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  • 1 Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville

    [br]
    b. 26 September 1887 Ripley, Derbyshire, England
    d. 30 October 1979 Leatherhead, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English aeronautical designer and inventor.
    [br]
    Wallis was apprenticed first at Thames Engineering Works, and then, in 1908, at John Samuel White's shipyard at Cowes. In 1913, the Government, spurred on by the accelerating development of the German Zeppelins (see Zeppelin, Ferdinand von), ordered an airship from Vickers; Wallis was invited to join the design team. Thus began his long association with aeronautical design and with Vickers. This airship, and the R80 that followed it, were successfully completed, but the military lost interest in them.
    In 1924 the Government initiated a programme for the construction of two airships to settle once and for all their viability for long-dis-tance air travel. The R101 was designed by a Government-sponsored team, but the R100 was designed by Wallis working for a subsidiary of Vickers. The R100 took off on 29 July 1930 for a successful round trip to Canada, but the R101 crashed on its first flight on 4 October, killing many of its distinguished passengers. The shock of this disaster brought airship development in Britain to an abrupt end and forced Wallis to direct his attention to aircraft.
    In aircraft design, Wallis is known for his use of geodesic construction, which combined lightness with strength. It was applied first to the single-engined "Wellesley" and then the twin-en-gined "Wellington" bomber, which first flew in 1936. With successive modifications, it became the workhorse of RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War until the autumn of 1943, when it was replaced by four-engined machines. In other areas, it remained in service until the end of the war and, in all, no fewer than 11,461 were built.
    Wallis is best known for his work on bomb design, first the bouncing bomb that was used to breach the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr district of Germany in 1943, an exploit immortalized in the film Dambusters. Encouraged by this success, the authorities then allowed Wallis to realize an idea he had long urged, that of heavy, penetration bombs. In the closing stages of the war, Tallboy, of 12,000 lb (5,400 kg), and the 10-ton Grand Slam were used to devastating effect.
    After the Second World War, Wallis returned to aeronautical design and was given his own department at Vickers to promote his ideas, principally on variable-geometry or swing-wing aircraft. Over the next thirteen years he battled towards the prototype stage of this revolutionary concept. That never came, however; changing conditions and requirements and increasing costs led to the abandonment of the project. Bit-terly disappointed, Wallis continued his researches into high-speed aircraft until his retirement from Vickers (by then the British Aircraft Corporation), in 1971.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1968. FRS 1945.
    Further Reading
    J.Morpurgo, 1972, Barnes Wallis: A Biography, London: Longman (a readable account, rather biased in Wallis's favour).
    C.J.Heap, 1987, The Papers of Sir Barnes Wallis (1887–1979) in the Science Museum Library, London: Science Museum; with a biographical introd. by L.R.Day.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville

  • 2 Davy, Sir Humphry

    [br]
    b. 17 December 1778 Penzance, Cornwall, England
    d. 29 May 1829 Geneva, Switzerland
    [br]
    English chemist, discoverer of the alkali and alkaline earth metals and the halogens, inventor of the miner's safety lamp.
    [br]
    Educated at the Latin School at Penzance and from 1792 at Truro Grammar School, Davy was apprenticed to a surgeon in Penzance. In 1797 he began to teach himself chemistry by reading, among other works, Lavoisier's elementary treatise on chemistry. In 1798 Dr Thomas Beddoes of Bristol engaged him as assistant in setting up his Pneumatic Institution to pioneer the medical application of the newly discovered gases, especially oxygen.
    In 1799 he discovered the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, discovered not long before by the chemist Joseph Priestley. He also noted its intoxicating qualities, on account of which it was dubbed "laughing-gas". Two years later Count Rumford, founder of the Royal Institution in 1800, appointed Davy Assistant Lecturer, and the following year Professor. His lecturing ability soon began to attract large audiences, making science both popular and fashionable.
    Davy was stimulated by Volta's invention of the voltaic pile, or electric battery, to construct one for himself in 1800. That enabled him to embark on the researches into electrochemistry by which is chiefly known. In 1807 he tried decomposing caustic soda and caustic potash, hitherto regarded as elements, by electrolysis and obtained the metals sodium and potassium. He went on to discover the metals barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium by the same means. Next, he turned his attention to chlorine, which was then regarded as an oxide in accordance with Lavoisier's theory that oxygen was the essential component of acids; Davy failed to decompose it, however, even with the aid of electricity and concluded that it was an element, thus disproving Lavoisier's view of the nature of acids. In 1812 Davy published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he presented his chemical ideas without, however, committing himself to the atomic theory, recently advanced by John Dalton.
    In 1813 Davy engaged Faraday as Assistant, perhaps his greatest service to science. In April 1815 Davy was asked to assist in the development of a miner's lamp which could be safely used in a firedamp (methane) laden atmosphere. The "Davy lamp", which emerged in January 1816, had its flame completely surrounded by a fine wire mesh; George Stephenson's lamp, based on a similar principle, had been introduced into the Northumberland pits several months earlier, and a bitter controversy as to priority of invention ensued, but it was Davy who was awarded the prize for inventing a successful safety lamp.
    In 1824 Davy was the first to suggest the possibility of conferring cathodic protection to the copper bottoms of naval vessels by the use of sacrificial electrodes. Zinc and iron were found to be equally effective in inhibiting corrosion, although the scheme was later abandoned when it was found that ships protected in this way were rapidly fouled by weeds and barnacles.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1812. FRS 1803; President, Royal Society 1820. Royal Society Copley Medal 1805.
    Bibliography
    1812, Elements of Chemical Philosophy.
    1839–40, The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, 9 vols, ed. John Davy, London.
    Further Reading
    J.Davy, 1836, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy, London (a classic biography). J.A.Paris, 1831, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, London (a classic biography). H.Hartley, 1967, Humphry Davy, London (a more recent biography).
    J.Z.Fullmer, 1969, Cambridge, Mass, (a bibliography of Davy's works).
    ASD

