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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Auguste Piccard and his twin brother, Jean-Félix, studied together in Zurich and qualified as a physicist and a chemist, respectively. In 1913 they made a sixteen-hour balloon flight together, and in 1915 they joined the balloon section of the Swiss Army. Auguste moved to Brussels as Professor of Applied Physics in 1922 and he carried out research into cosmic radiation. He realized that he needed to ascend into the rarefied air of the stratosphere in order to study these cosmic rays. His target was 16,000 m (52,500 ft), but no one had ever ventured to this height before.

Not surprisingly, Auguste Piccard turned to a balloon for his experiments, and during 1930 he designed a hydrogen balloon with a spherical gondola to house the crew. This gondola was sealed and pressurized with air, just as a modern airliner has a pressurized cabin. With Belgian finance, Piccard was able to build his balloon, and on 27 May 1931 he and his colleague Paul Kipfer reached a height of 15,781 m (51,775 ft). Although this was a world record and created great public interest, Piccard was a scientist rather than a record breaker, and as he needed further information he prepared for another ascent. His new gondola was equipped with radio and improved scientific equipment. On 18 August 1932 it ascended from Zurich and reached a height of 16,201 m (53,152 ft).

Jean-Félix was also interested in high-altitude balloon flights and in 1934, together with his wife, he ascended through a clouded sky and reached 17,550m (57,579ft). Jean- Félix also tested a gondola lifted by ninety-eight small balloons, and he developed frost-resistant windows. Other balloonists followed with record-breaking high-altitude flights, but Auguste Piccard, aided by his son Jacques, turned his attention to exploration of the depths of the ocean.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Despite being one of the youngest entrants to the South Kensington School of Naval Architecture, Purvis obtained both a Whitworth Exhibition and a Scholarship. Upon graduating he commenced a career in shipbuilding that involved him in military, civil and research work in Scotland, England and Japan. Initially he worked in Robert Napier's shipyard on the River Clyde, and then in the London drawing offices of Sir Edward Reed, before joining the staff of the Admiralty, where he assisted William Froude in his classic ship experiments at Torquay. After a short spell with Sir William Pearce at Govan, Purvis joined William Denny and Bros and with his recently gained knowledge of hydrodynamics helped set up the world's first commercial ship model tank at Dumbarton. His penultimate appointment was that of Shipbuilding Partner in the Scottish shipyard of Blackwood and Gordon.

In 1901 he became Professor of Naval Architecture at the Imperial University of Tokyo (succeeding Percy Hillhouse, who had become Naval Architect of Fairfield and later became Professor at Glasgow University) and it was in this role that Purvis was to achieve distinction through developing a teaching course of the highest order. It is accepted that his influence on the Japanese shipbuilding industry was profound. After nineteen years of service he retired to the United Kingdom.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Radcliffe was brought up in the textile industry and learned carding and spinning as a child. When he was old enough, he became a weaver. It was a time when there were not enough weavers to work up all the yarn being spun on the recently invented spinning machines, so some yarn was exported. Radcliffe regarded this as a sin; meetings were held to prohibit the export, and Radcliffe promised to use his best endeavours to discover means to work up the yarn in England. He owned a mill at Mellor and by 1801 was employing over 1,000 hand-loom weavers. He wanted to improve their efficiency so they could compete against power looms, which were beginning to be introduced at that time.

His first step was to divide up as much as possible the different weaving processes, not unlike the plan adopted by Arkwright in spinning. In order to strengthen the warp yarns made of cotton and to reduce their tendency to fray during weaving, it was customary to apply an adhesive substance such as starch paste. This was brushed on as the warp was unwound from the back beam during weaving, so only short lengths could be treated before being dried. Instead of dressing the warp in the loom as was hitherto done, Radcliffe had it dressed in a separate machine, relieving the weaver of the trouble and saving the time wasted by the method previously used. Radcliffe employed a young man names Thomas Johnson, who proved to be a clever mechanic. Radcliffe patented his inventions in Johnson's name to avoid other people, especially foreigners, finding out his ideas. He took out his first patent, for a dressing machine, in March 1803 and a second the following year. The combined result of the two patents was the introduction of a beaming machine and a dressing machine which, in addition to applying the paste to the yarns and then drying them, wound them onto a beam ready for the loom. These machines enabled the weaver to work a loom with fewer stoppages; however, Radcliffe did not anticipate that his method of sizing would soon be applied to power looms as well and lead to the commercial success of powered weaving. Other manufacturers quickly adopted Radcliffe's system, and Radcliffe himself soon had to introduce power looms in his own business.

