developing invention

- invention covered by a patent

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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The son of the millwright James Meikle, who is credited with the introduction of the winnowing machine into Britain, Andrew Meikle followed in his father's footsteps. His inventive inclinations were first turned to developing his father's idea, and together with his own son George he built and patented a double-fan winnowing machine.

However, in the history of agricultural development Andrew Meikle is most famous for his invention of the threshing machine, patented in 1784. He had been presented with a model of a threshing mill designed by a Mr Ilderton of Northumberland, but after failing to make a full-scale machine work, he developed the concept further. He eventually built the first working threshing machine for a farmer called Stein at Kilbagio. The patent revolutionized farming practice because it displaced the back-breaking and soul-destroying labour of flailing the grain from the straw. The invention was of great value in Scotland and in northern England when the land was becoming underpopulated as a result of heavy industrialization, but it was bitterly opposed in the south of England until well into the nineteenth century. Although the introduction of the threshing machine led to the "Captain Swing" riots of the 1830s, in opposition to it, it shortly became universal.

Meikle's provisional patent in 1785 was a natural progression of earlier attempts by other millwrights to produce such a machine. The published patent is based on power provided by a horse engine, but these threshing machines were often driven by water-wheels or even by windmills. The corn stalks were introduced into the machine where they were fed between cast-iron rollers moving quite fast against each other to beat the grain out of the ears. The power source, whether animal, water or wind, had to cause the rollers to rotate at high speed to knock the grain out of the ears. While Meikle's machine was at first designed as a fixed barn machine powered by a water-wheel or by a horse wheel, later threshing machines became mobile and were part of the rig of an agricultural contractor.

In 1788 Meikle was awarded a patent for the invention of shuttered sails for windmills. This patent is part of the general description of the threshing machine, and whilst it was a practical application, it was superseded by the work of Thomas Cubitt.

At the turn of the century Meikle became a manufacturer of threshing machines, building appliances that combined the threshing and winnowing principles as well as the reciprocating "straw walkers" found in subsequent threshing machines and in conventional combine harvesters to the present day. However, he made little financial gain from his invention, and a public subscription organized by the President of the Board of Agriculture, Sir John Sinclair, raised £1,500 to support him towards the end of his life.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Monro's whole family background is engineering, an interest he did not share. Instead, he preferred biology, an enthusiasm aroused by reading the celebrated Science of Life by H.G. and G.P.Wells and Julian Huxley. Educated at a London comprehensive school, Monro found it necessary to attend evening classes while at school to take his advanced level science examinations. Lacking parental support, he could not pursue a degree course until he was 21 years old, and so he gained valuable practical experience as a research technician. He resumed his studies and took a zoology degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic. He then worked in a range of zoology and medical laboratories, culminating after twelve years as a Senior Experimental Officer at Southampton Medical School. In 1989 he relinquished his post to devote himself fall time to developing his inventions as Managing Director of Hampshire Advisory and Technical Services Ltd (HATS). Also in 1988 he obtained his PhD from Southampton University, in the field of embryology.

Monro had meanwhile been demonstrating a talent for invention, mainly in microscopy. His most important invention, however, is of a water-purification system. The idea for it came from Michael Wilson of the Institute of Dental Surgery in London, who evolved a technique for osmotic production of sterile oral rehydration solutions, of particular use in treating infants suffering from diarrhoea in third-world countries. Monro broadened the original concept to include dried food, intravenous solutions and even dried blood. The process uses simple equipment and no external power and works as follows: a dry sugar/salts mixture is sealed in one compartment of a double bag, the common wall of which is a semipermeable membrane. Impure water is placed in the empty compartment and the water transfers across the membrane by the osmotic force of the sugar/salts. As the pores in the membrane exclude all viruses, bacteria and their toxins, a sterile solution is produced.

With the help of a research fellowship granted for humanitarian reasons at King Alfred College, Winchester, the invention was developed to functional prototype stage in 1993, with worldwide patent protection. Commercial production was expected to follow, if sufficient financial backing were forthcoming. The process is not intended to replace large installations, but will revolutionize the small-scale production of sterile water in scattered third-world communities and in disaster areas where normal services have been disrupted.

