(1844-1856)

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Metallurgy, Public utilities, Telecommunications

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Born Carl Wilhelm, he attended craft schools in Lübeck and Magdeburg, followed by an intensive course in natural science at Göttingen as a pupil of Weber. At the age of 19 Siemens travelled to England and sold an electroplating process developed by his brother Werner Siemens to Richard Elkington, who was already established in the plating business. From 1843 to 1844 he obtained practical experience in the Magdeburg works of Count Stolburg. He settled in England in 1844 and later assumed British nationality, but maintained close contact with his brother Werner, who in 1847 had co-founded the firm Siemens \& Halske in Berlin to manufacture telegraphic equipment. William began to develop his regenerative principle of waste-heat recovery and in 1856 his brother Frederick (1826–1904) took out a British patent for heat regeneration, by which hot waste gases were passed through a honeycomb of fire-bricks. When they became hot, the gases were switched to a second mass of fire-bricks and incoming air and fuel gas were led through the hot bricks. By alternating the two gas flows, high temperatures could be reached and considerable fuel economies achieved. By 1861 the two brothers had incorporated producer gas fuel, made by gasifying low-grade coal.

Heat regeneration was first applied in ironmaking by Cowper in 1857 for heating the air blast in blast furnaces. The first regenerative furnace was set up in Birmingham in 1860 for glassmaking. The first such furnace for making steel was developed in France by Pierre Martin and his father, Emile, in 1863. Siemens found British steelmakers reluctant to adopt the principle so in 1866 he rented a small works in Birmingham to develop his open-hearth steelmaking furnace, which he patented the following year. The process gradually made headway; as well as achieving high temperatures and saving fuel, it was slower than Bessemer's process, permitting greater control over the content of the steel. By 1900 the tonnage of open-hearth steel exceeded that produced by the Bessemer process.

In 1872 Siemens played a major part in founding the Society of Telegraph Engineers (from which the Institution of Electrical Engineers evolved), serving as its first President. He became President for the second time in 1878. He built a cable works at Charlton, London, where the cable could be loaded directly into the holds of ships moored on the Thames. In 1873, together with William Froude, a British shipbuilder, he designed the Faraday, the first specialized vessel for Atlantic cable laying. The successful laying of a cable from Europe to the United States was completed in 1875, and a further five transatlantic cables were laid by the Faraday over the following decade.

The Siemens factory in Charlton also supplied equipment for some of the earliest electric-lighting installations in London, including the British Museum in 1879 and the Savoy Theatre in 1882, the first theatre in Britain to be fully illuminated by electricity. The pioneer electric-tramway system of 1883 at Portrush, Northern Ireland, was an opportunity for the Siemens company to demonstrate its equipment.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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The son of a wealthy jeweller, he attended medical school in Vienna and qualified in 1836. Until 1844 he was engaged in research into the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. In 1844, while on a visit to Paris, he came to the attention of Baron Türckheim, Director of the General Hospital in Vienna. The consequence was the establishment of a special division of the hospital for nervous diseases, with Türck in charge.

In 1857 he was appointed Chief Physician to the largest hospital in Vienna and at the same time he became aware of the invention in 1855 by Manuel García, a music teacher of Paris, of a practical laryngoscope. Türck adapted the apparatus to clinical purposes and proceeded to establish the diagnostic and therapeutic techniques required for its efficient use. Some conflict over priority ensued following a publication by Johann Nepomuk Czermak in 1858, but eventually a professional declaration asserted Türck's priority.

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( adiós [aðjós] < Spanish a Dios 'to God' < Latin deus 'God')

   SW: 1844. General Spanish term for good-bye or farewell. Watts notes its relationship to another common leavetaking, vaya con Dios, 'go with God.' Hendrickson remarks that Texans also have used it as a verb meaning 'get going, vamoose,' as in "you better adios before the law comes." According to Bentley, Kit Carson is said to have uttered "Doctor, compadre, adios" in 1856 as his last words.

SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Public utilities

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Bateman's maternal grandfather was a Moravian missionary, and from the age of 7 he was educated at the Moravian schools at Fairfield and Ockbrook. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to a "civil engineer, land surveyor and agent" in Oldham. After this apprenticeship, Bateman commenced his own practice in 1833. One of his early schemes and reports was in regard to the flooding of the river Medlock in the Manchester area. He came to the attention of William Fairbairn, the engine builder and millwright of Canal Street, Ancoats, Manchester. Fairbairn used Bateman as his site surveyor and as such he prepared much of the groundwork for the Bann reservoirs in Northern Ireland. Whilst the reports on the proposals were in the name of Fairbairn, Bateman was, in fact, appointed by the company as their engineer for the execution of the works. One scheme of Bateman's which was carried forward was the Kendal Reservoirs. The Act for these was signed in 1845 and was implemented not for the purpose of water supply but for the conservation of water to supply power to the many mills which stood on the river Kent between Kentmere and Morecambe Bay. The Kentmere Head dam is the only one of the five proposed for the scheme to survive, although not all the others were built as they would have retained only small volumes of water.

Perhaps the greatest monument to the work of J.F.La Trobe Bateman is Manchester's water supply; he was consulted about this in 1844, and construction began four years later. He first built reservoirs in the Longdendale valley, which has a very complicated geological stratification. Bateman favoured earth embankment dams and gravity feed rather than pumping; the five reservoirs in the valley that impound the river Etherow were complex, cored earth dams. However, when completed they were greatly at risk from landslips and ground movement. Later dams were inserted by Bateman to prevent water loss should the older dams fail. The scheme was not completed until 1877, by which time Manchester's population had exceeded the capacity of the original scheme; Thirlmere in Cumbria was chosen by Manchester Corporation as the site of the first of the Lake District water-supply schemes. Bateman, as Consulting Engineer, designed the great stone-faced dam at the west end of the lake, the "gothic" straining well in the middle of the east shore of the lake, and the 100-mile (160 km) pipeline to Manchester. The Act for the Thirlmere reservoir was signed in 1879 and, whilst Bateman continued as Consulting Engineer, the work was supervised by G.H. Hill and was completed in 1894.

Bateman was also consulted by the authorities in Glasgow, with the result that he constructed an impressive water-supply scheme derived from Loch Katrine during the years 1856–60. It was claimed that the scheme bore comparison with "the most extensive aqueducts in the world, not excluding those of ancient Rome". Bateman went on to superintend the waterworks of many cities, mainly in the north of England but also in Dublin and Belfast. In 1865 he published a pamphlet, On the Supply of Water to London from the Sources of the River Severn, based on a survey funded from his own pocket; a Royal Commission examined various schemes but favoured Bateman's.

Bateman was also responsible for harbour and dock works, notably on the rivers Clyde and Shannon, and also for a number of important water-supply works on the Continent of Europe and beyond. Dams and the associated reservoirs were the principal work of J.F.La Trobe Bateman; he completed forty-three such schemes during his professional career. He also prepared many studies of water-supply schemes, and appeared as professional witness before the appropriate Parliamentary Committees.

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KM / LRD

SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Land transport, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Ports and shipping, Public utilities, Railways and locomotives

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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In about 1800 Daniel Massey's family moved to Upper Canada. At the age of 6 he was sent back to stay with his grandparents in Waterton, USA, where he attended school for three years. He returned to his parents in 1807, and for the next twelve years he remained on his father's farm.

At the age of 19 he forfeited his rights to his inheritance and rented land further west, which he began to clear. By the age of 21 he owned 200 acres, and during the next twelve years he bought, cleared and sold a further 1,200 acres. In 1820 he married Lucina Bradley from Water-town and returned with her to Canada.

In 1830 he decided to settle down to farming and brought one of the first US threshing machines into Canada. From frequent visits to his family in the US he would return with new farm equipment, and in 1844 he handed his farm over to his eldest son so that he could concentrate on the development of his farm workshop. In 1845 he formed a brief partnership with R.F.Vaughan, who owned a small factory in Durham County near Lake Ontario. He began the production of ploughs, harrows, scufflers and rollers at a time when the Canadian Government was imposing heavy import duties on agricultural equipment being brought in from the USA. His business flourished and within six months he bought out his partner.

