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1 Hales, Stephen
[br]b. September 1677 Bekesbourne, Kent, Englandd. 4 January 1761 Teddington, Middlesex, England[br]English physiologist and inventor, author of the first account of the measurement of blood pressure.[br]After attending Corpus Christi, Cambridge, he was admitted as a Fellow in 1702. During the ensuing years he was engaged in botanical, astronomical and chemical activities and research. He was appointed Minister at Teddington, Middlesex, in 1708 and remained in that post until his death. During these years, he continued to engage in a wide range of botanical and physiological activities involving studies of the nutrition of plants, blood pressure and the flow of blood in animals. He was also the inventor of improved ventilation by systems of partition and ducting, and the production of fresh water by distillation for ships at sea. The wide range of his interests did not preclude his care for his pastoral duties, and he was involved in the education of the Prince of Wales's children, although he declined a canonry of Windsor. In his writings he set a standard for the scientific method as related to principles based on facts and observation.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1718. Copley Medal 1739. Académie Française 1753. Founding Member, Society of Arts; Vice-President 1755.Bibliography1727, Vegetable Statisticks, London. 1733, Statistical Essays, London.1734, A Friendly Admonition to the Drinkers of Brandy, London.1736, Distilled Spirituous Liquors the Bane of the Nation, London. 1739, Philosophical Experiments, London.1740, An Account of Some Experiments and Observations, London.1743, 1758, A Description of Ventilators, London.1756, An Account of a Useful Discovery to Distill, London.MG -
2 Hodgkinson, Eaton
[br]b. 26 February 1789 Anderton, Cheshire, Englandd. 18 June 1861 near Manchester, England[br]English engineer who devised d new form of cast-iron girder.[br]Eaton Hodgkinson's father, a farmer, died when he was 6 years old, but his mother was a resourceful woman who set up a business in Salford and ensured that her son received a sound schooling. Most important for his education, however, was his friendship with the Manchester scientific luminary Dr. Dalton, who instructed him in practical mathematics. These studies led Hodgkinson to devise a new form of cast-iron girder, carefully tested by experiments and which was widely adopted for fire-proof structures in the nineteenth century. Following Dalton, Hodgkinson became an active member of the Manchester Philosophical Society, of which he was elected President in 1848. He also became an active member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Hodgkinson's work on cast-iron girders secured him a Fellowship of the Royal Society, and the Royal Medal of the Society, in 1841. It was Hodgkinson also who verified the mathematical value of the pioneering experiments carried out by William Fairbairn for Robert Stephenson's proposed wrought-iron tube structure which, in 1849, became the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits. He received a Silver Medal for this work at the Paris Exhibition of 1858. Hodgkinson served as a member of the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into the application of iron to railway structures. In 1847 he was appointed Professor of the Mechanical Principles of Engineering at University College, London, but his health began to fail shortly after. He was elected an Honorary Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1851. Described as "singularly simple and guileless", he was widely admired and respected.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, Manchester Philosophical Society 1848. FRS 1841. Royal Society Medal 1841.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, London.Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 21:542–5.AB -
3 Wilde, Henry
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 1833 Manchester, Englandd. 28 March 1919 Alderley Edge, Cheshire, England[br]English inventor and pioneer manufacturer of electrical generators.[br]After completing a mechanical engineering apprenticeship Wilde commenced in business as a telegraph and lightning conductor specialist in Lancashire. Several years spent on the design of an alphabetic telegraph resulted in a number of patents. In 1864 he secured a patent for an electromagnetic generator which gave alternating current from a shuttle-wound armature, the field being excited by a small direct-current magneto. Wilde's invention was described to the Royal Society by Faraday in March 1866. When demonstrated at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, Wilde's machine produced sufficient power to maintain an arc light. The small size of the generator provided a contrast to the large and heavy magnetoelectric machines also exhibited. He discovered, by experiment, that alternators in synchronism could be connected in parallel. At about the same time John Hopkinson arrived at the same conclusions on theoretical grounds.Between 1866 and 1877 he sold ninety-four machines with commutators for electroplating purposes, a number being purchased by Elkingtons of Birmingham. He also supplied generators for the first use of electric searchlights on battleships. In his early experiments Wilde was extremely close to the discovery of true self-excitation from remnant magnetism, a principle which he was to discover in 1867 on machines intended for electroplating. His patents proved to be financially successful and he retired from business in 1884. During the remaining thirty-five years of his life he published many scientific papers, turning from experimental work to philosophical and, finally, theological matters. His record as an inventor established him as a pioneer of electrical engineering, but his lack of scientific training was to restrict his later contributions.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1886.Bibliography1 December 1863, British patent no. 3,006 (alternator with a magneto-exciter).1866, Proceedings of the Royal Society 14:107–11 (first report on Wilde's experiments). 1900, autobiographical note, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 29:3–17.Further ReadingW.W.Haldane Gee. 1920, biography, Memoirs, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 63:1–16 (a comprehensive account).P.Dunsheath, 1962, A History of Electrical Engineering, London: Faber \& Faber, pp. 110–12 (a short account).GW -
4 Thinking