HATS was awarded First Prize in the small business category and was overall prize winner in the Toshiba Year of Invention, received a NatWest/BP award for technology and a Prince of Wales Award for Innovation.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Robert Wilson was the son of a fisherman who was drowned in a lifeboat rescue attempt in December 1810. He received only a meagre education and was apprenticed to a joiner. From a very early age he was much concerned with the idea of applying screw propellers to ships, and his invention was approved by the Highland Society and by the Scottish Society of Arts, who in 1832 awarded him a silver medal. He must have gained some experience as a mechanic and while working on his invention he made the acquaintance of James Nasmyth. In 1838 he became Works Manager at Nasmyth's Bridgewater Foundry and made an important contribution to the success of the steam-hammer by developing the self-acting control gear. From 1845 he was with the Low Moor Ironworks near Bradford, Yorkshire, but in July 1856 he returned to the Bridgewater Foundry so that he was able to take over as Managing Partner after Nasmyth's early retirement at the end of 1856. In 1867 the name of the firm was changed to Nasmyth, Wilson \& Co., and Wilson remained a partner until May 1882, when the firm became a limited company. Wilson often returned to his first invention, and two of his many patents related to improvements in screw propellers. In 1880 he received £500 from the War Department for the use of his double-action screw propeller as applied to the torpedo.

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potential [pə'tenʃəl]

1 adjective

(a) (possible) possible, potentiel, éventuel;

∎ that boy is a potential genius ce garçon est un génie en puissance;

∎ they're potential criminals ce sont des criminels en puissance;

∎ we mustn't discourage potential investors il ne faut pas décourager les investisseurs éventuels ou potentiels

(b) Linguistics potentiel

(c) Electricity & Physics potentiel

2 noun

(a) (UNCOUNT) (of person) promesse f, possibilités fpl (d'avenir);

∎ your son has potential votre fils a de l'avenir ou un avenir prometteur;

∎ she has the potential to succeed elle a la capacité de réussir;

∎ they don't have much intellectual potential ils n'ont pas de grandes capacités intellectuelles;

∎ she has great potential as an actress or great acting potential elle a toutes les qualités d'une grande actrice;

∎ she has potential as an athlete elle peut devenir une grande athlète;

∎ to fulfil one's potential donner toute sa mesure;

∎ he never achieved his full potential il n'a jamais exploité pleinement ses capacités

(b) (of concept, discovery, situation) possibilités fpl;

∎ the idea has potential l'idée a de l'avenir;

∎ your latest invention has great potential for developing countries votre dernière invention ouvre de grandes perspectives dans les pays en voie de développement;

∎ the scheme has no potential le projet n'a aucun avenir;

∎ there is little potential for development in the firm l'entreprise offre peu de possibilités de développement;

∎ the country's military potential le potentiel militaire du pays

(c) (of place) possibilités fpl;

∎ the area/garden has real potential le quartier/le jardin offre de nombreuses possibilités;

∎ the building has a lot of potential le bâtiment offre de grandes possibilités d'aménagement

(d) Electricity, Physics & Mathematics potentiel m

►► Commerce & Marketing potential buyer acheteur(euse) m,f éventuel(elle);

Electricity & Physics potential difference différence f de potentiel;

Electricity & Physics potential energy énergie f potentielle

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Arkwright was the youngest of thirteen children and was apprenticed to a barber; when he was about 18, he followed this trade in Bol ton. In 1755 he married Patients Holt, who bore him a son before she died, and he remarried in 1761, to Margaret Biggins. He prospered until he took a public house as well as his barber shop and began to lose money. After this failure, he travelled around buying women's hair for wigs.

