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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Alan Cobham was a man of many parts. He started as a veterinary assistant in France during the First World War, but transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. After the war he continued flying, by giving joy-rides and doing aerial photography work. In 1921 he joined the De Havilland Aircraft Company (see de Havilland, Geoffrey) as a test and charter pilot; he was also successful in a number of air races. During the 1920s Cobham made many notable flights to distant parts of the British Empire, pioneering possible routes for airline operations. During the early 1930s Sir Alan (he was knighted in 1926) devoted his attention to generating a public interest in aviation and to campaigning for more airfields. Cobham's Flying Circus toured the country giving flying displays and joy-rides, which for thousands of people was their first experience of flying.

In 1933 Cobham planned a non-stop flight to India by refuelling his aircraft while flying: this was not a new idea but the process was still experimental. The flight was unsuccessful due to a fault in his aircraft, unrelated to the in-flight refuelling system. The following year Flight Refuelling Ltd was founded, and by 1939 two Short flying boats were operating the first inflight-refuelled service across the Atlantic. Inflight refuelling was not required during the early years of the Second World War, so Cobham turned to other projects such as thermal de-icing of wings, and a scheme which was not carried out, for delivering fighters to the Middle East by towing them behind Wellington bombers.

After the Second World War the fortunes of Flight Refuelling Ltd were at a low ebb, especially when British South American Airways abandoned the idea of using in-flight refuelling. Then an American contract and the use of their tanker aircraft to ferry oil during the Berlin Airlift saved the day. In 1949 Cobham's chief designer, Peter Macgregor, came up with an idea for refuelling fighters using a probe and drogue system. A large tanker aircraft trailed a hose with a conical drogue at the free end. The fighter pilot manoeuvred the probe, fitted to his aircraft, so that it locked into the drogue, enabling fuel to be transferred. Since the 1950s this system has become the effective world standard.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Amidst the growing cohorts of American inventors who began to deluge the patent office with their inventions from around the middle of the nineteenth century are at least 30 women who received patents for dishwashers. Of these, it seems that Josephine C.Cochran can be credited with the invention of the first commercially available dishwasher. She developed her machine over a period often years, achieving patents in 1886 and 1888, with a third in 1894 for a "dish-cleaner". She completed the work in 1889, only after the death of her husband, who had kept her too short of funds to perfect her invention. Cochran exhibited her dishwasher at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1892. There was a smaller, "family"-size machine for domestic use and a larger model, steam-driven, for major hotels and restaurants; this latter model was used by many such establishments in Chicago. It was said that the large machine could scald, rinse and dry up to 240 plates of various shapes and sizes in two minutes. Her invention had won her sufficient fame to earn her a place in a list, published in 1886, of prominent American women inventors.

Little is known of Cochran's personal details, save that she was married to a circuit clerk ten years her senior, by whom she had a daughter. She was still active in November 1908, for she exhibited again at the Martha Washington Hotel Suffrage Bazaar in New York City.

