Atwood, George

George (1746-1807), an English mathematician and inventor. He was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, in which he was afterward a tutor. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and held a position in the British patent office under Mr. Pitt. He contributed a number of papers to the Philosophical Transactions, also some treatises on philosophical subjects. He is of interest to the schoolboy as the inventor of Atwood's machine, a device to verify the laws of the acceleration of motion for falling bodies.