land patent

• land patent

• land reclamation

• land or property totally free of lien or rent

• land patent

• rip out

• rip up

• riparian

• riparian owner

• land or property totally free of lien or rent

• land patent

• rip out

• rip tide

• rip up

• riparian

• riparian owner

• riparian ownership

• riverbank

• riverbed

• riverhead

• riverian

• riverine

• riverman

• riverside

• riverside dweller

• rivet

• situated by a river

• waterfowl

• waterfront

• waterfront owner

• waterhole

• land or property totally free of lien or rent

• land patent

• rip out

• rip up

• riparian

• riparian owner

1) Geology: concession, mining license (Vedun), patented claim, patented mining claim, pit operations, subsoil operations

2) Engineering: lease, mining lease, mining take

3) Law: claim

4) Mining: leasehold, located claim, mine take, mineral land patent, property, territory

5) Oil: allotment, area of operation allotting, mining allotment ( permit-paf)

6) Ecology: mineral block allocation

7) Sakhalin energy glossary: mining allotment, permit-PAF

8) Sakhalin R: mining allotment (permit-PAF)

9) leg.N.P. mining claim

10) Gold mining: mine allotment

1 registry (office) (oficina).

registro civil registry (office)

registro de comercio o mercantil business registry office

registro de la propiedad land registry office

registro de la propiedad industrial/intelectual trademark/copyright registry office

2 registration.

llevar el registro de algo to keep a record of something

3 register (libro).

registro parroquial parish register

4 search, searching.

efectuaron un registro domiciliario they searched his/her/etc home

5 bookmark.

6 record (computing).

7 register (linguistics & music).

8 inspection, inquisition, search.

9 entry.

10 damper.

11 voice range, range.

1^st person singular (yo) present indicative of spanish verb: registrar.

* * *

► nombre masculino

1 (inspección) search, inspection

2 (inscripción) registration, recording; (matriculación) enrolment (US enrollment), registration

3 DERECHO (oficina) registry; (libro) register

4 MÚSICA register (de órgano) stop

5 INFORMÁTICA register

6 TÉCNICA inspection hole

\

tocar todos los registros figurado to pull out all the stops

registro civil births, marriages and deaths register 2 (oficina) registry office

registro de la propiedad land registry

registro electoral electoral roll

registro mercantil business register

* * *

1) register

2) registry

3) record

4) search

* * *

1) (=acción) registration, recording

2) (=libro) register; (Inform) record

3) (=lista) list, record; (=apunte) note

4) (=entrada) entry

5) (=oficina) registry, record office

6) (=búsqueda) search; (=inspección) inspection

7) (Mús) (=grabación) recording

8) (Mús) (=timbre) [de la voz] register; [del órgano] stop; [del piano] pedal

- adoptar un registro muy raro

- tocar todos los registros

9) (Téc) manhole

10) (Ling) register

11) (Dep) (=marca) personal best; (=récord) record

12) [de reloj] regulator

13) (Tip) register

14) And, Cono Sur (=tienda) wholesale textiles store

* * *

1) ( libro) register; ( acción de anotar) registration; ( cosa anotada) record, entry

- registro civil

- registro de la propiedad

- registro de patentes y marcas

2) ( por la policía) search

- registro domiciliario

3) ( de reloj) regulator

4) (Mús)

a) (de voz, instrumento) range

b) ( pieza - de órgano) register, stop; (- de piano, clavicordio) pedal

c) ( tono) register

5) (Ling) register

6) (Tec) ( abertura) inspection hatch; ( de agua) (Col) stopcock, shutoff valve (AmE)

* * *

1) ( libro) register; ( acción de anotar) registration; ( cosa anotada) record, entry

- registro civil

- registro de la propiedad

- registro de patentes y marcas

2) ( por la policía) search

- registro domiciliario

3) ( de reloj) regulator

4) (Mús)

a) (de voz, instrumento) range

b) ( pieza - de órgano) register, stop; (- de piano, clavicordio) pedal

c) ( tono) register

5) (Ling) register

6) (Tec) ( abertura) inspection hatch; ( de agua) (Col) stopcock, shutoff valve (AmE)

* * *

registro¹

¹ = rec (record), record, tuple, booking record.

registro²

² = register, register, registry, records centre.

registro³

³ = accessioning, stock recording, registration.

registro⁴

⁴ = manhole.

