a+man+of+advanced+years

1) (advanced in age: an old man; He is too old to live alone.) vieux

2) (having a certain age: He is thirty years old.) âgé de

3) (having existed for a long time: an old building; Those trees are very old.) vieux

4) (no longer useful: She threw away the old shoes.) vieux

5) (belonging to times long ago: old civilizations like that of Greece.) ancien

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- old age

1) (advanced in age: an old man; He is too old to live alone.) velho

2) (having a certain age: He is thirty years old.) de idade

3) (having existed for a long time: an old building; Those trees are very old.) velho

4) (no longer useful: She threw away the old shoes.) velho

5) (belonging to times long ago: old civilizations like that of Greece.) antigo

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- old age

behind

❢ When used as a preposition to talk about the physical position of something, behind is translated by derrière: behind the house = derrière la maison. behind is sometimes used in verb combinations ( fall behind, lag behind etc). For translations, consult the appropriate verb entry (fall, lag etc).

For adverbial uses and figurative prepositional uses see the entry below.

A ○ n derrière ○ m.

B adj to be behind with avoir du retard dans [studies, work] ; to be too far behind avoir trop de retard ; to be behind in one's research être en retard dans ses recherches ; to be a long way behind être franchement en retard ; I'm behind with my rent je n'ai pas payé mon loyer.

C adv [follow on, trail] derrière ; [look, glance] en arrière ; the car behind la voiture de derrière.

D prep

1 ( at rear of) ( physically) derrière [person, vehicle, object] ; the mountains behind the town les montagnes qui se trouvent/trouvaient derrière la ville ; behind my back lit derrière le dos ; fig derrière mon dos ;

2 ( at other side of) derrière [desk, counter, barrier, line] ; to work behind the bar être barman/barmaid m/f ;

3 fig ( concealed) behind the smile derrière son sourire ; the reality behind the façade la réalité derrière les apparences ; the real story behind the news la véritable histoire que les médias n'ont pas révélée ;

4 fig ( less advanced than) to be behind the others [pupil] être en retard par rapport aux autres ;

5 fig ( motivating) the reasons behind his declaration les raisons qui motivent/motivaient etc sa déclaration ; what is behind his actions? qu'est-ce qui le pousse à agir ainsi? ; who is behind this proposal? qui est à l'origine de cette proposition? ;

6 fig ( supporting) to be (solidly) behind sb soutenir qn (à fond) ; he has no family behind him il n'a pas de famille pour le soutenir ; the woman behind the man journ la femme en coulisses ;

7 fig ( in past) he has three years' experience behind him il a trois ans d'expérience derrière lui ; those days are behind me now cette période est bien loin ; I've put all that behind me now j'ai oublié tout ça.