Radcliffe improved the hand looms themselves when, with the help of Johnson, he devised a cloth taking-up motion that wound the woven cloth onto a roller automatically as the weaver operated the loom. Radcliffe and Johnson also developed the "dandy loom", which was a more compact form of hand loom and was also later adapted for weaving by power. Radcliffe was among the witnesses before the Parliamentary Committee which in 1808 awarded Edmund Cartwright a grant for his invention of the power loom. Later Radcliffe was unsuccessfully to petition Parliament for a similar reward for his contributions to the introduction of power weaving. His business affairs ultimately failed partly through his own obstinacy and his continued opposition to the export of cotton yarn. He lived to be 81 years old and was buried in Mellor churchyard.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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John Urpeth Rastrick, son of an engineer, was initially articled to his father and then moved to Ketley Ironworks, Shropshire, c. 1801. In 1808 he entered into a partnership with John Hazledine at Bridgnorth, Shropshire: Hazledine and Rastrick built many steam engines to the designs of Richard Trevithick, including the demonstration locomotive Catch-Me-Who-Can. The firm also built iron bridges, notably the bridge over the River Wye at Chepstow in 1815–16.

Between 1822 and 1826 the Stratford \& Moreton Railway was built under Rastrick's direction. Malleable iron rails were laid, in one of the first instances of their use. They were supplied by James Foster of Stourbridge, with whom Rastrick went into partnership after the death of Hazledine. In 1825 Rastrick was one of a team of engineers sent by the committee of the proposed Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) to carry out trials of locomotives built by George Stephenson on the Killingworth Waggonway. Early in 1829 the directors of the L \& MR, which was by then under construction, sent Rastrick and James Walker to inspect railways in North East England and report on the relative merits of steam locomotives and fixed engines with cable haulage. They reported, rather hesitantly, in favour of the latter, particularly the reciprocal system of Benjamin Thompson. In consequence the Rainhill Trials, at which Rastrick was one of the judges, were held that October. In 1829 Rastrick constructed the Shutt End colliery railway in Worcestershire, for which Foster and Rastrick built the locomotive Agenoria; this survives in the National Railway Museum. Three similar locomotives were built to the order of Horatio Allen for export to the USA.

From then until he retired in 1847 Rastrick found ample employment surveying railways, appearing as a witness before Parliamentary committees, and supervising construction. Principally, he surveyed the southern part of the Grand Junction Railway, which was built for the most part by Joseph Locke, and the line from Manchester to Crewe which was eventually built as the Manchester \& Birmingham Railway. The London \& Brighton Railway (Croydon to Brighton) was his great achievement: built under Rastrick's supervision between 1836 and 1840, it included three long tunnels and the magnificent Ouse Viaduct. In 1845 he was Engineer to the Gravesend \& Rochester Railway, the track of which was laid through the Thames \& Medway Canal's Strood Tunnel, partly on the towpath and partly on a continuous staging over the water.

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See also: Stephenson, Robert

SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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After studying law, philosophy and politics at the University of Olmutz (now Olomouc), in 1835 Rittinger became a fellow of the Mining Academy in Schemnitz (now Banská Štiavnica), Slovakia. In 1839, the year he finished at the academy, he published a book on perspective drawing. The following year, he became Inspector of Mills at the ore mines in Schemnitz, and in 1845 he was engaged in coal mining in Bohemia and Moravia. In 1849 he joined the mining administration at Joachimsthal (now Jáchymov), Bohemia. In these early years he contributed his first important innovations for the mining industry and thus fostered his career in the government's service. In 1850 he was called to Vienna to become a high-ranked officer in various ministries. He was responsible for the construction of buildings, pumping installations and all sorts of machinery in the mining industry; he reorganized the curricula of the mining schools, was responsible for the mint and became head of the department of mines, forests and salt-works in the Austrian empire.

