1769-1839

English Mineral Surveyor, Engineer and Geologist

William Smith grew up in the small village of Churchill in southern England, where he received his only formal education at the village school. At the age of 18 Smith took a job as an assistant to a surveyor named Edward Webb, and this experience led to his employment as a surveyor with the Somerset Coal Canal Company. Smith helped to engineer the canals, which were the transport highways for barges carrying the goods that were the lifeblood of the early part of the industrial revolution in England. He gathered information about the rock into which the canals were dug and paid particular attention to the fossils contained within the rock layers. Smith grew particularly interested in the vertical changes in the layers of rocks. The data he collected led him to recognize widespread regularity in rock successions and to...