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  • 81 erection

    Англо-русский словарь по машиностроению > erection

  • 82 World War II

    (1939-1945)
       In the European phase of the war, neutral Portugal contributed more to the Allied victory than historians have acknowledged. Portugal experienced severe pressures to compromise her neutrality from both the Axis and Allied powers and, on several occasions, there were efforts to force Portugal to enter the war as a belligerent. Several factors lent Portugal importance as a neutral. This was especially the case during the period from the fall of France in June 1940 to the Allied invasion and reconquest of France from June to August 1944.
       In four respects, Portugal became briefly a modest strategic asset for the Allies and a war materiel supplier for both sides: the country's location in the southwesternmost corner of the largely German-occupied European continent; being a transport and communication terminus, observation post for spies, and crossroads between Europe, the Atlantic, the Americas, and Africa; Portugal's strategically located Atlantic islands, the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde archipelagos; and having important mines of wolfram or tungsten ore, crucial for the war industry for hardening steel.
       To maintain strict neutrality, the Estado Novo regime dominated by Antônio de Oliveira Salazar performed a delicate balancing act. Lisbon attempted to please and cater to the interests of both sets of belligerents, but only to the extent that the concessions granted would not threaten Portugal's security or its status as a neutral. On at least two occasions, Portugal's neutrality status was threatened. First, Germany briefly considered invading Portugal and Spain during 1940-41. A second occasion came in 1943 and 1944 as Great Britain, backed by the United States, pressured Portugal to grant war-related concessions that threatened Portugal's status of strict neutrality and would possibly bring Portugal into the war on the Allied side. Nazi Germany's plan ("Operation Felix") to invade the Iberian Peninsula from late 1940 into 1941 was never executed, but the Allies occupied and used several air and naval bases in Portugal's Azores Islands.
       The second major crisis for Portugal's neutrality came with increasing Allied pressures for concessions from the summer of 1943 to the summer of 1944. Led by Britain, Portugal's oldest ally, Portugal was pressured to grant access to air and naval bases in the Azores Islands. Such bases were necessary to assist the Allies in winning the Battle of the Atlantic, the naval war in which German U-boats continued to destroy Allied shipping. In October 1943, following tedious negotiations, British forces began to operate such bases and, in November 1944, American forces were allowed to enter the islands. Germany protested and made threats, but there was no German attack.
       Tensions rose again in the spring of 1944, when the Allies demanded that Lisbon cease exporting wolfram to Germany. Salazar grew agitated, considered resigning, and argued that Portugal had made a solemn promise to Germany that wolfram exports would be continued and that Portugal could not break its pledge. The Portuguese ambassador in London concluded that the shipping of wolfram to Germany was "the price of neutrality." Fearing that a still-dangerous Germany could still attack Portugal, Salazar ordered the banning of the mining, sale, and exports of wolfram not only to Germany but to the Allies as of 6 June 1944.
       Portugal did not enter the war as a belligerent, and its forces did not engage in combat, but some Portuguese experienced directly or indirectly the impact of fighting. Off Portugal or near her Atlantic islands, Portuguese naval personnel or commercial fishermen rescued at sea hundreds of victims of U-boat sinkings of Allied shipping in the Atlantic. German U-boats sank four or five Portuguese merchant vessels as well and, in 1944, a U-boat stopped, boarded, searched, and forced the evacuation of a Portuguese ocean liner, the Serpa Pinto, in mid-Atlantic. Filled with refugees, the liner was not sunk but several passengers lost their lives and the U-boat kidnapped two of the ship's passengers, Portuguese Americans of military age, and interned them in a prison camp. As for involvement in a theater of war, hundreds of inhabitants were killed and wounded in remote East Timor, a Portuguese colony near Indonesia, which was invaded, annexed, and ruled by Japanese forces between February 1942 and August 1945. In other incidents, scores of Allied military planes, out of fuel or damaged in air combat, crashed or were forced to land in neutral Portugal. Air personnel who did not survive such crashes were buried in Portuguese cemeteries or in the English Cemetery, Lisbon.
       Portugal's peripheral involvement in largely nonbelligerent aspects of the war accelerated social, economic, and political change in Portugal's urban society. It strengthened political opposition to the dictatorship among intellectual and working classes, and it obliged the regime to bolster political repression. The general economic and financial status of Portugal, too, underwent improvements since creditor Britain, in order to purchase wolfram, foods, and other materials needed during the war, became indebted to Portugal. When Britain repaid this debt after the war, Portugal was able to restore and expand its merchant fleet. Unlike most of Europe, ravaged by the worst war in human history, Portugal did not suffer heavy losses of human life, infrastructure, and property. Unlike even her neighbor Spain, badly shaken by its terrible Civil War (1936-39), Portugal's immediate postwar condition was more favorable, especially in urban areas, although deep-seated poverty remained.
       Portugal experienced other effects, especially during 1939-42, as there was an influx of about a million war refugees, an infestation of foreign spies and other secret agents from 60 secret intelligence services, and the residence of scores of international journalists who came to report the war from Lisbon. There was also the growth of war-related mining (especially wolfram and tin). Portugal's media eagerly reported the war and, by and large, despite government censorship, the Portuguese print media favored the Allied cause. Portugal's standard of living underwent some improvement, although price increases were unpopular.
       The silent invasion of several thousand foreign spies, in addition to the hiring of many Portuguese as informants and spies, had fascinating outcomes. "Spyland" Portugal, especially when Portugal was a key point for communicating with occupied Europe (1940-44), witnessed some unusual events, and spying for foreigners at least briefly became a national industry. Until mid-1944, when Allied forces invaded France, Portugal was the only secure entry point from across the Atlantic to Europe or to the British Isles, as well as the escape hatch for refugees, spies, defectors, and others fleeing occupied Europe or Vichy-controlled Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. Through Portugal by car, ship, train, or scheduled civil airliner one could travel to and from Spain or to Britain, or one could leave through Portugal, the westernmost continental country of Europe, to seek refuge across the Atlantic in the Americas.
       The wartime Portuguese scene was a colorful melange of illegal activities, including espionage, the black market, war propaganda, gambling, speculation, currency counterfeiting, diamond and wolfram smuggling, prostitution, and the drug and arms trade, and they were conducted by an unusual cast of characters. These included refugees, some of whom were spies, smugglers, diplomats, and business people, many from foreign countries seeking things they could find only in Portugal: information, affordable food, shelter, and security. German agents who contacted Allied sailors in the port of Lisbon sought to corrupt and neutralize these men and, if possible, recruit them as spies, and British intelligence countered this effort. Britain's MI-6 established a new kind of "safe house" to protect such Allied crews from German espionage and venereal disease infection, an approved and controlled house of prostitution in Lisbon's bairro alto district.
       Foreign observers and writers were impressed with the exotic, spy-ridden scene in Lisbon, as well as in Estoril on the Sun Coast (Costa do Sol), west of Lisbon harbor. What they observed appeared in noted autobiographical works and novels, some written during and some after the war. Among notable writers and journalists who visited or resided in wartime Portugal were Hungarian writer and former communist Arthur Koestler, on the run from the Nazi's Gestapo; American radio broadcaster-journalist Eric Sevareid; novelist and Hollywood script-writer Frederick Prokosch; American diplomat George Kennan; Rumanian cultural attache and later scholar of mythology Mircea Eliade; and British naval intelligence officer and novelist-to-be Ian Fleming. Other notable visiting British intelligence officers included novelist Graham Greene; secret Soviet agent in MI-6 and future defector to the Soviet Union Harold "Kim" Philby; and writer Malcolm Muggeridge. French letters were represented by French writer and airman, Antoine Saint-Exupery and French playwright, Jean Giroudoux. Finally, Aquilino Ribeiro, one of Portugal's premier contemporary novelists, wrote about wartime Portugal, including one sensational novel, Volframio, which portrayed the profound impact of the exploitation of the mineral wolfram on Portugal's poor, still backward society.
       In Estoril, Portugal, the idea for the world's most celebrated fictitious spy, James Bond, was probably first conceived by Ian Fleming. Fleming visited Portugal several times after 1939 on Naval Intelligence missions, and later he dreamed up the James Bond character and stories. Background for the early novels in the James Bond series was based in part on people and places Fleming observed in Portugal. A key location in Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953) is the gambling Casino of Estoril. In addition, one aspect of the main plot, the notion that a spy could invent "secret" intelligence for personal profit, was observed as well by the British novelist and former MI-6 officer, while engaged in operations in wartime Portugal. Greene later used this information in his 1958 spy novel, Our Man in Havana, as he observed enemy agents who fabricated "secrets" for money.
       Thus, Portugal's World War II experiences introduced the country and her people to a host of new peoples, ideas, products, and influences that altered attitudes and quickened the pace of change in this quiet, largely tradition-bound, isolated country. The 1943-45 connections established during the Allied use of air and naval bases in Portugal's Azores Islands were a prelude to Portugal's postwar membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