During all his years of public service, Rittinger continued his concern with technological innovations. He improved the processing of ores by introducing in 1844 the rotary washer and the box classifier, and later his continuously shaking concussion table which, having been exhibited at the Vienna World Fair of 1873, was soon adopted in other countries. He constructed water-column pumps, invented a differential shaft pump with hydraulic linkage to replace the heavy iron rods and worked on centrifugal pumps. He was one of the first to be concerned with the transfer of heat, and he developed a system of using exhaust steam for heating in salt-works. He kept his eye on current developments abroad, using his function as official Austrian commissioner to the world exhibitions, on which he published frequently as well as on other matters related to technology. With his systematic handbook on mineral processing, first published in 1867, he emphasized his international reputation in this specialized field of mining.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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A son of the manse, Russell was originally destined for the Church and commenced studies at the University of St Andrews, but shortly afterwards he transferred to Glasgow, graduating MA in 1825 when only 17 years old. He began work as a teacher in Edinburgh, working up from a school to the Mechanics Institute and then in 1832 to the University, where he took over the classes in natural philosophy following the death of the professor. During this period he designed and advised on the application of steam power to road transport and to the Forth and Clyde Canal, thereby awakening his interest in ships and naval architecture.

Russell presented papers to the British Association over several years, and one of them, The Wave Line Theory of Ship Form (although now superseded), had great influence on ship designers of the time and helped to establish the formal study of hydromechanics. With a name that was becoming well known, Russell looked around for better opportunities, and on narrowly missing appointment to the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh University he joined the upand-coming Clyde shipyard of Caird \& Co., Greenock, as Manager in 1838.

Around 1844 Russell and his family moved to London; following some business problems he was in straitened circumstances. However, appointment as Secretary to the Committee setting up the Great Exhibition of 1851 eased his path into London's intellectual society and allowed him to take on tasks such as, in 1847, the purchase of Fairbairn's shipyard on the Isle of Dogs and the subsequent building there of I.K. Brunel's Great Eastern steamship. This unhappy undertaking was a millstone around the necks of Brunel and Russell and broke the health of the former. With the yard failing to secure the order for HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy's first ironclad, Russell pulled out of shipbuilding and for the remainder of his life was a designer, consultant and at times controversial, but at all times polished and urbane, member of many important committees and societies. He is remembered as one of the founders of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1860. His last task was to design a Swiss Lake steamer for Messrs Escher Wyss, a company that coincidentally had previously retained Sir William Fairbairn.

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SUBJECT AREA: Recording

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He was the descendant of a Scottish family who emigrated to France in 1688. He trained as a printer and later became a proof corrector in printing houses catering predominantly for scientific publishers. He became interested in shorthand systems and eventually turned his interest to making a permanent record of sounds in air. At the time it was already known (Young, Duhamel, Wertheim) to record vibrations of bodies. He made a theoretical study and deposited under sealed wrapper a note in the Académie des Sciences on 26 January 1857. He approached the scientific instrument maker Froment and was able to pay for the manufacture of one instrument due to support from the Société d'Encouragement à l'Industrie Nationale. This funding body obtained a positive report from the physicist Lissajous on 6 January 1858. A new model phonautograph was constructed in collaboration with the leading scientific instrument maker in Paris at the time, Rudolph Koenig, and a contract was signed in 1859. The instrument was a success, and Koenig published a collection of traces in 1864.

Although the membrane was parallel to the rotating surface, a primitive lever system generated lateral movements of a bristle which scratched curves in a thin layer of lampblack on the rotating surface. The curves were not necessarily representative of the vibrations in the air. Scott did not imagine the need for reproducing a recorded sound; rather, his intention was to obtain a trace that would lend itself to mathematical analysis and visual recognition of sounds. Obviously the latter did not require the same degree of linearity as the former. When Scott learned that similar apparatus had been built independently in the USA, he requested that his sealed wrapper be opened on 15 July 1861 in order to prove his scientific priority. The contract with Koenig left Scott without influence over his instrument, and eventually he became convinced that everyone else, including Edison in the end, had stolen his invention. Towards the end of his life he became interested mainly in the history of printing, and he was involved in the publishing of a series of books about books.

