Excerpt:
RENNIE, JOHN, a celebrated civil engineer, was the youngest son of a respectable farmer at Phantassie, in East Lothian, where he was born, June 7, 1761. Before he had attained his sixth year, he had the misfortune to lose his father; his education, nevertheless, was carried on at the parish school (Prestonkirk) by his surviving relatives. The peculiar talents of young Rennie seem to have been called forth and fostered by his proximity to the workshop of the celebrated mechanic, Andrew Meikle, the inventor or improver of the thrashing-machine. He frequently visited that scene of mechanism, to admire the complicated processes which he saw going forward, and amuse himself with the tools of the workmen. In time, he began to imitate at home the models of machinery which he saw there; and at the early age of ten he had made the model of a wind-mill, a steam-engine, and a pile-engine, the last of which is said to have exhibited much practical dexterity.
Annotation:
The Significant Scots website has compiled an extensive historical primer on John Rennie, a major canal and bridge engineer. Though the writing style is convoluted, the biography covers the many career and personal landmarks of Rennie's life very well, including a fairly extensive list of his works and a section on his collaboration with John Watt. The site would most interest those studying Rennie himself, as it does not contextualize the engineer within broader trends in his field, but it could be of use to those studying the history of bridge design overall.