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SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Cotton was originally employed in Loughborough and became one of the first specialized hosiery-machine builders. After the introduction of the latch needle by Matthew Townsend in 1856, knitting frames developed rapidly. The circular frame was easier to work automatically, but attempts to apply power to the flat frame, which could produce fully fashioned work, culminated in 1863 with William Cotton's machine. In that year he invented a machine that could make a dozen or more stockings or hose simultaneously and knit fashioned garments of all kinds. The difficulty was to reduce automatically the number of stitches in the courses where the hose or garment narrowed to give it shape. Cotton had early opportunities to apply himself to the improvement of hosiery machines while employed in the patent shop of Cartwright \& Warner of Loughborough, where some of the first rotaries were made. He remained with the firm for twenty years, during which time sixty or seventy of these machines were turned out. Cotton then established a factory for the manufacture of warp fabrics, and it was here that he began to work on his ideas. He had no knowledge of the principles of engineering or drawing, so his method of making sketches and then getting his ideas roughed out involved much useless labour. After twelve years, in 1863, a patent was issued for the machine that became the basis of the Cotton's Patent type. This was a flat frame driven by rotary mechanism and remarkable for its adaptability. At first he built his machine upright, like a cottage piano, but after much thought and experimentation he conceived the idea of turning the upper part down flat so that the needles were in a vertical position instead of being horizontal, and the work was carried off horizontally instead of vertically. His first machine produced four identical pieces simultaneously, but this number was soon increased. Cotton was induced by the success of his invention to begin machine building as a separate business and thus established one of the first of a class of engineering firms that sprung up as an adjunct to the new hosiery manufacture. He employed only a dozen men and turned out six machines in the first year, entering into an agreement with Hine \& Mundella for their exclusive use. This was later extended to the firm of I. \& R.Morley. In 1878, Cotton began to build on his own account, and the business steadily increased until it employed some 200 workers and had an output of 100 machines a year.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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He was the son of a country lawyer who became legal advisor and travelling companion to certain rich Americans. At an early age Cousteau acquired a love of travel, of the sea and of cinematography: he made his first film at the age of 13. After an interrupted education he nevertheless passed the difficult entrance examination to the Ecole Navale in Brest, but his naval career was cut short in 1936 by injuries received in a serious motor accident. For his long recuperation he was drafted to Toulon. There he met Philippe Tailliez, a fellow naval officer, and Frédéric Dumas, a champion spearfisher, with whom he formed a long association and began to develop his underwater swimming and photography. He apparently took little part in the Second World War, but under cover he applied his photographic skills to espionage, for which he was awarded the Légion d'honneur after the war.

Cousteau sought greater freedom of movement underwater and, with Emile Gagnan, who worked in the laboratory of Air Liquide, he began experimenting to improve portable underwater breathing apparatus. As a result, in 1943 they invented the aqualung. Its simple design and robust construction provided a reliable and low-cost unit and revolutionized scientific and recreational diving. Gagnan shunned publicity, but Cousteau revelled in the new freedom to explore and photograph underwater and exploited the publicity potential to the full.

The Undersea Research Group was set up by the French Navy in 1944 and, based in Toulon, it provided Cousteau with the Opportunity to develop underwater exploration and filming techniques and equipment. Its first aims were minesweeping and exploration, but in 1948 Cousteau pioneered an extension to marine archaeology. In 1950 he raised the funds to acquire a surplus US-built minesweeper, which he fitted out to further his quest for exploration and adventure and named Calypso. Cousteau also sought and achieved public acclaim with the publication in 1953 of The Silent World, an account of his submarine observations, illustrated by his own brilliant photography. The book was an immediate success and was translated into twenty-two languages. In 1955 Calypso sailed through the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean, and the outcome was a film bearing the same title as the book: it won an Oscar and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. This was his favoured medium for the expression of his ideas and observations, and a stream of films on the same theme kept his name before the public.

Cousteau's fame earned him appointment by Prince Rainier as Director of the Oceanographie Institute in Monaco in 1957, a post he held until 1988. With its museum and research centre, it offered Cousteau a useful base for his worldwide activities.

In the 1980s Cousteau turned again to technological development. Like others before him, he was concerned to reduce ships' fuel consumption by harnessing wind power. True to form, he raised grants from various sources to fund research and enlisted technical help, namely Lucien Malavard, Professor of Aerodynamics at the Sorbonne. Malavard designed a 44 ft (13.4 m) high non-rotating cylinder, which was fitted onto a catamaran hull, christened Moulin à vent. It was intended that its maiden Atlantic crossing in 1983 should herald a new age in ship propulsion, with large royalties to Cousteau. Unfortunately the vessel was damaged in a storm and limped to the USA under diesel power. A more robust vessel, the Alcyone, was fitted with two "Turbosails" in 1985 and proved successful, with a 40 per cent reduction in fuel consumption. However, oil prices fell, removing the incentive to fit the new device; the lucrative sales did not materialize and Alcyone remained the only vessel with Turbosails, sharing with Calypso Cousteau's voyages of adventure and exploration. In September 1995, Cousteau was among the critics of the decision by the French President Jacques Chirac to resume testing of nuclear explosive devices under the Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Telecommunications