But what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels. (Descartes, 1951, p. 153)I have been trying in all this to remove the temptation to think that there "must be" a mental process of thinking, hoping, wishing, believing, etc., independent of the process of expressing a thought, a hope, a wish, etc.... If we scrutinize the usages which we make of "thinking," "meaning," "wishing," etc., going through this process rids us of the temptation to look for a peculiar act of thinking, independent of the act of expressing our thoughts, and stowed away in some particular medium. (Wittgenstein, 1958, pp. 41-43)Analyse the proofs employed by the subject. If they do not go beyond observation of empirical correspondences, they can be fully explained in terms of concrete operations, and nothing would warrant our assuming that more complex thought mechanisms are operating. If, on the other hand, the subject interprets a given correspondence as the result of any one of several possible combinations, and this leads him to verify his hypotheses by observing their consequences, we know that propositional operations are involved. (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958, p. 279)In every age, philosophical thinking exploits some dominant concepts and makes its greatest headway in solving problems conceived in terms of them. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers construed knowledge, knower, and known in terms of sense data and their association. Descartes' self-examination gave classical psychology the mind and its contents as a starting point. Locke set up sensory immediacy as the new criterion of the real... Hobbes provided the genetic method of building up complex ideas from simple ones... and, in another quarter, still true to the Hobbesian method, Pavlov built intellect out of conditioned reflexes and Loeb built life out of tropisms. (S. Langer, 1962, p. 54)Experiments on deductive reasoning show that subjects are influenced sufficiently by their experience for their reasoning to differ from that described by a purely deductive system, whilst experiments on inductive reasoning lead to the view that an understanding of the strategies used by adult subjects in attaining concepts involves reference to higher-order concepts of a logical and deductive nature. (Bolton, 1972, p. 154)There are now machines in the world that think, that learn and create. Moreover, their ability to do these things is going to increase rapidly until-in the visible future-the range of problems they can handle will be coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied. (Newell & Simon, quoted in Weizenbaum, 1976, p. 138)But how does it happen that thinking is sometimes accompanied by action and sometimes not, sometimes by motion, and sometimes not? It looks as if almost the same thing happens as in the case of reasoning and making inferences about unchanging objects. But in that case the end is a speculative proposition... whereas here the conclusion which results from the two premises is an action.... I need covering; a cloak is a covering. I need a cloak. What I need, I have to make; I need a cloak. I have to make a cloak. And the conclusion, the "I have to make a cloak," is an action. (Nussbaum, 1978, p. 40)It is well to remember that when philosophy emerged in Greece in the sixth century, B.C., it did not burst suddenly out of the Mediterranean blue. The development of societies of reasoning creatures-what we call civilization-had been a process to be measured not in thousands but in millions of years. Human beings became civilized as they became reasonable, and for an animal to begin to reason and to learn how to improve its reasoning is a long, slow process. So thinking had been going on for ages before Greece-slowly improving itself, uncovering the pitfalls to be avoided by forethought, endeavoring to weigh alternative sets of consequences intellectually. What happened in the sixth century, B.C., is that thinking turned round on itself; people began to think about thinking, and the momentous event, the culmination of the long process to that point, was in fact the birth of philosophy. (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980, p. xi)The way to look at thought is not to assume that there is a parallel thread of correlated affects or internal experiences that go with it in some regular way. It's not of course that people don't have internal experiences, of course they do; but that when you ask what is the state of mind of someone, say while he or she is performing a ritual, it's hard to believe that such experiences are the same for all people involved.... The thinking, and indeed the feeling in an odd sort of way, is really going on in public. They are really saying what they're saying, doing what they're doing, meaning what they're meaning. Thought is, in great part anyway, a public activity. (Geertz, quoted in J. Miller, 1983, pp. 202-203)Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Einstein, quoted in Minsky, 1986, p. 17)What, in effect, are the conditions for the construction of formal thought? The child must not only apply operations to objects-in other words, mentally execute possible actions on them-he must also "reflect" those operations in the absence of the objects which are replaced by pure propositions. Thus, "reflection" is thought raised to the second power. Concrete thinking is the representation of a possible action, and formal thinking is the representation of a representation of possible action.... It is not surprising, therefore, that the system of concrete operations must be completed during the last years of childhood before it can be "reflected" by formal operations. In terms of their function, formal operations do not differ from concrete operations except that they are applied to hypotheses or propositions [whose logic is] an abstract translation of the system of "inference" that governs concrete operations. (Piaget, quoted in Minsky, 1986, p. 237)[E]ven a human being today (hence, a fortiori, a remote ancestor of contemporary human beings) cannot easily or ordinarily maintain uninterrupted attention on a single problem for more than a few tens of seconds. Yet we work on problems that require vastly more time. The way we do that (as we can observe by watching ourselves) requires periods of mulling to be followed by periods of recapitulation, describing to ourselves what seems to have gone on during the mulling, leading to whatever intermediate results we have reached. This has an obvious function: namely, by rehearsing these interim results... we commit them to memory, for the immediate contents of the stream of consciousness are very quickly lost unless rehearsed.... Given language, we can describe to ourselves what seemed to occur during the mulling that led to a judgment, produce a rehearsable version of the reaching-a-judgment process, and commit that to long-term memory by in fact rehearsing it. (Margolis, 1987, p. 60)Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Thinking
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5 Lawes, Sir John Bennet
SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology[br]b. 28 December 1814 Rothamsted, Hertfordshire, Englandd. 31 August 1900 Rothamsted, Hertfordshire, England[br]English scientific agriculturalist.[br]Lawes's education at Eton and Oxford did little to inform his early taste for chemistry, which he developed largely on his own. By the age of 20 he had fitted up the best bedroom in his house as a fully equipped chemical laboratory. His first interest was in the making of drugs; it was said that he knew the Pharmacopoeia, by heart. He did, however, receive some instruction from Anthony Todd Thomson of University College, London. His father having died in 1822, Lawes entered into possession of the Rothamsted estate when he came of age in 1834. He began experiments with plants with uses as drugs, but following an observation by a neighbouring farmer of the effect of bones on the growth of certain crops Lawes turned to experiments with bones dissolved in sulphuric acid on his turnip crop. The results were so promising that he took out a patent in 1842 for converting mineral and fossil phosphates into a powerful manure by the action of sulphuric acid. The manufacture of these superphosphates became a major industry of tremendous benefit to agriculture. Lawes himself set up a factory at Deptford in 1842 and a larger one in 1857 at Barking Creek, both near London. The profits from these and other chemical manufacturing concerns earned Lawes profits which funded his experimental work at Rothamsted. In 1843, Lawes set up the world's first agricultural experiment station. Later in the same year he was joined by Joseph Henry Gilbert, and together they carried out a considerable number of experiments of great benefit to agriculture, many of the results of which were published in the leading scientific journals of the day, including the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In all, 132 papers were published, most of them jointly with Gilbert. A main theme of the work on plants was the effect of various chemical fertilizers on the growth of different crops, compared with the effects of farm manure and of no treatment at all. On animal rearing, they studied particularly the economical feeding of animals.The work at Rothamsted soon brought Lawes into prominence; he joined the Royal Agricultural Society in 1846 and became a member of its governing body two years later, a position he retained for over fifty years. Numerous distinctions followed and Rothamsted became a place of pilgrimage for people from many parts of the world who were concerned with the application of science to agriculture. Rothamsted's jubilee in 1893 was marked by a public commemoration headed by the Prince of Wales.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsBaronet 1882. FRS 1854. Royal Society Royal Medal (jointly with Gilbert) 1867.Further ReadingMemoir with portrait published in J. Roy. Agric. Soc. Memoranda of the origin, plan and results of the field and other experiments at Rothamsted, issued annually by the Lawes Agricultural Trust Committee, with a list of Lawes's scientific papers.LRD -
6 Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph
[br]b. 12 June 1851 Penkhull, Staffordshire, Englandd. 22 August 1940 Lake, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England[br]English physicist who perfected Branly's coherer; said to have given the first public demonstration of wireless telegraphy.[br]At the age of 8 Lodge entered Newport Grammar School, and in 1863–5 received private education at Coombs in Suffolk. He then returned to Staffordshire, where he assisted his father in the potteries by working as a book-keeper. Whilst staying with an aunt in London in 1866–7, he attended scientific lectures and became interested in physics. As a result of this and of reading copies of English Mechanic magazine, when he was back home in Hanley he began to do experiments and attended the Wedgewood Institute. Returning to London c. 1870, he studied initially at the Royal College of Science and then, from 1874, at University College, London (UCL), at the same time attending lectures at the Royal Institution.In 1875 he obtained his BSc, read a paper to the British Association on "Nodes and loops in chemical formulae" and became a physics demonstrator at UCL. The following year he was appointed a physics lecturer at Bedford College, completing his DSc in 1877. Three years later he became Assistant Professor of Mathematics at UCL, but in 1881, after only two years, he accepted the Chair of Experimental Physics at the new University College of Liverpool. There began a period of fruitful studies of electricity and radio transmission and reception, including development of the lightning conductor, discovery of the "coherent" effect of sparks and improvement of Branly's coherer, and, in 1894, what is said to be the first public demonstration of the transmission and reception (using a coherer) of wireless telegraphy, from Lewis's department store to the clock tower of Liverpool University's Victoria Building. On 10 May 1897 he filed a patent for selective tuning by self-in-ductance; this was before Marconi's first patent was actually published and its priority was subsequently upheld.In 1900 he became the first Principal of the new University of Birmingham, where he remained until his retirement in 1919. In his later years he was increasingly interested in psychical research.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1902. FRS 1887. Royal Society Council Member 1893. President, Society for Psychical Research 1901–4, 1932. President, British Association 1913. Royal Society Rumford Medal 1898. Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal 1919. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1932. Fourteen honorary degrees from British and other universities.Bibliography1875, "The flow of electricity in a plane", Philosophical Magazine (May, June and December).1876, "Thermo-electric phenomena", Philosophical Magazine (December). 1888, "Lightning conductors", Philosophical Magazine (August).1889, Modern Views of Electricity (lectures at the Royal Institution).10 May 1897, "Improvements in syntonized telegraphy without line wires", British patent no. 11,575, US patent no. 609,154.1898, "Radio waves", Philosophical Magazine (August): 227.1931, Past Years, An Autobiography, London: Hodder \& Stoughton.Further ReadingW.P.Jolly, 1974, Sir Oliver Lodge, Psychical Resear cher and Scientist, London: Constable.E.Hawks, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen.See also: Hertz, Heinrich RudolphKFBiographical history of technology > Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph
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7 Perkins, Jacob