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SUBJECT AREA: Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Seguin trained under Joseph Montgolfier, one of the inventors of the hot-air balloon, and became a pioneer of suspension bridges. In 1825 he was involved in an attempt to introduce steam navigation to the River Rhône using a tug fitted with a winding drum to wind itself upstream along a cable attached to a point on the bank, with a separate boat to transfer the cable from point to point. The attempt proved unsuccessful and was short-lived, but in 1825 Seguin had decided also to seek a government concession for a railway from Saint-Etienne to Lyons as a feeder of traffic to the river. He inspected the Stockton \& Darlington Railway and met George Stephenson; the concession was granted in 1826 to Seguin Frères \& Ed. Biot and two steam locomotives were built to their order by Robert Stephenson \& Co. The locomotives were shipped to France in the spring of 1828 for evaluation prior to construction of others there; each had two vertical cylinders, one each side between front and rear wheels, and a boiler with a single large-diameter furnace tube, with a watertube grate. Meanwhile, in 1827 Seguin, who was still attempting to produce a steamboat powerful enough to navigate the fast-flowing Rhône, had conceived the idea of increasing the heating surface of a boiler by causing the hot gases from combustion to pass through a series of tubes immersed in the water. He was soon considering application of this type of boiler to a locomotive. He applied for a patent for a multi-tubular boiler on 12 December 1827 and carried out numerous experiments with various means of producing a forced draught to overcome the perceived obstruction caused by the small tubes. By May 1829 the steam-navigation venture had collapsed, but Seguin had a locomotive under construction in the workshops of the Lyons-Sain t- Etienne Railway: he retained the cylinder layout of its Stephenson locomotives, but incorporated a boiler of his own design. The fire was beneath the barrel, surrounded by a water-jacket: a single large flue ran towards the front of the boiler, whence hot gases returned via many small tubes through the boiler barrel to a chimney above the firedoor. Draught was provided by axle-driven fans on the tender.

Seguin was not aware of the contemporary construction of Rocket, with a multi-tubular boiler, by Robert Stephenson; Rocket had its first trial run on 5 September 1829, but the precise date on which Seguin's locomotive first ran appears to be unknown, although by 20 October many experiments had been carried out upon it. Seguin's concept of a multi-tubular locomotive boiler therefore considerably antedated that of Henry Booth, and his first locomotive was completed about the same date as Rocket. It was from Rocket's boiler, however, rather than from that of Seguin's locomotive, that the conventional locomotive boiler was descended.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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Shortt entered the Engineering Department of the London and South Western Railway as an engineering cadet in 1902, remaining with the company and its successors until he retired in 1946. He became interested in precision horology in 1908, when he designed an instrument for recording the speed of trains; this led to a long and fruitful collaboration with Frank HopeJones, the proprietor of the Synchronome Company. This association culminated in the installation of a free-pendulum clock, with an accuracy of the order of one second per year, at Edinburgh Observatory in 1921. The clock's performance was far better than that of existing clocks, such as the Riefler, and a slightly modified version was produced commercially by the Synchronome Company. These clocks provided the time standard at Greenwich and many other observatories and scientific institutions across the world until they were supplanted by the quartz clock.

The period of a pendulum is constant if it swings freely with a constant amplitude in a vacuum. However, this ideal state cannot be achieved in a clock because the pendulum must be impulsed to maintain its amplitude and the swings have to be counted to indicate time. The free-pendulum clock is an attempt to approach this ideal as closely as possible. In 1898 R.J. Rudd used a slave clock, synchronized with a free pendulum, to time the impulses delivered to the free pendulum. This clock was not successful, but it provided the inspiration for Shortt's clock, which operates on the same principle. The Shortt clock used a standard Synchronome electric clock as the slave, and its pendulum was kept in step with the free pendulum by means of the "hit and miss" synchronizer that Shortt had patented in 1921. This allowed the pendulum to swing freely (in a vacuum), apart from the fraction of a second in which it received an impulse each half-minute.

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See also: Marrison, Warren Alvin

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Carding by hand required a pair of hand cards. The lump of tangled fibres was teased out by pulling one card across the other to even out the fibres and transfer them onto one of the cards from which they could be rolled up into a rollag or slubbing. When Arkwright began to use cylinder cards, the fibres were teased out as they passed from one cylinder to the next. In order to obtain a greater carding area, he soon introduced smaller cylinders and placed strips of flat card above the periphery of the main cylinder. These became clogged with short fibres and dirt, so they had to be lifted off and cleaned or "stripped" at intervals. The first to invent a self-stripping card was Archibald Buchanan, at the Catrine mills in Ayrshire, with his patent in 1823. In his arrangement each flat was turned upside down and stripped by a rotary brush. This was improved by Smith in 1834 and patented in the same year. Smith fixed the flats on an endless chain so that they travelled around the periphery of the top of the main cylinder. Just after the point where they left the cylinder, Smith placed a rotary brush and a comb to clear the brush. In this way each flat in turn was properly and regularly cleaned.

