lighthouses, but covered the whole field of general engineering. He designed many bridges. His Hutchison Bridge ‘is one of the best specimens of the segmental arch.’ He also designed a new form of suspension bridge, in which the roadway passes above the chains, and the necessity of tall piers is avoided; many bridges have since, especially on the continent, been constructed on this principle. He also suggested the modern rail used on railways. George Stephenson acknowledged that it was from Stevenson's description that he adopted malleable iron rails. He was the first to discover and point out that the salt waters of the ocean flow up the beds of rivers in a stream quite distinct from the overflowing fresh water; and he invented the hydrophore for procuring specimens of sea and river water, so largely used in estuarial and oceanic observations. Stevenson designed the magnificent eastern road approaches to Edinburgh; of one of the eastern approaches Cockburn wrote: ‘The effect was like drawing up the curtain of a theatre.’
His experiments on the destruction of timber by the Limnoria terebrans led to the universal adoption of greenheart oak for structures in the sea. He took a great interest in the promotion of the fisheries, and suggested and urged the use of the barometer by fishermen. He was one of the originators of the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh, and strongly advocated the importance to navigation of trustworthy charts founded on careful marine surveys and soundings. He was a fellow of the Royal, the Antiquarian, and Wernerian societies of Edinburgh; the Geological and Astronomical societies of London; and a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1828). Stevenson died at Edinburgh on 12 July 1850, and was buried in the New Calton cemetery, close to one of the approaches to Edinburgh which he designed. Joseph's marble bust of Stevenson is in the Bell Rock lighthouse. The original model is in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. A portrait painted from it is in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, and has been engraved for David Stevenson's ‘Life of Robert Stevenson,’ 1878.
Alan, his eldest, David his third son, and his youngest son, Thomas, are noticed separately. Stevenson contributed many articles on engineering to the ‘Edinburgh Encyclopædia’ and the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ such as bridges, blasting, dredging, roads, lighthouses, railways. Among the papers he contributed to scientific societies, that contributed to the Wernerian Society on the ‘Alveus of the German Ocean’ is frequently quoted by geologists.
[Private information; David Stevenson's Life of Robert Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1878; Robert Louis Stevenson's Family of Engineers, in Edinburgh edition of his Works, 1896, vol. xviii.]
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (1850–1894), novelist, essayist, poet, and traveller, was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on 13 Nov. 1850. He was baptised Robert Louis Balfour, but from about his eighteenth year dropped the use of the third christian name and changed the spelling of the second to Louis; signing thereafter Robert Louis in full, and being called always Louis by his family and intimate friends. On both sides of the house he was sprung from capable and cultivated stock. His father, Thomas Stevenson [q. v.], was a member of the distinguished Edinburgh firm of civil engineers [see under Stevenson, Robert; Stevenson, David; and Stevenson, Alan]. His mother was Margaret Isabella (d. 14 May 1897), youngest daughter of Lewis Balfour, for many years minister of the parish of Colinton in Midlothian, and grandson to James Balfour (1705–1795) [q. v.], professor at Edinburgh first of moral philosophy and afterwards of the law of nature and of nations. His mother's father was described by his grandson in the essay called ‘The Manse.’ Robert Louis was his parents' only child. His mother was subject in early and middle life to chest and nerve troubles, and her son may have inherited from her some of his constitutional weakness as well as of his intellectual vivacity and taste for letters. His health was infirm from the first. He suffered from frequent bronchial affections and acute nervous excitability, and in the autumn of 1858 was near dying of a gastric fever. In January 1853 his parents moved to No. 1 Inverleith Terrace, and in May 1857 to 17 Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh home until the father's death in 1887. Much of his time was also spent in the manse at Colinton on the water of Leith, the home of his maternal grandfather. If he suffered much as a child from the distresses, he also enjoyed to the full the pleasures, of imagination. He was eager in every kind of play, and made the most of all the amusements natural to an only child kept much indoors by ill-health. The child in him never died; and the zest with which in after life he would throw himself into the pursuits of children and young boys was on his own account as much as on theirs. This spirit is illustrated in the pieces which he wrote and published under the title ‘A Child's