In the late 1760s he began spinning experiments at Preston. It is not clear how much Arkwright copied earlier inventions or was helped by Thomas Highs and John Kay but in 1768 he left Preston for Nottingham, where, with John Smalley and David Thornley as partners, he took out his first patent. They set up a mill worked by a horse where machine-spun yarn was produced successfully. The essential part of this process lay in drawing out the cotton by rollers before it was twisted by a flyer and wound onto the bobbin. The partners' resources were not sufficient for developing their patent so Arkwright found new partners in Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt, hosiers of Nottingham and Derby. Much experiment was necessary before they produced satisfactory yarn, and in 1771 a water-driven mill was built at Cromford, where the spinning process was perfected (hence the name "waterframe" was given to his spinning machine); some of this first yarn was used in the hosiery trade. Sales of all-cotton cloth were initially limited because of the high tax on calicoes, but the tax was lowered in 1774 by Act of Parliament, marking the beginning of the phenomenal growth of the cotton industry. In the evidence for this Act, Arkwright claimed that he had spent £12,000 on his machine. Once Arkwright had solved the problem of mechanical spinning, a bottleneck in the preliminary stages would have formed but for another patent taken out in 1775. This covered all preparatory processing, including some ideas not invented by Arkwright, with the result that it was disputed in 1783 and finally annulled in 1785. It contained the "crank and comb" for removing the cotton web off carding engines which was developed at Cromford and solved the difficulty in carding. By this patent, Arkwright had mechanized all the preparatory and spinning processes, and he began to establish water-powered cotton mills even as far away as Scotland. His success encouraged many others to copy him, so he had great difficulty in enforcing his patent Need died in 1781 and the partnership with Strutt ended soon after. Arkwright became very rich and financed other spinning ventures beyond his immediate control, such as that with Samuel Oldknow. It was estimated that 30,000 people were employed in 1785 in establishments using Arkwright's patents. In 1786 he received a knighthood for delivering an address of thanks when an attempt to assassinate George III failed, and the following year he became High Sheriff of Derbyshire. He purchased the manor of Cromford, where he died in 1792.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Automotive engineering, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Metallurgy, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities, Recording, Telecommunications

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He was the son of Samuel Edison, who was in the timber business. His schooling was delayed due to scarlet fever until 1855, when he was 8½ years old, but he was an avid reader. By the age of 14 he had a job as a newsboy on the railway from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles (101 km). He worked a fourteen-hour day with a stopover of five hours, which he spent in the Detroit Free Library. He also sold sweets on the train and, later, fruit and vegetables, and was soon making a profit of $20 a week. He then started two stores in Port Huron and used a spare freight car as a laboratory. He added a hand-printing press to produce 400 copies weekly of The Grand Trunk Herald, most of which he compiled and edited himself. He set himself to learn telegraphy from the station agent at Mount Clements, whose son he had saved from being run over by a freight car.

At the age of 16 he became a telegraphist at Port Huron. In 1863 he became railway telegraphist at the busy Stratford Junction of the Grand Trunk Railroad, arranging a clock with a notched wheel to give the hourly signal which was to prove that he was awake and at his post! He left hurriedly after failing to hold a train which was nearly involved in a head-on collision. He usually worked the night shift, allowing himself time for experiments during the day. His first invention was an arrangement of two Morse registers so that a high-speed input could be decoded at a slower speed. Moving from place to place he held many positions as a telegraphist. In Boston he invented an automatic vote recorder for Congress and patented it, but the idea was rejected. This was the first of a total of 1180 patents that he was to take out during his lifetime. After six years he resigned from the Western Union Company to devote all his time to invention, his next idea being an improved ticker-tape machine for stockbrokers. He developed a duplex telegraphy system, but this was turned down by the Western Union Company. He then moved to New York.

Edison found accommodation in the battery room of Law's Gold Reporting Company, sleeping in the cellar, and there his repair of a broken transmitter marked him as someone of special talents. His superior soon resigned, and he was promoted with a salary of $300 a month. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the sole rights on future improvements on the duplex telegraph, and he moved to Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey, where he employed a gathering of specialist engineers. Within a year, he married one of his employees, Mary Stilwell, when she was only 16: a daughter, Marion, was born in 1872, and two sons, Thomas and William, in 1876 and 1879, respectively.

