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GADD, William (1838–1919), inventor, patent agent and designer of Gas Holders, was born on 3 March 1838 in Basford, Nottingham, to William Gadd, and his wife, Eliza, née Belfield, both employed in the Nottingham lace and hosiery trade. His family moved in 1851 to St. Werburgh, Derby, where he was formally educated. After leaving school ‘he had ample opportunity to develop his natural mechanical and inventive proclivities in his father's and uncle's workshops’. In 1859 he took out his first patent (No. 2858) for improving the manufacture of lace trimming. By 1861 the family was back in Nottingham and in that same year he married Mary, née Belfield (presumably a cousin), of St. Werburgh, Derby, listed in the 1851 Census, aged 11, as a silk winder. They were to have three sons and three daughters. Although Gadd is described in the 1861 census as being a lace manufacturer like his father, he shortly thereafter left for London to serve an apprenticeship with a civil and mechanical engineer. He took out his second patent in 1863 (No. 2685), also for lace trimming machinery. At some point, probably at the conclusion of his apprenticeship, he went to Manchester to conduct a series of experiments connected with weaving and in 1864 he took out, in conjunction with John Moore, a Manchester manufacturer, the first of a long series of patents for improvements to looms. The success of this venture persuaded him to move permanently to Manchester where he remained for the rest of his life; by 1870 he was living in Chorlton-upon-Medlock. He described himself in the 1871 census as ‘Consulting Engineer and Inventor’ and had business premises at 1 Corporation Street. By 1874 he had premises at 64 Barton Arcade, where he remained for the rest of his career. At this point there is a ten-year gap in the patents and it is unclear what he was doing, though he describes himself as ‘Civil Engineer’ in the 1881 census and was also working as a patent agent. In 1884 the flow of patents resumed, again largely concerned with textile machinery.