    Historical dictionary of Portugal > World War II

  • 83 personnel

    personnel [‚pɜ:sə'nel]
    (a) (staff) personnel m
    (b) (department) service m du personnel;
    she works in personnel elle travaille au service du personnel
    (c) Military (troops) troupes fpl
    ►► Military personnel carrier (véhicule m de) transport m de troupes;
    personnel consultant conseiller(ère) m,f du travail;
    personnel department service m du personnel;
    personnel management direction f ou administration f du personnel;
    personnel officer responsable mf du personnel;
    personnel resource management gestion f des ressources humaines

    Un panorama unique de l'anglais et du français > personnel

  • 84 Ackermann, Rudolph

    [br]
    b. 20 April 1764 Stolberg, Saxony
    d. 30 March 1834 Finchley, London, England
    [br]
    German-born fine-art publisher and bookseller, noted for his arrangement of the steering of the front wheels of horse-drawn carriages, which is still used in automobiles today.
    [br]
    Ackermann's father was a coachbuilder and harness-maker who in 1775 moved to Schneeberg. Rudolph was educated there and later entered his father's workshop for a short time. He visited Dresden, among other towns in Germany, and was resident in Paris for a short time, but eventually settled in London. For the first ten years of his life there he was employed in making designs for many of the leading coach builders. His steering-gear consisted of an arrangement of the track arms on the stub axles and their connection by the track rod in such a way that the inner wheel moved through a greater angle than the outer one, so giving approximately true rolling of the wheels in cornering. A necessary condition for this is that, in the plan view, the point of intersection of the axes of all the wheels must be at a point which always lies on the projection of the rear axle. In addition, the front wheels are inclined to bring the line of contact of the front wheels under the line of the pivots, about which they turn when cornering. This mechanism was not entirely new, having been proposed for windmill carriages in 1714 by Du Quet, but it was brought into prominence by Ackermann and so has come to bear his name.
    In 1801 he patented a method of rendering paper, cloth and other materials waterproof and set up a factory in Chelsea for that purpose. He was one of the first private persons to light his business premises with gas. He also devoted some time to a patent for movable carriage axles between 1818 and 1820. In 1805 he was put in charge of the preparation of the funeral car for Lord Nelson.
    Most of his life and endeavours were devoted to fine-art printing and publishing. He was responsible for the introduction into England of lithography as a fine art: it had first been introduced as a mechanical process in 1801, but was mainly used for copying until Ackermann took it up in 1817, setting up a press and engaging the services of a number of prominent artists, including W.H.Pyne, W.Combe, Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson. In 1819 he published an English translation of J.A.Senefelder's A Complete Course of Lithography, illustrated with lithographic plates from his press. He was much involved in charitable works for widows, children and wounded soldiers after the war of 1814. In 1830 he suffered "an attack of paralysis" which left him unable to continue in business. He died four years later and was buried at St Clement Danes.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    His fine-art publications are numerous and well known, and include the following:
    The Microcosm of London University of Oxford University of Cambridge The Thames
    Further Reading
    Aubrey F.Burstall, "A history of mechanical engineering", Dictionary of National Biography.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Ackermann, Rudolph