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After private education and an engineering apprenticeship, Crampton worked under Marc Brunel, Daniel Gooch and the Rennie brothers before setting up as a civil engineer in 1848. His developing ideas on locomotive design were expressed through a series of five patents taken out between 1842 and 1849, each making a multiplicity of claims. The most typical feature of the Crampton locomotive, however, was a single pair of driving wheels set to the rear of the firebox. This meant they could be of large diameter, while the centre of gravity of the locomotive remained low, for the boiler barrel, though large, had only small carrying-wheels beneath it. The cylinders were approximately midway along the boiler and were outside the frames, as was the valve gear. The result was a steady-riding locomotive which neither pitched about a central driving axle nor hunted from side to side, as did other contemporary locomotives, and its working parts were unusually accessible for maintenance. However, adhesive weight was limited and the long wheelbase tended to damage track. Locomotives of this type were soon superseded on British railways, although they lasted much longer in Germany and France. Locomotives built to the later patents incorporated a long, coupled wheelbase with drive through an intermediate crankshaft, but they mostly had only short lives. In 1851 Crampton, with associates, laid the first successful submarine electric telegraph cable. The previous year the brothers Jacob and John Brett had laid a cable, comprising a copper wire insulated with gutta-percha, beneath the English Channel from Dover to Cap Gris Nez: signals were passed but within a few hours the cable failed. Crampton joined the Bretts' company, put up half the capital needed for another attempt, and designed a much stronger cable. Four gutta-percha-insulated copper wires were twisted together, surrounded by tarred hemp and armoured by galvanized iron wires; this cable was successful.

Crampton was also active in railway civil engineering and in water and gas engineering, and c. 1882 he invented a hydraulic tunnel-boring machine intended for a Channel tunnel.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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Cruickshank graduated MA from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1765, and later gained a Diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons. When chemistry was introduced in 1788 into the course at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, Cruickshank became a member of staff, serving as Assistant to Dr A.Crawford, the Lecturer in Chemistry. Upon Crawford's death in 1796 Cruickshank succeeded him as Lecturer and held the post until his retirement due to ill health in 1804. He also held the senior posts of Chemist to the Ordnance at Woolwich and Surgeon to the Ordnance Medical Department. He should not be confused with William Cumberland Cruickshank (1745–1800), who was also a surgeon and Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1801, shortly after Volta's announcement of his pile, Cruickshank built a voltaic pile to facilitate his experiments in electrochemistry. The pile had zinc and silver plates about 1½ in2 (10 cm²) with interposed papers moistened with ammonium chloride. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, Cruickshank devised a horizontal trough battery in which a wooden box was divided into cells, each holding a pair of zinc and silver or zinc and copper plates. Charged with a dilute solution of ammonium chloride, the battery, which was typically of sixty cells, was found to be more convenient to use than a pile and it, or a derivative, was generally adopted for electrochemical experiments including tose of Humphrey Davy during the early years of the nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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When he was 14 years old Davenport was apprenticed to a blacksmith for seven years. At the close of his apprenticeship in 1823 he opened a blacksmith's shop in Brandon, Vermont. He began experimenting with electromagnets after observing one in use at the Penfield Iron Works at Crown Point, New York, in 1831. He saw the device as a possible source of power and by July 1834 had constructed his first electric motor. Having totally abandoned his regular business, Davenport built and exhibited a number of miniature machines; he utilized an electric motor to propel a model car around a circular track in 1836, and this became the first recorded instance of an electric railway. An application for a patent and a model were destroyed in a fire at the United States Patent Office in December 1836, but a second application was made and Davenport received a patent the following year for Improvements in Propelling Machinery by Magnetism and Electromagnetism. A British patent was also obtained. A workshop and laboratory were established in New York, but Davenport had little financial backing for his experiments. He built a total of over one hundred motors but was defeated by the inability to obtain an inexpensive source of power. Using an electric motor of his own design to operate a printing press in 1840, he undertook the publication of a journal, The Electromagnet and Mechanics' Intelligencer. This was the first American periodical on electricity, but it was discontinued after a few issues. In failing health he retired to Vermont where in the last year of his life he continued experiments in electromagnetism.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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It is believed that Deane was born in Harwich, the son of a master mariner. When 22 years of age, having been trained by Christopher Pett, he was appointed Assistant Master Shipwright at Woolwich Naval Dockyard, indicating an ability as a shipbuilder and also that he had influence behind him. Despite abruptness and a tendency to annoy his seniors, he was acknowledged by no less a man than Pepys (1633–1703) for his skill as a ship designer and -builder, and he was one of the few who could accurately estimate displacements and drafts of ships under construction. While only 26 years old, he was promoted to Master Shipwright of the Naval Base at Harwich and commenced a notable career. When the yard was closed four years later (on the cessation of the threat from the Dutch), Deane was transferred to the key position of Master Shipwright at Portsmouth and given the opportunity to construct large men-of-war. In 1671 he built his first three-decker and was experimenting with underwater hull sheathing and other matters. In 1672 he became a member of the Navy Board, and from then on promotion was spectacular, with almost full responsibility given him for decisions on ship procurement for the Navy. Owing to political changes he was out of office for some years and endured a short period in prison, but on his release he continued to work as a private shipbuilder. He returned to the King's service for a few years before the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688; thereafter little is known of his life, beyond that he died in 1721.

