BEVERLY, ARTHUR (1822-1907) was born at Alford, Aberdeenshire. The son of a farmer, he received school education in his parish and at a night school kept by John Taylor, of Stonehaven, a shoemaker. There he made extraordinary progress and was in charge of the class in navigation. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Aberdeen, and he worked there to 1852, and in Melbourne to 1856, when he moved to Dunedin and set up in business for himself.

A confirmed student, he lived frugally and, by means of careful investment in town sections and the profits from his business, he was able to retire in 1864 and devote himself to his hobbies, gardening, science and mechanics. He was a geologist and a good botanist and on the provincial expedition to the West Coast of Otago (1862) he made an exhaustive collection of plants between Preservation Inlet and Breaksea Sound. Beverly had a genius for mathematics, made original investigations in various branches of science and was expert at manipulating formulas. He found an empirical formula for the law of expansion of aqueous vapour which gave more accuracy than existing formulas. He was an excellent optician both in theory and practice and made many microscopes and telescopes. His combined thermometer and barometer on the aneroid principle was for many years in the Fernhill club, Dunedin. He also designed new escapements for chronometers and a compensation pendulum; and made a metallic thermometer with a circular face on which the divisions of the degree were so far apart as to be visible a few yards away. For his platometer, or planimeter (exhibited at the Dunedin Exhibition in 1865) he received from the Royal Scottish Society of Arts a bronze medal and the Macdougal Brisbane prize. The instrument was afterwards perfected and patented by Professor Amsler. In connection with a paper on the measurement of distances with long steel tapes, he devised a formula for sag and made a concise table which was used all over the world.

All Beverly's investigations were carried out in the most thorough manner. He left a great volume of mathematical formulas, and was the first modern geometrist to solve the twisting angle. After an exhaustive examination of Professor C. Piozzi Smyth's book on the construction of the Great Pyramid, Beverly devised a new 'radical calculus' and new formulas in hydraulics and optics. For some years he contributed monthly 'Rough Astronomical Notes' to the Evening Star and 'Notes and Queries' to the Otago Witness; and he consistently offered advice gratuitously to farmers and others on the construction of water races and power wheels.

Beverly was unmarried. He took no part in public life beyond a short period on the town board. He was an agnostic. His death occurred on 25 Oct 1907.

Reid; N.Z. Surveyor, Dec 1907; Otago Witness, 30 Oct; Otago Daily Times, 26 Oct 1907.

Reference: Volume 1, page 50

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