Fleeming Jenkin

Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer, economist, lecturer, linguist, critic, actor, dramatist and artist. His descendants include the engineer Charles Frewen Jenkin and through him the Tory MPs Patrick, Lord Jenkin of Roding and Bernard Jenkin.

Generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his fathers patrons, he was born to an old and eccentric family in a government building near Dungeness, Kent, England, his father, Captain Charles Jenkin, at that time being in the coastguard service. His versatility was derived from his mother, Henrietta Camilla Jackson, a strong and energetic character who sang and sketched. Owing to her husbands frequent absence, she became responsible for Fleemings education. She took him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at Barjarg, she taught him drawing and allowed him to ride his pony on the moors. He went to school at Jedburgh, Borders, and afterwards to the Edinburgh Academy, where he won many prizes. Among his school fellows were James Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait.

Source: Wikipedia