* * *

A (libro) register; (acción de anotar) registration; (cosa anotada) record, entry

(libro) register of births, marriages and deaths; (oficina) registry, registry office ( BrE)

(libro) land register; (oficina) land registration office, land registry ( BrE)

patent office

patent office

( Chi) electoral roll o register

parish register

B (por la policía) search

orden de registro search warrant

la policía ha efectuado 300 registros domiciliarios the police have carried out searches on 300 houses

C (de un reloj) regulator

D ( Mús)

1 (de una voz, un instrumento) range

2 (pieza — de un órgano) register, stop; (— de un piano, clavicordio) pedal

3 (tono) register

E ( Ling) register

F ( Tec)

1 (abertura) inspection hatch

2 ( Col) (de agua) stopcock, shutoff valve ( AmE)

G ( Arg) driver's license ( AmE), driving licence ( BrE)

* * *

1ª persona singular (yo) presente indicativo

3ª persona singular (él/ella/usted) pretérito indicativo

a) ‹nacimiento/defunción/patente› to register

b) ‹sonido/temperatura› to record;

◊ estaba registrando mis cajones (fam) he was going through my drawers

◊ registro civil ( oficina) registry, registry office (BrE)

◊ orden de registro search warrant

* * *

registro nm

1. [oficina] registry (office)

registro civil registry (office);

registro de comercio trade register office;

registro mercantil trade register office;

registro de la propiedad land records office, Br land registry office;

registro de la propiedad industrial trademark registry office;

registro de la propiedad intelectual copyright registry office

2. [libro] register;

inscribir a alguien en el registro civil to register sb in the register of births, marriages and deaths

registro parroquial parish register

3. [inscripción] registration;

llevar el registro de algo to keep a record of sth

4. [inspección] search;

una orden de registro a search warrant;

procedieron al registro de la fábrica they carried out a search of the factory;

efectuaron un registro domiciliario they searched his/her/ etc home

5. [de libro] bookmark

6. Informát [en base de datos] record

7. Ling register

8. Mús [notas] register

9. Mús [en órgano] stop, register;

tocar todos los registros to pull out all the stops

10. Tec [abertura] inspection hatch

11. Tec [llave] stopcock

* * *

1 ( archivo) register

2 de casa search

tocar todos los registros fig fam pull out all the stops fam

* * *

registro nm

1) : register

2) : registration

3) : registry, record office

4) : range (of a voice or musical instrument)

5) : search

* * *

registro n

1. (examen) search

2. (inscripción) registration

3. (libro) register

1 ownership (derecho).

tener algo en propiedad to own something

propiedad ajena other people's property

propiedad horizontal joint ownership

propiedad industrial (in a block of flats) patent rights

propiedad intelectual copyright

propiedad privada private property

propiedad pública public ownership

2 property.

3 accuracy.

expresarse o hablar con propiedad to express oneself precisely, to use words properly

4 propriety, decency, correctness, appropriateness.

* * *

► nombre femenino

1 (derecho) ownership

■ ¿a quién corresponde la propiedad de esta finca? to whom does this property belong?

■ este campo es de mi propiedad I own this field, this field is my property

2 (bien inmueble) property

■ tiene propiedades por toda la costa he has properties all along the coast

3 (corrección) propriety

■ compórtate con propiedad behave properly

■ hay que aprender a hablar con propiedad one must learn to speak correctly

4 (cualidad) property

■ el apio tiene muy buenas propiedades celery has excellent properties

\

propiedad intelectual copyright

propiedad particular private property

propiedad privada private property

* * *

1) property

2) ownership

* * *

1) (=pertenencia) possession, ownership

2) (=objeto poseído) property

3) (Quím, Med) property

4) (=característica) property, attribute

5) (=adecuación) propriety

6) (=exactitud) accuracy

7) (Com) (=derechos) right, rights pl

* * *

1)

a) ( pertenencia)

b) ( lo poseído) property

2) ( cualidad) property; ( corrección)

•

- propiedad inmobiliaria

- propiedad industrial

- propiedad intelectual

- propiedad privada/pública

* * *

1)

a) ( pertenencia)

b) ( lo poseído) property

2) ( cualidad) property; ( corrección)

•

- propiedad inmobiliaria

- propiedad industrial

- propiedad intelectual

- propiedad privada/pública

* * *

propiedad¹

¹ = ownership, domain, estate, backyard, property.

Nota: Posesión.

propiedad²

² = property.

Nota: Característica.