[br]b. 9 July 1766 Newburyport, Massachusetts, USAd. 30 July 1849 London, England[br]American inventor of a nail-making machine and a method of printing banknotes, investigator of the use of steam at very high pressures.[br]Perkins's occupation was that of a gold-and silversmith; while he does not seem to have followed this after 1800, however, it gave him the skills in working metals which he would continue to employ in his inventions. He had been working in America for four years before he patented his nail-making machine in 1796. At the time there was a great shortage of nails because only hand-forged ones were available. By 1800, other people had followed his example and produced automatic nail-making machines, but in 1811 Perkins' improved machines were introduced to England by J.C. Dyer. Eventually Perkins had twenty-one American patents for a range of inventions in his name.In 1799 Perkins invented a system of engraving steel plates for printing banknotes, which became the foundation of modern siderographic work. It discouraged forging and was adopted by many banking houses, including the Federal Government when the Second United States Bank was inaugurated in 1816. This led Perkins to move to Philadelphia. In the intervening years, Perkins had improved his nail-making machine, invented a machine for graining morocco leather in 1809, a fire-engine in 1812, a letter-lock for bank vaults and improved methods of rolling out spoons in 1813, and improved armament and equipment for naval ships from 1812 to 1815.It was in Philadelphia that Perkins became interested in the steam engine, when he met Oliver Evans, who had pioneered the use of high-pressure steam. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society and conducted experiments on the compressibility of water before a committee of that society. Perkins claimed to have liquified air during his experiments in 1822 and, if so, was the real discoverer of the liquification of gases. In 1819 he came to England to demonstrate his forgery-proof system of printing banknotes, but the Bank of England was the only one which did not adopt his system.While in London, Perkins began to experiment with the highest steam pressures used up to that time and in 1822 took out his first of nineteen British patents. This was followed by another in 1823 for a 10 hp (7.5 kW) engine with only 2 in. (51 mm) bore, 12 in. (305 mm) stroke but a pressure of 500 psi (35 kg/cm2), for which he claimed exceptional economy. After 1826, Perkins abandoned his drum boiler for iron tubes and steam pressures of 1,500 psi (105 kg/cm2), but the materials would not withstand such pressures or temperatures for long. It was in that same year that he patented a form of uniflow cylinder that was later taken up by L.J. Todd. One of his engines ran for five days, continuously pumping water at St Katherine's docks, but Perkins could not raise more finance to continue his experiments.In 1823 one his high-pressure hot-water systems was installed to heat the Duke of Wellington's house at Stratfield Saye and it acquired a considerable vogue, being used by Sir John Soane, among others. In 1834 Perkins patented a compression ice-making apparatus, but it did not succeed commercially because ice was imported more cheaply from Norway as ballast for sailing ships. Perkins was often dubbed "the American inventor" because his inquisitive personality allied to his inventive ingenuity enabled him to solve so many mechanical challenges.[br]Further ReadingHistorical Society of Pennsylvania, 1943, biography which appeared previously as a shortened version in the Transactions of the Newcomen Society 24.D.Bathe and G.Bathe, 1943–5, "The contribution of Jacob Perkins to science and engineering", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 24.D.S.L.Cardwell, 1971, From Watt to Clausius. The Rise of Thermodynamics in the Early Industrial Age, London: Heinemann (includes comments on the importance of Perkins's steam engine).A.F.Dufton, 1940–1, "Early application of engineering to warming of buildings", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 21 (includes a note on Perkins's application of a high-pressure hot-water heating system).RLH -
8 Johnson, Percival Norton
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 29 September 1792 London, Englandd. 1 June 1866 Stoke Fleming, Devon, England[br]English chemist, assayer, mining engineer and founder of the firm Johnson Matthey.[br]He was the son of John Johnson, then sole Commercial Assayer in London, from whom he inherited his aptitude for chemistry and metallurgy. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to his father by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Ore samples then being analysed in Johnson's office introduced him to the new metal platinum, and resulted in a paper to Philosophical Magazine in 1812. Johnson established himself as a "practical mineralogist" in Maiden Lane, London, in 1818 and in Hatton Garden after 1822. He was greatly assisted by a fellow metallurgist, Thomas Cock (1787–1842), who developed the platinum fabrication and pigment sides of die business. In 1827 Johnson was consulted by the Russian government about the exploitation of the rich platinum deposits that had been discovered in the Urals in 1819. Between 1829 and 1832 Johnson became the first in England to manufacture nickel, extracted from nickel-bearing material imported from Germany at his plant at Bow Common on the Regent's Canal. In 1832 he began to réfine gold imported from the Imperial Brazilian Association by a process which separated without loss the metals silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium and iridium. This profitable activity continued until the Brazilian company was wound up in 1852. Since 1824, Johnson had been named "assay master" by a number of mining companies. From 1843 until the mid-1850s he had a considerable mining interest in the West Country. Meanwhile, the Hatton Garden establishment continued to prosper. In 1839 he was joined by George Matthey, who particularly fostered the Russian platinum business, and in 1851 he was taken unto partnership and the firm became the celebrated Johnson Matthey. In the following year the firm was officially recognized as one of the four Assayers to the Bank of England appointed to handle the flood of gold dust then arriving in England from the Australian gold fields. Soon after, however, ill health compelled him to retire to his Devon country house.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1846.Bibliography1812, "Experiments which prove platina, when combined with gold and silver, to be soluble in nitric acid", Philosophical Magazine (1st series) 40(171):3–4.Further ReadingD.McDonald, 1951, Percival Norton Johnson, London: Johnson Matthey (includes lists of his publications and his honours and awards).——1964, The Johnsons of Morden Lane, London: Martins.——1960, A History of Platinum, London: Johnson Matthey.ASDBiographical history of technology > Johnson, Percival Norton