Smith was an able mechanic and Managing Partner of the Deanston mills in Scotland. He visited Manchester, where he was warmly received on the introduction of his machine there at about the same time as he patented it in Scotland. The carding engine he designed was complex, for he arranged a double feed to obtain greater production. While this part of his patent was not developed, his chain or endless flats became the basis used in later cotton carding engines. He took out at least half a dozen other patents for textile machinery. These included two in 1834, the first for a self-acting mule and the second with J.C. Dyer for improvements to winding on to spools. There were further spinning patents in 1839 and 1844 and more for preparatory machinery including carding in 1841 and 1842. He was also interested in agriculture and invented a subsoil plough and other useful things.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Recording

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Of English descent, Smith embarked on an education in mechanical engineering, graduating from West Jersey Academy, Bridgeton, New Jersey, in 1859. In 1863 he established a machine shop in Bridgeton, New Jersey, that became the Ferracute Machine Company in 1877, eventually specializing in the manufacture of presses for metalworking. He seems to have subscribed to design principles considered modern even in the 1990s, "always giving attention to the development of artistic form in combination with simplicity, and with massive strength where required" (bibliographic reference below). He was successful in his business, and developed and patented a large number of mechanical constructions.

Inspired by the advent of the phonograph of Edison, in 1878 Smith obtained the tin-foil mechanical phonograph, analysed its shortcomings and performed some experiments in magnetic recording. He filed a caveat in the US Patent Office in order to be protected while he "reduced the invention to practice". However, he did not follow this trail. When there was renewed interest in practical sound recording and reproduction in 1888 (the constructions of Berliner and Bell \& Tainter), Smith published an account of his experiments in the journal Electrical World. In a corrective letter three weeks later it is clear that he was aware of the physical requirements for the interaction between magnetic coil and magnetic medium, but his publications also indicate that he did not as such obtain reproduction of recorded sound.

Smith did not try to develop magnetic recording, but he felt it imperative that he be given credit for conceiving the idea of it. When accounts of Valdemar Poulsen's work were published in 1900, Smith attempted to prove some rights in the invention in the US Patent Office, but to no avail.

He was a highly respected member of both his community and engineering societies, and in later life became interested in the anti-slavery cause that had also been close to the heart of his parents, as well as in the YMCA movement and in women's suffrage.

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SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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Soemmerring appears to have been a distinguished anatomist and physiologist who in 1805 became a member of the Munich Academy of Sciences. Whilst experimenting with electric currents in acid solutions in 1809, he observed the bubbles of gases produced by the dissociation process. Using this effect at the receiver, he devised a telegraph consisting of twenty-six parallel wires (one for each letter of the alphabet) and was able to transmit messages over a distance of 2 miles (3 km), but the idea was not commercially viable. In 1812, with the help of Schilling, he experimented with soluble indiarubber as a possible cable insulator.

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See also: Morse, Samuel Finley Breeze

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Son of a successful mining engineer, Sopwith did not shine at school and, having been turned down by the Royal Navy as a result, attended an engineering college. His first interest was motor cars and, while still in his teens, he set up a business in London with a friend in order to sell them; he also took part in races and rallies.

Sopwith's interest in aviation came initially through ballooning, and in 1906 he purchased his own balloon. Four years later, inspired by the recent flights across the Channel to France and after a joy-ride at Brooklands, he bought an Avis monoplane, followed by a larger biplane, and taught himself to fly. He was awarded the Royal Aero Society's Aviator Certificate No. 31 on 21 November 1910, and he quickly distinguished himself in flying competitions on both sides of the Atlantic and started his own flying school. In his races he was ably supported by his friend Fred Sigrist, a former motor engineer. Among the people Sopwith taught to fly were an Australian, Harry Hawker, and Major Hugh Trenchard, who later became the "father" of the RAF.