* * *

(pertenencia): la casa no es de mi propiedad, es alquilada the house isn't mine o I don't own the house, it's rented

la finca es propiedad de mi hijo the estate belongs to o is owned by my son

se disputan la propiedad de las tierras they're in dispute over the ownership of the land

la empresa es de propiedad estatal the company is in state ownership

delito contra la propiedad crime against property

les dejó los terrenos en propiedad she left them the freehold to the land

los cuadros exhibidos son propiedad de la fundación the paintings on show are the property of the foundation

2 (lo poseído) property

1 (cualidad) property

(corrección): habla/se expresa con propiedad she speaks/expresses herself correctly

se comportó con propiedad he behaved with decorum

(sistema) condominium ( AmE), joint freehold ( BrE); (edificio) condominium ( AmE) ( building owned under joint freehold)

patent rights (pl)

real estate, property ( BrE)

copyright

private/public property

* * *

a) ( pertenencia) property;

◊ son propiedad del museo they are the property of the museum;

b) ( lo poseído) property;

◊ propiedad intelectual copyright;

◊ con propiedad ‹ hablar› correctly;

* * *

propiedad nf

1. [derecho] ownership;

la casa es propiedad de sus padres the house belongs to o is owned by her parents;

pertenecer en propiedad a alguien to rightfully belong to sb;

tener algo en propiedad to own sth

la legislación en materia de propiedad horizontal the legislation on ownership of properties in tenements;

propiedad industrial patent rights;

propiedad inmobiliaria real estate;

propiedad intelectual copyright;

propiedad privada private property;

propiedad pública public ownership

2. [facultad] property;

las propiedades de una sustancia the properties of a substance;

con propiedades medicinales with medicinal properties

3. [exactitud] accuracy;

expresarse o [m5] hablar con propiedad to use words properly;

empleaste esa expresión con mucha propiedad you used exactly the right expression there

* * *

f property;

ser propiedad de alguien be s.o.’s property

* * *

propiedad nf

1) : property

propiedad privada: private property

2) : ownership

3) cualidad: property, quality

4) : suitability, appropriateness

* * *

propiedad n property [pl. properties]

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Heathcote was the son of a small farmer who became blind, obliging the family to move to Long Whatton, near Loughborough, c.1790. He was apprenticed to W.Shepherd, a hosiery-machine maker, and became a frame-smith in the hosiery industry. He moved to Nottingham where he entered the employment of an excellent machine maker named Elliott. He later joined William Caldwell of Hathern, whose daughter he had married. The lace-making apparatus they patented jointly in 1804 had already been anticipated, so Heathcote turned to the problem of making pillow lace, a cottage industry in which women made lace by arranging pins stuck in a pillow in the correct pattern and winding around them thread contained on thin bobbins. He began by analysing the complicated hand-woven lace into simple warp and weft threads and found he could dispense with half the bobbins. The first machine he developed and patented, in 1808, made narrow lace an inch or so wide, but the following year he made much broader lace on an improved version. In his second patent, in 1809, he could make a type of net curtain, Brussels lace, without patterns. His machine made bobbin-net by the use of thin brass discs, between which the thread was wound. As they passed through the warp threads, which were arranged vertically, the warp threads were moved to each side in turn, so as to twist the bobbin threads round the warp threads. The bobbins were in two rows to save space, and jogged on carriages in grooves along a bar running the length of the machine. As the strength of this fabric depended upon bringing the bobbin threads diagonally across, in addition to the forward movement, the machine had to provide for a sideways movement of each bobbin every time the lengthwise course was completed. A high standard of accuracy in manufacture was essential for success. Called the "Old Loughborough", it was acknowledged to be the most complicated machine so far produced. In partnership with a man named Charles Lacy, who supplied the necessary capital, a factory was established at Loughborough that proved highly successful; however, their fifty-five frames were destroyed by Luddites in 1816. Heathcote was awarded damages of £10,000 by the county of Nottingham on the condition it was spent locally, but to avoid further interference he decided to transfer not only his machines but his entire workforce elsewhere and refused the money. In a disused woollen factory at Tiverton in Devonshire, powered by the waters of the river Exe, he built 300 frames of greater width and speed. By continually making inventions and improvements until he retired in 1843, his business flourished and he amassed a large fortune. He patented one machine for silk cocoon-reeling and another for plaiting or braiding. In 1825 he brought out two patents for the mechanical ornamentation or figuring of lace. He acquired a sound knowledge of French prior to opening a steam-powered lace factory in France. The factory proved to be a successful venture that lasted many years. In 1832 he patented a monstrous steam plough that is reputed to have cost him over £12,000 and was claimed to be the best in its day. One of its stated aims was "improved methods of draining land", which he hoped would develop agriculture in Ireland. A cable was used to haul the implement across the land. From 1832 to 1859, Heathcote represented Tiverton in Parliament and, among other benefactions, he built a school for his adopted town.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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See also: Blenkinsop, John

SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Domestic appliances and interiors, Land transport, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Public utilities

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Bramah was the son of a tenant farmer and was educated at the village school before being apprenticed to a local carpenter, Thomas Allot. He walked to London c.1773 and found work with a Mr Allen that included the repair of some of the comparatively rare water-closets of the period. He invented and patented one of his own, which was followed by a water cock in 1783. His next invention, a greatly improved lock, involved the devising of a number of special machine tools, for it was one of the first devices involving interchangeable components in its manufacture. In this he had the help of Henry Maudslay, then a young and unknown engineer, who became Bramah's foreman before setting up business on his own. In 1784 he moved his premises from Denmark Street, St Giles, to 124 Piccadilly, which was later used as a showroom when he set up a factory in Pimlico. He invented an engine for putting out fires in 1785 and 1793, in effect a reciprocating rotary-vane pump. He undertook the refurbishment and modernization of Norwich waterworks c.1793, but fell out with Robert Mylne, who was acting as Consultant to the Norwich Corporation and had produced a remarkably vague specification. This was Bramah's only venture into the field of civil engineering.

In 1797 he acted as an expert witness for Hornblower \& Maberley in the patent infringement case brought against them by Boulton and Watt. Having been cut short by the judge, he published his proposed evidence in "Letter to the Rt Hon. Sir James Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas…etc". In 1795 he was granted his most important patent, based on Pascal's Hydrostatic Paradox, for the hydraulic press which also incorporated the concept of hydraulics for the transmission of both power and motion and was the foundation of the whole subsequent hydraulic industry. There is no truth in the oft-repeated assertion originating from Samuel Smiles's Industrial Biography (1863) that the hydraulic press could not be made to work until Henry Maudslay invented the self-sealing neck leather. Bramah used a single-acting upstroking ram, sealed only at its base with a U-leather. There was no need for a neck leather.

He also used the concept of the weight-loaded, in this case as a public-house beer-engine. He devised machinery for carbonating soda water. The first banknote-numbering machine was of his design and was bought by the Bank of England. His development of a machine to cut twelve nibs from one goose quill started a patent specification which ended with the invention of the fountain pen, patented in 1809. His coach brakes were an innovation that was followed bv a form of hydropneumatic carriage suspension that was somewhat in advance of its time, as was his patent of 1812. This foresaw the introduction of hydraulic power mains in major cities and included the telescopic ram and the air-loaded accumulator.

In all Joseph Bramah was granted eighteen patents. On 22 March 1813 he demonstrated a hydraulic machine for pulling up trees by the roots in Hyde Park before a large crowd headed by the Duke of York. Using the same machine in Alice Holt Forest in Hampshire to fell timber for ships for the Navy, he caught a chill and died soon after at his home in Pimlico.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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In the mid-1850s Saxby was a foreman in the Brighton Works of the London Brighton \& South Coast Railway, where he had no doubt become familiar with construction of semaphore signals of the type invented by C.H. Gregory; the London-Brighton line was one of the first over which these were installed. In the 1850s points and signals were usually worked independently, and it was to eliminate the risk of accident from conflicting points and signal positions that Saxby in 1856 patented an arrangement by which related points and signals would be operated simultaneously by a single lever.

Others were concerned with the same problem. In 1855 Vignier, an employee of the Western Railway of France, had made an interlocking apparatus for junctions, and in 1859 Austin Chambers, who worked for the North London Railway, installed at Kentish Town Junction an interlocking lever frame in which a movement that depended upon another could not even commence until the earlier one was completed. He patented it early in 1860; Saxby patented his own version of such an apparatus later the same year. In 1863 Saxby left the London Brighton \& South Coast Railway to enter into a partnership with J.S.Farmer and established Saxby \& Farmer's railway signalling works at Kilburn, London. The firm manufactured, installed and maintained signalling equipment for many prominent railway companies. Its interlocking frames made possible installation of complex track layouts at increasingly busy London termini possible.

In 1867 Saxby \& Farmer purchased Chambers's patent of 1860, Later developments by the firm included effective interlocking actuated by lifting a lever's catch handle, rather than by the lever itself (1871), and an improved locking frame known as the "gridiron" (1874). This was eventually superseded by tappet interlocking, which had been invented by James Deakin of the rival firm Stevens \& Co. in 1870 but for which patent protection had been lost through non-renewal.