  • 85 Austin, Herbert, Baron Austin

    [br]
    b. 8 November 1866 Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England
    d. 23 May 1941 Lickey Grange, near Bromsgrove, Herefordshire, England
    [br]
    English manufacturer of cars.
    [br]
    The son of Stephen (or Steven) Austin, a farmer of Wentworth, Yorkshire, he was educated at Rotherham Grammar School and then went to Australia with an uncle in 1884. There he became apprenticed as an engineer at the Langlands Foundry in Melbourne. He moved to the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company, and soon after became its Manager; in 1893 he returned to England, where he became Production Manager to the English branch of the same company in Birmingham. The difficulties of travel in Australia gave him an idea of the advantages of motor-driven vehicles, and in 1895 he produced the first Wolseley car. In 1901 he was appointed to the Wolseley board, and from 1911 he was Chairman.
    His first car was a three-wheeler. An improved model was soon available, and in 1901 the Wolseley company took over the machine tool and motor side of Vickers Sons and Maxim and traded under the name of the Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company. Herbert Austin was the General Manager. In 1905 he decided to start his own company and formed the Austin Motor Company Ltd, with works at Longbridge, near Birmingham. With a workforce of 270, the firm produced 120 cars in 1906; by 1914 a staff of 2,000 were producing 1,000 cars a year. The First World War saw production facilities turned over to the production of aeroplanes, guns and ammunition.
    Peacetime brought a return to car manufacture, and 1922 saw the introduction of the 7 hp "Baby Austin", a car for the masses. Many other models followed. By 1937 the original Longbridge factory had grown to 220 acres, and the staff had increased to over 16,000, while the number of cars produced had grown to 78,000 per year.
    Herbert Austin was a philanthropist who endowed many hospitals and not a few universities; he was created a Baron in 1936.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Baron 1936.
    Further Reading
    1941, Austin Magazine (June).
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Austin, Herbert, Baron Austin

  • 86 Benz, Karl

    [br]
    b. 25 November 1844 Pfaffenrot, Black Forest, Germany
    d. 4 April 1929 Ladenburg, near Mannheim, Germany
    [br]
    German inventor of one of the first motor cars.
    [br]
    The son of a railway mechanic, it is said that as a child one of his hobbies was the repair of Black Forest clocks. He trained as a mechanical engineer at the Karlsruhe Lyzeum and Polytechnikum under Ferdinand Redtenbacher (d. 1863), who pointed out to him the need for a more portable power source than the steam engine. He went to Maschinenbau Gesellschaft Karlsruhe for workshop experience and then joined Schweizer \& Cie, Mannheim, for two years. In 1868 he went to the Benkiser Brothers at Pforzheim. In 1871 he set up a small machine-tool works at Mannheim, but in 1877, in financial difficulties, he turned to the idea of an entirely new product based on the internal-combustion engine. At this time, N.A. Otto held the patent for the four-stroke internal-combustion engine, so Benz had to put his hopes on a two-stroke design. He avoided the trouble with Dugald Clerk's engine and designed one in which the fuel would not ignite in the pump and in which the cylinder was swept with fresh air between each two firing strokes. His first car had a sparking plug and coil ignition. By 1879 he had developed the engine to a stage where it would run satisfactorily with little attention. On 31 December 1879, with his wife Bertha working the treadle of her sewing machine to charge the batteries, he demonstrated his engine in street trials in Mannheim. In the summer of 1888, unknown to her husband, Bertha drove one of his cars the 80 km (50 miles) to Pforzheim and back with her two sons, aged 13 and 15. She and the elder boy pushed the car up hills while the younger one steered. They bought petrol from an apothecary in Wiesloch and had a brake block repaired in Bauschlott by the village cobbler. Karl Benz's comments on her return from this venture are not recorded! Financial problems prevented immediate commercial production of the automobile, but in 1882 Benz set up the Gasmotorenfabrik Mannheim. After trouble with some of his partners, he left in 1883 and formed a new company, Benz \& Cie, Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik. Otto's patent was revoked in 1886 and in that year Benz patented a motor car with a gas engine drive. He manufactured a 0.8hp car, the engine running at 250 rpm with a horizontal flywheel, exhibited at the Paris Fair in 1889. He was not successful in finding anyone in France who would undertake manufacture. This first car was a three-wheeler, and soon after he produced a four-wheeled car, but he quarrelled with his co-directors, and although he left the board in 1902 he rejoined it soon after.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    St J.Nixon, 1936, The Invention of the Automobile. E.Diesel et al., 1960, From Engines to Autos. E.Johnson, 1986, The Dawn of Motoring.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Benz, Karl

  • 87 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

    [br]
    b. 9 April 1806 Portsea, Hampshire, England
    d. 15 September 1859 18 Duke Street, St James's, London, England
    [br]
    English civil and mechanical engineer.
    [br]
    The son of Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Kingdom, he was educated at a private boarding-school in Hove. At the age of 14 he went to the College of Caen and then to the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris, after which he was apprenticed to Louis Breguet. In 1822 he returned from France and started working in his father's office, while spending much of his time at the works of Maudslay, Sons \& Field.
    From 1825 to 1828 he worked under his father on the construction of the latter's Thames Tunnel, occupying the position of Engineer-in-Charge, exhibiting great courage and presence of mind in the emergencies which occurred not infrequently. These culminated in January 1828 in the flooding of the tunnel and work was suspended for seven years. For the next five years the young engineer made abortive attempts to find a suitable outlet for his talents, but to little avail. Eventually, in 1831, his design for a suspension bridge over the River Avon at Clifton Gorge was accepted and he was appointed Engineer. (The bridge was eventually finished five years after Brunel's death, as a memorial to him, the delay being due to inadequate financing.) He next planned and supervised improvements to the Bristol docks. In March 1833 he was appointed Engineer of the Bristol Railway, later called the Great Western Railway. He immediately started to survey the route between London and Bristol that was completed by late August that year. On 5 July 1836 he married Mary Horsley and settled into 18 Duke Street, Westminster, London, where he also had his office. Work on the Bristol Railway started in 1836. The foundation stone of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was laid the same year. Whereas George Stephenson had based his standard railway gauge as 4 ft 8½ in (1.44 m), that or a similar gauge being usual for colliery wagonways in the Newcastle area, Brunel adopted the broader gauge of 7 ft (2.13 m). The first stretch of the line, from Paddington to Maidenhead, was opened to traffic on 4 June 1838, and the whole line from London to Bristol was opened in June 1841. The continuation of the line through to Exeter was completed and opened on 1 May 1844. The normal time for the 194-mile (312 km) run from Paddington to Exeter was 5 hours, at an average speed of 38.8 mph (62.4 km/h) including stops. The Great Western line included the Box Tunnel, the longest tunnel to that date at nearly two miles (3.2 km).
    Brunel was the engineer of most of the railways in the West Country, in South Wales and much of Southern Ireland. As railway networks developed, the frequent break of gauge became more of a problem and on 9 July 1845 a Royal Commission was appointed to look into it. In spite of comparative tests, run between Paddington-Didcot and Darlington-York, which showed in favour of Brunel's arrangement, the enquiry ruled in favour of the narrow gauge, 274 miles (441 km) of the former having been built against 1,901 miles (3,059 km) of the latter to that date. The Gauge Act of 1846 forbade the building of any further railways in Britain to any gauge other than 4 ft 8 1/2 in (1.44 m).
    The existence of long and severe gradients on the South Devon Railway led to Brunel's adoption of the atmospheric railway developed by Samuel Clegg and later by the Samuda brothers. In this a pipe of 9 in. (23 cm) or more in diameter was laid between the rails, along the top of which ran a continuous hinged flap of leather backed with iron. At intervals of about 3 miles (4.8 km) were pumping stations to exhaust the pipe. Much trouble was experienced with the flap valve and its lubrication—freezing of the leather in winter, the lubricant being sucked into the pipe or eaten by rats at other times—and the experiment was abandoned at considerable cost.
    Brunel is to be remembered for his two great West Country tubular bridges, the Chepstow and the Tamar Bridge at Saltash, with the latter opened in May 1859, having two main spans of 465 ft (142 m) and a central pier extending 80 ft (24 m) below high water mark and allowing 100 ft (30 m) of headroom above the same. His timber viaducts throughout Devon and Cornwall became a feature of the landscape. The line was extended ultimately to Penzance.
    As early as 1835 Brunel had the idea of extending the line westwards across the Atlantic from Bristol to New York by means of a steamship. In 1836 building commenced and the hull left Bristol in July 1837 for fitting out at Wapping. On 31 March 1838 the ship left again for Bristol but the boiler lagging caught fire and Brunel was injured in the subsequent confusion. On 8 April the ship set sail for New York (under steam), its rival, the 703-ton Sirius, having left four days earlier. The 1,340-ton Great Western arrived only a few hours after the Sirius. The hull was of wood, and was copper-sheathed. In 1838 Brunel planned a larger ship, some 3,000 tons, the Great Britain, which was to have an iron hull.
    The Great Britain was screwdriven and was launched on 19 July 1843,289 ft (88 m) long by 51 ft (15.5 m) at its widest. The ship's first voyage, from Liverpool to New York, began on 26 August 1845. In 1846 it ran aground in Dundrum Bay, County Down, and was later sold for use on the Australian run, on which it sailed no fewer than thirty-two times in twenty-three years, also serving as a troop-ship in the Crimean War. During this war, Brunel designed a 1,000-bed hospital which was shipped out to Renkioi ready for assembly and complete with shower-baths and vapour-baths with printed instructions on how to use them, beds and bedding and water closets with a supply of toilet paper! Brunel's last, largest and most extravagantly conceived ship was the Great Leviathan, eventually named The Great Eastern, which had a double-skinned iron hull, together with both paddles and screw propeller. Brunel designed the ship to carry sufficient coal for the round trip to Australia without refuelling, thus saving the need for and the cost of bunkering, as there were then few bunkering ports throughout the world. The ship's construction was started by John Scott Russell in his yard at Millwall on the Thames, but the building was completed by Brunel due to Russell's bankruptcy in 1856. The hull of the huge vessel was laid down so as to be launched sideways into the river and then to be floated on the tide. Brunel's plan for hydraulic launching gear had been turned down by the directors on the grounds of cost, an economy that proved false in the event. The sideways launch with over 4,000 tons of hydraulic power together with steam winches and floating tugs on the river took over two months, from 3 November 1857 until 13 January 1858. The ship was 680 ft (207 m) long, 83 ft (25 m) beam and 58 ft (18 m) deep; the screw was 24 ft (7.3 m) in diameter and paddles 60 ft (18.3 m) in diameter. Its displacement was 32,000 tons (32,500 tonnes).
    The strain of overwork and the huge responsibilities that lay on Brunel began to tell. He was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease, or nephritis, and spent the winter travelling in the Mediterranean and Egypt, returning to England in May 1859. On 5 September he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed, and he died ten days later at his Duke Street home.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    L.T.C.Rolt, 1957, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, London: Longmans Green. J.Dugan, 1953, The Great Iron Ship, Hamish Hamilton.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

  • 88 Daimler, Gottlieb

    [br]
    b. 17 March 1834 Schorndorff, near Stuttgart, Germany
    d. 6 March 1900 Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, Germany
    [br]
    German engineer, pioneer automobile maker.
    [br]
    The son of a baker, his youthful interest in technical affairs led to his being apprenticed to a gunsmith with whom he produced his apprenticeship piece: a double-barrelled pistol with a rifled barrel and "nicely chased scrollwork", for which he received high praise. He remained there until 1852 before going to technical school in Stuttgart from 1853 to 1857. He then went to a steam-engineering company in Strasbourg to gain practical experience. He completed his formal education at Stuttgart Polytechnik, and in 1861 he left to tour France and England. There he worked in the engine-shop of Smith, Peacock \& Tanner and then with Roberts \& Co., textile machinery manufacturers of Manchester. He later moved to Coventry to work at Whitworths, and it was in that city that he was later involved with the Daimler Motor Company, who had been granted a licence by his company in Germany. In 1867 he was working at Bruderhaus Engineering Works at Reutlingen and in 1869 went to Maschinenbau Gesellschaft Karlsruhe where he became Manager and later a director. Early in the 1870s, N.A. Otto had reorganized his company into Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz and he appointed Gottlieb Daimler as Factory Manager and Wilhelm Maybach as Chief Designer. Together they developed the Otto engine to its limit, with Otto's co-operation. Daimler and Maybach had met previously when both were working at Bruderhaus. In 1875 Daimler left Deutz, taking Maybach with him to set up a factory in Stuttgart to manufacture light, high-speed internal-combustion engines. Their first patent was granted in 1883. This was for an engine fuelled by petrol and with hot tube ignition which continued to be used until Robert Bosch's low-voltage ignition became available in 1897. Two years later he produced his first vehicle, a motor cycle with outriggers. They showed a motor car at the Paris exhibition in 1889, but French manufacturers were slow to come forward and no French company could be found to undertake manufacture. Eventually Panhard and Levassor established the Daimler engine in France. Daimler Motoren GmbH was started in 1895, but soon after Daimler and Maybach parted, having provided an engine for a boat on the River Neckar in 1887 and that for the Wolfert airship in 1888. Daimler was in sole charge of the company from 1895, but his health began to decline in 1899 and he died in 1900.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    E.Johnson, 1986, The Dawn of Motoring. P.Siebetz, 1942, Gottlieb Daimler.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Daimler, Gottlieb

  • 89 Darby, Abraham

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy
    [br]
    b. 1678 near Dudley, Worcestershire, England
    d. 5 May 1717 Madely Court, Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, England
    [br]
    English ironmaster, inventor of the coke smelting of iron ore.
    [br]
    Darby's father, John, was a farmer who also worked a small forge to produce nails and other ironware needed on the farm. He was brought up in the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and this community remained important throughout his personal and working life. Darby was apprenticed to Jonathan Freeth, a malt-mill maker in Birmingham, and on completion of his apprenticeship in 1699 he took up the trade himself in Bristol. Probably in 1704, he visited Holland to study the casting of brass pots and returned to Bristol with some Dutch workers, setting up a brassworks at Baptist Mills in partnership with others. He tried substituting cast iron for brass in his castings, without success at first, but in 1707 he was granted a patent, "A new way of casting iron pots and other pot-bellied ware in sand without loam or clay". However, his business associates were unwilling to risk further funds in the experiments, so he withdrew his share of the capital and moved to Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. There, iron ore, coal, water-power and transport lay close at hand. He took a lease on an old furnace and began experimenting. The shortage and expense of charcoal, and his knowledge of the use of coke in malting, may well have led him to try using coke to smelt iron ore. The furnace was brought into blast in 1709 and records show that in the same year it was regularly producing iron, using coke instead of charcoal. The process seems to have been operating successfully by 1711 in the production of cast-iron pots and kettles, with some pig-iron destined for Bristol. Darby prospered at Coalbrookdale, employing coke smelting with consistent success, and he sought to extend his activities in the neighbourhood and in other parts of the country. However, ill health prevented him from pursuing these ventures with his previous energy. Coke smelting spread slowly in England and the continent of Europe, but without Darby's technological breakthrough the ever-increasing demand for iron for structures and machines during the Industrial Revolution simply could not have been met; it was thus an essential component of the technological progress that was to come.
    Darby's eldest son, Abraham II (1711–63), entered the Coalbrookdale Company partnership in 1734 and largely assumed control of the technical side of managing the furnaces and foundry. He made a number of improvements, notably the installation of a steam engine in 1742 to pump water to an upper level in order to achieve a steady source of water-power to operate the bellows supplying the blast furnaces. When he built the Ketley and Horsehay furnaces in 1755 and 1756, these too were provided with steam engines. Abraham II's son, Abraham III (1750–89), in turn, took over the management of the Coalbrookdale works in 1768 and devoted himself to improving and extending the business. His most notable achievement was the design and construction of the famous Iron Bridge over the river Severn, the world's first iron bridge. The bridge members were cast at Coalbrookdale and the structure was erected during 1779, with a span of 100 ft (30 m) and height above the river of 40 ft (12 m). The bridge still stands, and remains a tribute to the skill and judgement of Darby and his workers.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    A.Raistrick, 1989, Dynasty of Iron Founders, 2nd edn, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust (the best source for the lives of the Darbys and the work of the company).
    H.R.Schubert, 1957, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry AD 430 to AD 1775, London: Routledge \& Kegan Paul.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Darby, Abraham

  • 90 Engerth, Wilhelm

    [br]
    b. 26 May 1814 Pless, Prussian Silesia (now Poland)
    d. 4 September 1884 Baden, Austria
    [br]
    German engineer, designer of the Engerth articulated locomotive.
    [br]
    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.
    [br]
    Principal Honours find Distinctions
    Knighted as Ritter von Engerth 1861. Ennobled as Freiherr (Baron) von Engerth 1875.
    Further Reading
    D.R.Carling, 1985, "Engerth and similar locomotives", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 57 (a good description).
    J.B.Snell, 1964, Early Railways, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson, pp. 68–73 (for Semmering Trials).
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Engerth, Wilhelm

  • 91 Ford, Henry

    [br]
    b. 30 July 1863 Dearborn, Michigan, USA
    d. 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]
    Bibliography
    1922, with S.Crowther, My Life and Work, London: Heinemann.
    Further Reading
    R.Lacey, 1986, Ford, the Men and the Machine, London: Heinemann. W.C.Richards, 1948, The Last Billionaire, Henry Ford, New York: Charles Scribner.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Ford, Henry

  • 92 Forrester, George

    [br]
    b. 1780/1 Scotland
    d. after 1841
    [br]
    Scottish locomotive builder and technical innovator.
    [br]
    George Forrester \& Co. built locomotives at the Vauxhall Foundry, Liverpool, between 1834 and c.1847. The first locomotives built by them, in 1834, were three for the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway and one for the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway; they were the first locomotives to have outside horizontal cylinders and the first to have four fixed eccentrics to operate the valves, in place of two loose eccentrics. Two locomotives built by Forrester in 1835 for the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway were the first tank locomotives to run regularly on a public railway, and two more supplied in 1836 to the London \& Greenwich Railway were the first such locomotives in England. Little appears to be known about Forrester himself. In the 1841 census his profession is shown as "civil engineer, residence 1 Lord Nelson Street". Directories for Liverpool, contemporary with Forrester \& Co.'s locomotive building period, describe the firm variously as engineers, iron founders and boilermakers, located at (successively) 234,224 and 40 Vauxhall Road. Works Manager until 1840 was Alexander Allan, who subsequently used the experience he had gained with Forrester in the design of his "Crewe Type" outside-cylinder locomotive, which became widely used.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    E.L.Ahrons, 1927, The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825–1925, The Locomotive Publishing Co., pp. 29, 43, 50 and 83.
    J.Lowe, 1975, British Steam Locomotive Builders, Cambridge: Goose \& Son.
    R.H.G.Thomas, 1986, London's First Railway: The London \& Greenwich, B.T.Batsford, p. 176.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Forrester, George

  • 93 Garratt, Herbert William

    [br]
    b. 8 June 1864 London, England
    d. 25 September 1913 Richmond, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English engineer, inventor of the Beyer-Garratt articulated locomotive.
    [br]
    After apprenticeship at the North London Railway's locomotive works, Garratt had a varied career which included responsibility for the locomotive departments of several British-owned railways overseas. This gave him an insight into the problems of such lines: locomotives, which were often inadequate, had to be operated over lines with weak bridges, sharp curves and steep gradients. To overcome these problems, he designed an articulated locomotive in which the boiler, mounted on a girder frame, was sus pended between two power bogies. This enabled a wide firebox and large-diameter boiler barrel to be combined with large driving-wheels and good visibility. Coal and water containers were mounted directly upon the bogies to keep them steady. The locomotive was inherently stable on curves because the central line of the boiler between its pivots lay within the curve of the centre line of the track. Garratt applied for a patent for his locomotive in 1907 and manufacture was taken up by Beyer, Peacock \& Co. under licence: the type became known as the Beyer-Garratt. The earliest Beyer-Garratt locomotives were small, but subsequent examples were larger. Sadly, only twenty-six locomotives of the type had been built or were under construction when Garratt died in 1913. Subsequent classes came to include some of the largest and most powerful steam locomotives: they were widely used and particularly successful in Central and Southern Africa, where examples continue to give good service in the 1990s.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    H.W.Garratt took out nine British patents, of which the most important is: 1907, British patent no. 17,165, "Improvements in and Relating to Locomotive Engines".
    Further Reading
    R.L.Hills, 1979–80, "The origins of the Garratt locomotive", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 51:175 (a good description of Garratt's career and the construction of the earliest Beyer-Garratt locomotives).
    A.E.Durrant, 1981, Garratt Locomotives of the World, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles. L.Wiener, 1930, Articulated Locomotives, London: Constable \& Co.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Garratt, Herbert William