He continued to work on the automatic telegraph, a device to send out messages faster than they could be tapped out by hand: that is, over fifty words per minute or so. An earlier machine by Alexander Bain worked at up to 400 words per minute, but was not good over long distances. Edison agreed to work on improving this feature of Bain's machine for the Automatic Telegraph Company (ATC) for $40,000. He improved it to a working speed of 500 words per minute and ran a test between Washington and New York. Hoping to sell their equipment to the Post Office in Britain, ATC sent Edison to England in 1873 to negotiate. A 500-word message was to be sent from Liverpool to London every half-hour for six hours, followed by tests on 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of cable at Greenwich. Only confused results were obtained due to induction in the cable, which lay coiled in a water tank. Edison returned to New York, where he worked on his quadruplex telegraph system, tests of which proved a success between New York and Albany in December 1874. Unfortunately, simultaneous negotiation with Western Union and ATC resulted in a lawsuit.

Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for a telephone in March 1876 while Edison was still working on the same idea. His improvements allowed the device to operate over a distance of hundreds of miles instead of only a few miles. Tests were carried out over the 106 miles (170 km) between New York and Philadelphia. Edison applied for a patent on the carbon-button transmitter in April 1877, Western Union agreeing to pay him $6,000 a year for the seventeen-year duration of the patent. In these years he was also working on the development of the electric lamp and on a duplicating machine which would make up to 3,000 copies from a stencil. In 1876–7 he moved from Newark to Menlo Park, twenty-four miles (39 km) from New York on the Pennsylvania Railway, near Elizabeth. He had bought a house there around which he built the premises that would become his "inventions factory". It was there that he began the use of his 200- page pocket notebooks, each of which lasted him about two weeks, so prolific were his ideas. When he died he left 3,400 of them filled with notes and sketches.

Late in 1877 he applied for a patent for a phonograph which was granted on 19 February 1878, and by the end of the year he had formed a company to manufacture this totally new product. At the time, Edison saw the device primarily as a business aid rather than for entertainment, rather as a dictating machine. In August 1878 he was granted a British patent. In July 1878 he tried to measure the heat from the solar corona at a solar eclipse viewed from Rawlins, Wyoming, but his "tasimeter" was too sensitive.

Probably his greatest achievement was "The Subdivision of the Electric Light" or the "glow bulb". He tried many materials for the filament before settling on carbon. He gave a demonstration of electric light by lighting up Menlo Park and inviting the public. Edison was, of course, faced with the problem of inventing and producing all the ancillaries which go to make up the electrical system of generation and distribution-meters, fuses, insulation, switches, cabling—even generators had to be designed and built; everything was new. He started a number of manufacturing companies to produce the various components needed.

In 1881 he built the world's largest generator, which weighed 27 tons, to light 1,200 lamps at the Paris Exhibition. It was later moved to England to be used in the world's first central power station with steam engine drive at Holborn Viaduct, London. In September 1882 he started up his Pearl Street Generating Station in New York, which led to a worldwide increase in the application of electric power, particularly for lighting. At the same time as these developments, he built a 1,300yd (1,190m) electric railway at Menlo Park.

On 9 August 1884 his wife died of typhoid. Using his telegraphic skills, he proposed to 19-year-old Mina Miller in Morse code while in the company of others on a train. He married her in February 1885 before buying a new house and estate at West Orange, New Jersey, building a new laboratory not far away in the Orange Valley.

Edison used direct current which was limited to around 250 volts. Alternating current was largely developed by George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, using transformers to step up the current to a higher voltage for long-distance transmission. The use of AC gradually overtook the Edison DC system.

In autumn 1888 he patented a form of cinephotography, the kinetoscope, obtaining film-stock from George Eastman. In 1893 he set up the first film studio, which was pivoted so as to catch the sun, with a hinged roof which could be raised. In 1894 kinetoscope parlours with "peep shows" were starting up in cities all over America. Competition came from the Latham Brothers with a screen-projection machine, which Edison answered with his "Vitascope", shown in New York in 1896. This showed pictures with accompanying sound, but there was some difficulty with synchronization. Edison also experimented with captions at this early date.

