that river by an aqueduct of thirty-nine feet above the surface of the water; and though this project was treated as wild and chimerical, yet, supported by his noble patron, he began his work in September 1760, and the first boat sailed over it in July 1761.

The success of the Duke of Bridgewater's undertakings encouraged a number of gentlemen and manufacturers in Staffordshire to revive the idea of a canal navigation through that country, and Brindley was therefore engaged to make a survey from the Trent to the Mersey. This canal was begun in 1766, conducted under Brindley's direction as long as he lived, and finished after his death by his brother-in-law Mr Flemshall in May 1777. The proprietors called it the Canal from the Trent to the Mersey; but the engineer, more emphatically, the Grand Trunk Navigation, on account of the numerous branches, which, as he justly supposed, would be every way extended from it. (See the article NAVIGATION, ISLAND.) The scheme of this inland navigation had employed the thoughts of the ingenious part of the community for upwards of twenty years, and some surveys had been made; but Harecastle Hill, through which the tunnel is constructed, could neither be avoided nor overcome by any expedient which the most able engineers could devise. It was Brindley alone who surmounted this, and other difficulties arising from the variety of strata and quicksands, which no one but himself would have attempted to conquer.

Brindley died at Turnhurst in Staffordshire, September 27, 1772, in his fifty-sixth year. He is said to have shortened his days by too intense application, and to have brought on a hectic fever, which continued in his system for some years before it finally cut him off. He never relaxed his labours, nor indulged in the common diversions of life; and though once prevailed on to see a play in London, yet he declared that he would on no account be present at another, because it so disturbed his ideas for several days after as to render him unfit for business. When any extraordinary difficulty occurred to him in the execution of his works, he generally retired to bed, and has been known to lie there one, two, or three days, till he had surmounted it. He would then get up and execute his design without drawing or model; for his memory was so powerful as to enable him to dispense with notes or memoranda of any kind.