    Biographical history of technology > Davy, Sir Humphry

  • 3 Preece, Sir William Henry

    [br]
    b. 15 February 1834 Bryn Helen, Gwynedd, Wales
    d. 6 November 1913 Penrhos, Gwynedd, Wales
    [br]
    Welsh electrical engineer who greatly furthered the development and use of wireless telegraphy and the telephone in Britain, dominating British Post Office engineering during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
    [br]
    After education at King's College, London, in 1852 Preece entered the office of Edwin Clark with the intention of becoming a civil engineer, but graduate studies at the Royal Institution under Faraday fired his enthusiasm for things electrical. His earliest work, as connected with telegraphy and in particular its application for securing the safe working of railways; in 1853 he obtained an appointment with the Electric and National Telegraph Company. In 1856 he became Superintendent of that company's southern district, but four years later he moved to telegraph work with the London and South West Railway. From 1858 to 1862 he was also Engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company. When the various telegraph companies in Britain were transferred to the State in 1870, Preece became a Divisional Engineer in the General Post Office (GPO). Promotion followed in 1877, when he was appointed Chief Electrician to the Post Office. One of the first specimens of Bell's telephone was brought to England by Preece and exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1877. From 1892 to 1899 he served as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. During this time he made a number of important contributions to telegraphy, including the use of water as part of telegraph circuits across the Solent (1882) and the Bristol Channel (1888). He also discovered the existence of inductive effects between parallel wires, and with Fleming showed that a current (thermionic) flowed between the hot filament and a cold conductor in an incandescent lamp.
    Preece was distinguished by his administrative ability, some scientific insight, considerable engineering intuition and immense energy. He held erroneous views about telephone transmission and, not accepting the work of Oliver Heaviside, made many errors when planning trunk circuits. Prior to the successful use of Hertzian waves for wireless communication Preece carried out experiments, often on a large scale, in attempts at wireless communication by inductive methods. These became of historic interest only when the work of Maxwell and Hertz was developed by Guglielmo Marconi. It is to Preece that credit should be given for encouraging Marconi in 1896 and collaborating with him in his early experimental work on radio telegraphy.
    While still employed by the Post Office, Preece contributed to the development of numerous early public electricity schemes, acting as Consultant and often supervising their construction. At Worcester he was responsible for Britain's largest nineteenth-century public hydro-electric station. He received a knighthood on his retirement in 1899, after which he continued his consulting practice in association with his two sons and Major Philip Cardew. Preece contributed some 136 papers and printed lectures to scientific journals, ninety-nine during the period 1877 to 1894.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    CB 1894. Knighted (KCB) 1899. FRS 1881. President, Society of Telegraph Engineers, 1880. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1880, 1893. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1898–9. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1901–2.
    Bibliography
    Preece produced numerous papers on telegraphy and telephony that were presented as Royal Institution Lectures (see Royal Institution Library of Science, 1974) or as British Association reports.
    1862–3, "Railway telegraphs and the application of electricity to the signaling and working of trains", Proceedings of the ICE 22:167–93.
    Eleven editions of Telegraphy (with J.Sivewright), London, 1870, were published by 1895.
    1883, "Molecular radiation in incandescent lamps", Proceedings of the Physical Society 5: 283.
    1885. "Molecular shadows in incandescent lamps". Proceedings of the Physical Society 7: 178.
    1886. "Electric induction between wires and wires", British Association Report. 1889, with J.Maier, The Telephone.
    1894, "Electric signalling without wires", RSA Journal.
    Further Reading
    J.J.Fahie, 1899, History of Wireless Telegraphy 1838–1899, Edinburgh: Blackwood. E.Hawkes, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen.
    E.C.Baker, 1976, Sir William Preece, F.R.S. Victorian Engineer Extraordinary, London (a detailed biography with an appended list of his patents, principal lectures and publications).
    D.G.Tucker, 1981–2, "Sir William Preece (1834–1913)", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 53:119–36 (a critical review with a summary of his consultancies).
    GW / KF

    Biographical history of technology > Preece, Sir William Henry

  • 4 Smith, Sir Francis Pettit

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 9 February 1808 Copperhurst Farm, near Hythe, Kent, England
    d. 12 February 1874 South Kensington, London, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the screw propeller.
    [br]
    Smith was the only son of Charles Smith, Postmaster at Hythe, and his wife Sarah (née Pettit). After education at a private school in Ashford, Kent, he took to farming, first on Romney Marsh, then at Hendon, Middlesex. As a boy, he showed much skill in the construction of model boats, especially in devising their means of propulsion. He maintained this interest into adult life and in 1835 he made a model propelled by a screw driven by a spring. This worked so well that he became convinced that the screw propeller offered a better method of propulsion than the paddle wheels that were then in general use. This notion so fired his enthusiasm that he virtually gave up farming to devote himself to perfecting his invention. The following year he produced a better model, which he successfully demonstrated to friends on his farm at Hendon and afterwards to the public at the Adelaide Gallery in London. On 31 May 1836 Smith was granted a patent for the propulsion of vessels by means of a screw.
    The idea of screw propulsion was not new, however, for it had been mooted as early as the seventeenth century and since then several proposals had been advanced, but without successful practical application. Indeed, simultaneously but quite independently of Smith, the Swedish engineer John Ericsson had invented the ship's propeller and obtained a patent on 13 July 1836, just weeks after Smith. But Smith was completely unaware of this and pursued his own device in the belief that he was the sole inventor.
    With some financial and technical backing, Smith was able to construct a 10 ton boat driven by a screw and powered by a steam engine of about 6 hp (4.5 kW). After showing it off to the public, Smith tried it out at sea, from Ramsgate round to Dover and Hythe, returning in stormy weather. The screw performed well in both calm and rough water. The engineering world seemed opposed to the new method of propulsion, but the Admiralty gave cautious encouragement in 1839 by ordering that the 237 ton Archimedes be equipped with a screw. It showed itself superior to the Vulcan, one of the fastest paddle-driven ships in the Navy. The ship was put through its paces in several ports, including Bristol, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel was constructing his Great Britain, the first large iron ocean-going vessel. Brunel was so impressed that he adapted his ship for screw propulsion.
    Meanwhile, in spite of favourable reports, the Admiralty were dragging their feet and ordered further trials, fitting Smith's four-bladed propeller to the Rattler, then under construction and completed in 1844. The trials were a complete success and propelled their lordships of the Admiralty to a decision to equip twenty ships with screw propulsion, under Smith's supervision.
    At last the superiority of screw propulsion was generally accepted and virtually universally adopted. Yet Smith gained little financial reward for his invention and in 1850 he retired to Guernsey to resume his farming life. In 1860 financial pressures compelled him to accept the position of Curator of Patent Models at the Patent Museum in South Kensington, London, a post he held until his death. Belated recognition by the Government, then headed by Lord Palmerston, came in 1855 with the grant of an annual pension of £200. Two years later Smith received unofficial recognition when he was presented with a national testimonial, consisting of a service of plate and nearly £3,000 in cash subscribed largely by the shipbuilding and engineering community. Finally, in 1871 Smith was honoured with a knighthood.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1871.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1874, Illustrated London News (7 February).
    1856, On the Invention and Progress of the Screw Propeller, London (provides biographical details).
    Smith and his invention are referred to in papers in Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 14 (1934): 9; 19 (1939): 145–8, 155–7, 161–4, 237–9.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Smith, Sir Francis Pettit

  • 5 Yarrow, Sir Alfred Fernandez

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 13 January 1842 London, England
    d. 24 January 1932 London, England
    [br]
    English shipbuilder, naval architect, engineer and philanthropist.
    [br]
    At the conclusion of his schooling in the South of England, Yarrow became an indentured apprentice to the Thames engine-builder Ravenhill. During this five-year period various incidents and meetings sharpened his interest in scientific matters and he showed the skills that in later years were to be so beneficial to shipbuilding. For two years he acted as London representative for Ravenhill before joining up with a Mr Hedley to form a shipyard on the Isle of Dogs. The company lasted from 1868 until 1875 and in that period produced 350 small launches and other craft. This massive output enabled Yarrow to gain confidence in many aspects of ship design. Within two years of setting out on his own he built his first ship for the Royal Navy: a torpedo boat, then at the cutting edge of technology.
    In the early 1890s the company was building watertube boilers and producing destroyers with speeds in excess of 27 knots (50 km/h); it built the Russian destroyer Sokol, did pioneering work with aluminium and with high-tensile steels and worked on shipboard equipment to nullify vibrational effects. With the closure of most of the Thames shipyards and the run-down in skilled labour, Yarrow decided that the shipyard must move to some other part of the United Kingdom. After careful deliberation a green field site to the west of Glasgow was chosen, and in 1908 their first Clyde-built destroyer was launched. The company expanded, more building berths were arranged, boiler construction was developed and over the years they became recognized as specialists in smaller highspeed craft and in "knock down" ships for other parts of the world.
    Yarrow retired in 1913, but at the commencement of the First World War he returned to help the yard produce, in four years, twenty-nine destroyers with speeds of up to 40 knots (74 km/h). At the end of hostilities he gave of his time and money to many charities, including those for ex-servicemen. He left a remarkable industrial organization which remains to this day the most prolific builder of surface craft for the Royal Navy.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Created Baronet 1916. FRS 1922. Vice-President, Institution of Naval Architects 1896.
    Further Reading
    Lady Yarrow, 1924, Alfred Yarrow, His Life and Work, London: Edward Arnold. A.Borthwick, 1965, Yarrow and Company Limited, The First Hundred Years 1865–
    1965, Glasgow.
    B.Baxter, 1986, "Alfred Fernandez Yarrow", Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography, Vol. I, pp. 245–7, Slaven \& Checkland and Aberdeen University Press.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Yarrow, Sir Alfred Fernandez