In 1880 he filed a patent for a magnetic ore separator, the first of nearly sixty. He bought up deposits of low-grade iron ore which had been developed in the north of New Jersey. The process was a commercial success until the discovery of iron-rich ore in Minnesota rendered it uneconomic and uncompetitive. In 1898 cement rock was discovered in New Village, west of West Orange. Edison bought the land and started cement manufacture, using kilns twice the normal length and using half as much fuel to heat them as the normal type of kiln. In 1893 he met Henry Ford, who was building his second car, at an Edison convention. This started him on the development of a battery for an electric car on which he made over 9,000 experiments. In 1903 he sold his patent for wireless telegraphy "for a song" to Guglielmo Marconi.

In 1910 Edison designed a prefabricated concrete house. In December 1914 fire destroyed three-quarters of the West Orange plant, but it was at once rebuilt, and with the threat of war Edison started to set up his own plants for making all the chemicals that he had previously been buying from Europe, such as carbolic acid, phenol, benzol, aniline dyes, etc. He was appointed President of the Navy Consulting Board, for whom, he said, he made some forty-five inventions, "but they were pigeonholed, every one of them". Thus did Edison find that the Navy did not take kindly to civilian interference.

In 1927 he started the Edison Botanic Research Company, founded with similar investment from Ford and Firestone with the object of finding a substitute for overseas-produced rubber. In the first year he tested no fewer than 3,327 possible plants, in the second year, over 1,400, eventually developing a variety of Golden Rod which grew to 14 ft (4.3 m) in height. However, all this effort and money was wasted, due to the discovery of synthetic rubber.

In October 1929 he was present at Henry Ford's opening of his Dearborn Museum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the incandescent lamp, including a replica of the Menlo Park laboratory. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He died in 1931 at his home, Glenmont; throughout the USA, lights were dimmed temporarily on the day of his funeral.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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James Nasmyth was the youngest son of Alexander Nasmyth (1758–1840), the portrait and landscape painter. According to his autobiography he was named James Hall after his father's friend, the geologist Sir James Hall (1761–1832), but he seems never to have used his second name in official documents. He received an elementary education at Edinburgh High School, but left at the age of 12. He attended evening classes at the Edinburgh School of Arts for the instruction of Mechanics between 1821 and 1825, and gained experience as a mechanic at an early age in his father's workshop. He shared these early experiences with his brother George, who was only a year or so older, and in the 1820s the brothers built several model steam engines and a steam-carriage capable of carrying eight passengers on the public roads. In 1829 Nasmyth obtained a position in London as personal assistant to Henry Maudslay, and after Maudslay's death in February 1831 he remained with Maudslay's partner, Joshua Field, for a short time. He then returned to Edinburgh, where he and his brother George started in a small way as general engineers. In 1834 they moved to a small workshop in Manchester, and in 1836, with the aid of financial backing from some Manchester businessmen, they established on a site at Patricroft, a few miles from the city, the works which became known as the Bridgewater Foundry. They were soon joined by a third partner, Holbrook Gaskell (1813–1909), who looked after the administration of the business, the firm then being known as Nasmyths Gaskell \& Co. They specialized in making machine tools, and Nasmyth invented many improvements so that they soon became one of the leading manufacturers in this field. They also made steam locomotives for the rapidly developing railways. James Nasmyth's best-known invention was the steam-hammer, which dates from 1839 but was not patented until 1842. The self-acting control gear was probably the work of Robert Wilson and ensured the commercial success of the invention. George Nasmyth resigned from the partnership in 1843 and in 1850 Gaskell also resigned, after which the firm continued as James Nasmyth \& Co. James Nasmyth himself retired at the end of 1856 and went to live at Penshurst, Kent, in a house which he named "Hammerfield" where he devoted his time mainly to his hobby of astronomy. Robert Wilson returned to become Managing Partner of the firm, which later became Nasmyth, Wilson \& Co. and retained that style until its closure in 1940. Nasmyth's claim to be the sole inventor of the steam-hammer has been disputed, but his patent of 1842 was not challenged and the fourteen-year monopoly ensured the prosperity of the business so that he was able to retire at the age of 48. At his death in 1890 he left an estate valued at £243,805.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Electricity, Land transport, Ports and shipping