Deane's monument to posterity is his Doctrine of Naval Architecture, published in 1670. It is one of the few books on ship design of the period and gives a clear insight into the rather pedantic procedures used in those less than scientific times. Deane became Mayor of Harwich and subsequently Member of Parliament. It is believed that he was Peter the Great's tutor on shipbuilding during his visit to the Thames in 1698.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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After John Levers had brought out his lacemaking machine in 1813, other lacemakers proceeded to elaborate their machinery so as to imitate the more complicated forms of handwork. One of these was Samuel Draper of Nottingham, who took out one patent in 1835 for the use of a Jacquard mechanism on a lace making machine, followed by another in 1837. However, material made on his machine cost more than the handmade article, so the experiment was abandoned after three years. Then, in Nottingham in 1841, Hooton Deverill patented the first truly successful application of the Jacquard to lacemaking. The Jacquard needles caused the warp threads to be pushed sideways to form the holes in the lace while the bobbins were moved around them to bind them together. This made it possible to reproduce most of the traditional patterns of handmade lace in both narrow and wide pieces. Lace made on these machines became cheap enough for most people to be able to hang it in their windows as curtains, or to use it for trimming clothing. However, it raised in a most serious form the problem of patent rights between the two patentees, Deverill and Draper, threatening much litigation. Deverill's patent was bought by Richard Birkin, who with his partner Biddle relinquished the patent rights. The lacemaking trade on these machines was thus thrown open to the public and a new development of the trade took place. Levers lace is still made in the way described here.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Domagk's studies in medicine were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War and his service in the Army, delaying his qualification at Kiel until 1921. For a short while he worked at the University of Greifswald, but in 1925 he was appointed Reader in Pathology at the University of Munster, where he remained as Extraordinary Professor of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy (1928) and Professor (1958).

In 1924 he published a paper on the role of the reticulo-endothelial system against infection. This led to his appointment as Director of Research by IG Farbenindustrie in their laboratory for experimental pathology and bacteriology. The planned programme of research into potential antibacterial chemotherapeutic drugs led, via the discovery of the dye Prontosil rubrum by his colleagues, to his reporting in 1936 the clinical antistreptococcal effects of the sulphonamide drugs. These results were confirmed in other countries, but owing to problems with the Nazi authorities he was unable to receive until 1947 the Nobel Prize that he was awarded in 1939.

