Henry Robinson Palmer

Henry Robinson Palmer (1793-1844) was a British civil engineer born at Hackney, London, who designed the first monorail system and invented corrugated iron. Apprenticed to Bryan Donkin from 1811 to 1816, he then worked for Thomas Telford for ten years on road and canal surveys, and in 1818 was one of three young engineers key to founding the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 1823 he published a short book describing his monorail railway, demonstrated over one mile in 1825. From 1826 he was resident engineer to the London Docks, where he designed the Eastern Dock, and in 1828 he invented the corrugation and galvanisation of sheet iron. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1831, he later worked as a consulting engineer on railway surveys and on docks and harbours including Port Talbot and Ipswich, and died in Westminster in 1844.