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9 Grove, Sir William Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 11 July 1811 Swansea, Walesd. 1 August 1896 London, England[br]Welsh chemist and physicist, inventor of the Grove electrochemical primary cell.[br]After education at Brasenose College, Oxford, Grove was called to the Bar in 1835. Instead of immediately practising, he became involved in electrical research, devising in 1839 the cell that bears his name. He became Professor of Experimental Philosophy at the London Institution from 1840 to 1845; it was during this period that he built up his high reputation among physicists. In 1846 he published On the Correlation of Physical Forces, which was based on a course of his lectures. He returned to the practice of law, becoming a judge in 1871, but retained his interest in scientific research during his sixteen-year occupancy of the Bench. He served as a member of the Council of the Royal Society in 1846 and 1847 and played a leading part in its reform. Contributing to the science of electrochemistry, he invented the Grove cell, which together with its modification by Bunsen became an important source of electrical energy during the middle of the nineteenth century, before mechanically driven generators became available. The Grove cell had a platinum electrode immersed in strong nitric acid, separated by a porous diaphragm from a zinc electrode in weak sulphuric acid. The hydrogen formed at the platinum electrode was immediately oxidized by the acid, turning it into water. This avoided the polarization which occurred in the early copper-zinc cells. It was a very powerful primary cell with a high voltage and a low internal resistance, but it produced objectionable fumes. Grove also invented his "gas battery", the earliest fuel cell, in which a current resulted from the chemical energy released from combining oxygen and hydrogen. This was developed by Rawcliffe and others, and found applications as a power source in manned spacecraft.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1872. FRS 1840. Fellow of the Chemistry Society 1841. Royal Society Royal Medal 1847.Bibliography1846, On the Correlation of Physical Forces, London; 1874, 6th edn, with reprints of many of Grove's papers (his only book, an early view on the conservation of energy).1839, "On a small voltaic battery of great energy", Philosophical Magazine 15:287–93 (his account of his cell).Further ReadingObituary, 1896, Electrician 37:483–4.K.R.Webb, 1961, "Sir William Robert Grove (1811–1896) and the origin of the fuel cell", Journal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry 85: 291–3 (for the present-day significance of Grove's experiments).C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V, New York, pp. 559–61.GWBiographical history of technology > Grove, Sir William Robert
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10 Hunter, John
SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology[br]b. 14 (registered 13) February 1728 East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, Scotlandd. 16 October 1793 London, England[br]Scottish surgeon and anatomist, pioneer of experimental methods in medicine and surgery.[br]The younger brother of William Hunter (1718–83), who was of great distinction but perhaps of slightly less achievement in similar fields, he owed much of his early experience to his brother; William, after a period at Glasgow University, moved to St George's Hospital, London. In his later teens, John assisted a brother-in-law with cabinet-making. This appears to have contributed to the lifelong mechanical skill which he displayed as a dissector and surgeon. This skill was particularly obvious when, after following William to London in 1748, he held post at a number of London teaching hospitals before moving to St George's in 1756. A short sojourn at Oxford in 1755 appears to have been unfruitful.Despite his deepening involvement in the study of comparative anatomy, facilitated by the purchase of animals from the Tower menagerie and travelling show people, he accepted an appointment as a staff surgeon in the Army in 1760, participating in the expedition to Belle Isle and also serving in Portugal. He returned home with over 300 specimens in 1763 and, until his appointment as Surgeon to St George's in 1768, was heavily involved in the examination of this and other material, as well as in studies of foetal testicular descent, placental circulation, the nature of pus and lymphatic circulation. In 1772 he commenced lecturing on the theory and practice of surgery, and in 1776 he was appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to George III.He is rightly regarded as the founder of scientific surgery, but his knowledge was derived almost entirely from his own experiments and observations. His contemporaries did not always accept or understand the concepts which led to such aphorisms as, "to perform an operation is to mutilate a patient we cannot cure", and his written comment to his pupil Jenner: "Why think. Why not trie the experiment". His desire to establish the aetiology of gonorrhoea led to him infecting himself, as a result of which he also contracted syphilis. His ensuing account of the characteristics of the disease remains a classic of medicine, although it is likely that the sequelae of the condition brought about his death at a relatively early age. From 1773 he suffered recurrent anginal attacks of such a character that his life "was in the hands of any rascal who chose to annoy and tease him". Indeed, it was following a contradiction at a board meeting at St George's that he died.By 1788, with the death of Percival Pott, he had become unquestionably the leading surgeon in Britain, if not Europe. Elected to the Royal Society in 1767, the extraordinary variety of his collections, investigations and publications, as well as works such as the "Treatise on the natural history of the human teeth" (1771–8), gives testimony to his original approach involving the fundamental and inescapable relation of structure and function in both normal and disease states. The massive growth of his collections led to his acquiring two houses in Golden Square to contain them. It was his desire that after his death his collection be purchased and preserved for the nation. It contained 13,600 specimens and had cost him £70,000. After considerable delay, Par-liament voted inadequate sums for this purpose and the collection was entrusted to the recently rechartered Royal College of Surgeons of England, in whose premises this remarkable monument to the omnivorous and eclectic activities of this outstanding figure in the evolution of medicine and surgery may still be seen. Sadly, some of the collection was lost to bombing during the Second World War. His surviving papers were also extensive, but it is probable that many were destroyed in the early nineteenth century.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1767. Copley Medal 1787.Bibliography1835–7, Works, ed. J.F.Palmer, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London.MG -
11 Papin, Denis