Domagk turned his interest to the chemotherapy of tuberculosis, and in 1946 he was able to report the therapeutic activity of the thiosemicarbazones, which, although too toxic for general use, in their turn led to the discovery of the potent and effective isoniazid. In his later years he moved into the field of cancer chemotherapy, but interestingly he wrote, "One should not have too great expectations of the future of cytostatic agents." His only daughter was one of the first patients to have a severe streptococcal infection successfully treated with Prontosil rubrum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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After an education at the College of Stanislas, Cannes, Duddell served an apprenticeship with Davy Paxman of Colchester. Studying under Ayrton and Mather at the Central Technical College in South Kensington, he found the facilities for experimental work of exceptional value to him and remained there for some years. In 1897 Duddell produced a galvanometer which was sufficiently responsive to display an alternating-current wave-form. This instrument, with a coil carrying a mirror in the air gap of a powerful electromagnet, had a small periodic time. An oscillating mirror driven by a synchronous motor spread out the deflection on a time-scale. This development became the first commercial oscillograph and brought Duddell into prominence as a first-rate designer of special instruments. The Duddell oscillograph remained in use until after the Second World War, examples being used for recording short-circuit tests on high-power switchgear and other rapidly varying or transient phenomena. His next important work was to collaborate with Professor Marchant at Liverpool University to investigate the characteristics of the electric arc. This led to the suggestion that, coupled to a resonant circuit, the electric arc could form a generator of high-frequency currents. This arrangement was later developed by Poulson for wireless telegraphy. Duddell spent the last years of his life on government research as a member of the Admiralty Board of Inventions and Research and also of the Inventions Board of the Ministry of Munitions.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Dudley was the fourth natural son of Edward Sutton, fifth Baron Dudley. In 1619 he was summoned from Balliol College, Oxford, to superintend his father's ironworks at Pensnet in Worcestershire. There had long been concern at the destruction of the forests in order to make charcoal for the smelting of iron ore, and unsuccessful attempts had been made to substitute coal as a fuel. Finding that charcoal was in short supply and coal plentiful near Pensnet, Dudley was stimulated by these attempts to try the process for himself. He claimed to have made good, marketable iron and in 1621 his father obtained a patent from the King to protect his process for thirty-one years. After a serious flood, Dudley moved to Staffordshire and continued his efforts there. In 1639 he was granted a further patent for making iron with coal. Although he probably made some samples of good iron, more by luck than judgement, it is hardly possible that he achieved consistent success. He blamed this on the machinations of other ironmasters. The day that King Charles II landed in England to assume his throne', Dudley petitioned him to renew his patents, but he was refused and he ceased to promote his invention. In 1665, however, he published his celebrated book Metallum Martis, Iron Made with Pit-Coaky Sea-Coale…. In this he described his efforts in general terms, but neither there nor in his patents does he give any technical details of his methods. He implied the use of slack or small coal from the Staffordshire Thick or Ten Yard coal, but this has a sulphur content that would have rendered the iron unusable; in addition, this coal would not have been suitable for converting to coke in order to remove the sulphur. Nevertheless, Dudley recognized the need to change from charcoal to coal as a fuel for iron smelting and drew attention to it, even though he himself achieved little success.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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After early education at home and at private school, Eccles won a scholarship to the Royal College of Science (now Imperial College), London, where he gained a First Class BSc in physics in 1898. He then worked as a demonstrator at the college and studied coherers, for which he obtained a DSc in 1901. Increasingly interested in electrical engineering, he joined the Marconi Company in 1899 to work on oscillators at the Poole experimental radio station, but in 1904 he returned to academic life as Professor of Mathematics and Physics and Department Head at South West Polytechnic, Chelsea. There he discovered ways of using the negative resistance of galena-crystal detectors to generate oscillations and gave a mathematical description of the operation of the triode valve. In 1910 he became Reader in Engineering at University College, London, where he published a paper explaining the reflection of radio waves by the ionosphere and designed a 60 MHz short-wave transmitter. From 1916 to 1926 he was Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at the Finsbury City \& Guilds College and a private consulting engineer. During the First World War he was a military scientific adviser and Secretary to the Joint Board of Scientific Societies. After the war he made many contributions to electronic-circuit development, many of them (including the Eccles-Jordan "flip-flop" patented in 1918 and used in binary counters) in conjunction with F.W.Jordan, about whom little seems to be known. Illness forced Eccles's premature academic retirement in 1926, but he remained active as a consultant for many years.

