Having received the ordinary education of a parish school, he was apprenticed to his uncle, a millwright, and, after qualifying himself as a ship-modeller at Bo'ness, went to London, where he found employment under John Rennie, the celebrated engineer.
An impression exists in Cornwall, where Murdoch's early experiments were made, that it was a millwright named Hornblower who first suggested the process of making gas to Murdoch, but, as has been shown, the fact that illuminating gas could be obtained from coal by distillation was known a century before Murdoch made his experiments, and the most that can be claimed for him is that he made the first successful application of it on a practical scale.
Here was an engine that could be built by the millwright and blacksmith.
The postmill was bought by millwright, Robert Gilbert, who quite possibly was responsible for building the new towermill for the Lane family.
The son of a Scottish millwright, he was born in Auchinleck, Ayrshire, on the estate of James Boswell's father.