  • 6 Perkin, Sir William Henry

    [br]
    b. 12 March 1838 London, England
    d. 14 July 1907 Sudbury, England
    [br]
    English chemist, discoverer of aniline dyes, the first synthetic dyestuffs.
    [br]
    He early showed an aptitude for chemistry and in 1853 entered the Royal College of Chemistry as a student under A.W.von Hofmann, the first Professor at the College. By the end of his first year, he had carried out his first piece of chemical research, on the action of cyanogen chloride on phenylamine, which he published in the Journal of the Chemical Society (1857). He became honorary assistant to von Hofmann in 1857; three years previously he had set up his own chemical laboratory at home, where he had discovered the first of the azo dyes, aminoazonapththalene. In 1856 Perkin began work on the synthesis of quinine by oxidizing a salt of allyl toluidine with potassium dichromate. Substituting aniline, he obtained a dark-coloured precipitate which proved to possess dyeing properties: Perkin had discovered the first aniline dye. Upon receiving favourable reports on the new material from manufacturers of dyestuffs, especially Pullars of Perth, Perkin resigned from the College and turned to the commercial exploitation of his discovery. This proved highly successful. From 1858, the dye was manufactured at his Greenford Green works as "Aniline Purple" or "Tyrian Purple". It was later to be referred to by the French as mauve. Perkin's discovery led to the development of the modern dyestuffs industry, supplanting dyes from the traditional vegetable sources. In 1869, he introduced two new methods for making the red dye alizarin, in place of the process that involved the use of the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum). In spite of German competition, he dominated the British market until the end of 1873. After eighteen years in chemical industry, Perkin retired and devoted himself entirely to the pure chemical research which he had been pursuing since the 1850s. He eventually contributed ninety papers to the Chemical Society and further papers to other bodies, including the Royal Society. For example, in 1867 he published his synthesis of unsaturated organic acids, known as "Perkin's synthesis". Other papers followed, on the structure of "Aniline Purple". In 1881 Perkin drew attention to the magnetic-rotatory power of some of the substances he had been dealing with. From then on, he devoted particular attention to the application of this phenomenon to the determination of chemical structure.
    Perkin won wide recognition for his discoveries and other contributions to chemistry.
    The half-centenary of his great discovery was celebrated in July 1906 and later that year he received a knighthood.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1906. FRS 1866. President, Chemical Society 1883–5. President, Society of Chemical Industry 1884–5. Royal Society Royal Medal 1879; Davy Medal 1889.
    Bibliography
    26 August 1856, British patent no. 1984 (Aniline Purple).
    1867, "The action of acetic anhydride upon the hydrides of salicyl, etc.", Journal of the Chemical Society 20:586 (the first description of Perkin's synthesis).
    Further Reading
    S.M.Edelstein, 1961, biography in Great Chemists, ed. E.Farber, New York: Interscience, pp. 757–72 (a reliable, short account).
    R.Meldola, 1908, Journal of the Chemical Society 93:2,214–57 (the most detailed account).
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Perkin, Sir William Henry

  • 7 Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon

    [br]
    b. 13 June 1854 London, England
    d. 11 February 1931 on board Duchess of Richmond, Kingston, Jamaica
    [br]
    English eingineer, inventor of the steam turbine and developer of the high-speed electric generator.
    [br]
    The youngest son of the Earl of Rosse, he came from a family well known in scientific circles, the six boys growing up in an intellectual atmosphere at Birr Castle, the ancestral home in Ireland, where a forge and large workshop were available to them. Charles, like his brothers, did not go to school but was educated by private tutors of the character of Sir Robert Ball, this type of education being interspersed with overseas holiday trips to France, Holland, Belgium and Spain in the family yacht. In 1871, at the age of 17, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, and after two years he went on to St John's College, Cambridge. This was before the Engineering School had opened, and Parsons studied mechanics and mathematics.
    In 1877 he was apprenticed to W.G.Armstrong \& Co. of Elswick, where he stayed for four years, developing an epicycloidal engine that he had designed while at Cambridge. He then moved to Kitson \& Co. of Leeds, where he went half shares in a small experimental shop working on rocket propulsion for torpedoes.
    In 1887 he married Katherine Bethell, who contracted rheumatic fever from early-morning outdoor vigils with her husband to watch his torpedo experiments while on their honeymoon! He then moved to a partnership in Clarke, Chapman \& Co. at Gateshead. There he joined the electrical department, initially working on the development of a small, steam-driven marine lighting set. This involved the development of either a low-speed dynamo, for direct coupling to a reciprocating engine, or a high-speed engine, and it was this requirement that started Parsons on the track of the steam turbine. This entailed many problems such as the running of shafts at speeds of up to 40,000 rpm and the design of a DC generator for 18,000 rpm. He took out patents for both the turbine and the generator on 23 April 1884. In 1888 he dissolved his partnership with Clarke, Chapman \& Co. to set up his own firm in Newcastle, leaving his patents with the company's owners. This denied him the use of the axial-flow turbine, so Parsons then designed a radial-flow layout; he later bought back his patents from Clarke, Chapman \& Co. His original patent had included the use of the steam turbine as a means of marine propulsion, and Parsons now set about realizing this possibility. He experimented with 2 ft (61 cm) and 6 ft (183 cm) long models, towed with a fishing line or, later, driven by a twisted rubber cord, through a single-reduction set of spiral gearing.
    The first trials of the Turbinia took place in 1894 but were disappointing due to cavitation, a little-understood phenomenon at the time. He used an axial-flow turbine of 2,000 shp running at 2,000 rpm. His work resulted in a far greater understanding of the phenomenon of cavitation than had hitherto existed. Land turbines of up to 350 kW (470 hp) had meanwhile been built. Experiments with the Turbinia culminated in a demonstration which took place at the great Naval Review of 1897 at Spithead, held to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Here, the little Turbinia darted in and out of the lines of heavy warships and destroyers, attaining the unheard of speed of 34.5 knots. The following year the Admiralty placed their first order for a turbine-driven ship, and passenger vessels started operation soon after, the first in 1901. By 1906 the Admiralty had moved over to use turbines exclusively. These early turbines had almost all been direct-coupled to the ship's propeller shaft. For optimum performance of both turbine and propeller, Parsons realized that some form of reduction gearing was necessary, which would have to be extremely accurate because of the speeds involved. Parsons's Creep Mechanism of 1912 ensured that any errors in the master wheel would be distributed evenly around the wheel being cut.
    Parsons was also involved in optical work and had a controlling interest in the firm of Ross Ltd of London and, later, in Sir Howard Grubb \& Sons. He he was an enlightened employer, originating share schemes and other benefits for his employees.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted. Order of Merit 1927.
    Further Reading
    A.T.Bowden, 1966, "Charles Parsons: Purveyor of power", in E.G.Semler (ed.), The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon

  • 8 Armstrong, Sir William George, Baron Armstrong of Cragside

    [br]
    b. 26 November 1810 Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
    d. 27 December 1900 Cragside, Northumbria, England
    [br]
    English inventor, engineer and entrepreneur in hydraulic engineering, shipbuilding and the production of artillery.
    [br]
    The only son of a corn merchant, Alderman William Armstrong, he was educated at private schools in Newcastle and at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. He then became an articled clerk in the office of Armorer Donkin, a solicitor and a friend of his father. During a fishing trip he saw a water-wheel driven by an open stream to work a marble-cutting machine. He felt that its efficiency would be improved by introducing the water to the wheel in a pipe. He developed an interest in hydraulics and in electricity, and became a popular lecturer on these subjects. From 1838 he became friendly with Henry Watson of the High Bridge Works, Newcastle, and for six years he visited the Works almost daily, studying turret clocks, telescopes, papermaking machinery, surveying instruments and other equipment being produced. There he had built his first hydraulic machine, which generated 5 hp when run off the Newcastle town water-mains. He then designed and made a working model of a hydraulic crane, but it created little interest. In 1845, after he had served this rather unconventional apprenticeship at High Bridge Works, he was appointed Secretary of the newly formed Whittle Dene Water Company. The same year he proposed to the town council of Newcastle the conversion of one of the quayside cranes to his hydraulic operation which, if successful, should also be applied to a further four cranes. This was done by the Newcastle Cranage Company at High Bridge Works. In 1847 he gave up law and formed W.G.Armstrong \& Co. to manufacture hydraulic machinery in a works at Elswick. Orders for cranes, hoists, dock gates and bridges were obtained from mines; docks and railways.
    Early in the Crimean War, the War Office asked him to design and make submarine mines to blow up ships that were sunk by the Russians to block the entrance to Sevastopol harbour. The mines were never used, but this set him thinking about military affairs and brought him many useful contacts at the War Office. Learning that two eighteen-pounder British guns had silenced a whole Russian battery but were too heavy to move over rough ground, he carried out a thorough investigation and proposed light field guns with rifled barrels to fire elongated lead projectiles rather than cast-iron balls. He delivered his first gun in 1855; it was built of a steel core and wound-iron wire jacket. The barrel was multi-grooved and the gun weighed a quarter of a ton and could fire a 3 lb (1.4 kg) projectile. This was considered too light and was sent back to the factory to be rebored to take a 5 lb (2.3 kg) shot. The gun was a complete success and Armstrong was then asked to design and produce an equally successful eighteen-pounder. In 1859 he was appointed Engineer of Rifled Ordnance and was knighted. However, there was considerable opposition from the notably conservative officers of the Army who resented the intrusion of this civilian engineer in their affairs. In 1862, contracts with the Elswick Ordnance Company were terminated, and the Government rejected breech-loading and went back to muzzle-loading. Armstrong resigned and concentrated on foreign sales, which were successful worldwide.
    The search for a suitable proving ground for a 12-ton gun led to an interest in shipbuilding at Elswick from 1868. This necessitated the replacement of an earlier stone bridge with the hydraulically operated Tyne Swing Bridge, which weighed some 1450 tons and allowed a clear passage for shipping. Hydraulic equipment on warships became more complex and increasing quantities of it were made at the Elswick works, which also flourished with the reintroduction of the breech-loader in 1878. In 1884 an open-hearth acid steelworks was added to the Elswick facilities. In 1897 the firm merged with Sir Joseph Whitworth \& Co. to become Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth \& Co. After Armstrong's death a further merger with Vickers Ltd formed Vickers Armstrong Ltd.
    In 1879 Armstrong took a great interest in Joseph Swan's invention of the incandescent electric light-bulb. He was one of those who formed the Swan Electric Light Company, opening a factory at South Benwell to make the bulbs. At Cragside, his mansion at Roth bury, he installed a water turbine and generator, making it one of the first houses in England to be lit by electricity.
    Armstrong was a noted philanthropist, building houses for his workforce, and endowing schools, hospitals and parks. His last act of charity was to purchase Bamburgh Castle, Northumbria, in 1894, intending to turn it into a hospital or a convalescent home, but he did not live long enough to complete the work.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1859. FRS 1846. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers; Institution of Civil Engineers; British Association for the Advancement of Science 1863. Baron Armstrong of Cragside 1887.
    Further Reading
    E.R.Jones, 1886, Heroes of Industry', London: Low.
    D.J.Scott, 1962, A History of Vickers, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Armstrong, Sir William George, Baron Armstrong of Cragside

  • 9 Cayley, Sir George

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 27 December 1773 Scarborough, England
    d. 15 December 1857 Brompton Hall, Yorkshire, England
    [br]
    English pioneer who laid down the basic principles of the aeroplane in 1799 and built a manned glider in 1853.
    [br]
    Cayley was born into a well-to-do Yorkshire family living at Brompton Hall. He was encouraged to study mathematics, navigation and mechanics, particularly by his mother. In 1792 he succeeded to the baronetcy and took over the daunting task of revitalizing the run-down family estate.
    The first aeronautical device made by Cayley was a copy of the toy helicopter invented by the Frenchmen Launoy and Bienvenu in 1784. Cayley's version, made in 1796, convinced him that a machine could "rise in the air by mechanical means", as he later wrote. He studied the aerodynamics of flight and broke away from the unsuccessful ornithopters of his predecessors. In 1799 he scratched two sketches on a silver disc: one side of the disc showed the aerodynamic force on a wing resolved into lift and drag, and on the other side he illustrated his idea for a fixed-wing aeroplane; this disc is preserved in the Science Museum in London. In 1804 he tested a small wing on the end of a whirling arm to measure its lifting power. This led to the world's first model glider, which consisted of a simple kite (the wing) mounted on a pole with an adjustable cruciform tail. A full-size glider followed in 1809 and this flew successfully unmanned. By 1809 Cayley had also investigated the lifting properties of cambered wings and produced a low-drag aerofoil section. His aim was to produce a powered aeroplane, but no suitable engines were available. Steam-engines were too heavy, but he experimented with a gunpowder motor and invented the hot-air engine in 1807. He published details of some of his aeronautical researches in 1809–10 and in 1816 he wrote a paper on airships. Then for a period of some twenty-five years he was so busy with other activities that he largely neglected his aeronautical researches. It was not until 1843, at the age of 70, that he really had time to pursue his quest for flight. The Mechanics' Magazine of 8 April 1843 published drawings of "Sir George Cayley's Aerial Carriage", which consisted of a helicopter design with four circular lifting rotors—which could be adjusted to become wings—and two pusher propellers. In 1849 he built a full-size triplane glider which lifted a boy off the ground for a brief hop. Then in 1852 he proposed a monoplane glider which could be launched from a balloon. Late in 1853 Cayley built his "new flyer", another monoplane glider, which carried his coachman as a reluctant passenger across a dale at Brompton, Cayley became involved in public affairs and was MP for Scarborough in 1832. He also took a leading part in local scientific activities and was co-founder of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831 and of the Regent Street Polytechnic Institution in 1838.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Cayley wrote a number of articles and papers, the most significant being "On aerial navigation", Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy (November 1809—March 1810) (published in three numbers); and two further papers with the same title in Philosophical Magazine (1816 and 1817) (both describe semi-rigid airships).
    Further Reading
    L.Pritchard, 1961, Sir George Cayley, London (the standard work on the life of Cayley).
    C.H.Gibbs-Smith, 1962, Sir George Cayley's Aeronautics 1796–1855, London (covers his aeronautical achievements in more detail).
    —1974, "Sir George Cayley, father of aerial navigation (1773–1857)", Aeronautical Journal (Royal Aeronautical Society) (April) (an updating paper).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Cayley, Sir George