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See also: Heaviside, Oliver; Kennelly, Arthur Edwin

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Steam and internal combustion engines

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John was the third son of David Elder. The father came from a family of millwrights and moved to Glasgow where he worked for the well-known shipbuilding firm of Napier's and was involved with improving marine engines. John was educated at Glasgow High School and then for a while at the Department of Civil Engineering at Glasgow University, where he showed great aptitude for mathematics and drawing. He spent five years as an apprentice under Robert Napier followed by two short periods of activity as a pattern-maker first and then a draughtsman in England. He returned to Scotland in 1849 to become Chief Draughtsman to Napier, but in 1852 he left to become a partner with the Glasgow general engineering company of Randolph Elliott \& Co. Shortly after his induction (at the age of 28), the engineering firm was renamed Randolph Elder \& Co.; in 1868, when the partnership expired, it became known as John Elder \& Co. From the outset Elder, with his partner, Charles Randolph, approached mechanical (especially heat) engineering in a rigorous manner. Their knowledge and understanding of entropy ensured that engine design was not a hit-and-miss affair, but one governed by recognition of the importance of the new kinetic theory of heat and with it a proper understanding of thermodynamic principles, and by systematic development. In this Elder was joined by W.J.M. Rankine, Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Glasgow University, who helped him develop the compound marine engine. Elder and Randolph built up a series of patents, which guaranteed their company's commercial success and enabled them for a while to be the sole suppliers of compound steam reciprocating machinery. Their first such engine at sea was fitted in 1854 on the SS Brandon for the Limerick Steamship Company; the ship showed an improved performance by using a third less coal, which he was able to reduce still further on later designs.

Elder developed steam jacketing and recognized that, with higher pressures, triple-expansion types would be even more economical. In 1862 he patented a design of quadruple-expansion engine with reheat between cylinders and advocated the importance of balancing reciprocating parts. The effect of his improvements was to greatly reduce fuel consumption so that long sea voyages became an economic reality.

His yard soon reached dimensions then unequalled on the Clyde where he employed over 4,000 workers; Elder also was always interested in the social welfare of his labour force. In 1860 the engine shops were moved to the Govan Old Shipyard, and again in 1864 to the Fairfield Shipyard, about 1 mile (1.6 km) west on the south bank of the Clyde. At Fairfield, shipbuilding was commenced, and with the patents for compounding secure, much business was placed for many years by shipowners serving long-distance trades such as South America; the Pacific Steam Navigation Company took up his ideas for their ships. In later years the yard became known as the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd, but it remains today as one of Britain's most efficient shipyards and is known now as Kvaerner Govan Ltd.

