George Forbes
Recent
Local Studies research at the
AK Bell Library has brought to light local associations with a
remarkable "giant" of a man whose life spanned both sides of 1900.
George Forbes lived in Pitlochry from 1906 until close to his death
in 1936 at a house he built in Armoury Road named The
Observatory.
Forbes was born in 1849 in Edinburgh and became a professor at the
incredible age of 23 having attended Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews
and Cambridge. His chair was in Natural Philosophy, and he was a
keen advocate of electrical power for transport as well as an
astronomer. Having led a British party to Hawaii in 1874 to observe
the transit of Venus, he returned alone to Scotland undertaking an
overland journey which took him through China, the Gobi Desert,
Siberia and Russia. From 1880 - having served as the Times'
Russo-Turkish war correspondent in 1877 - he turned to industry and
electrical engineering.
He it was who recommended that the London Underground be powered by
electricity, a model for numerous urban transit systems of today.
He played a major part in the generation of electricity through
dynamos before turning to hydro-electric schemes in the 1890s at
Niagara, South Africa, New Zealand and Egypt. In the early 1900s he
devoted his attention to military projects, and gunnery in
particular. He devised a range-finder for naval guns that was still
in use at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was also
involved in signalling methods for submarines.
His love of Pitlochry had been nurtured during family holidays
there and he built the wooden structure which would become known as
The Observatory. His own name for it was simpler - he called it The
Shed. It overlooked Faskally and the site of the later hydro scheme
he proposed in the early 1900s. On an upper level was the
observatory which allowed him to spend his latter years devoted to
his early interest in astronomy. He published throughout his life,
but more prolifically once settled in Perthshire. He achieved a
string of honours, honorary degrees and citations but sadly he
became reclusive and lived latterly in relative poverty, believing
that he had achieved neither the rewards nor recognition his
brilliance, creativity and invention merited. Accordingly
George Forbes richly deserves a place on the long list of people
who were born in, or closely associated with, Perthshire and whose
contributions to life far transcended that of more ordinary people.
The
Local Studies section in the
AK Bell Library has documentation relating to all of these
people in its vast treasury of local books, newspapers, pictures,
postcards and records. Staff are always keen to help with
enquiries.
