removed to Manchester, whence he paid a visit to his father's old friend, James Watt, at Soho, near Birmingham, and made the acquaintance of young Watt, who became his lifelong friend. In 1802 he obtained a mercantile situation in Madras, and subsequently entered the service of the nizam of Hyderabad as contractor for the establishment and maintenance of the artillery service, including the furnishing of guns and ammunition. He was also appointed commanding officer of the corps. For the nizam he laid out grounds on the English model. Having acquired a considerable fortune, he left India in 1815, and settled in the west of Scotland, at the Grove, near Hamilton. After some years he removed to Edinburgh. On 22 Jan. 1816 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; in 1823 secretary of the physical class of the society; and in 1828, in succession to Sir David Brewster, general secretary to the society. The last office, which his father had previously held, he filled till 1840 with great ability. On resigning the post the society voted the sum of 300l. to Robison ‘in acknowledgment of his long services.’ In 1831 he contributed to the ‘Transactions’ of the society a ‘Notice regarding a Timekeeper in the Hall of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,’ the pendulum of which had been constructed by Robison of marble, as being less subject to variations in temperature than metal. This clock, the work of Whitelaw, still keeps accurate time in the lecture-hall of the society. Robison also contributed the article on ‘Turning’ to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ and published a description in English and French (which he wrote and spoke fluently) of a large pumping steam-engine, and an account of the failure of a suspension bridge at Paris. In 1821 he was one of the founders of the Scottish Society of Arts, of which he was secretary from 1822 to 1824, twice vice-president, and finally president, 1841–2, the first year of its incorporation. Upwards of sixty articles from his pen were communicated to this society. He received its Keith prize for his improvements in the art of cutting accurate metal screws, a silver medal for his description and drawing of a cheap and easily used camera lucida, and a medal for a notice of experiments on the Forth and Clyde Canal on the resistance to vessels moving with different velocities. Robison was for many years a member of the Highland Society, and chairman of its committee on agricultural implements and machinery. He acted as local secretary to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1834, when M. Arago was his guest. He was also a commissioner of police. In 1837 he received the Guelphic order from William IV, and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1838. His inventions were numerous and ingenious. He made a particular study of the application of hot air to warming houses, and of gas to the purposes of illumination and heating. In his own kitchen the chief combustible was gas. ‘From boring a cannon,’ wrote Professor Forbes, ‘to drilling a needle's eye, nothing was strange to him. Masonry, carpentry, and manufactures in metals were almost equally familiar to him. His house in Randolph Crescent was built entirely from his own plans, and nothing, from the cellar to the roof, in construction or in furniture, but bore testimony to his minute and elaborate invention.’ He evinced great energy in making known merit among talented artificers. His house was always open to distinguished foreigners. He died on 7 March 1843. He married first, in 1816, Jean Grahame (d. 1824) of Whitehill, near Glasgow; and, secondly, Miss Benson (d. 1837). He left two daughters by his first wife. The elder daughter, Euphemia Erskine, born in 1818, married in 1839 Archibald Gerard of Rochsoles, Airdrie, and died at Salzburg in 1870, leaving three sons and four daughters, two of whom (Emily, wife of General de Laszowska, and Dorothea, wife of Major de Longgarde) won repute as the novelists E. and D. Gerard. The former died 11 Jan. 1905.
[For the elder Robison see Ogilvie's Imp. Dict. of Biogr.; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Allibone's Dict.; Chambers's and Thomson's Eminent Scotsmen; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Brewster's Preface to Robison's System; John Playfair's obit. notice in Trans. Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. vii. (reprinted in Playfair's Works, vol. iv.); Dr. Thomas Young's Works, vol. ii.; Phil. Mag. 1802; Cockburn's Memorials, chap. i.; Smiles's Lives of Boulton and Watt. For the younger Robison see Edinburgh Courant, 9 March 1843; Ann. Register, 1843; Trans. of the Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, xv. 680–1; Obit. notice by Prof. Forbes in Proc. of same society, ii. 68–78; Trans. of Royal Scottish Soc. of Arts, 1843, pp. 43–4; information supplied by Miss Guthrie Wright, Edinburgh.]
ROBOTHOM, JOHN (fl. 1654), divine, possibly descended from the Robothoms of St. Albans, Hertfordshire (see Urwick, Nonconf. in Hertfordshire, pp. 149, 180; Harl. Soc. xvii. 208, xxii. 87), may have been of Trinity College, Oxford. In 1647 he applied for ordination to the ministers of the fourth presbyterian classis in London. There were several exceptions against him, and the ministers, not having leisure to examine them, turned him over to the next classis meeting for
