Horace Darwin was born at Downe in Kent on 13 May 1851, the fifth and youngest son of the celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin and his wife Emma nee Wedgwood. As a boy he was somewhat delicate in health but, with the help of privae tuition, he qualified to enter Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1871. After graduating in the mathematical tripos of 1874 he took up an ordinary three-year apprenticeship in the iron foundry of Messrs Easton and Anderson of Erith, Kent. At the end of his training he returned to Cambridge and remained there for the rest of his life.
Darwin began earning his living as a consulting engineer on land reclamation and drainage schemes but his university friends were soon asking him to design and construct new types of instruments and apparatus which they needed, particularly in the natural sciences school, where research techniques were becoming more dependent on precision measurements and recording of events. After working with various scientists and mechanics on different projects, Darwin entered into a formal partnership in 1878 with A. G. Dew Smith to establish the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. This became a limited company in 1880 with Darwin as its chief shareholder, and from 1891 he was in sole control.
The company was associated from the outset with prominent figures in the university; it specialized in constructing apparatus for their individual needs and underpinned this with the production of basic apparatus for schools and colleges, and for industry. It became widely known as ‘Horace Darwin's shop’ and its reputation grew apace, supported by Darwin's flair for design and the skilled workforce who served him. Darwin himself contributed in large part to the marked improvement in British scientific instrument design which took place between 1880 and 1930, as industry came to rely on instruments for process control. Darwin frequently aired his strong views on the place of the designer in industry, in lectures and in print: he argued that the designer should be a mechanical engineer with much scientific knowledge and well acquainted with the available methods of manufacture.
In 1880 Darwin married the Hon. Emma Cecilia (Ida) (1854-1946), daughter of Thomas Henry Farrer, first Baron Farrer; they had one son (killed in action in 1915), and two daughters. Darwin became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1877 and a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1878. He served on numerous local and university boards and committees, and as a JP, and held office as mayor of Cambridge in 1896–7. In 1903 he was elected FRS. About this time his interests turned to aviation and the problems of mechanical stress and navigation in flight. Darwin was one of the founder members of the advisory committee for aeronautics set up in 1909 and his company soon became involved in this new industry, building the apparatus needed for wind-tunnel and other airframe tests, and designing and making aircraft instruments. In 1918 Darwin was awarded a knighthood for his ‘services in connection with the war’, most notably his work as chairman of the Munitions Inventions Department Panel.
Darwin died at his home, The Orchard, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, on 22 September 1928, and was buried in St. Giles's cemetery, Cambridge.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography