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21 Ford, Henry
[br]b. 30 July 1863 Dearborn, Michigan, USAd. 7 April 1947 Dearborn, Michigan, USA[br]American pioneer motor-car maker and developer of mass-production methods.[br]He was the son of an Irish immigrant farmer, William Ford, and the oldest son to survive of Mary Litogot; his mother died in 1876 with the birth of her sixth child. He went to the village school, and at the age of 16 he was apprenticed to Flower brothers' machine shop and then at the Drydock \& Engineering Works in Detroit. In 1882 he left to return to the family farm and spent some time working with a 1 1/2 hp steam engine doing odd jobs for the farming community at $3 per day. He was then employed as a demonstrator for Westinghouse steam engines. He met Clara Jane Bryant at New Year 1885 and they were married on 11 April 1888. Their only child, Edsel Bryant Ford, was born on 6 November 1893.At that time Henry worked on steam engine repairs for the Edison Illuminating Company, where he became Chief Engineer. He became one of a group working to develop a "horseless carriage" in 1896 and in June completed his first vehicle, a "quadri cycle" with a two-cylinder engine. It was built in a brick shed, which had to be partially demolished to get the carriage out.Ford became involved in motor racing, at which he was more successful than he was in starting a car-manufacturing company. Several early ventures failed, until the Ford Motor Company of 1903. By October 1908 they had started with production of the Model T. The first, of which over 15 million were built up to the end of its production in May 1927, came out with bought-out steel stampings and a planetary gearbox, and had a one-piece four-cylinder block with a bolt-on head. This was one of the most successful models built by Ford or any other motor manufacturer in the life of the motor car.Interchangeability of components was an important element in Ford's philosophy. Ford was a pioneer in the use of vanadium steel for engine components. He adopted the principles of Frederick Taylor, the pioneer of time-and-motion study, and installed the world's first moving assembly line for the production of magnetos, started in 1913. He installed blast furnaces at the factory to make his own steel, and he also promoted research and the cultivation of the soya bean, from which a plastic was derived.In October 1913 he introduced the "Five Dollar Day", almost doubling the normal rate of pay. This was a profit-sharing scheme for his employees and contained an element of a reward for good behaviour. About this time he initiated work on an agricultural tractor, the "Fordson" made by a separate company, the directors of which were Henry and his son Edsel.In 1915 he chartered the Oscar II, a "peace ship", and with fifty-five delegates sailed for Europe a week before Christmas, docking at Oslo. Their objective was to appeal to all European Heads of State to stop the war. He had hoped to persuade manufacturers to replace armaments with tractors in their production programmes. In the event, Ford took to his bed in the hotel with a chill, stayed there for five days and then sailed for New York and home. He did, however, continue to finance the peace activists who remained in Europe. Back in America, he stood for election to the US Senate but was defeated. He was probably the father of John Dahlinger, illegitimate son of Evangeline Dahlinger, a stenographer employed by the firm and on whom he lavished gifts of cars, clothes and properties. He became the owner of a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which became the medium for the expression of many of his more unorthodox ideas. He was involved in a lawsuit with the Chicago Tribune in 1919, during which he was cross-examined on his knowledge of American history: he is reputed to have said "History is bunk". What he actually said was, "History is bunk as it is taught in schools", a very different comment. The lawyers who thus made a fool of him would have been surprised if they could have foreseen the force and energy that their actions were to release. For years Ford employed a team of specialists to scour America and Europe for furniture, artefacts and relics of all kinds, illustrating various aspects of history. Starting with the Wayside Inn from South Sudbury, Massachusetts, buildings were bought, dismantled and moved, to be reconstructed in Greenfield Village, near Dearborn. The courthouse where Abraham Lincoln had practised law and the Ohio bicycle shop where the Wright brothers built their first primitive aeroplane were added to the farmhouse where the proprietor, Henry Ford, had been born. Replicas were made of Independence Hall, Congress Hall and the old City Hall in Philadelphia, and even a reconstruction of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory was installed. The Henry Ford museum was officially opened on 21 October 1929, on the fiftieth anniversary of Edison's invention of the incandescent bulb, but it continued to be a primary preoccupation of the great American car maker until his death.Henry Ford was also responsible for a number of aeronautical developments at the Ford Airport at Dearborn. He introduced the first use of radio to guide a commercial aircraft, the first regular airmail service in the United States. He also manufactured the country's first all-metal multi-engined plane, the Ford Tri-Motor.Edsel became President of the Ford Motor Company on his father's resignation from that position on 30 December 1918. Following the end of production in May 1927 of the Model T, the replacement Model A was not in production for another six months. During this period Henry Ford, though officially retired from the presidency of the company, repeatedly interfered and countermanded the orders of his son, ostensibly the man in charge. Edsel, who died of stomach cancer at his home at Grosse Point, Detroit, on 26 May 1943, was the father of Henry Ford II. Henry Ford died at his home, "Fair Lane", four years after his son's death.[br]Bibliography1922, with S.Crowther, My Life and Work, London: Heinemann.Further ReadingR.Lacey, 1986, Ford, the Men and the Machine, London: Heinemann. W.C.Richards, 1948, The Last Billionaire, Henry Ford, New York: Charles Scribner.IMcN -
22 Gillette, King Camp
[br]b. 5 January 1855 Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, USAd. 9 July 1932 Los Angeles, California, USA[br]American inventor and manufacturer, inventor of the safety razor.[br]Gillette's formal education in Chicago was brought to an end when a disastrous fire destroyed all his father's possessions. Forced to fend for himself, he worked first in the hardware trade in Chicago and New York, then as a travelling salesman. Gillette inherited the family talent for invention, but found that his successful inventions barely paid for those that failed. He was advised by a previous employer, William Painter (inventor of the Crown Cork), to look around for something that could be used widely and then thrown away. In 1895 he succeeded in following that advice of inventing something which people could use and then throw away, so that they would keep coming back for more. An idea came to him while he was honing an old-fashioned razor one morning; he was struck by the fact that only a short piece of the whole length of a cutthroat razor is actually used for shaving, as well as by the potentially dangerous nature of the implement. He "rushed out to purchase some pieces of brass, some steel ribbon used for clock springs, a small hand vise and some files". He thought of using a thin steel blade sharpened on each side, placed between two plates and held firmly together by a handle. Though coming from a family of inventors, Gillette had no formal technical education and was entirely ignorant of metallurgy. For six years he sought a way of making a cheap blade from sheet steel that could be hardened, tempered and sharpened to a keen edge.Gillette eventually found financial supporters: Henry Sachs, a Boston lamp manufacturer; his brother-in-law Jacob Heilbron; and William Nickerson, who had a considerable talent for invention. By skilled trial and error rather than expert metallurgical knowledge, Nickerson devised ways of forming and sharpening the blades, and it was these that brought commercial success. In 1901, the American Safety Razor Company, later to be renamed the Gillette Safety Razor Company, was set up. When it started production in 1903 the company was badly in debt, and managed to sell only fifty-one razors and 168 blades; but by the end of the following year, 90,000 razors and 12.4 million blades had been sold. A sound invention coupled with shrewd promotion ensured further success, and eight plants manufacturing safety razors were established in various parts of the world. Gillette's business experiences led him into the realms of social theory about the way society should be organized. He formulated his views in a series of books published over the years 1894 to 1910. He believed that competition led to a waste of up to 90 per cent of human effort and that want and crime would be eliminated by substituting a giant trust to plan production centrally. Unfortunately, the public in America, or anywhere else for that matter, were not ready for this form of Utopia; no omniscient planners were available, and human wants and needs were too various to be supplied by a single agency. Even so, some of his ideas have found favour: air conditioning and government provision of work for the unemployed. Gillette made a fortune from his invention and retired from active participation in the business in 1913, although he remained President until 1931 and Director until his death.[br]Bibliography"Origin of the Gillette razor", Gillette Blade (February/March).Further ReadingObituary, 1932, New York Times (11 July).J.Jewkes, D.Sawers and R.Stillerman, 1958, The Sources of Invention, London: Macmillan.LRD / IMcN -
23 Szilard, Leo