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 22 August 1647 Blois, Loire et Cher, Franced. 1712 London, England[br]French mathematician and physicist, inventor of the pressure-cooker.[br]Largely educated by his father, he worked for some time for Huygens at Ley den, then for a time in London where he assisted Robert Boyle with his experiments on the air pump. He supposedly invented the double-acting air pump. He travelled to Venice and worked there for a time, but was back in London in 1684 before taking up the position of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Marburg (in 1669 or 1670 he became a Doctor of Medicine at Angers), where he remained from 1687 to 1695. Then followed a period at Cassel, where he was employed by the Duke of Hesse. In this capacity he was much involved in the application of steam-power to pumping water for the Duke's garden fountains. Papin finally returned to London in 1707. He is best known for his "digester", none other than the domestic pressure-cooker. John Evelyn describes it in his diary (12 April 1682): "I went this Afternoone to a Supper, with severall of the R.Society, which was all dressed (both fish and flesh) in Monsieur Papins Digestorie; by which the hardest bones of Biefe itself, \& Mutton, were without water, or other liquor, \& with less than 8 ounces of Coales made as soft as Cheeze, produc'd an incredible quantity of Gravie…. This Philosophical Supper raised much mirth among us, \& exceedingly pleased all the Companie." The pressure-cooker depends on the increase in the boiling point of water with increase of pressure. To avoid the risk of the vessel exploding, Papin devised a weight-loaded lever-type safety valve.There are those who would claim that Papin preceded Newcomen as the true inventor of the steam engine. There is no doubt that as early as 1690 Papin had the idea of an atmospheric engine, in which a piston in a cylinder is forced upwards by expanding steam and then returned by the weight of the atmosphere upon the piston, but he lacked practical engineering skill such as was necessary to put theory into practice. The story is told of his last trip from Cassel, when returning to England. It is said that he built his own steamboat, intending to make the whole journey by this means, ending with a triumphal journey up the Thames. However, boatmen on the river Weser, thinking that the steamboat threatened their livelihood, attacked it and broke it up. Papin had to travel by more orthodox means. Papin is said to have co-operated with Thomas Savery in the development of the lat-ter's steam engine, on which he was working c. 1705.[br]Further ReadingCharles-Armand Klein, 1987, Denis Papin: Illustre savant blaisois, Chambray, France: CLD.A.P.M.Fleming and H.R.S.Brocklehurst, 1925, A History of Engineering.Sigvar Strandh, 1979, Machines, Mitchell Beazley.IMcN -
12 Pascal, Blaise
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 19 June 1623 Clermont Ferrand, Franced. 19 August 1662 Paris, France[br]French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher.[br]Pascal was the son of Etienne Pascal, President of the Court of Aids. His mother died when he was 3 years old and he was brought up largely by his two sisters, one of whom was a nun at Port Royal. They moved to Paris in 1631 and again to Rouen ten years later. He received no formal education. In 1654 he was involved in a carriage accident in which he saw a mystical vision of God and from then on confined himself to philosophical rather than scientific matters. In the field of mathematics he is best known for his work on conic sections and on the laws of probability. As a youth he designed a calculating machine of which, it is said, some seventy were made. His main contribution to technology was his elucidation of the laws of hydrostatics which formed the basis of all hydrostatic machines in subsequent years. Pascal, however, did not put these laws to any practical use: that was left to the English cabinet-maker and engineer Joseph Bramah more than a century later. Suffering from indifferent health, Pascal persuaded his brother-in-law Périer to repeat the experiments of Evangelista Torricelli on the pressure of the atmosphere. This involved climbing the 4,000 ft (1,220 m) of the Puy de Dôme, a mountain close to Clermont, with a heavy mercury-in-glass barometer. The experiment was reported in the 1647 pamphlet "Expériences nouvelles touchant le vide". The Hydrostatic Law was laid down by Pascal in Traité de l'équilibre des liqueurs, published a year after his death. In this he established the fact that in a fluid at rest the pressure is transmitted equally in all directions.[br]Bibliography1647, "Expériences nouvelles touchant le vide". 1663, Traité de l'équilibre des liqueurs.Further ReadingJ.Mesnard, 1951, Pascal, His Life and Works.I.McNeil, 1972, Hydraulic Power, London: Longmans.IMcN -
13 Ponton, Mungo
SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics[br]b. 1801 Balgreen, Scotlandd. 1880 Clifton, England[br]Scottish discoverer of the light sensitivity of potassium bichromate.[br]Employed as Secretary of the Bank of Scotland, Ponton was an amateur photographer and described details of experiments on the effect of light on potassium bichromate in May 1839, only months after the announcement of the first practicable photographic processes. In a paper communicated to the Society of Arts for Scotland (of which he was Vice-President), Ponton suggested that paper soaked in a solution of potassium bichromate could be used as a cheap substitute for paper coated with silver salts. Although Ponton's descriptions were received with interest, potassium bichromate was not widely employed at the time; his work was to be exploited later, however, in the development of permanent photographic and photomechanical printing processes.[br]BibliographyFor the original announcement of Ponton's work, see Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 1839, p. 169.Further ReadingJ.M.Eder, 1945, History of Photography, trans. E.Epstean, New York.H.Gernsheim and A.Gernsheim, 1969, The History of Photography, rev. edn, London.JW -
14 Staite, William Edwards
[br]b. 19 April 1809 Bristol, Englandd. 26 September 1854 Caen, France[br]English inventor who did much to popularize electric lighting in early Victorian England and demonstrated the first self-regulating arc lamp.[br]Before devoting the whole of his attention to the electric light, Staite was a partner in a business of iron merchants and patented a method of obtaining extracts and essences. From 1834 he attempted to produce a continuous light by electricity. The first public exhibition of Staite's arc lamp incorporating a fixed-rate clockwork mechanism was given in 1847 to the Sunderland Literary and Philosophical Society. He also demonstrated an incandescent lamp with an iridioplatinum filament. Sir Joseph Wilson Swan recorded that it was attending lectures by Staite in Sunderland, Newcastle and Carlisle that started him on the quest which many years later was to lead to his incandescent lamp.In association with William Petrie (1821–1904), Staite made an important advance in the development of arc lamps by introducing automatic regulation of the carbon rods by way of an electromagnet. This was the first of many self-regulating arc lamps that were invented during the nineteenth century employing this principle. A contributory factor in the success of Staite's lamp was the semi enclosure of the arc in a transparent vessel that reduced the consumption of carbons, a feature not used again until the 1890s. His patents included processes for preparing carbons and the construction of primary cells for arc lighting. An improved lamp used by Staite in a theatrical production at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, in April 1849 may be considered the first commercial success of the electric light in England. In spite of the limitations imposed by the use of primary cells as the only available source of power, serious interest in this system of electric lighting was shown by railway companies and dock authorities. However, after he had developed a satisfactory arc lamp, an end to these early experiments was brought about by Staite's death.[br]BibliographyJuly 1847, British patent no. 1,1783 (electromagnetic regulation of an arc lamp).His manuscript "History of electric light" is in the Institution of Electrical Engineers archives.Further ReadingJ.J.Fahie, 1902, "Staite and Petrie's electric light 1846–1853", Electrical Engineer 30:297–301, 337–40, 374–6 (a detailed reliable account).G.Woodward, 1989, "Staite and Petrie: pioneers of electric lighting", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 136 (Part A): 290–6 GWBiographical history of technology > Staite, William Edwards