  • 10 Ricardo, Sir Harry Ralph

    [br]
    b. 26 January 1885 London, England
    d. 18 May 1974 Graffham, Sussex, England
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer; researcher, designer and developer of internal combustion engines.
    [br]
    Harry Ricardo was the eldest child and only son of Halsey Ricardo (architect) and Catherine Rendel (daughter of Alexander Rendel, senior partner in the firm of consulting civil engineers that later became Rendel, Palmer and Tritton). He was educated at Rugby School and at Cambridge. While still at school, he designed and made a steam engine to drive his bicycle, and by the time he went up to Cambridge in 1903 he was a skilled craftsman. At Cambridge, he made a motor cycle powered by a petrol engine of his own design, and with this he won a fuel-consumption competition by covering almost 40 miles (64 km) on a quart (1.14 1) of petrol. This brought him to the attention of Professor Bertram Hopkinson, who invited him to help with research on turbulence and pre-ignition in internal combustion engines. After leaving Cambridge in 1907, he joined his grandfather's firm and became head of the design department for mechanical equipment used in civil engineering. In 1916 he was asked to help with the problem of loading tanks on to railway trucks. He was then given the task of designing and organizing the manufacture of engines for tanks, and the success of this enterprise encouraged him to set up his own establishment at Shoreham, devoted to research on, and design and development of, internal combustion engines.
    Leading on from the work with Hopkinson were his discoveries on the suppression of detonation in spark-ignition engines. He noted that the current paraffinic fuels were more prone to detonation than the aromatics, which were being discarded as they did not comply with the existing specifications because of their high specific gravity. He introduced the concepts of "highest useful compression ratio" (HUCR) and "toluene number" for fuel samples burned in a special variable compression-ratio engine. The toluene number was the proportion of toluene in heptane that gave the same HUCR as the fuel sample. Later, toluene was superseded by iso-octane to give the now familiar octane rating. He went on to improve the combustion in side-valve engines by increasing turbulence, shortening the flame path and minimizing the clearance between piston and head by concentrating the combustion space over the valves. By these means, the compression ratio could be increased to that used by overhead-valve engines before detonation intervened. The very hot poppet valve restricted the advancement of all internal combustion engines, so he turned his attention to eliminating it by use of the single sleeve-valve, this being developed with support from the Air Ministry. By the end of the Second World War some 130,000 such aero-engines had been built by Bristol, Napier and Rolls-Royce before the piston aero-engine was superseded by the gas turbine of Whittle. He even contributed to the success of the latter by developing a fuel control system for it.
    Concurrent with this was work on the diesel engine. He designed and developed the engine that halved the fuel consumption of London buses. He invented and perfected the "Comet" series of combustion chambers for diesel engines, and the Company was consulted by the vast majority of international internal combustion engine manufacturers. He published and lectured widely and fully deserved his many honours; he was elected FRS in 1929, was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1944–5 and was knighted in 1948. This shy and modest, though very determined man was highly regarded by all who came into contact with him. It was said that research into internal combustion engines, his family and boats constituted all that he would wish from life.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1948. FRS 1929. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1944–5.
    Bibliography
    1968, Memo \& Machines. The Pattern of My Life, London: Constable.
    Further Reading
    Sir William Hawthorne, 1976, "Harry Ralph Ricardo", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 22.
    JB

    Biographical history of technology > Ricardo, Sir Harry Ralph

  • 11 Bessemer, Sir Henry

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy
    [br]
    b. 19 January 1813 Charlton (near Hitchin), Hertfordshire, England
    d. 15 January 1898 Denmark Hill, London, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the Bessemer steelmaking process.
    [br]
    The most valuable part of Bessemer's education took place in the workshop of his inventor father. At the age of only 17 he went to London to seek his fortune and set himself up in the trade of casting art works in white metal. He went on to the embossing of metals and other materials and this led to his first major invention, whereby a date was incorporated in the die for embossing seals, thus preventing the wholesale forgeries that had previously been committed. For this, a grateful Government promised Bessemer a paid position, a promise that was never kept; recognition came only in 1879 with a belated knighthood. Bessemer turned to other inventions, mainly in metalworking, including a process for making bronze powder and gold paint. After he had overcome technical problems, the process became highly profitable, earning him a considerable income during the forty years it was in use.
    The Crimean War presented inventors such as Bessemer with a challenge when weaknesses in the iron used to make the cannon became apparent. In 1856, at his Baxter House premises in St Paneras, London, he tried fusing cast iron with steel. Noticing the effect of an air current on the molten mixture, he constructed a reaction vessel or converter in which air was blown through molten cast iron. There was a vigorous reaction which nearly burned the house down, and Bessemer found the iron to be almost completely decarburized, without the slag threads always present in wrought iron. Bessemer had in fact invented not only a new process but a new material, mild steel. His paper "On the manufacture of malleable iron and steel without fuel" at the British Association meeting in Cheltenham later that year created a stir. Bessemer was courted by ironmasters to license the process. However, success was short-lived, for they found that phosphorus in the original iron ore passed into the metal and rendered it useless. By chance, Bessemer had used in his trials pig-iron, derived from haematite, a phosphorus-free ore. Bessemer tried hard to overcome the problem, but lacking chemical knowledge he resigned himself to limiting his process to this kind of pig-iron. This limitation was removed in 1879 by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, who substituted a chemically basic lining in the converter in place of the acid lining used by Bessemer. This reacted with the phosphorus to form a substance that could be tapped off with the slag, leaving the steel free from this harmful element. Even so, the new material had begun to be applied in engineering, especially for railways. The open-hearth process developed by Siemens and the Martin brothers complemented rather than competed with Bessemer steel. The widespread use of the two processes had a revolutionary effect on mechanical and structural engineering and earned Bessemer around £1 million in royalties before the patents expired.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1879. FRS 1879. Royal Society of Arts Albert Gold Medal 1872.
    Bibliography
    1905, Sir Henry Bessemer FRS: An Autobiography, London.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Bessemer, Sir Henry

  • 12 Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy

    [br]
    b. 14 February 1793 Treator, near Padstow, Cornwall, England
    d. 28 February 1875 Reeds, near Bude, Cornwall, England
    [br]
    English pioneer of steam road transport.
    [br]
    Educated at Truro Grammar School, he then studied under Dr Avery at Wadebridge to become a doctor of medicine. He settled as a surgeon in Wadebridge, spending his leisure time in building an organ and in the study of chemistry and mechanical science. He married Elizabeth Symons in 1814, and in 1820 moved with his wife to London. He delivered a course of lectures at the Surrey Institution on the elements of chemical science, attended by, amongst others, the young Michael Faraday. While there, Gurney made his first invention, the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. For this he received the Gold Medal of the Society of Arts. He experimented with lime and magnesia for the production of an illuminant for lighthouses with some success. He invented a musical instrument of glasses played like a piano.
    In 1823 he started experiments related to steam and locomotion which necessitated taking a partner in to his medical practice, from which he resigned shortly after. His objective was to produce a steam-driven vehicle to run on common roads. His invention of the steam-jet of blast greatly improved the performance of the steam engine. In 1827 he took his steam carriage to Cyfarthfa at the request of Mr Crawshaw, and while there applied his steam-jet to the blast furnaces, greatly improving their performance in the manufacture of iron. Much of the success of George Stephenson's steam engine, the Rocket was due to Gurney's steam blast.
    In July 1829 Gurney made a historic trip with his road locomotive. This was from London to Bath and back, which was accomplished at a speed of 18 mph (29 km/h) and was made at the instigation of the Quartermaster-General of the Army. So successful was the carriage that Sir Charles Dance started to run a regular service with it between Gloucester and Cheltenham. This ran for three months without accident, until Parliament introduced prohibitive taxation on all self-propelled vehicles. A House of Commons committee proposed that these should be abolished as inhibiting progress, but this was not done. Sir Goldsworthy petitioned Parliament on the harm being done to him, but nothing was done and the coming of the railways put the matter beyond consideration. He devoted his time to finding other uses for the steam-jet: it was used for extinguishing fires in coal-mines, some of which had been burning for many years; he developed a stove for the production of gas from oil and other fatty substances, intended for lighthouses; he was responsible for the heating and the lighting of both the old and the new Houses of Parliament. His evidence after a colliery explosion resulted in an Act of Parliament requiring all mines to have two shafts. He was knighted in 1863, the same year that he suffered a stroke which incapacitated him. He retired to his house at Reeds, near Bude, where he was looked after by his daughter, Anna.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1863. Society of Arts Gold Medal.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy

  • 13 Vermuyden, Sir Cornelius

    SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering
    [br]
    b. c. 1590 St Maartensdijk, Zeeland, the Netherlands
    d. 4 February 1656 probably London, England
    [br]
    Dutch/British civil engineer responsible for many of the drainage and flood-protection schemes in low-lying areas of England in the seventeenth century.
    [br]
    At the beginning of the seventeenth century, several wealthy men in England joined forces as "adventurers" to put their money into land ventures. One such group was responsible for the draining of the Fens. The first need was to find engineers who were versed in the processes of land drainage, particularly when that land was at, or below, sea level. It was natural, therefore, to turn to the Netherlands to find these skilled men. Joachim Liens was one of the first of the Dutch engineers to go to England, and he started work on the Great Level; however, no real progress was made until 1621, when Cornelius Vermuyden was brought to England to assist in the work.
    Vermuyden had grown up in a district where he could see for himself the techniques of embanking and reclaiming land from the sea. He acquired a reputation of expertise in this field, and by 1621 his fame had spread to England. In that year the Thames had flooded and breached its banks near Havering and Dagenham in Essex. Vermuyden was commissioned to repair the breach and drain neighbouring marshland, with what he claimed as complete success. The Commissioners of Sewers for Essex disputed this claim and whthheld his fee, but King Charles I granted him a portion of the reclaimed land as compensation.
    In 1626 Vermuyden carried out his first scheme for drainage works as a consultant. This was the drainage of Hatfield Chase in South Yorkshire. Charles I was, in fact, Vermuyden's employer in the drainage of the Chase, and the work was undertaken as a means of raising additional rents for the Royal Exchequer. Vermuyden was himself an "adventurer" in the undertaking, putting capital into the venture and receiving the title to a considerable proportion of the drained lands. One of the important elements of his drainage designs was the principal of "washes", which were flat areas between the protective dykes and the rivers to carry flood waters, to prevent them spreading on to nearby land. Vermuyden faced bitter opposition from those whose livelihoods depended on the marshlands and who resorted to sabotage of the embankments and violence against his imported Dutch workmen to defend their rights. The work could not be completed until arbiters had ruled out on the respective rights of the parties involved. Disagreements and criticism of his engineering practices continued and he gave up his interest in Hatfield Chase. The Hatfield Chase undertaking was not a great success, although the land is now rich farmland around the river Don in Doncaster. However, the involved financial and land-ownership arrangements were the key to the granting of a knighthood to Cornelius Vermuyden in January 1628, and in 1630 he purchased 4,000 acres of low-lying land on Sedgemoor in Somerset.
    In 1629 Vermuyden embarked on his most important work, that of draining the Great Level in the fenlands of East Anglia. Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, was given charge of the work, with Vermuyden as Engineer; in this venture they were speculators and partners and were recompensed by a grant of land. The area which contains the Cambridgeshire tributaries of the Great Ouse were subject to severe and usually annual flooding. The works to contain the rivers in their flood period were important. Whilst the rivers were contained with the enclosed flood plain, the land beyond became highly sought-after because of the quality of the soil. The fourteen "adventurers" who eventually came into partnership with the Earl of Bedford and Vermuyden were the financiers of the scheme and also received land in accordance with their input into the scheme. In 1637 the work was claimed to be complete, but this was disputed, with Vermuyden defending himself against criticism in a pamphlet entitled Discourse Touching the Great Fennes (1638; 1642, London). In fact, much remained to be done, and after an interruption due to the Civil War the scheme was finished in 1652. Whilst the process of the Great Level works had closely involved the King, Oliver Cromwell was equally concerned over the success of the scheme. By 1655 Cornelius Vermuyden had ceased to have anything to do with the Great Level. At that stage he was asked to account for large sums granted to him to expedite the work but was unable to do so; most of his assets were seized to cover the deficiency, and from then on he subsided into obscurity and poverty.
    While Cornelius Vermuyden, as a Dutchman, was well versed in the drainage needs of his own country, he developed his skills as a hydraulic engineer in England and drained acres of derelict flooded land.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1628.
    Further Reading
    L.E.Harris, 1953, Vermuyden and the Fens, London: Cleaver Hume Press. J.Korthals-Altes, 1977, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden: The Lifework of a Great Anglo-
    Dutchman in Land-Reclamation and Drainage, New York: Alto Press.
    KM / LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Vermuyden, Sir Cornelius

  • 14 Wren, Sir Christopher

    [br]
    b. 20 October 1632 East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England
    d. 25 February 1723 London, England
    [br]
    English architect whose background in scientific research and achievement enhanced his handling of many near-intractable architectural problems.
    [br]
    Born into a High Church and Royalist family, the young Wren early showed outstanding intellectual ability and at Oxford in 1654 was described as "that miracle of a youth". Educated at Westminster School, he went up to Oxford, where he graduated at the age of 19 and obtained his master's degree two years later. From this time onwards his interests were in science, primarily astronomy but also physics, engineering and meteorology. While still at college he developed theories about and experimentally solved some fifty varied problems. At the age of 25 Wren was appointed to the Chair of Astronomy at Gresham College in London, but he soon returned to Oxford as Savilian Professor of Astronomy there. At the same time he became one of the founder members of the Society of Experimental Philosophy at Oxford, which was awarded its Royal Charter soon after the Restoration of 1660; Wren, together with such men as Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, John Evelyn and Robert Boyle, then found himself a member of the Royal Society.
    Wren's architectural career began with the classical chapel that he built, at the request of his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, for Pembroke College, Cambridge (1663). From this time onwards, until he died at the age of 91, he was fully occupied with a wide and taxing variety of architectural problems which he faced in the execution of all the great building schemes of the day. His scientific background and inventive mind stood him in good stead in solving such difficulties with an often unusual approach and concept. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his rebuilding of fifty-one churches in the City of London after the Great Fire, in the construction of the new St Paul's Cathedral and in the grand layout of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich.
    The first instance of Wren's approach to constructional problems was in his building of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (1664–9). He based his design upon that of the Roman Theatre of Marcellus (13–11 BC), which he had studied from drawings in Serlio's book of architecture. Wren's reputation as an architect was greatly enhanced by his solution to the roofing problem here. The original theatre in Rome, like all Roman-theatres, was a circular building open to the sky; this would be unsuitable in the climate of Oxford and Wren wished to cover the English counterpart without using supporting columns, which would have obscured the view of the stage. He solved this difficulty mathematically, with the aid of his colleague Dr Wallis, the Professor of Geometry, by means of a timber-trussed roof supporting a painted ceiling which represented the open sky.
    The City of London's churches were rebuilt over a period of nearly fifty years; the first to be completed and reopened was St Mary-at-Hill in 1676, and the last St Michael Cornhill in 1722, when Wren was 89. They had to be rebuilt upon the original medieval sites and they illustrate, perhaps more clearly than any other examples of Wren's work, the fertility of his imagination and his ability to solve the most intractable problems of site, limitation of space and variation in style and material. None of the churches is like any other. Of the varied sites, few are level or possess right-angled corners or parallel sides of equal length, and nearly all were hedged in by other, often larger, buildings. Nowhere is his versatility and inventiveness shown more clearly than in his designs for the steeples. There was no English precedent for a classical steeple, though he did draw upon the Dutch examples of the 1630s, because the London examples had been medieval, therefore Roman Catholic and Gothic, churches. Many of Wren's steeples are, therefore, Gothic steeples in classical dress, but many were of the greatest originality and delicate beauty: for example, St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside; the "wedding cake" St Bride in Fleet Street; and the temple diminuendo concept of Christ Church in Newgate Street.
    In St Paul's Cathedral Wren showed his ingenuity in adapting the incongruous Royal Warrant Design of 1675. Among his gradual and successful amendments were the intriguing upper lighting of his two-storey choir and the supporting of the lantern by a brick cone inserted between the inner and outer dome shells. The layout of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich illustrates Wren's qualities as an overall large-scale planner and designer. His terms of reference insisted upon the incorporation of the earlier existing Queen's House, erected by Inigo Jones, and of John Webb's King Charles II block. The Queen's House, in particular, created a difficult problem as its smaller size rendered it out of scale with the newer structures. Wren's solution was to make it the focal centre of a great vista between the main flanking larger buildings; this was a masterstroke.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1673. President, Royal Society 1681–3. Member of Parliament 1685–7 and 1701–2. Surveyor, Greenwich Hospital 1696. Surveyor, Westminster Abbey 1699.
    Surveyor-General 1669–1712.
    Further Reading
    R.Dutton, 1951, The Age of Wren, Batsford.
    M.Briggs, 1953, Wren the Incomparable, Allen \& Unwin. M.Whinney, 1971, Wren, Thames \& Hudson.
    K.Downes, 1971, Christopher Wren, Allen Lane.
    G.Beard, 1982, The Work of Sir Christopher Wren, Bartholomew.
    DY

