Steven Hoogendijk (1698-1788), Dutch watchmaker. Hoogendijk was born at Rotterdam and entered the family clockmaking business. He applied his technical and mechanical skills to many problems, inluding inventing a pyrometer and designing a water mill. He never married and had no children, so in his will he bequeathed an inheritance to found the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy. One of its first aims was to introduce the steam engine into Holland, although the Dutch pumps were not up to the power provided by English steam engines. The Society continues to this day, although almost all of its archive was destroyed during the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940.