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15 Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson
[br]b. 31 October 1828 Sunderland, Englandd. 27 May 1914 Warlingham, Surrey, England[br]English chemist, inventor in Britain of the incandescent electric lamp and of photographic processes.[br]At the age of 14 Swan was apprenticed to a Sunderland firm of druggists, later joining John Mawson who had opened a pharmacy in Newcastle. While in Sunderland Swan attended lectures at the Athenaeum, at one of which W.E. Staite exhibited electric-arc and incandescent lighting. The impression made on Swan prompted him to conduct experiments that led to his demonstration of a practical working lamp in 1879. As early as 1848 he was experimenting with carbon as a lamp filament, and by 1869 he had mounted a strip of carbon in a vessel exhausted of air as completely as was then possible; however, because of residual air, the filament quickly failed.Discouraged by the cost of current from primary batteries and the difficulty of achieving a good vacuum, Swan began to devote much of his attention to photography. With Mawson's support the pharmacy was expanded to include a photographic business. Swan's interest in making permanent photographic records led him to patent the carbon process in 1864 and he discovered how to make a sensitive dry plate in place of the inconvenient wet collodian process hitherto in use. He followed this success with the invention of bromide paper, the subject of a British patent in 1879.Swan resumed his interest in electric lighting. Sprengel's invention of the mercury pump in 1865 provided Swan with the means of obtaining the high vacuum he needed to produce a satisfactory lamp. Swan adopted a technique which was to become an essential feature in vacuum physics: continuing to heat the filament during the exhaustion process allowed the removal of absorbed gases. The inventions of Gramme, Siemens and Brush provided the source of electrical power at reasonable cost needed to make the incandescent lamp of practical service. Swan exhibited his lamp at a meeting in December 1878 of the Newcastle Chemical Society and again the following year before an audience of 700 at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Swan's failure to patent his invention immediately was a tactical error as in November 1879 Edison was granted a British patent for his original lamp, which, however, did not go into production. Parchmentized thread was used in Swan's first commercial lamps, a material soon superseded by the regenerated cellulose filament that he developed. The cellulose filament was made by extruding a solution of nitro-cellulose in acetic acid through a die under pressure into a coagulating fluid, and was used until the ultimate obsolescence of the carbon-filament lamp. Regenerated cellulose became the first synthetic fibre, the further development and exploitation of which he left to others, the patent rights for the process being sold to Courtaulds.Swan also devised a modification of Planté's secondary battery in which the active material was compressed into a cellular lead plate. This has remained the central principle of all improvements in secondary cells, greatly increasing the storage capacity for a given weight.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1904. FRS 1894. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1898. First President, Faraday Society 1904. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1904. Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur 1881.Bibliography2 January 1880, British patent no. 18 (incandescent electric lamp).24 May 1881, British patent no. 2,272 (improved plates for the Planté cell).1898, "The rise and progress of the electrochemical industries", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 27:8–33 (Swan's Presidential Address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers).Further ReadingM.E.Swan and K.R.Swan, 1968, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan F.R.S., Newcastle upon Tyne (a detailed account).R.C.Chirnside, 1979, "Sir Joseph Swan and the invention of the electric lamp", IEEElectronics and Power 25:96–100 (a short, authoritative biography).GWBiographical history of technology > Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson
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16 Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 18 February 1745 Como, Italyd. 5 March 1827 Como, Italy[br]Italian physicist, discoverer of a source of continuous electric current from a pile of dissimilar metals.[br]Volta had an early command of English, French and Latin, and also learned to read Dutch and Spanish. After completing studies at the Royal Seminary in Como he was involved in the study of physics, chemistry and electricity. He became a teacher of physics in his native town and in 1779 was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Pavia, a post he held for forty years.With a growing international reputation and a wish to keep abreast of the latest developments, in 1777 he began the first of many travels abroad. A journey started in 1781 to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France and England lasted about one year. By 1791 he had been elected to membership of many learned societies, including those in Zurich, Berlin, Berne and Paris. Volta's invention of his pile resulted from a controversy with Luigi Galvani, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bologna. Galvani discovered that the muscles of frogs' legs contracted when touched with two pieces of different metals and attributed this to a phenomenon of the animal tissue. Volta showed that the excitation was due to a chemical reaction resulting from the contact of the dissimilar metals when moistened. His pile comprised a column of zinc and silver discs, each pair separated by paper moistened with brine, and provided a source of continuous current from a simple and accessible source. The effectiveness of the pile decreased as the paper dried and Volta devised his crown of cups, which had a longer life. In this, pairs of dissimilar metals were placed in each of a number of cups partly filled with an electrolyte such as brine. Volta first announced the results of his experiments with dissimilar metals in 1800 in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. This letter, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, has been regarded as one of the most important documents in the history of science. Large batteries were constructed in a number of laboratories soon after Volta's discoveries became known, leading immediately to a series of developments in electrochemistry and eventually in electromagnetism. Volta himself made little further contribution to science. In recognition of his achievement, at a meeting of the International Electrical Congress in Paris in 1881 it was agreed to name the unit of electrical pressure the "volt".