In 1912, depressed by the poor quality of the aircraft on trial for the British Army, Sopwith, in conjunction with Hawker and Sigrist, bought a skating rink in Kingston-upon-Thames and, assisted by Fred Sigrist, started to design and build his first aircraft, the Sopwith Hybrid. He sold this to the Royal Navy in 1913, and the following year his aviation manufacturing company became the Sopwith Aviation Company Ltd. That year a seaplane version of his Sopwith Tabloid won the Schneider Trophy in the second running of this speed competition. During 1914–18, Sopwith concentrated on producing fighters (or "scouts" as they were then called), with the Pup, the Camel, the 1½ Strutter, the Snipe and the Sopwith Triplane proving among the best in the war. He also pioneered several ideas to make flying easier for the pilot, and in 1915 he patented his adjustable tailplane and his 1 ½ Strutter was the first aircraft to be fitted with air brakes. During the four years of the First World War, Sopwith Aviation designed thirty-two different aircraft types and produced over 16,000 aircraft.

The end of the First World War brought recession to the aircraft industry and in 1920 Sopwith, like many others, put his company into receivership; none the less, he immediately launched a new, smaller company with Hawker, Sigrist and V.W.Eyre, which they called the H.G. Hawker Engineering Company Ltd to avoid any confusion with the former company. He began by producing cars and motor cycles under licence, but was determined to resume aircraft production. He suffered an early blow with the death of Hawker in an air crash in 1921, but soon began supplying aircraft to the Royal Air Force again. In this he was much helped by taking on a new designer, Sydney Camm, in 1923, and during the next decade they produced a number of military aircraft types, of which the Hart light bomber and the Fury fighter, the first to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h), were the best known. In the mid-1930s Sopwith began to build a large aviation empire, acquiring first the Gloster Aircraft Company and then, in quick succession, Armstrong-Whitworth, Armstrong-Siddeley Motors Ltd and its aero-engine counterpart, and A.V.Roe, which produced Avro aircraft. Under the umbrella of the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company (set up in 1935) these companies produced a series of outstanding aircraft, ranging from the Hawker Hurricane, through the Avro Lancaster to the Gloster Meteor, Britain's first in-service jet aircraft, and the Hawker Typhoon, Tempest and Hunter. When Sopwith retired as Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group in 1963 at the age of 75, a prototype jump-jet (the P-1127) was being tested, later to become the Harrier, a for cry from the fragile biplanes of 1910.

Sopwith also had a passion for yachting and came close to wresting the America's Cup from the USA in 1934 when sailing his yacht Endeavour, which incorporated a number of features years ahead of their time; his greatest regret was that he failed in his attempts to win this famous yachting trophy for Britain. After his retirement as Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group, he remained on the Board until 1978. The British aviation industry had been nationalized in April 1977, and Hawker Siddeley's aircraft interests merged with the British Aircraft Corporation to become British Aerospace (BAe). Nevertheless, by then the Group had built up a wide range of companies in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering, and its board conferred on Sopwith the title Founder and Life President.

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SUBJECT AREA: Recording

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He manufactured "philosophical devices" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was approached by Alexander Graham Bell in connection with the construction of toys using sound recordings. A more formal co-operation was agreed, and after Bell's receipt of the French Volta prize in 1880 he financed the Volta Laboratory Association in Washington, DC. He founded this in 1881 together with a cousin and Tainter to develop a practical sound-recording and -reproducing system. Another area that was developed was the transmission of sound by means of modulated light and reception via a selenium cell.

The advances in sound recording and reproduction were very positive, and T.A. Edison was approached in mid-1885 in order to establish co-operation in the further development of a cylinder instrument. In early 1886 the Volta Graphophone Company was incorporated in Virginia, and an experimental laboratory was established in Washington, DC. The investors were connected with the secretarial services at the House of Representatives and needed the development for increasing efficiency in debate reporting. In mid-1887 Edison, against the advice of his collaborators, declined co-operation and went ahead on his own. There is no doubt that Tainter's skill in developing functional equipment and the speed with which he was able to work in the crucial years provoked other developments in the field, in particular the perfection of the Edison phonograph and the development of the disc record by Berliner.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Telecommunications

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After education at Glasgow University and Peterhouse, Cambridge, a period of study in France gave Thomson an interest in experimental work and instrumentation. He became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow in 1846 and retained the position for the rest of his career, establishing the first teaching laboratory in Britain.

