1790 he was employed under Holland at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, and, attracting the notice of Francis Russell, fifth duke of Bedford [q. v.], became in 1794 the duke's resident architect and mechanist. In this capacity he effected many reforms in the management of the property. He designed the home farm at Woburn, the Swan Inn at Bedford, and many buildings and farmhouses on the Russell estates, all of which were models in their way. His services in the improvement of agricultural implements proved of the highest importance, and his numerous inventions attracted much attention when exhibited at the annual sheep-shearings at Woburn. In 1797 the Society of Arts awarded him thirty guineas for a chaff-cutting engine, which was the parent of all modern chaffcutters. In 1801 Salmon exhibited his ‘Bedfordshire Drill,’ which became the model for all succeeding drills. In 1803 he showed a plough, where the slade was replaced by a skew wheel, as in Pirie's modern double-furrow plough. In 1804 he brought out an excellent ‘scuffler,’ or cultivator, and two years later he exhibited a self-raking reaping machine, which was described in 1808 in ‘Bell's Weekly Messenger,’ and which embodied all the principles of the modern self-raker, introduced nearly sixty years later. In 1814 Salmon patented the first haymaking machine, to which modern improvement has added nothing but new details. He received at various times silver medals from the Society of Arts for surgical instruments, a canal lock, a weighing machine, a humane mantrap, and a system of earthwalls. John Russell, sixth duke of Bedford, father of Lord John Russell [q. v.], conferred on him the stewardship of his Chenies estate, that he might improve the system of plantation. He paid great attention to the proper method of pruning forest trees, for which he invented an apparatus, and made numerous experiments to determine the best method of seasoning timber.
Salmon continued his duties at Woburn until September 1821, when failing health caused him to resign his offices and retire to Lambeth. He died, however, within a month, while on a visit to Woburn, on 6 Oct. 1821, and was buried two days later in Woburn Church, where the sixth Duke of Bedford placed a tablet commemorating his ‘unwearied zeal and disinterested integrity.’
Salmon was the author of ‘An Analysis of the General Construction of Trusses,’ 1807, 8vo. He also contributed several papers to the ‘Transactions’ of the Society of Arts.
[Ann. Biography and Obituary, 1822, pp. 487–490; Clarke's Agriculture and the House of Russell, 1891, p. 10; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816, p. 305; Reuss's Register of Living Authors, 1790–1803, ii. 291; Woodcroft's Alphabetical List of Patentees, p. 498; Journal Royal Agricult. Soc. 1891, p. 132 and 1892, p. 250.]
SALMON, THOMAS (1648–1706), divine and writer on music, born in 1648, was the son of Thomas Salmon, gentleman, of Hackney. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, on 8 April 1664, and graduated B.A. 1667, and M.A. 1670. At the university he chiefly studied mathematics; but it is in connection with music that he is principally remembered. Matthew Locke [q. v.] says that Salmon applied to him for instruction in composition; adding ‘but I, never having contriv'd any method that way, referr'd him to Mr. Simpson's “Compendium of Practical Music” for the first introduction, and to Mr. Birchensha.’ Salmon, in 1672, published an ‘Essay to the Advancement of Musick,’ proposing the disuse of the Guidonian gamut-nomenclature, and the substitution of the first seven letters of the alphabet, without the further additions by which, for example, tenor C (C-fa-ut) had been distinguished from middle C (C sol-fa-ut). As the Guidonian hexachords were then falling into disuse, the nomenclature was certain to follow them into oblivion. Salmon proposed the modern octave system, which William Bathe [q. v.] had long before recommended. Salmon also added a proposal to give up the tablature then used for the lute, and in all music to substitute for the clefs the letters B, M, T (bass, mean, treble), each stave having G on the lowest line. This proposal, if adopted, would have enormously simplified the acquirement of notation; and the essay was recommended by the Royal Society. But its only result was a very scurrilous controversy. Salmon had appealed to Locke and the lutenist, Theodore Stefkins, for support; Locke answered by publishing ‘Observations upon a late Essay,’ in which Salmon's proposals are attacked with great acrimony and scarcely veiled obscenity. Salmon retorted in a ‘Vindication;’ with this was printed a tract by an unidentified ‘N. E.,’ dated from Norwich. Locke's answer, ‘The Present Practice of Music Vindicated,’ was more decently written than the ‘Observations;’ but the tracts by John Phillips and John Playford in its support are singularly coarse.
In 1673 Salmon obtained the valuable living of Mepsal or Meppershall in Bedfordshire, and he was also rector of Ickleford, Hertfordshire. He abandoned the controversy with Locke, but in 1688 issued a work