[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1791. Royal Society Copley Medal 1794. Knight of the Iron Crown, Austria, 1806. Senator of the Realm of Lombardy 1809.Bibliography1800, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 18:744–6 (Volta's report on his discovery).Further ReadingG.Polvani, 1942, Alessandro Volta, Pisa (the best account available).B.Dibner, 1964, Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery, New York (a detailed account).C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1976, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. XIV, New York, pp.66–82 (includes an extensive biography).F.Soresni, 1988, Alessandro Volta, Milan (includes illustrations of Volta's apparatus, with brief text).GWBiographical history of technology > Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio
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17 Science
It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science.... This notion seems to involve some confusion of ideas, which it is necessary to begin by clearing up. Any facts are fitted, in themselves, to be a subject of science, which follow one another according to constant laws; although those laws may not have been discovered, nor even to be discoverable by our existing resources. (Mill, 1900, B. VI, Chap. 3, Sec. 1)One class of natural philosophers has always a tendency to combine the phenomena and to discover their analogies; another class, on the contrary, employs all its efforts in showing the disparities of things. Both tendencies are necessary for the perfection of science, the one for its progress, the other for its correctness. The philosophers of the first of these classes are guided by the sense of unity throughout nature; the philosophers of the second have their minds more directed towards the certainty of our knowledge. The one are absorbed in search of principles, and neglect often the peculiarities, and not seldom the strictness of demonstration; the other consider the science only as the investigation of facts, but in their laudable zeal they often lose sight of the harmony of the whole, which is the character of truth. Those who look for the stamp of divinity on every thing around them, consider the opposite pursuits as ignoble and even as irreligious; while those who are engaged in the search after truth, look upon the other as unphilosophical enthusiasts, and perhaps as phantastical contemners of truth.... This conflict of opinions keeps science alive, and promotes it by an oscillatory progress. (Oersted, 1920, p. 352)Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. (Einstein & Infeld, 1938, p. 27)A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Planck, 1949, pp. 33-34)[Original quotation: "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, dass ihre Gegner ueberzeugt werden und sich as belehrt erklaeren, sondern vielmehr dadurch, dass die Gegner allmaehlich aussterben und dass die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist." (Planck, 1990, p. 15)]I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science. (Planck, 1949, p. 46)If you cannot-in the long run-tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless. (SchroЁdinger, 1951, pp. 7-8)Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. (Heisenberg, 1958, p. 168)The old scientific ideal of episteґmeґ-of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge-has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative forever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be "absolutely certain." (Popper, 1959, p. 280)The layman, taught to revere scientists for their absolute respect for the observed facts, and for the judiciously detached and purely provisional manner in which they hold scientific theories (always ready to abandon a theory at the sight of any contradictory evidence) might well have thought that, at Miller's announcement of this overwhelming evidence of a "positive effect" [indicating that the speed of light is not independent from the motion of the observer, as Einstein's theory of relativity demands] in his presidential address to the American Physical Society on December 29th, 1925, his audience would have instantly abandoned the theory of relativity. Or, at the very least, that scientists-wont to look down from the pinnacle of their intellectual humility upon the rest of dogmatic mankind-might suspend judgment in this matter until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. But no: by that time they had so well closed their minds to any suggestion which threatened the new rationality achieved by Einstein's world-picture, that it was almost impossible for them to think again in different terms. Little attention was paid to the experiments, the evidence being set aside in the hope that it would one day turn out to be wrong. (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 12-13)The practice of normal science depends on the ability, acquired from examplars, to group objects and situations into similarity sets which are primitive in the sense that the grouping is done without an answer to the question, "Similar with respect to what?" (Kuhn, 1970, p. 200)Science in general... does not consist in collecting what we already know and arranging it in this or that kind of pattern. It consists in fastening upon something we do not know, and trying to discover it. (Collingwood, 1972, p. 9)Scientific fields emerge as the concerns of scientists congeal around various phenomena. Sciences are not defined, they are recognized. (Newell, 1973a, p. 1)This is often the way it is in physics-our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. I do not think it is possible really to understand the successes of science without understanding how hard it is-how easy it is to be led astray, how difficult it is to know at any time what is the next thing to be done. (Weinberg, 1977, p. 49)Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in a position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophize without "foundations." (Putnam, 1987, p. 29)Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Science
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