Thomas Aveling

Thomas Aveling (1824–1882) was an English engineer and founder of Aveling & Porter, known as a manufacturer of agricultural equipment and steamrollers.

Background and early life Thomas Aveling was born 11 September 1824 at Elm, Cambridgeshire, the son of Thomas Aveling (1801–1835), and his wife, Ann Hobson (1802–1873); he was the elder brother of James Hobson Aveling. His paternal grandfather Thomas Aveling of Whittlesey was High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1802; his father was a landowner. Widowed in 1835, she remarried in 1836 at Eaton Socon to the Rev. John D'Urban, curate at High Halstow, in Kent. He had graduated at Queens' College, Cambridge in 1833, as Durban, and was ordained priest in 1834, by John Kaye. His first appointment was as curate at Hedsor in Buckinghamshire. He was moved in 1841, within Kent, to Hoo St Werburgh, near Rochester. He remained there as curate to 1860.

Career Aveling was apprenticed to Edward Lake, a farmer, of Hoo. and in 1850 took a farm at Ruckinge on Romney Marsh. In 1859, Aveling invented the traction engine when he modified a Clayton & Shuttleworth portable engine, which had to be hauled from job to job by horses, into a self-propelled one. The alteration was made by fitting a long driving chain between the crankshaft and the rear axle. Aveling later invented the steamroller in 1867. Thomas Aveling is regarded as "the father of the traction engine".

Aveling had a reputation as something of a martinet in business, only keeping on the best men. He did provide his staff with recreational facilities with a lecture room and mess room. Lectures were delivered on educational, social and political topics with Aveling himself in the chair and participation from the floor encouraged. He helped lay out the public gardens in Rochester Castle, sat on the Rochester School Board and was a governor of the Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School.

There is a secondary school in Rochester, Kent named after Aveling, called The Thomas Aveling School.