officer of the Royal Engineers; several inventions, including a tunneling machine which bore his name, and the Beaumont-Adams revolver;

1873 - in charge of railways at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich; worked on methods for generating hydrogen for balloon experiments;

1874 - involved with the Channel Tunnel Company and successfully bored a number of tunnels without the use of explosives and more than three times faster than manual labour; invented a tunneling machine but it was not used for the Channel Tunnel trial;

1876 - elected one of Members of Parliament for South Durham which he held from 1868 to 1880;

1877 - retired after his promotion to Colonel