  • 94 Gooch, Sir Daniel

    [br]
    b. 24 August 1816 Bedlington, Northumberland, England
    d. 15 October 1889 Clewer Park, Berkshire, England
    [br]
    English engineer, first locomotive superintendent of the Great Western Railway and pioneer of transatlantic electric telegraphy.
    [br]
    Gooch gained experience as a pupil with several successive engineering firms, including Vulcan Foundry and Robert Stephenson \& Co. In 1837 he was engaged by I.K. Brunel, who was then building the Great Western Railway (GWR) to the broad gauge of 7 ft 1/4 in. (2.14 m), to take charge of the railway's locomotive department. He was just 21 years old. The initial locomotive stock comprised several locomotives built to such extreme specifications laid down by Brunel that they were virtually unworkable, and two 2–2–2 locomotives, North Star and Morning Star, which had been built by Robert Stephenson \& Co. but left on the builder's hands. These latter were reliable and were perpetuated. An enlarged version, the "Fire Fly" class, was designed by Gooch and built in quantity: Gooch was an early proponent of standardization. His highly successful 4–2–2 Iron Duke of 1847 became the prototype of GWR express locomotives for the next forty-five years, until the railway's last broad-gauge sections were narrowed. Meanwhile Gooch had been largely responsible for establishing Swindon Works, opened in 1843. In 1862 he designed 2–4–0 condensing tank locomotives to work the first urban underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway in London. Gooch retired in 1864 but was then instrumental in arranging for Brunel's immense steamship Great Eastern to be used to lay the first transatlantic electric telegraph cable: he was on board when the cable was successfully laid in 1866. He had been elected Member of Parliament for Cricklade (which constituency included Swindon) in 1865, and the same year he had accepted an invitation to become Chairman of the Great Western Railway Company, which was in financial difficulties; he rescued it from near bankruptcy and remained Chairman until shortly before his death. The greatest engineering work undertaken during his chairmanship was the boring of the Severn Tunnel.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1866 (on completion of transatlantic telegraph).
    Bibliography
    1972, Sir Daniel Gooch, Memoirs and Diary, ed. R.B.Wilson, with introd. and notes, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.
    Further Reading
    A.Platt, 1987, The Life and Times of Daniel Gooch, Gloucester: Alan Sutton (puts Gooch's career into context).
    C.Hamilton Ellis, 1958, Twenty Locomotive Men, Ian Allan (contains a good short biography).
    J.Kieve, 1973, The Electric Telegraph, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles, pp. 112–5.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Gooch, Sir Daniel

  • 95 Hancock, Walter

    [br]
    b. 16 June 1799 Marlborough, Wiltshire, England d. 14 May 1852
    [br]
    English engineer and promoter of steam locomotion on common roads.
    [br]
    He was the sixth son of James Hancock, a cabinet-maker and merchant of Marlborough, Wiltshire. Initially Walter was apprenticed to a watchmaker and jeweller in London, but he soon turned his attention to engineering. In 1824 he invented a steam engine in which the cylinder and piston were replaced by two flexible bags of several layers of canvas and rubber solution, which were alternately filled with steam. The engine worked satisfactorily at Hancock's works in Stratford and its simplicity and lightness suggested its suitability for road carriages. Initial experiments were not very successful, but Hancock continued to experiment. After many trials in and around London, the Infant began a regular run between Stratford and London in February 1831. The following year he built the Era for the London and Brighton Steam Carriage Company. The Enterprise was next put on the road, by the London and Paddington Steam Carriage Company in April 1833. The Autopsy started to run from Finsbury Square to Pentonville in October of the same year and ran alternately with the Erin between the City and Paddington. Hancock's interest in steam road locomotion continued until about 1840, by which time he had built ten carriages. But by then public interest had declined and most of the companies involved had failed. Later, he turned his attention to indiarubber, working with his brother Thomas Hancock. In 1843 he obtained a patent for cutting rubber into sheets and for a method of preparing a solution of rubber.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1838, Narrative of Twelve Years of Experiments (1824–1836) Demonstrative of the Practicability and Advantages of Employing Steam Carriages on Common Roads, London.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Hancock, Walter

  • 96 Holt, Benjamin

    [br]
    b. 1 January 1849 Concord, New Hampshire, USA
    d. 5 December 1924 Stockton, California, USA
    [br]
    American machinery manufacturer responsible for the development of the Caterpillar tractor and for early developments in combine harvesters.
    [br]
    In 1864 Charles Henry Holt led three other brothers to California in response to the gold rush. In 1868 he founded C.H.Holt \& Co. in San Francisco with the help of his brothers Williams and Ames. The company dealt in timber as well as wagon and carriage materials, as did the business they had left behind in Concord in the care of their youngest brother, Benjamin. In 1883 Benjamin joined the others in California and together they formed the Stockton Wheel Company with offices in San Francisco and Stockton. The brothers recognized the potential of combine harvesters and purchased a number of patents, enlarged their works and began to experiment. Their first combine was produced in 1886, and worked for forty-six days that year. With the stimulus of Benjamin Holt the company produced the first hillside combine in 1891 and introduced the concept of belt drive. The Holt harvesting machine produced in 1904 was the first to use an auxiliary gas engine. By 1889 Benjamin was sole family executive. In 1890 the company produced its first traction engine. He began experimenting with track-laying machines, building his first in 1904. It was this machine which earned the nickname "Caterpillar", which has remained the company trade name to the present day. In 1906 thecompany produced its first gasoline-engined Caterpillar, and the first production model was introduced two years later. The development of Caterpillar tractors had a significant impact on the transport potential of the Allies during the First World War, and the Holt production of track-laying traction engines was of immense importance to the supply of the armed forces. In 1918 Benjamin Holt was still actively involved in the company, but he died in Stockton in 1920.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    W.A.Payne (ed.), 1982, Benjamin Holt: The Story of the Caterpillar Tractor, Stockton, Calif: University of the Pacific (provides an illustrated account of the life of Holt and the company he formed).
    R.Jones, "Benjamin Holt and the Caterpillar tractor", Vintage Tractor Magazine 1st special vol.
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Holt, Benjamin

  • 97 Joy, David

    [br]
    b. 3 March 1825 Leeds, England
    d. 14 March 1903 Hampstead, London, England
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer, designer of the locomotive Jenny Lind and of Joy's valve gear for steam engines.
    [br]
    By the mid-1840s Joy was Chief Draughtsman at E.B.Wilson's locomotive works at Leeds. During that period, attempts by engineers to design ever larger and more powerful locomotives were producing ungainly types, such as the long-boiler and the Cramp ton, which were to prove blind alleys in locomotive development. Joy rediscovered the proper route with his Jenny Lind 2–2–2, built in 1847. His locomotive had minimal overhang, with the firebox between the driving and trailing axles; the driving axle supported inside frames which stopped short at the firebox, allowing the latter to be wide, while leading and trailing wheels were held by outside plate frames which had a degree of elasticity. The boiler was low-pitched, the steam pressure high at 120 psi (8.4 kg/cm2). The result was a powerful locomotive which rode well and immediately became popular, a forerunner of many later designs. Joy subsequently had a varied career with successive railways and engineering firms. In the late 1850s he invented steam reversing gear for large, marine steam engines, a hydraulic organ blower and a pneumatic hammer. In 1879 he invented his radial valve gear for steam engines, which was adopted by F.W. Webb for the London \& North Western Railway's locomotives and was also much used in marine steam engines.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1879, British patent no. 929 (valve gear).
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1903, Engineering (20 March).
    Obituary, 1903, The Engineer (20 March).
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Joy, David

