Latlmer Clark.
MR. Clark was born at Great Marlow in 1822, and probably acquired his scientific bent while engaged at a manufacturing chemist's business in Dublin. On the outbreak of the railway mania in 1845 he took to surveying, and through his brother, Mr. Edwin Clark, became assistant engineer to the late Robert Stephenson on the Britannia Bridge. While thus employed, he made the acquaintance of Mr. Ricardo, founder of the Electric Telegraph Company, and joined that Company as an engineer in 1850. He rose to be chief engineer in 1854, and held the post till 1861, when he entered into a partnership with Mr. Charles T. Bright. Prior to this, he had made several original researches; in 1853, he found that the retardation of current on insulated wires was independent of the strength of current, and his experiments formed the subject of a Friday evening lecture by Faraday at the Royal Institution--a sufficient mark of their importance.

In 1854 he introduced the pneumatic dispatch into London, and, in 1856, he patented his well-known double-cup insulator. In 1858, he and Mr. Bright produced the material known as 'Clark's Compound,' which is so valuable for protecting submarine cables from rusting in the sea-water. In 1859, Mr. Clark was appointed engineer to the Atlantic Telegraph Company which tried to lay an Anglo-American cable in 1865. in partnership with Sir C. T. Bright, who had taken part in the first Atlantic cable expedition, Mr. Clark laid a cable for the Indian Government in the Red Sea, in order to establish a telegraph to India. In 1886, the partnership ceased; but, in 1869, Mr Clark went out to the Persian Gulf to lay a second cable there. Here he was nearly lost in the shipwreck of the Carnatic on the Island of Shadwan in the Red Sea.