Conrad Christian Severin Knap (1840-1925)
1866 Conrad Knap, Engineer, Temple Street, Birmingham.[1]
1875 Secretary for the Patent Steam Boiler Co. [2]
1875 Patent. '208. And Richard Hobbs Taunton, of Wilton, in the county of Warwick, George Hayward, of Acock's Green, in the county of Worcester, and Conrad Knap, of Gravelly Hill, in the county of Warwick, have given the like notice in respect of the invention of "improvements in the manufacture of wrought iron tubes."'[3]
1926 Obituary [4]
CONRAD CHRISTIAN SEVERIN KNAP was born at Fredrikshald, in Norway, on 13th December 1840, and was educated at the Grammar School there.
He was an engineering student in Hannover and in Belgium from 1856 to 1860, and after a short return to Norway, he came to England and was engaged as a draughtsman from 1861 to 1865 in the works of Messrs. Cochrane and Co., of the Woodside Iron Works, Dudley.
Later on he was employed by Messrs. Delmard Lane and Co., of Birmingham, and from 1866 to 1884 was engaged as engineer and manager by the Patent Steam Boiler Co., the makers of the Roots' Safety Tubulous Steam Boiler.
Mr. Knap left Birmingham in 1885 and opened a business in Westminster as consulting mechanical engineer and boiler maker. About this time he invented a joint for boiler use that required neither rubber nor asbestos rings. This patent he gradually improved, and the results were embodied in the "Knap" water-tube steam-boiler, which came subsequently into considerable use in mining equipment.
When the Great War broke out in 1914, he went back to Norway, but after spending a few years there his liking for England brought him again to this country and he died in London on 5th May 1925.
He became a Member of this Institution in 1889.