Thomas Gaskell Allen (1868 - 1955?)

Thomas Gaskell Allen was born in U.S.A. in 1868 and graduated at Washington University in 1890. The day after graduation he started on a three years' tour around the world on a bicycle. Up to that time, he was the first westerner to cross the Chinese Empire from West to East since Marco Polo. Subsequently, as correspondent for US papers, he traversed Siberia to describe the Trans-Siberian Railway then under construction.

He later married in Scotland and became a British subject. He was an engineer and invented the hydroautomat, a water-level raising device. His probable date of death is 1955, in England.