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Sperry was born into a farming community in Cortland County. He received a rudimentary education at the local school, but an interest in mechanical devices was aroused by the agricultural machinery he saw around him. His attendance at the Normal School in Cortland provided a useful theoretical background to his practical knowledge. He emerged in 1880 with an urge to pursue invention in electrical engineering, then a new and growing branch of technology. Within two years he was able to patent and demonstrate his arc lighting system, complete with its own generator, incorporating new methods of regulating its output. The Sperry Electric Light, Motor and Car Brake Company was set up to make and market the system, but it was difficult to keep pace with electric-lighting developments such as the incandescent lamp and alternating current, and the company ceased in 1887 and was replaced by the Sperry Electric Company, which itself was taken over by the General Electric Company.

In the 1890s Sperry made useful inventions in electric mining machinery and then in electric street-or tramcars, with his patent electric brake and control system. The patents for the brake were important enough to be bought by General Electric. From 1894 to 1900 he was manufacturing electric motor cars of his own design, and in 1900 he set up a laboratory in Washington, where he pursued various electrochemical processes.

In 1896 he began to work on the practical application of the principle of the gyroscope, where Sperry achieved his most notable inventions, the first of which was the gyrostabilizer for ships. The relatively narrow-hulled steamship rolled badly in heavy seas and in 1904 Ernst Otto Schuck, a German naval engineer, and Louis Brennan in England began experiments to correct this; their work stimulated Sperry to develop his own device. In 1908 he patented the active gyrostabilizer, which acted to correct a ship's roll as soon as it started. Three years later the US Navy agreed to try it on a destroyer, the USS Worden. The successful trials of the following year led to widespread adoption. Meanwhile, in 1910, Sperry set up the Sperry Gyroscope Company to extend the application to commercial shipping.

At the same time, Sperry was working to apply the gyroscope principle to the ship's compass. The magnetic compass had worked well in wooden ships, but iron hulls and electrical machinery confused it. The great powers' race to build up their navies instigated an urgent search for a solution. In Germany, Anschütz-Kämpfe (1872–1931) in 1903 tested a form of gyrocompass and was encouraged by the authorities to demonstrate the device on the German flagship, the Deutschland. Its success led Sperry to develop his own version: fortunately for him, the US Navy preferred a home-grown product to a German one and gave Sperry all the backing he needed. A successful trial on a destroyer led to widespread acceptance in the US Navy, and Sperry was soon receiving orders from the British Admiralty and the Russian Navy.

In the rapidly developing field of aeronautics, automatic stabilization was becoming an urgent need. In 1912 Sperry began work on a gyrostabilizer for aircraft. Two years later he was able to stage a spectacular demonstration of such a device at an air show near Paris.

Sperry continued research, development and promotion in military and aviation technology almost to the last. In 1926 he sold the Sperry Gyroscope Company to enable him to devote more time to invention.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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From an old mining family in the Saxon coalfields, Wolf was aware from his youth of the urgent demand for a miner's lamp which would provide adequate light but not provoke firedamp explosions. While working as an engineer in Zwickau, Wolf spent his spare time conducting experiments for such a lamp. The basic concept of his invention was the principle that dangerous concentrations of methane and air would not explode within a small pipe; this had been established almost seventy years earlier by the English chemist Humphrey Davy. By combining and developing certain devices designed by earlier inventors, in 1883 Wolf produced a prototype with a glass cylinder, a primer fixed inside the lamp and a magnetic lock. Until the successful application of electric light, Wolfs invention was the safest and most popular mining safety lamp. Many earlier inventions had failed to address all the problems of lighting for mines; Davy's lamp, for example, would too quickly become sooty and hot. As Wolfs lamp burned petroleum spirit, at first it was mistrusted outside Saxony, but it successfully passed the safety tests in all the leading coal-producing countries at that time. As well as casting a safe, constant light, the appearance of the cap flame could indicate the concentration of fire-damp in the air, thus providing an additional safety measure. Wolfs first patent was soon followed by many others in several countries, and underwent many developments. In 1884 Heinrich Friemann, a merchant from Eisleben, invested capital in the new company of Friemann and Wolf, which became the leading producer of miners' safety lamps. By 1914 they had manufactured over one million lamps, and the company had branches in major mining districts worldwide.