In 1869, at the age of only 45, John Elder was unanimously elected President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland; however, before taking office and giving his eagerly awaited presidential address, he died in London from liver disease. A large multitude attended his funeral and all the engineering shops were silent as his body, which had been brought back from London to Glasgow, was carried to its resting place. In 1857 Elder had married Isabella Ure, and on his death he left her a considerable fortune, which she used generously for Govan, for Glasgow and especially the University. In 1883 she endowed the world's first Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow, an act which was reciprocated in 1901 when the University awarded her an LLD on the occasion of its 450th anniversary.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Flying kites as a boy aroused Ellehammer's interest in aeronautics, and he developed a kite that could lift him off the ground. After completing an apprenticeship, he started his own manufacturing business, whose products included motor cycles. He experimented with model aircraft as a sideline and used his mo tor-cycle experience to build an aero engine during 1903–4. It had three cylinders radiating from the crankshaft, making it, in all probability, the world's first air-cooled radial engine. Ellehammer built his first full-size aircraft in 1905 and tested it in January 1906. It ran round a circular track, was tethered to a central mast and was unmanned. A more powerful engine was needed, and by September Ellehammer had improved his engine so that it was capable of lifting him for a tethered flight. In 1907 Ellehammer produced a new five-cylinder radial engine and installed it in the first manned tri-plane, which made a number of free-flight hops. Various wing designs were tested and during 1908–9 Ellehammer developed yet another radial engine, which had six cylinders arranged in two rows of three. Ellehammer's engines had a very good power-to-weight ratio, but his aircraft designs lacked an understanding of control; consequently, he never progressed beyond short hops in a straight line. In 1912 he built a helicopter with contra-rotating rotors that was a limited success. Ellehammer turned his attention to his other interests, but if he had concentrated on his excellent engines he might have become a major aero engine manufacturer.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Engerth was Chairman of the judges for the Semmering Locomotive Trials, held in 1851 to find locomotives suitable for working the sharply curved and steeply graded section of the Vienna-Trieste railway that was being built over the Semmering Pass, the first of the transalpine main lines. When none of the four locomotives entered proved suitable, Engerth designed his own. Six coupled wheels were at the fore part of the locomotive, with the connecting rods driving the rear pair: at the back of the locomotive the frames of the tender were extended forward on either side of the firebox, the front wheels of the tender were ahead of it, and the two parts were connected by a spherical pivot ahead of these. Part of the locomotive's weight was carried by the tender portion, and the two pairs of tender wheels were coupled by rods and powered by a geared drive from the axle of the rear driving-wheels. The powered drive to the tender wheels proved a failure, but the remaining characteristics of the locomotive, namely short rigid wheel-base, large firebox, flexibility and good tracking on curves (as drawbar pull was close behind the driving axle), were sufficient for the type to be a success. It was used on many railways in Europe and examples in modified form were built in Spain as recently as 1956. Engerth became General Manager of the Austro-Hungarian State Railway Company and designed successful flood-prevention works on the Danube at Vienna.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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Louis Essen joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at Teddington in 1927 after graduating from London University. He spent his whole working life at the NPL and retired in 1972; his research there was recognized by the award of a DSc in 1948. At NPL he joined a team working on the development of frequency standards using quartz crystals and he designed a very successful quartz oscillator, which became known as the "Essen ring". He was also involved with radio frequency oscillators. His expertise in these fields was to play a crucial role in the development of the caesium clock. The idea of an atomic clock had been proposed by I.I.Rabbi in 1945, and an instrument was constructed shortly afterwards at the National Bureau of Standards in the USA. However, this device never realized the full potential of the concept, and after seeing it on a visit to the USA Essen was convinced that a more successful instrument could be built at Teddington. Assisted by J.V.L.Parry, he commenced work in the spring of 1953 and by June 1955 the clock was working reliably, with an accuracy that was equivalent to one second in three hundred years. This was significantly more accurate than the astronomical observations that were used at that time to determine the second: in 1967 the second was redefined in terms of the value for the frequency of vibration of caesium atoms that had been obtained with this clock.

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See also: Marrison, Warren Alvin

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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He was the fifth child of Charles and Ann Stalcrop Evans, and by the age of 15 he had four sisters and seven brothers. Nothing is known of his schooling, but at the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a Newport wheelwright and wagon-maker. At 19 he was enrolled in a Delaware Militia Company in the Revolutionary War but did not see active service. About this time he invented a machine for bending and cutting off the wires in textile carding combs. In July 1782, with his younger brother, Joseph, he moved to Tuckahoe on the eastern shore of the Delaware River, where he had the basic idea of the automatic flour mill. In July 1782, with his elder brothers John and Theophilus, he bought part of his father's Newport farm, on Red Clay Creek, and planned to build a mill there. In 1793 he married Sarah Tomlinson, daughter of a Delaware farmer, and joined his brothers at Red Clay Creek. He worked there for some seven years on his automatic mill, from about 1783 to 1790.

His system for the automatic flour mill consisted of bucket elevators to raise the grain, a horizontal screw conveyor, other conveying devices and a "hopper boy" to cool and dry the meal before gathering it into a hopper feeding the bolting cylinder. Together these components formed the automatic process, from incoming wheat to outgoing flour packed in barrels. At that time the idea of such automation had not been applied to any manufacturing process in America. The mill opened, on a non-automatic cycle, in 1785. In January 1786 Evans applied to the Delaware legislature for a twenty-five-year patent, which was granted on 30 January 1787 although there was much opposition from the Quaker millers of Wilmington and elsewhere. He also applied for patents in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Hampshire. In May 1789 he went to see the mill of the four Ellicot brothers, near Baltimore, where he was impressed by the design of a horizontal screw conveyor by Jonathan Ellicot and exchanged the rights to his own elevator for those of this machine. After six years' work on his automatic mill, it was completed in 1790. In the autumn of that year a miller in Brandywine ordered a set of Evans's machinery, which set the trend toward its general adoption. A model of it was shown in the Market Street shop window of Robert Leslie, a watch-and clockmaker in Philadelphia, who also took it to England but was unsuccessful in selling the idea there.

