(1837-1839)

Юридический термин: сборник решений суда казначейства, составители Хорн и Херлстон (1837-1839)

сокр. от Cooper's Reports, Chancery

сокр. от Horn and Hurlstone's Exchequer Reports

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The son of a minor official in a magistrate's court, Daguerre showed an early aptitude for drawing. He was first apprenticed to an architect, but in 1804 he moved to Paris to learn the art of stage design. He was particularly interested in perspective and lighting, and later showed great ingenuity in lighting stage sets. Fascinated by a popular form of entertainment of the period, the panorama, he went on to create a variant of it called the diorama. It is assumed that he used a camera obscura for perspective drawings and, by purchasing it from the optician Chevalier, he made contact with Joseph Nicéphore Niepce. In 1829 Niepce and Daguerre entered into a formal partnership to perfect Niepce's heliographic process, but the partnership was dissolved when Niepce died in 1833, when only limited progress had been made. Daguerre continued experimenting alone, however, using iodine and silver plates; by 1837 he had discovered that images formed in the camera obscura could be developed by mercury vapour and fixed with a hot salt solution. After unsuccessfully attempting to sell his process, Daguerre approached F.J.D. Arago, of the Académie des Sciences, who announced the discovery in 1839. Details of Daguerre's work were not published until August of that year when the process was presented free to the world, except England. With considerable business acumen, Daguerre had quietly patented the process through an agent, Miles Berry, in London a few days earlier. He also granted a monopoly to make and sell his camera to a Monsieur Giroux, a stationer by trade who happened to be a relation of Daguerre's wife. The daguerreotype process caused a sensation when announced. Daguerre was granted a pension by a grateful government and honours were showered upon him all over the world. It was a direct positive process on silvered copper plates and, in fact, proved to be a technological dead end. The future was to lie with negative-positive photography devised by Daguerre's British contemporary, W.H.F. Talbot, although Daguerre's was the first practicable photographic process to be announced. It captured the public's imagination and in an improved form was to dominate professional photographic practice for more than a decade.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Educated as a notary's clerk, Bayard began his working life in Paris in the Ministry of Finance. His interest in art led him to investigations into the chemical action of light, and he began his experiments in 1837. In May 1839 Bayard described an original photographic process which produced direct positive images on paper. It was devised independently of Talbot and before details of Daguerre's process had been published. During the same period, similar techniques were announced by other investigators and Bayard became involved in a series of priority disputes. Bayard's photographs were well received when first exhibited, and examples survive to the present day. Because the process required long exposure times it was rarely practised, but Bayard is generally credited with being an independent inventor of photography.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Davidson, son of an Aberdeen merchant, attended Marischal College, Aberdeen, between 1819 and 1822: his studies included mathematics, mechanics and chemistry. He subsequently joined his father's grocery business, which from time to time received enquiries for yeast: to meet these, Davidson began to manufacture yeast for sale and from that start built up a successful chemical manufacturing business with the emphasis on yeast and dyes. About 1837 he started to experiment first with electric batteries and then with motors. He invented a form of electromagnetic engine in which soft iron bars arranged on the periphery of a wooden cylinder, parallel to its axis, around which the cylinder could rotate, were attracted by fixed electromagnets. These were energized in turn by current controlled by a simple commutaring device. Electric current was produced by his batteries. His activities were brought to the attention of Michael Faraday and to the scientific world in general by a letter from Professor Forbes of King's College, Aberdeen. Davidson declined to patent his inventions, believing that all should be able freely to draw advantage from them, and in order to afford an opportunity for all interested parties to inspect them an exhibition was held at 36 Union Street, Aberdeen, in October 1840 to demonstrate his "apparatus actuated by electro-magnetic power". It included: a model locomotive carriage, large enough to carry two people, that ran on a railway; a turning lathe with tools for visitors to use; and a small printing machine. In the spring of 1842 he put on a similar exhibition in Edinburgh, this time including a sawmill. Davidson sought support from railway companies for further experiments and the construction of an electromagnetic locomotive; the Edinburgh exhibition successfully attracted the attention of the proprietors of the Edinburgh 585\& Glasgow Railway (E \& GR), whose line had been opened in February 1842. Davidson built a full-size locomotive incorporating his principle, apparently at the expense of the railway company. The locomotive weighed 7 tons: each of its two axles carried a cylinder upon which were fastened three iron bars, and four electromagnets were arranged in pairs on each side of the cylinders. The motors he used were reluctance motors, the power source being zinc-iron batteries. It was named Galvani and was demonstrated on the E \& GR that autumn, when it achieved a speed of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) while hauling a load of 6 tons over a distance of 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km); it was the first electric locomotive. Nevertheless, further support from the railway company was not forthcoming, although to some railway workers the locomotive seems to have appeared promising enough: they destroyed it in Luddite reaction. Davidson staged a further exhibition in London in 1843 without result and then, the cost of battery chemicals being high, ceased further experiments of this type. He survived long enough to see the electric railway become truly practicable in the 1880s.

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PJGR / GW

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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After studying architecture at Göttingen University, Jacobi turned his attention to physics and chemistry. In 1835 he was appointed a professor of civil engineering at the University of Dorpat (which later assumed the Estonian name of Tartu). Later, moving to St Petersburg, he became a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and commenced research on electricity and its practical applications. In December 1834 Jacobi presented a paper to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in which he stated that he had obtained rotation by electromagnetic methods in May of that year. Tsar Nicholas of Russia gave him a grant to prove that his electric motor had a practical application. Jacobi had a boat constructed that measured 28 ft in length and was propelled by paddles connected to an electric motor of his own design. Powered by Grove cells, it carried about fourteen passengers at a speed of almost 3 mph (5 km/h) on the River Neva. The weight of and possibly the fumes from the batteries contributed to the abandonment of the project. In 1839 Jacobi introduced electrotyping, i.e. the reproduction of forms by electrodeposition, which was one of the first commercial applications of electricity. In 1840 he reported the results of his investigations into the power of the electromagnet as a function of various parameters to the British Association.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Young's early education took place in the evenings, after the day's work in his father's joinery. From 1830 he studied chemistry at the evening classes in Glasgow given by the distinguished Scottish chemist Thomas Graham (1805–69) and soon afterwards became Graham's assistant. When Graham moved to University College London in 1837, Young accompanied him.

From 1839 he was employed in the chemical industry, first with James Muspratt at St Helens, Lancashire, and from 1843 with Tennant \& Company in Manchester. In 1848 his attention was drawn to an oil seepage in a mine at Alfreton, Derbyshire, of some 300 gallons per day; he set up his own works there to extract an oil that could be used for lighting and lubrication. When this source of oil was exhausted, three years later, Young moved to Lothian in Scotland. By distillation, he extracted oil from the oil-shale deposits there and thus founded the Scottish oil-shale industry: he obtained a high yield of paraffin oil for lighting and heating, and was a pioneer in the use of chemical methods in extracting and treating oil. In 1866 he disposed of his company for no less than £400,000. Young's other activities included measuring the speed of light by Fizeau's method and giving financial support to the expeditions of David Livingstone, who had been a fellow student in Glasgow.

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