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1) (the process or act of developing: a crucial stage in the development of a child.) desarrollo

2) (something new which is the result of developing: important new developments in science.) progreso

development n desarrollo

tr[dɪ'veləpmənt]

noun

1 (growth, formation - gen) desarrollo; (- of skill, system) perfección nombre femenino; (fostering) fomento, promoción nombre femenino; (growth, expansion - of firm, industry, country) desarrollo; (evolution) evolución nombre femenino

2 (elaboration - of idea, argument, play) desarrollo, elaboración nombre femenino; (evolution - of situation, events) desarrollo, evolución nombre femenino

3 (invention - of product) creación nombre femenino

4 (event, incident) acontecimiento, suceso; (advance) avance nombre masculino, conquista

■ let me know if there are any developments hazme saber si hay novedades

5 (of resources) explotación nombre femenino; (of site, land, etc) urbanización nombre femenino

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development area zona de reindustrialización

housing development urbanización nombre femenino, conjunto residencial

development [di'vɛləpmənt] n

1) : desarrollo m

physical development: desarrollo físico

2) : urbanización f (de un área), explotación f (de recursos), creación f (de inventos)

3) event: acontecimiento m, suceso m

to await developments: esperar acontecimientos

• beneficio s.m.

• desarrollo s.m.

• desenvolvimiento s.m.

• revelado s.m.

• urbanización s.f.

1) u

a) (physical, mental) desarrollo m

b) (of argument, idea, plot) desarrollo m; (of situation, events) desarrollo m, evolución f

2) u (of drug, engine) creación f

3) u (of land, area) urbanización f

4) c ( housing development) complejo m habitacional, fraccionamiento m (Méx), urbanización f (Esp)

5) u ( Econ) desarrollo m

6)

a) c

b) (happening, event) acontecimiento m, suceso m

1. N

1) (gen) desarrollo m ; (=unfolding) evolución f

2) (=change in situation) novedad f, cambio m ; (=event) acontecimiento m

3) [of resources] explotación f ; [of land] urbanización f

4) (=area of new housing) urbanización f

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1) u

a) (physical, mental) desarrollo m

b) (of argument, idea, plot) desarrollo m; (of situation, events) desarrollo m, evolución f

2) u (of drug, engine) creación f

3) u (of land, area) urbanización f

4) c ( housing development) complejo m habitacional, fraccionamiento m (Méx), urbanización f (Esp)

5) u ( Econ) desarrollo m

6)

a) c

b) (happening, event) acontecimiento m, suceso m

SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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The son of a surgeon who became Professor of Anatomy at Durham University, Cooke received a conventional classical education, with no science, in Durham and at Edinburgh University. He joined the East India Company's aimy in Madras, but resigned because of ill health in 1833. While convalescent, Cooke travelled in Europe and began making wax models of anatomical sections, possibly as teaching aids for his father. In Germany he saw an experimental electric-telegraph demonstration, and was so impressed with the idea of instantaneous long-distance communication that he dropped the modelling and decided to devote all his energies to developing a practical electric telegraph. His own instruments were not successful: they worked across a room, but not over a mile of wire. His search for scientific advice led him to Charles Wheatstone, who was working on a similar project, and together they obtained a patent for the first practical electric telegraph. Cooke's business drive and Wheatstone's scientific abilities should have made a perfect partnership, but the two men quarrelled and separated. Cooke's energy and enthusiasm got the telegraph established, first on the newly developing railways, then independently. Sadly, the fortune he made from the telegraph was lost in other ventures, and he died a poor man.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