In 1790 the Federal Plant Laws were passed; Evans's patent was the third to come within the new legislation. A detailed description with a plate was published in a Philadelphia newspaper in January 1791, the first of a proposed series, but the paper closed and the series came to nothing. His brother Joseph went on a series of sales trips, with the result that some machinery of Evans's design was adopted. By 1792 over one hundred mills had been equipped with Evans's machinery, the millers paying a royalty of $40 for each pair of millstones in use. The series of articles that had been cut short formed the basis of Evans's The Young Millwright and Miller's Guide, published first in 1795 after Evans had moved to Philadelphia to set up a store selling milling supplies; it was 440 pages long and ran to fifteen editions between 1795 and 1860.

Evans was fairly successful as a merchant. He patented a method of making millstones as well as a means of packing flour in barrels, the latter having a disc pressed down by a toggle-joint arrangement. In 1801 he started to build a steam carriage. He rejected the idea of a steam wheel and of a low-pressure or atmospheric engine. By 1803 his first engine was running at his store, driving a screw-mill working on plaster of Paris for making millstones. The engine had a 6 in. (15 cm) diameter cylinder with a stroke of 18 in. (45 cm) and also drove twelve saws mounted in a frame and cutting marble slabs at a rate of 100 ft (30 m) in twelve hours. He was granted a patent in the spring of 1804. He became involved in a number of lawsuits following the extension of his patent, particularly as he increased the licence fee, sometimes as much as sixfold. The case of Evans v. Samuel Robinson, which Evans won, became famous and was one of these. Patent Right Oppression Exposed, or Knavery Detected, a 200-page book with poems and prose included, was published soon after this case and was probably written by Oliver Evans. The steam engine patent was also extended for a further seven years, but in this case the licence fee was to remain at a fixed level. Evans anticipated Edison in his proposal for an "Experimental Company" or "Mechanical Bureau" with a capital of thirty shares of $100 each. It came to nothing, however, as there were no takers. His first wife, Sarah, died in 1816 and he remarried, to Hetty Ward, the daughter of a New York innkeeper. He was buried in the Bowery, on Lower Manhattan; the church was sold in 1854 and again in 1890, and when no relative claimed his body he was reburied in an unmarked grave in Trinity Cemetery, 57th Street, Broadway.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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After obtaining a degree in engineering, Fabre specialized in hydrodynamics. Around 1904 he developed an interest in flying and followed the progress of early French aviators such as Archdeacon, Voisin and Blériot who were experimenting with float-gliders. Fabre carried out many experiments during the following years, including airflow tests on various surfaces and hydrodynamic tests on different designs for floats. He also built a propeller-driven motor car to develop the most efficient design for a propeller. In 1909 he built his first "hydro-aeroplane", but it failed to fly. By March 1910 he built a new float plane which was very different from contemporary French aeroplanes. It was a tail-first (canard) monoplane and had unusual Warren girder spars exposed to the airstream. The engine was a conventional Gnome rotary mounted at the rear of the machine. On 28 March 1910 Fabre, who had no previous experience of flying, decided he was ready to test his hydro-aeroplane. First he made several straight runs to test the planing properties of his three floats, then he made several short hops. In the afternoon Fabre took off from the harbour at La Mède near Marseille before official witnesses: he was able to claim the first flight by a powered seaplane. His hydro-aeroplane is preserved in the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace in Paris.

Despite several accidents, Fabre continued to improve his design and in October of 1910 Glenn Curtiss, the American designer, visited Fabre to compare notes. A year later Curtiss built the first of his many successful seaplanes. Fabre did not continue as an aircraft designer, but he went on to design and manufacture floats for other people.

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