Isaac Taylor (17 August 1787 – 28 June 1865) was an English philosophical and historical writer, artist, and inventor. He was the eldest surviving son of Isaac Taylor of Ongar. He was born at Lavenham, Suffolk, and moved with his family to Colchester and, at the end of 1810, to Ongar. In the family tradition, he was trained as draughtsman and engraver. After a few years' occupation as a designer of book illustrations, he turned to literature as vocation.
In 1825 he settled at Stanford Rivers, about two miles from Ongar, in a rambling old-fashioned farmhouse. He married, on 17 August 1825, Elizabeth, second daughter of James Medland of Newington, the friend and correspondent of his sister Jane.
In 1836 Taylor contested the chair of logic at Edinburgh University with Sir William Hamilton, and was narrowly beaten. In March 1841, in Hanover Square, he delivered four lectures on 'Spiritual Christianity'. Though he joined the Anglican communion at an early stage in his career, Taylor remained on good terms with friends among the dissenters.
Taylor was always much interested in mechanical devices and inventions, and he spent many hours in the workshop that he fitted up at Stanford Rivers. Early in life he invented a beer-tap (patented 20 Nov. 1824) which came into almost universal use, and in 1848 he brought to perfection a highly ingenious machine for engraving upon copper (pat. 12248, 21 Aug. 1848). The expenses and liabilities involved by this invention made it a disaster financially to the inventor; it was eventually applied on a large scale by a syndicate to engraving patterns upon copper cylinders for calico printing in Manchester.
Two of his sisters had a reputation as poets. Ann Taylor, later Mrs. Gilbert (1782–1866), and Jane (1783–1824), responsible for the well-known rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
In the 1861 Census he is described as ‘a gentleman.’ He died in 1865 and is buried at Stanford Rivers.