Among his many contributions to science and engineering was his concept, introduced in 1848, of an "absolute" zero of temperature. Following on from the work of Joule, his investigations into the nature of heat led to the first successful liquefaction of gases such as hydrogen and helium, and later to the science of low-temperature physics.

Cable telegraphy gave an impetus to the scientific measurement of electrical quantities, and for many years Thomson was a member of the British Association Committee formed in 1861 to consider electrical standards and to develop units; these are still in use. Thomson first became Scientific Adviser to the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1857, sailing on the Agamemnon and Great Eastern during the cable-laying expeditions. He invented a mirror galvanometer and more importantly the siphon recorder, which, used as a very sensitive telegraph receiver, provided a permanent record of signals. He also laid down the design parameters of long submarine cables and discovered that the conductivity of copper was greatly affected by its purity. A major part of the success of the Atlantic cable in 1866 was due to Thomson, who received a knighthood for his contribution.

Other instruments he designed included a quadrant electrostatic voltmeter to measure high voltages, and his "multi-cellular" instrument for low voltages. They could be used on alternating or direct current and were free from temperature errors. His balances for precision current measurement were widely used in standardizing laboratories.

Thomson was a prolific writer of scientific papers on subjects across the whole spectrum of physics; between 1855 and 1866 he published some 110 papers, with a total during his life of over 600. In 1892 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kelvin of Largs. By the time of his death he was looked upon as the "father" of British physics, but despite his outstanding achievements his later years were spent resisting change and progress.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.

About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.

Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.

Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.

Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.

In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.

In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.

He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.

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See also: Blenkinsop, John

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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A single-cylinder atmospheric steam engine had a power stroke only when the piston descended the cylinder: a means had to be found of returning the piston to its starting position. For rotative engines, this was partially solved by the patent of Matthew Wasborough in 1779. His father was a partner in a Bristol brass-founding and clockmaking business in Narrow Wine Street where he was joined by his son. Wasborough proposed to use some form of ratchet gear to effect the rotary motion and added a flywheel, the first time one was used in a steam engine, "in order to render the motion more regular and uniform". He installed one engine to drive the lathes in the Bristol works and another at James Pickard's flour mill at Snow Hill, Birmingham, where Pickard applied his recently patented crank to it. It was this Wasborough-Pickard engine which posed a threat to Boulton \& Watt trying to develop a rotative engine, for Wasborough built several engines for cornmills in Bristol, woollen mills in Gloucestershire and a block factory at Southampton before his early death. Matthew Boulton was told that Wasborough was "so intent upon the study of engines as to bring a fever on his brain and he dyed in consequence thereof…. How dangerous it is for a man to wade out of his depth" (Jenkins 1936:106).

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Following early education at Devonport, White passed the Royal Dockyard entry examination in 1859 to commence a seven-year shipwright apprenticeship. However, he was destined for greater achievements and in 1863 passed the Admiralty Scholarship examinations, which enabled him to study at the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington, London. He graduated in 1867 with high honours and was posted to the Admiralty Constructive Department. Promotion came swiftly, with appointment to Assistant Constructor in 1875 and Chief Constructor in 1881.

In 1883 he left the Admiralty and joined the Tyneside shipyard of Sir W.G. Armstrong, Mitchell \& Co. at a salary of about treble that of a Chief Constructor, with, in addition, a production bonus based on tonnage produced! At the Elswick Shipyard he became responsible for the organization and direction of shipbuilding activities, and during his relatively short period there enhanced the name of the shipyard in the warship export market. It is assumed that White did not settle easily in the North East of England, and in 1885, following negotiations with the Admiralty, he was released from his five-year exclusive contract and returned to public service as Director of Naval Construction and Assistant Controller of the Royal Navy. (As part of the settlement the Admiralty released Philip Watts to replace White, and in later years Watts was also to move from that same shipyard and become White's successor as Director of Naval Construction.) For seventeen momentous years White had technical control of ship production for the Royal Navy. The rapid building of warships commenced after the passing of the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which authorized directly and indirectly the construction of around seventy vessels. The total number of ships built during the White era amounted to 43 battleships, 128 cruisers of varying size and type, and 74 smaller vessels. While White did not have the stimulation of building a revolutionary capital ship as did his successor, he did have the satisfaction of ensuring that the Royal Navy was equipped with a fleet of all-round capability, and he saw the size, displacement and speed of the ships increase dramatically.

