Newcastle owes its prosperity to its convenient situation on a tidal river, and to the immense stores of coal in the neighbourhood, which, besides being largely exported, stimulate a great variety of industries which are dependent on their use. It began to export coal about the end of the 13th century, but the trade received a severe check by the act of Edward I. which made the burning of coal in London a capital offence. In the reign of Edward III. licence was granted to the inhabitants “to dig coals and stones in the common soil of the town without the walls thereof in the place called the Castle Field and the Forth.” The quay in front of the town, extending from the hydraulic bridge to the Ouseburn, forms a fine thoroughfare of about a mile in length; and by means of dredging a depth of water has been obtained at the shore permitting vessels of large tonnage to approach, although the berths of the ocean steamers are a little farther down the river. The quay is supplied with the most improved mechanical appliances, and has direct communication with the North-Eastern railway. There is a large grain warehouse at the E. end of the quay. Exports include coal, chemicals, pig-iron, iron-work, steel, iron bars, plates and castings, machinery, fire-clay goods and copper. The chief imports are fruits, wheat, maize, oats, barley, iron and steel, petroleum, sulphur ore, timber and wood hoops, iron ore and potatoes. Steamers carrying passengers serve the principal English ports, Cardiff, Leith, &c.; also Baltic ports and New York; while Newcastle is one of the chief ports for the extensive Norwegian tourist traffic, the ships of the combined Bergenske and Nordenfjeldske companies regularly serving Stavanger, Bergen, Trondhjem and intermediate ports. To the industries of Newcastle indicated by the exports may be added glass, lead and shot, brick and tile, earthenware, tool, rope and ships’-fitting manufactures, and most important of all, shipbuilding. The celebrated Elswick works, founded by Messrs Armstrong in 1847, and amalgamated with those of Mitchell & Co., are among the most important in the world. The construction of ships of all sorts, including the largest ironclads with all their armour and guns, is carried on. Elswick is the name of the western part of the borough of Newcastle. The borough returns two members to parliament. It is the largest undivided parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom. The city is governed by a lord mayor (the title was conferred in 1906), 19 aldermen and 57 councillors. Area, 8453 acres.
History.—Newcastle owes its origin to its position on the great Roman wall and on the estuary of the river Tyne. Its Roman occupation is proved by existing remains, most important among which are the foundations of a bridge, attributed to the emperor Hadrian. Before the Conquest little is known of the town except that it was called Monkchester, and that it was destroyed in the 9th century by the Danes. After the defeat of Edgar Ætheling and Earl Waltheof on Gateshead Fell, it was again destroyed by William the Conqueror, but Robert of Normandy is said to have raised a castle there in 1080 on his return from an expedition against Malcolm, king of Scotland, and from that time the town was called Newcastle. Shortly afterwards it was fortified by Robert de Mowbray in his rebellion against William Rufus, but it was taken by the king in 1095. In the reign of Stephen it was seized by David, king of Scotland, and after its restoration to the English in 1157 Henry II. rebuilt the castle and established a mint. The walls surrounding the town are attributed to Edward I. During the 14th century Newcastle was three times defended successfully against the Scots, but in 1640 it was occupied for a year by the Scottish Covenanters under Leslie. It was then garrisoned by royalists, but again surrendered to the Scots in 1644 after a siege of about six weeks, and Charles I. was taken there in 1646 when he had yielded himself to the Scottish army. The burgesses are said to have held the borough at a fee-farm rent under a grant from William Rufus. The title of mayor was conferred by Henry III., while Henry IV. in 1400 made the town a county of itself with a sheriff, and granted the burgesses power to elect 6 aldermen. Queen Elizabeth incorporated the town in 1589 under the title of mayor and burgesses, and Philip and Mary in 1556 granted 4 additional aldermen, while the charter of James I. in 1604 appointed 24 common councilmen. Newcastle has been represented in parliament by two members since 1295. The coal trade, to which the town owes its prosperity, began in the 13th century, but, partly owing to the act of parliament passed in the reign of Edward I. forbidding the use of coal in London, did not become important until the 17th century. Glassmaking was a considerable trade in the 17th century, and in 1823 George Stephenson established iron works at Newcastle, where the first engines used on the Stockton and Darlington, and Manchester and Liverpool lines were made.
See Victoria County History, Northumberland; John Brand, The History and Antiquities of the Town and County of the Town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1789); Chirographia, or a Survey of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1818).
NEWCOMB, SIMON (1835–1909), American astronomer, was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia, on the 12th of March 1835. He became a resident of the United States in 1853, and graduated at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University in 1858, having paid special attention to mathematics and astronomy. He assisted in the preparation of the American Nautical Almanac for 1857. In 1861 he became professor of mathematics in the United States navy, and was put in charge of the great 26-in. equatorial erected at Washington Observatory in 1873. In 1877 he was appointed director of the American Nautical Almanac office, a post which he held until March 1897. In 1884 he became professor of mathematics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University, continuing, however, to reside at Washington. He was also editor of the American Journal of Mathematics for many years. In view of the wide extent and importance of his labours, the variety of subjects of which he treats, and the unity of purpose which guided him throughout, Simon Newcomb must be considered as one of the most distinguished astronomers of his time. A study of his works reveals an unusual combination of skill and originality in the mathematical treatment of many of the most difficult problems of astronomy, an unfailing patience and sagacity in dealing with immense masses of numerical results, and a talent for observation of the highest order. On assuming the directorship of the Nautical Almanac he became very strongly impressed with the diversity existing in the values of the elements and constants of astronomy adopted by different astronomers, and the injurious effect which it exercised on the precision and symmetry of much astronomical work. Accordingly he resolved to “devote all the force which he could spare to the work of deriving improved values of the fundamental elements and embodying them in new tables of the celestial motions.” The formation of the tables of a planet has been described by Cayley as “the culminating achievement of astronomy,” but the gigantic task which Newcomb laid out for himself, and which he carried on for more than twenty years, was the building up, on an absolutely homogeneous basis, of the theory and tables of the whole planetary system. The results of these investigations have, for the most part, appeared in the Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris, and have been more or less completely adopted for use in the nautical almanacs of all countries. A valuable summary of a considerable part of this work, containing an account of the methods adopted, the materials employed, and the resulting values of the various quantities involved, was published in 1895, as a supplement to the American Ephemeris for 1897, entitled The Elements of the Four Inner Planets and the Fundamental Constants of Astronomy. In 1866 Newcomb had published[1] an important memoir on the orbit of Neptune, which was followed in 1873 by a similar investigation of the orbit of Uranus.[2] About twenty-five years later the tables of these planets were revised by him in view of all the observations which had accumulated in the meanwhile at Washington, Greenwich, Paris and Cambridge. In the meantime the theory of Jupiter and Saturn had been thoroughly worked out by G. W. Hill, Newcomb’s distinguished collaborator in the Nautical Almanac office and thus was