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Dickson was born in France of English and Scottish parents. As a young man of almost 19 years, he wrote in 1879 to Thomas Edison in America, asking for a job. Edison replied that he was not taking on new staff at that time, but Dickson, with his mother and sisters, decided to emigrate anyway. In 1883 he contacted Edison again, and was given a job at the Goerk Street laboratory of the Edison Electric Works in New York. He soon assumed a position of responsibility as Superintendent, working on the development of electric light and power systems, and also carried out most of the photography Edison required. In 1888 he moved to the Edison West Orange laboratory, becoming Head of the ore-milling department. When Edison, inspired by Muybridge's sequence photographs of humans and animals in motion, decided to develop a motion picture apparatus, he gave the task to Dickson, whose considerable skills in mechanics, photography and electrical work made him the obvious choice. The first experiments, in 1888, were on a cylinder machine like the phonograph, in which the sequence pictures were to be taken in a spiral. This soon proved to be impractical, and work was delayed for a time while Dickson developed a new ore-milling machine. Little progress with the movie project was made until George Eastman's introduction in July 1889 of celluloid roll film, which was thin, tough, transparent and very flexible. Dickson returned to his experiments in the spring of 1891 and soon had working models of a film camera and viewer, the latter being demonstrated at the West Orange laboratory on 20 May 1891. By the early summer of 1892 the project had advanced sufficiently for commercial exploitation to begin. The Kinetograph camera used perforated 35 mm film (essentially the same as that still in use in the late twentieth century), and the kinetoscope, a peep-show viewer, took fifty feet of film running in an endless loop. Full-scale manufacture of the viewers started in 1893, and they were demonstrated on a number of occasions during that year. On 14 April 1894 the first kinetoscope parlour, with ten viewers, was opened to the public in New York. By the end of that year, the kinetoscope was seen by the public all over America and in Europe. Dickson had created the first commercially successful cinematograph system. Dickson left Edison's employment on 2 April 1895, and for a time worked with Woodville Latham on the development of his Panoptikon projector, a projection version of the kinetoscope. In December 1895 he joined with Herman Casier, Henry N.Marvin and Elias Koopman to form the American Mutoscope Company. Casier had designed the Mutoscope, an animated-picture viewer in which the sequences of pictures were printed on cards fixed radially to a drum and were flipped past the eye as the drum rotated. Dickson designed the Biograph wide-film camera to produce the picture sequences, and also a projector to show the films directly onto a screen. The large-format images gave pictures of high quality for the period; the Biograph went on public show in America in September 1896, and subsequently throughout the world, operating until around 1905. In May 1897 Dickson returned to England and set up as a producer of Biograph films, recording, among other subjects, Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897, Pope Leo XIII in 1898, and scenes of the Boer War in 1899 and 1900. Many of the Biograph subjects were printed as reels for the Mutoscope to produce the "what the butler saw" machines which were a feature of fairgrounds and seaside arcades until modern times. Dickson's contact with the Biograph Company, and with it his involvement in cinematography, ceased in 1911.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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For a man who contributed much to the history of shipbuilding in Britain, surprisingly little is known of his life and times. The family are reputedly descendants of Danish or Norwegian shipbuilders who emigrated to England around the late seventeenth century. It is known, however, that Marmaduke was the fourth child of his father, Hugh Stalkartt, but the second child of Hugh's second wife.

Stalkartt is believed to have served an apprenticeship at the Naval Yard at Deptford on the Thames. He had advanced sufficiently by 1796 for the Admiralty to send him to India to establish shipyards dedicated to the construction of men-of-war in teak. The worsening supply of oak from England, and to a lesser extent Scotland, coupled with the war with France was making ship procurement one of the great concerns of the time. The ready supply of hardwoods from the subcontinent was a serious attempt to overcome this problem. For some years one of the shipyards in Calcutta was known as Stalkartt's Yard and this gives some credence to the belief that Stalkartt left the Navy while overseas and started his own shipbuilding organization.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Since he had a long family connection with the naval base at Portsmouth, it is not surprising that Watts started to serve his apprenticeship there in 1860. He was singled out for advanced training and then in 1866 was one of three young men selected to attend the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington in London. On completing his training he joined the technical staff, then had a period as a ship overseer before going to assist William Froude for two years, an arrangement which led to a close friendship between Watts and the two Froudes. Some interesting tasks followed: the calculations for HM Armoured Ram Polyphemus; the setting up of a "calculating" section within the Admiralty; and then work as a constructor at Chatham Dockyard. In 1885 the first major change of direction took place: Watts resigned from naval service to take the post of General Manager of the Elswick shipyard of Sir W.G.Armstrong. This was a wonderful opportunity for an enthusiastic and highly qualified man, and Watts rose to the challenge. Elswick produced some of the finest warships at the end of the nineteenth century and its cruisers, such as the Esmeralda of the Chilean Navy, had a legendary name.

In 1902 he was recalled to the Navy to succeed Sir William White as Director of Naval Construction (DNC). This was one of the most exciting times ever in warship design and it was during Watts's tenure of the post that the Dreadnought class of battleship was produced, the submarine service was developed and the destroyer fleet reached high levels of performance. It has been said that Watts's distinct achievements as DNC were greater armament per ton displacement, higher speeds and better manoeuvring, greater protection and, almost as important, elegance of appearance. Watt retired in 1912 but remained a consultant to the Admiralty until 1916, and then joined the board of Armstrong Whitworth, on which he served until his death.

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