    Biographical history of technology > Wren, Sir Christopher

  • 15 Morland, Sir Samuel

    [br]
    b. 1625 Sulhampton, near Reading, Berkshire, England
    d. 26 December 1695 Hammersmith, near London, England
    [br]
    English mathematician and inventor.
    [br]
    Morland was one of several sons of the Revd Thomas Morland and was probably initially educated by his father. He went to Winchester School from 1639 to 1644 and then to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1648 and MA in 1652. He was appointed a tutor there in 1650. In 1653 he went to Sweden in the ambassadorial staff of Bulstrode Whitelocke and remained there until 1654. In that year he was appointed Clerk to Mr Secretary Thurloe, and in 1655 he was accredited by Oliver Cromwell to the Duke of Savoy to appeal for the Waldenses. In 1657 he married Susanne de Milleville of Boissy, France, with whom he had three children. In 1660 he went over to the Royalists, meeting King Charles at Breda, Holland. On 20 May, the King knighted him, creating him baron, for revealing a conspiracy against the king's life. He was also granted a pension of£500 per year. In 1661, at the age of 36, he decided to devote himself to mathematics and invention. He devised a mechanical calculator, probably based on the pattern of Blaise Pascal, for adding and subtracting: this was followed in 1666 by one for multiplying and other functions. A Perpetual Calendar or Almanack followed; he toyed with the idea of a "gunpowder engine" for raising water; he developed a range of speaking trum-pets, said to have a range of 1/2 to 1 mile (0.8–1.6 km) or more; also iron stoves for use on board ships, and improvements to barometers.
    By 1675 he had started selling a range of pumps for private houses, for mines or deep wells, for ships, for emptying ponds or draining low ground as well as to quench fire or wet the sails of ships. The pumps cost from £5 to £63, and the great novelty was that he used, instead of packing around the cylinder sealing against the bore of the cylinder, a neck-gland or seal around the outside diameter of the piston or piston-rod. This revolutionary step avoided the necessity of accurately boring the cylinder, replacing it with the need to machine accurately the outside diameter of the piston or rod, a much easier operation. Twenty-seven variations of size and materials were included in his schedule of'Pumps or Water Engines of Isaac Thompson of Great Russel Street', the maker of Morland's design. In 1681 the King made him "Magister mechanicorum", or Master of Machines. In that year he sailed for France to advise Louis XIV on the waterworks being built at Marly to supply the Palace of Versailles. About this time he had shown King Charles plans for a pumping engine "worked by fire alone". He petitioned for a patent for this, but did not pursue the matter.
    In 1692 he went blind. In all, he married five times. While working for Cromwell he became an expert in ciphers, in opening sealed letters and in their rapid copying.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1660.
    Bibliography
    Further Reading
    H.W.Dickinson, 1970, Sir Samuel Morland: Diplomat and Inventor, Cambridge: Newcomen Society/Heffers.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Morland, Sir Samuel

  • 16 Sopwith, Sir Thomas (Tommy) Octave Murdoch

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 18 January 1888 London, England
    d. 27 January 1989 Stockbridge, Hampshire, England
    [br]
    English aeronautical engineer and industrialist.
    [br]
    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.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1953. CBE 1918.
    Bibliography
    1961, "My first ten years in aviation", Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (April) (a very informative and amusing paper).
    Further Reading
    A.Bramson, 1990, Pure Luck: The Authorized Biography of Sir Thomas Sopwith, 1888– 1989, Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens.
    B.Robertson, 1970, Sopwith. The Man and His Aircraft, London (a detailed publication giving plans of all the Sopwith aircraft).
    CM / JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Sopwith, Sir Thomas (Tommy) Octave Murdoch

  • 17 Bentham, Sir Samuel

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 11 January 1757 England
    d. 31 May 1831 London, England
    [br]
    English naval architect and engineer.
    [br]
    He was the son of Jeremiah Bentham, a lawyer. His mother died when he was an infant and his early education was at Westminster. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a master shipwright at Woolwich and later at Chatham Dockyard, where he made some small improvements in the fittings of ships. In 1778 he completed his apprenticeship and sailed on the Bienfaisant on a summer cruise of the Channel Fleet where he suggested and supervised several improvements to the steering gear and gun fittings.
    Unable to find suitable employment at home, he sailed for Russia to study naval architecture and shipbuilding, arriving at St Petersburg in 1780, whence he travelled throughout Russia as far as the frontier of China, examining mines and methods of working metals. He settled in Kritchev in 1782 and there established a small shipyard with a motley work-force. In 1784 he was appointed to command a battalion. He set up a yard on the "Panopticon" principle, with all workshops radiating from his own central office. He increased the armament of his ships greatly by strengthening the hulls and fitting guns without recoil, which resulted in a great victory over the Turks at Liman in 1788. For this he was awarded the Cross of St George and promoted to Brigadier- General. Soon after, he was appointed to a command in Siberia, where he was responsible for opening up the resources of the country greatly by developing river navigation.
    In 1791 he returned to England, where he was at first involved in the development of the Panopticon for his brother as well as with several other patents. In 1795 he was asked to look into the mechanization of the naval dockyards, and for the next eighteen years he was involved in improving methods of naval construction and machinery. He was responsible for the invention of the steam dredger, the caisson method of enclosing the entrances to docks, and the development of non-recoil cannonades of large calibre.
    His intervention in the maladministration of the naval dockyards resulted in an enquiry that brought about the clearing-away of much corruption, making him very unpopular. As a result he was sent to St Petersburg to arrange for the building of a number of ships for the British navy, in which the Russians had no intention of co-operating. On his return to England after two years he was told that his office of Inspector-General of Navy Works had been abolished and he was appointed to the Navy Board; he had several disagreements with John Rennie and in 1812 was told that this office, too, had been abolished. He went to live in France, where he stayed for thirteen years, returning in 1827 to arrange for the publication of some of his papers.
    There is some doubt about his use of his title: there is no record of his having received a knighthood in England, but it was assumed that he was authorized to use the title, granted to him in Russia, after his presentation to the Tsar in 1809.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    Mary Sophia Bentham, Life of Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham, K.S.G., Formerly Inspector of Naval Works (written by his wife, who died before completing it; completed by their daughter).
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Bentham, Sir Samuel