  • 98 Krauss, Georg

    [br]
    b. 25 December 1826 Augsburg, Germany
    d. 5 November 1906 Munich, Germany
    [br]
    German locomotive engineer, founder of the locomotive builders Krauss \& Co.
    [br]
    Krauss entered the Maffei locomotive works, Munich, as a fitter and subsequently worked successively for the Bavarian State Railways and the Swiss North Eastern Railway, which he left in 1866 to found Locomotivfabrik Krauss in Munich. The firm became one of the most important locomotive builders in Germany. A second factory was established in Munich in 1872 and a third at Linz, Austria, in 1880: by the time of Krauss's death, these factories had built more than 5,500 locomotives. The second Munich factory was predominantly for small locomotives, and to increase the sales of these Krauss promoted the construction of many local railways in south Germany and Austria. The firm survived to amalgamate with Maffei and take the name Krauss-Maffei AG in 1940.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    J.Marshall, 1978, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.
    Biographical note, 1985–6, Transactions of the Newcomen Society 57:46.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Krauss, Georg

  • 99 Lanchester, Frederick William

    [br]
    b. 28 October 1868 Lewisham, London, England
    d. 8 March 1946 Birmingham, England
    [br]
    English designer and builder of the first all-British motor car.
    [br]
    The fourth of eight children of an architect, he spent his childhood in Hove and attended a private preparatory school, from where, aged 14, he went to the Hartley Institution (the forerunner of Southampton University). He was then granted a scholarship to the Royal College of Science, South Kensington, and also studied practical engineering at Finsbury Technical College, London. He worked first for a draughtsman and pseudo-patent agent, and was then appointed Assistant Works Manager of the Forward Gas Engine Company of Birmingham, with sixty men and a salary of £1 per week. He was then aged 21. His younger brother, George, was apprenticed to the same company. In 1889 and 1890 he invented a pendulum governor and an engine starter which earned him royalties. He built a flat-bottomed river craft with a stern paddle-wheel and a vertical single-cylinder engine with a wick carburettor of his own design. From 1892 he performed a number of garden experiments on model gliders relating to problems of lift and drag, which led him to postulate vortices from the wingtips trailing behind, much of his work lying behind the theory of modern aerodynamics. The need to develop a light engine for aircraft led him to car design.
    In February 1896 his first experimental car took the road. It had a torsionally rigid chassis, a perfectly balanced and almost noiseless engine, dynamically stable steering, epicyclic gear for low speed and reverse with direct drive for high speed. It turned out to be underpowered and was therefore redesigned. Two years later an 8 hp, two-cylinder flat twin appeared which retained the principle of balancing by reverse rotation, had new Lanchester valve-gear and a new method of ignition based on a magneto generator. For the first time a worm and wheel replaced chain-drive or bevel-gear transmission. Lanchester also designed the machinery to make it. The car was capable of about 18 mph (29 km/h): future cars of his travelled at twice that speed. From 1899 to 1904 cars were produced for sale by the Lanchester Engine Company, which was formed in 1898. The company had to make every component except the tyres. Lanchester gave up the managership but remained as Chief Designer, and he remained in this post until 1914.
    In 1907–8 his two-volume treatise Aerial Flight was published; it included consideration of skin friction, boundary-layer theory and the theory of stability. In 1909 he was appointed to the Government's Committee for Aeronautics and also became a consultant to the Daimler Company. At the age of 51 he married Dorothea Cooper. He remained a consultant to Daimler and worked also for Wolseley and Beardmore until 1929 when he started Lanchester Laboratories, working on sound reproduction. He also wrote books on relativity and on the theory of dimensions.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS.
    Bibliography
    bht=1907–8, Aerial Flight, 2 vols.
    Further Reading
    P.W.Kingsford, 1966, F.W.Lanchester, Automobile Engineer.
    E.G.Semler (ed.), 1966, The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Lanchester, Frederick William

  • 100 Palmer, Henry Robinson

    [br]
    b. 1795 Hackney, London, England
    d. 12 September 1844
    [br]
    English civil engineer and monorail pioneer.
    [br]
    Palmer was an assistant to Thomas Telford for ten years from 1816. In 1818 he arranged a meeting of young engineers from which the Institution of Civil Engineers originated. In the early 1820s he invented a monorail system, the first of its kind, in which a single rail of wood, with an iron strip spiked on top to form a running surface, was supported on posts. Wagon bodies were supported pannier fashion from a frame attached to grooved wheels and were propelled by men or horses. An important object was to minimize friction, and short lines were built on this principle at Deptford and Cheshunt. In 1826 Palmer was appointed Resident Engineer to the London Docks and was responsible for the construction of many of them. He was subsequently consulted about many important engineering works.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1831. Vice-President, Institution of Civil Engineers.
    Bibliography
    1821, British patent no. 4,618 (monorail).
    1823, Description of a Railway on a New Principle…, London (describes his monorail).
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1845, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 4. C.von Oeynhausen and H.von Dechen, 1971, Railways in England 1826 and 1827, London: Newcomen Society (a contemporary description of the monorails). M.J.T.Lewis, 1970, Early Wooden Railways, London: Routledge \& Kegan Paul.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Palmer, Henry Robinson

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