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Hennébique was an important leader in experimenting with various ways of reinforcing concrete with iron and steel. He set up his own firm in 1867, so acquiring valuable experience in the number of commissions that he carried out when using this material. He patented his own invention in 1892; this was for a method of using hooked connections for reinforcing-bars of iron and steel. England lagged behind France in developing the use of reinforced concrete as a structural material: it was Hennébique who was most influential in changing this situation. He had used his new method of reinforcement in the construction of the Spinning Mills at Tourcoing in France in 1895, and he was commissioned by Weaver \& Co., who wished to build a new flour mill in Swansea: the mill was completed in 1898. Soon after, both Hennébique and Coignet established London offices for developing their constructional techniques in England.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Ill health forced Adams to live abroad when he was a young man and when he returned to England in the early 1830s he became a partner in his father's firm of coachbuilders. Coaches during that period were steered by a centrally pivoted front axle, which meant that the front wheels had to swing beneath the body and were therefore made smaller than the rear wheels. Adams considered this design defective and invented equirotal coaches, built by his firm, in which the front and rear wheels were of equal diameter and the coach body was articulated midway along its length so that the front part pivoted. He also applied himself to improving vehicles for railways, which were developing rapidly then.

In 1843 he opened his own engineering works, Fairfield Works in north London (he was not related to his contemporary William Adams, who was appointed Locomotive Superintendent to the North London Railway in 1854). In 1847 he and James Samuel, Engineer to the Eastern Counties Railway, built for that line a small steam inspection car, the Express, which was light enough to be lifted off the track. The following year Adams built a broad-gauge steam railcar, the Fairfield, for the Bristol \& Exeter Railway at the insistance of the line's Engineer, C.H.Gregory: self-propelled and passenger-carrying, this was the first railcar. Adams developed the concept further into a light locomotive that could haul two or three separate carriages, and light locomotives built both by his own firm and by other noted builders came into vogue for a decade or more.

In 1847 Adams also built eight-wheeled coaches for the Eastern Counties Railway that were larger and more spacious than most others of the day: each in effect comprised two four-wheeled coaches articulated together, with wheels that were allowed limited side-play. He also realized the necessity for improvements to railway track, the weakest point of which was the joints between the rails, whose adjoining ends were normally held in common chairs. Adams invented the fishplated joint, first used by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1849 and subsequently used almost universally.

Adams was a prolific inventor. Most important of his later inventions was the radial axle, which was first applied to the leading and trailing wheels of a 2–4–2 tank engine, the White Raven, built in 1863; Adams's radial axle was the forerunner of all later radial axles. However, the sprung tyres with which White Raven was also fitted (an elastic steel hoop was interposed between wheel centre and tyre) were not perpetuated. His inventiveness was not restricted to engineering: in matters of dress, his adoption, perhaps invention, of the turn-down collar at a time when men conventionally wore standup collars had lasting effect.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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After education in Sweden at the High School and University of Lund and the Royal Institution of Technology in Stockholm, Alexanderson took a postgraduate course at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Engineering College. In 1901 he began work for the Swedish C \& C Electric Company, joining the General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York, the following year. There, in 1906, together with Fessenden, he developed a series of high-power, high-frequency alternators, which had a dramatic effect on radio communications and resulted in the first real radio broadcast. His early interest in television led to working demonstrations in his own home in 1925 and at the General Electric laboratories in 1927, and to the first public demonstration of large-screen (7 ft (2.13 m) diagonal) projection TV in 1930. Another invention of significance was the "amplidyne", a sensitive manufacturing-control system subsequently used during the Second World War for controlling anti-aircraft guns. He also contributed to developments in electric propulsion and radio aerials.

He retired from General Electric in 1948, but continued television research as a consultant for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), filing his 321st patent in 1955.

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