  • 18 Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson

    [br]
    b. 31 October 1828 Sunderland, England
    d. 27 May 1914 Warlingham, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English chemist, inventor in Britain of the incandescent electric lamp and of photographic processes.
    [br]
    At the age of 14 Swan was apprenticed to a Sunderland firm of druggists, later joining John Mawson who had opened a pharmacy in Newcastle. While in Sunderland Swan attended lectures at the Athenaeum, at one of which W.E. Staite exhibited electric-arc and incandescent lighting. The impression made on Swan prompted him to conduct experiments that led to his demonstration of a practical working lamp in 1879. As early as 1848 he was experimenting with carbon as a lamp filament, and by 1869 he had mounted a strip of carbon in a vessel exhausted of air as completely as was then possible; however, because of residual air, the filament quickly failed.
    Discouraged by the cost of current from primary batteries and the difficulty of achieving a good vacuum, Swan began to devote much of his attention to photography. With Mawson's support the pharmacy was expanded to include a photographic business. Swan's interest in making permanent photographic records led him to patent the carbon process in 1864 and he discovered how to make a sensitive dry plate in place of the inconvenient wet collodian process hitherto in use. He followed this success with the invention of bromide paper, the subject of a British patent in 1879.
    Swan resumed his interest in electric lighting. Sprengel's invention of the mercury pump in 1865 provided Swan with the means of obtaining the high vacuum he needed to produce a satisfactory lamp. Swan adopted a technique which was to become an essential feature in vacuum physics: continuing to heat the filament during the exhaustion process allowed the removal of absorbed gases. The inventions of Gramme, Siemens and Brush provided the source of electrical power at reasonable cost needed to make the incandescent lamp of practical service. Swan exhibited his lamp at a meeting in December 1878 of the Newcastle Chemical Society and again the following year before an audience of 700 at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Swan's failure to patent his invention immediately was a tactical error as in November 1879 Edison was granted a British patent for his original lamp, which, however, did not go into production. Parchmentized thread was used in Swan's first commercial lamps, a material soon superseded by the regenerated cellulose filament that he developed. The cellulose filament was made by extruding a solution of nitro-cellulose in acetic acid through a die under pressure into a coagulating fluid, and was used until the ultimate obsolescence of the carbon-filament lamp. Regenerated cellulose became the first synthetic fibre, the further development and exploitation of which he left to others, the patent rights for the process being sold to Courtaulds.
    Swan also devised a modification of Planté's secondary battery in which the active material was compressed into a cellular lead plate. This has remained the central principle of all improvements in secondary cells, greatly increasing the storage capacity for a given weight.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1904. FRS 1894. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1898. First President, Faraday Society 1904. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1904. Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur 1881.
    Bibliography
    2 January 1880, British patent no. 18 (incandescent electric lamp).
    24 May 1881, British patent no. 2,272 (improved plates for the Planté cell).
    1898, "The rise and progress of the electrochemical industries", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 27:8–33 (Swan's Presidential Address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers).
    Further Reading
    M.E.Swan and K.R.Swan, 1968, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan F.R.S., Newcastle upon Tyne (a detailed account).
    R.C.Chirnside, 1979, "Sir Joseph Swan and the invention of the electric lamp", IEE
    Electronics and Power 25:96–100 (a short, authoritative biography).
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson

  • 19 Appleton, Sir Edward Victor

    [br]
    b. 6 September 1892 Bradford, England
    d. 21 April 1965 Edinburgh, Scotland
    [br]
    English physicist awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the ionospheric layer, named after him, which is an efficient reflector of short radio waves, thereby making possible long-distance radio communication.
    [br]
    After early ambitions to become a professional cricketer, Appleton went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he studied under J.J.Thompson and Ernest Rutherford. His academic career interrupted by the First World War, he served as a captain in the Royal Engineers, carrying out investigations into the propagation and fading of radio signals. After the war he joined the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, as a demonstrator in 1920, and in 1924 he moved to King's College, London, as Wheatstone Professor of Physics.
    In the following decade he contributed to developments in valve oscillators (in particular, the "squegging" oscillator, which formed the basis of the first hard-valve time-base) and gained international recognition for research into electromagnetic-wave propagation. His most important contribution was to confirm the existence of a conducting ionospheric layer in the upper atmosphere capable of reflecting radio waves, which had been predicted almost simultaneously by Heaviside and Kennelly in 1902. This he did by persuading the BBC in 1924 to vary the frequency of their Bournemouth transmitter, and he then measured the signal received at Cambridge. By comparing the direct and reflected rays and the daily variation he was able to deduce that the Kennelly- Heaviside (the so-called E-layer) was at a height of about 60 miles (97 km) above the earth and that there was a further layer (the Appleton or F-layer) at about 150 miles (240 km), the latter being an efficient reflector of the shorter radio waves that penetrated the lower layers. During the period 1927–32 and aided by Hartree, he established a magneto-ionic theory to explain the existence of the ionosphere. He was instrumental in obtaining agreement for international co-operation for ionospheric and other measurements in the form of the Second Polar Year (1932–3) and, much later, the International Geophysical Year (1957–8). For all this work, which made it possible to forecast the optimum frequencies for long-distance short-wave communication as a function of the location of transmitter and receiver and of the time of day and year, in 1947 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
    He returned to Cambridge as Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1939, and with M.F. Barnett he investigated the possible use of radio waves for radio-location of aircraft. In 1939 he became Secretary of the Government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, a post he held for ten years. During the Second World War he contributed to the development of both radar and the atomic bomb, and subsequently served on government committees concerned with the use of atomic energy (which led to the establishment of Harwell) and with scientific staff.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted (KCB 1941, GBE 1946). Nobel Prize for Physics 1947. FRS 1927. Vice- President, American Institute of Electrical Engineers 1932. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1933. Institute of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1946. Vice-Chancellor, Edinburgh University 1947. Institution of Civil Engineers Ewing Medal 1949. Royal Medallist 1950. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1962. President, British Association 1953. President, Radio Industry Council 1955–7. Légion d'honneur. LLD University of St Andrews 1947.
    Bibliography
    1925, joint paper with Barnett, Nature 115:333 (reports Appleton's studies of the ionosphere).
    1928, "Some notes of wireless methods of investigating the electrical structure of the upper atmosphere", Proceedings of the Physical Society 41(Part III):43. 1932, Thermionic Vacuum Tubes and Their Applications (his work on valves).
    1947, "The investigation and forecasting of ionospheric conditions", Journal of the
    Institution of Electrical Engineers 94, Part IIIA: 186 (a review of British work on the exploration of the ionosphere).
    with J.F.Herd \& R.A.Watson-Watt, British patent no. 235,254 (squegging oscillator).
    Further Reading
    Who Was Who, 1961–70 1972, VI, London: A. \& C.Black (for fuller details of honours). R.Clark, 1971, Sir Edward Appleton, Pergamon (biography).
    J.Jewkes, D.Sawers \& R.Stillerman, 1958, The Sources of Invention.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Appleton, Sir Edward Victor

  • 20 Arkwright, Sir Richard

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. 23 December 1732 Preston, England
    d. 3 August 1792 Cromford, England
    [br]
    English inventor of a machine for spinning cotton.
    [br]
    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.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1786.
    Bibliography
    1769, British patent no. 931.
    1775, British patent no. 1,111.
    Further Reading
    R.S.Fitton, 1989, The Arkwrights, Spinners of Fortune, Manchester (a thorough scholarly work which is likely to remain unchallenged for many years).
    R.L.Hills, 1973, Richard Arkwright and Cotton Spinning, London (written for use in schools and concentrates on Arkwright's technical achievements).
    R.S.Fitton and A.P.Wadsworth, 1958, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, Manchester (concentrates on the work of Arkwright and Strutt).
    A.P.Wadsworth and J.de L.Mann, 1931, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, Manchester (covers the period leading up to the Industrial Revolution).
    F.Nasmith, 1932, "Richard Arkwright", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 13 (looks at the actual spinning invention).
    R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (discusses the technical problems of Arkwright's invention).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Arkwright, Sir Richard

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