Saxby \& Farmer's equipment was also much used on the European continent, in India and in the USA, to which it introduced interlocking. A second manufacturing works was set up in 1878 at Creil (Oise), France, and when the partnership terminated in 1888 Saxby moved to Creil and managed the works himself until he retired to Sussex in 1900.

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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: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Fairlie worked on railways in Ireland and India, and established himself as a consulting engineer in London by the early 1860s. In 1864 he patented his design of locomotive: it was to be carried on two bogies and had a double boiler, the barrels extending in each direction from a central firebox. From smokeboxes at the outer ends, return tubes led to a single central chimney. At that time in British practice, locomotives of ever-increasing size were being carried on longer and longer rigid wheelbases, but often only one or two of their three or four pairs of wheels were powered. Bogies were little used and then only for carrying-wheels rather than driving-wheels: since their pivots were given no sideplay, they were of little value. Fairlie's design offered a powerful locomotive with a wheelbase which though long would be flexible; it would ride well and have all wheels driven and available for adhesion.

The first five double Fairlie locomotives were built by James Cross \& Co. of St Helens during 1865–7. None was particularly successful: the single central chimney of the original design had been replaced by two chimneys, one at each end of the locomotive, but the single central firebox was retained, so that exhaust up one chimney tended to draw cold air down the other. In 1870 the next double Fairlie, Little Wonder, was built for the Festiniog Railway, on which C.E. Spooner was pioneering steam trains of very narrow gauge. The order had gone to George England, but the locomotive was completed by his successor in business, the Fairlie Engine \& Steam Carriage Company, in which Fairlie and George England's son were the principal partners. Little Wonder was given two inner fireboxes separated by a water space and proved outstandingly successful. The spectacle of this locomotive hauling immensely long trains up grade, through the Festiniog Railway's sinuous curves, was demonstrated before engineers from many parts of the world and had lasting effect. Fairlie himself became a great protagonist of narrow-gauge railways and influenced their construction in many countries.

Towards the end of the 1860s, Fairlie was designing steam carriages or, as they would now be called, railcars, but only one was built before the death of George England Jr precipitated closure of the works in 1870. Fairlie's business became a design agency and his patent locomotives were built in large numbers under licence by many noted locomotive builders, for narrow, standard and broad gauges. Few operated in Britain, but many did in other lands; they were particularly successful in Mexico and Russia.

Many Fairlie locomotives were fitted with the radial valve gear invented by Egide Walschaert; Fairlie's role in the universal adoption of this valve gear was instrumental, for he introduced it to Britain in 1877 and fitted it to locomotives for New Zealand, whence it eventually spread worldwide. Earlier, in 1869, the Great Southern \& Western Railway of Ireland had built in its works the first "single Fairlie", a 0–4–4 tank engine carried on two bogies but with only one of them powered. This type, too, became popular during the last part of the nineteenth century. In the USA it was built in quantity by William Mason of Mason Machine Works, Taunton, Massachusetts, in preference to the double-ended type.

Double Fairlies may still be seen in operation on the Festiniog Railway; some of Fairlie's ideas were far ahead of their time, and modern diesel and electric locomotives are of the powered-bogie, double-ended type.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport, Metallurgy

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From his early years, Haynes was a practising Presbyterian and an active prohibitionist. He graduated in 1881 at Worcester, Massachusetts, and a spell of teaching in his home town was interrupted in 1884–5 while he attended the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1886 he became permanently diverted by the discovery of natural gas in Portland. He was soon appointed Superintendent of the local gas undertaking, and then in 1890 he was hired by the Indiana Natural Gas \& Oil Company. While continuing his gas-company employment until 1901, Haynes conducted numerous metallurgical experiments. He also designed an automobile: this led to the establishment of the Haynes- Apperson Company at Kokomo as one of the earliest motor-car makers in North America. From 1905 the firm traded as the Haynes Automobile Company, and before its bankruptcy in 1924 it produced more than 50,000 cars. After 1905, Haynes found the first "Stellite" alloys of cobalt and chromium, and in 1910 he was publicizing the patented material. He then discovered the valuable hardening effect of tungsten, and in 1912 began applying the "improved" Stellite to cutting tools. Three years later, the Haynes Stellite Company was incorporated, with Haynes as President, to work the patents. It was largely from this source that Haynes became a millionaire in 1920. In April 1912, Haynes's attempt to patent the use of chromium with iron to render the product rustless was unsuccessful. However, he re-applied for a US patent on 12 March 1915 and, although this was initially rejected, he persevered and finally obtained recognition of his modified claim. The American Stainless Steel Company licensed the patents of Brearley and Haynes jointly in the USA until the 1930s.

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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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