In 1902 he resigned from the Navy because of ill health and assumed several less onerous tasks. During the construction of the Cunard Liner Mauretania on the Tyne, he held directorships with the shipbuilders Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, and also the Parsons Marine Turbine Company. He acted as a consultant to many organizations and had an office in Westminster. It was there that he died in February 1913.

White left a great literary legacy in the form of his esteemed Manual of Naval Architecture, first published in 1877 and reprinted several times since in English, German and other languages. This volume is important not only as a text dealing with first principles but also as an illustration of the problems facing warship designers of the late nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Wright began his career in 1887 working in the Chicago offices of Adler \& Sullivan. He conceived a great admiration for Sullivan, who was then concentrating upon large commercial projects in modern mode, producing functional yet decorative buildings which took all possible advantage of new structural methods. Wright was responsible for many of the domestic commissions.

In 1893 Wright left the firm in order to set up practice on his own, thus initiating a career which was to develop into three distinct phases. In the first of these, up until the First World War, he was chiefly designing houses in a concept in which he envisaged "the house as a shelter". These buildings displayed his deeply held opinion that detached houses in country areas should be designed as an integral part of the landscape, a view later to be evidenced strongly in the work of modern Finnish architects. Wright's designs were called "prairie houses" because so many of them were built in the MidWest of America, which Wright described as a "prairie". These were low and spreading, with gently sloping rooflines, very plain and clean lined, built of traditional materials in warm rural colours, blending softly into their settings. Typical was W.W.Willit's house of 1902 in Highland Park, Illinois.

In the second phase of his career Wright began to build more extensively in modern materials, utilizing advanced means of construction. A notable example was his remarkable Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, carefully designed and built in 1916–22 (now demolished), with special foundations and structure to withstand (successfully) strong earthquake tremors. He also became interested in the possibilities of reinforced concrete; in 1906 he built his church at Oak Park, Illinois, entirely of this material. In the 1920s, in California, he abandoned his use of traditional materials for house building in favour of precast concrete blocks, which were intended to provide an "organic" continuity between structure and decorative surfacing. In his continued exploration of the possibilities of concrete as a building material, he created the dramatic concept of'Falling Water', a house built in 1935–7 at Bear Run in Pennsylvania in which he projected massive reinforced-concrete terraces cantilevered from a cliff over a waterfall in the woodlands. In the later 1930s an extraordinary run of original concepts came from Wright, then nearing 70 years of age, ranging from his own winter residence and studio, Taliesin West in Arizona, to the administration block for Johnson Wax (1936–9) in Racine, Wisconsin, where the main interior ceiling was supported by Minoan-style, inversely tapered concrete columns rising to spreading circular capitals which contained lighting tubes of Pyrex glass.

Frank Lloyd Wright continued to work until four days before his death at the age of 91. One of his most important and certainly controversial commissions was the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York. This had been proposed in 1943 but was not finally built until 1956–9; in this striking design the museum's exhibition areas are ranged along a gradually mounting spiral ramp lit effectively from above. Controversy stemmed from the unusual and original design of exterior banding and interior descending spiral for wall-display of paintings: some critics strongly approved, while others, equally strongly, did not.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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Yagi studied engineering at Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University), graduating in 1910. For the next four years he taught at Engineering High School in Sendai, Honshu, then in 1914 he was sent to study resonance phenomena under Barkhausen at Dresden University. When the First World War broke out he was touring Europe, so he travelled to London to study under Ambrose Fleming at University College, London. Continuing his travels, he then visited the USA, studying at Harvard under G.W. Pierce, before returning to his teaching post at Sendai Engineering High School, which in 1919 was absorbed into Tohoku University. There, in 1921, he obtained his doctorate, and some years later he was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering. Having heard of the invention of the magnetron, he worked with a student, Kinjiro Okabe; in 1927 they produced microwave energy at a wavelength of a few tens of centimetres. However, he is best known for his development with another student, Shintaro Uda, of a directional, multi-element ultrahigh frequency aerial, which he demonstrated during a tour of the USA in 1928. During the Second World War Yagi worked on radar systems. After his retirement he became Professor Emeritus at Tohoku and Osaka universities and formed the Yagi Antenna Company.

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