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 11 February 1898 Budapest, Hungaryd. 30 May 1964 La Jolla, California, USA[br]Hungarian (naturalized American in 1943) nuclear-and biophysicist.[br]The son of an engineer, Szilard, after service in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, studied electrical engineering at the University of Berlin. Obtaining his doctorate there in 1922, he joined the faculty and concentrated his studies on thermodynamics. He later began to develop an interest in nuclear physics, and in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, Szilard emigrated to Britain because of his Jewish heritage.In 1934 he conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction through the breakdown of beryllium into helium and took out a British patent on it, but later realized that this process would not work. In 1937 he moved to the USA and continued his research at the University of Columbia, and the following year Hahn and Meitner discovered nuclear fission with uranium; this gave Szilard the breakthrough he needed. In 1939 he realized that a nuclear chain reaction could be produced through nuclear fission and that a weapon with many times the destructive power of the conventional high-explosive bomb could be produced. Only too aware of the progress being made by German nuclear scientists, he believed that it was essential that the USA should create an atomic bomb before Hitler. Consequently he drafted a letter to President Roosevelt that summer and, with two fellow Hungarian émigrés, persuaded Albert Einstein to sign it. The result was the setting up of the Uranium Committee.It was not, however, until December 1941 that active steps began to be taken to produce such a weapon and it was a further nine months before the project was properly co-ordinated under the umbrella of the Manhattan Project. In the meantime, Szilard moved to join Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago and it was here, at the end of 1942, in a squash court under the football stadium, that they successfully developed the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reactor. Szilard, who became an American citizen in 1943, continued to work on the Manhattan Project. In 1945, however, when the Western Allies began to believe that only the atomic bomb could bring the war against Japan to an end, Szilard and a number of other Manhattan Project scientists objected that it would be immoral to use it against populated targets.Although he would continue to campaign against nuclear warfare for the rest of his life, Szilard now abandoned nuclear research. In 1946 he became Professor of Biophysics at the University of Chicago and devoted himself to experimental work on bacterial mutations and biochemical mechanisms, as well as theoretical research on ageing and memory.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsAtoms for Peace award 1959.Further ReadingKosta Tsipis, 1985, Understanding Nuclear Weapons, London: Wildwood House, pp. 16–19, 26, 28, 32 (a brief account of his work on the atomic bomb).A collection of his correspondence and memories was brought out by Spencer Weart and Gertrud W.Szilard in 1978.CM -
24 all over the place
разг.1) повсюду, вездеPickering: "You mustn't mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over the place." (B. Shaw, ‘Pygmalion’, act V) — Пикеринг: "Вы не должны обижаться на это. Хиггинс снимает ботинки где попало."
‘Didn't you tell me that your friend Gersbach has become a kind of figure in Chicago?’ ‘Yes, yes. He started out in educational radio, and now he's all over the place. On committees, in the papers.’ (S. Bellow, ‘Herzog’) — - Разве вы мне не рассказывали, что ваш друг Герсбах стал заметной фигурой в Чикаго? - Да, да. Он начал свою карьеру с того, что участвовал в общеобразовательных радиопередачах. А сейчас его можно встретить повсюду: во всех комиссиях, на страницах газет.
It was now Lord Blankiron's turn, and the meeting came to life at once. Here was a strong man who had been shot at all over the place. (J. B. Priestley, ‘Wonder Hero’, ch. V) — Наступила очередь лорда Бланкирона, и зал тотчас оживился. Наконец-то можно будет послушать действительно сильного человека, которого где только не пытались убить!
I was looking all over the place for you last night. I don't seem able to find the right spots. (Gr. Greene, ‘Our Man in Havana’, part V, ch. III) — Искал вас вчера вечером по всему городу. Никак не могу попасть в те злачные места, о которых вы говорили.
2) в беспорядкеLet me do your pillows, Daddy, they're all over the place. (I. Murdoch, ‘A Fairly Honourable Defeat’, part II, ch. 23) — Ты не возражаешь, если я займусь твоими подушками, папа? Они брошены как попало.
‘Golly, I must look a mess...’ ‘Terrible. Hair all over the place, nose shiny... Ink smudge on the chin.’ (J. B. Priestley, ‘Festival’, part III, ch. I) — - Боже мой! Должно быть, у меня ужасный вид... - Ужасный. Волосы торчат во все стороны, нос блестит... чернильное пятно на подбородке.
3) ужасно, отчаянноDon't be an ass, Uncle Roddie; my head really is bad. It throbs all over the place. (M. Dickens, ‘Joy and Josephine’, part II, ch. III) — - Не будьте ослом, дядюшка Родди. У меня правда голова болит. Ужасно болит.
I yawned. I was yawning all over the place. For one thing, the room was too damn hot. It made you sleepy. (J. Salinger, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, ch. III) — Я опять зевнул. Зевота одолела. В комнате стояла страшная жара, меня разморило, хотелось спать.
Then he really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the Goddam floor again. I don't remember if he knocked me out or not... But my nose was bleeding all over the place. (J. Salinger, ‘The Catcher ih the Rye’, ch. VI) — Тут он развернулся по-настоящему, и я опять очутился на полу. Не помню, потерял я сознание или нет... Но кровь у меня текла из носу отчаянно.
It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. (J. Salinger, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, ch. XX) — Лило как из ведра. И все посетители кладбища вдруг помчались как сумасшедшие к своим машинам.
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