George Parker Bidder (1806-1878), Engineer

Sitter in 5 portraits
As a child, Bidder had an extraordinary ability to handle numbers without writing them down, and his father, a stonemason, exhibited him widely as a 'calculating boy'. In 1824, he began work in the Ordnance Survey but left the following year to become an assistant to Henry Robinson Palmer, engineer of the London Dock Company. This was the start of a varied and successful career as a civil engineer. He was a friend of Robert Louis Stephenson, and contributed to the planning and construction of railways including the London & Birmingham Railway. He was also one of the founders of the Electric Telegraph Company where he worked on the development of transatlantic cables.