In 1848 he bought another foundry in Newcastle, together with 50 acres of land, and in 1851 his son Hart joined him in the business. The following year Hart returned from the USA with the sole rights to manufacture the Ketchum mower and the Burrell reaper.

The advent of the railway four years later opened up wider markets, and from these beginnings the Massey Company was to represent Canada at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. The European market was secured by the successes of the Massey reaper in the "World" trials held in France in 1889. Two years later the company merged with the Harris Company of Canada, to become the Massey Harris Company. Daniel Massey retired from the company four years after his son joined it, and he died the following year.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering

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Although primarily an engineer, William Pole was a man of many and varied talents, being amongst other things an accomplished musician (his doctorate was in music) and an authority on whist. He served an apprenticeship at the Horsley Company in Birmingham, and moved to London in 1836, when he was employed first as Manager to a gasworks. In 1844 he published a study of the Cornish pumping engine, and he also accepted an appointment as the first Professor of Engineering in the Elphinstone College at Bombay. He spent three pioneering years in this post, and undertook the survey work for the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. Before returning to London in 1848 he married Matilda Gauntlett, the daughter of a clergyman.

Back in Britain, Pole was employed by James Simpson, J.M.Rendel and Robert Stephenson, the latter engaging him to assist with calculations on the Britannia Bridge. In 1858 he set up his own practice. He kept a very small office, choosing not to delegate work to subordinates but taking on a bewildering variety of commissions for government and private companies. In the first category, he made calculations for government officials of the main drainage of the metropolis and for its water supply. He lectured on engineering to the Royal Engineers' institution at Chatham, and served on a Select Committee to enquire into the armour of warships and fortifications. He became a member of the Royal Commission on the Railways of Great Britain and Ireland (the Devonshire Commission, 1867) and reported to the War Office on the MartiniHenry rifle. He also advised the India Office about examinations for engineering students. The drafting and writing up of reports was frequently left to Pole, who also made distinguished contributions to the official Lives of Robert Stephenson (1864), I.K. Brunel (1870) and William Fairbairn (1877). For other bodies, he acted as Consulting Engineer in England to the Japanese government, and he assisted W.H.Barlow in calculations for a bridge at Queensferry on the Firth of Forth (1873). He was consulted about many urban water supplies.

Pole joined the Institution of Civil Engineers as an Associate in 1840 and became a Member in 1856. He became a Member of Council, Honorary Secretary (succeeding Manby in 1885–96) and Honorary Member of the Institution. He was interested in astronomy and photography, he was fluent in several languages, was an expert on music, and became the world authority on whist. In 1859 he was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering at University College London, serving in this office until 1867. Pole, whose dates coincided closely with those of Queen Victoria, was one of the great Victorian engineers: he was a polymath, able to apply his great abilities to an amazing range of different tasks. In engineering history, he deserves to be remembered as an outstanding communicator and popularizer.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Smith was the only son of Charles Smith, Postmaster at Hythe, and his wife Sarah (née Pettit). After education at a private school in Ashford, Kent, he took to farming, first on Romney Marsh, then at Hendon, Middlesex. As a boy, he showed much skill in the construction of model boats, especially in devising their means of propulsion. He maintained this interest into adult life and in 1835 he made a model propelled by a screw driven by a spring. This worked so well that he became convinced that the screw propeller offered a better method of propulsion than the paddle wheels that were then in general use. This notion so fired his enthusiasm that he virtually gave up farming to devote himself to perfecting his invention. The following year he produced a better model, which he successfully demonstrated to friends on his farm at Hendon and afterwards to the public at the Adelaide Gallery in London. On 31 May 1836 Smith was granted a patent for the propulsion of vessels by means of a screw.

The idea of screw propulsion was not new, however, for it had been mooted as early as the seventeenth century and since then several proposals had been advanced, but without successful practical application. Indeed, simultaneously but quite independently of Smith, the Swedish engineer John Ericsson had invented the ship's propeller and obtained a patent on 13 July 1836, just weeks after Smith. But Smith was completely unaware of this and pursued his own device in the belief that he was the sole inventor.

With some financial and technical backing, Smith was able to construct a 10 ton boat driven by a screw and powered by a steam engine of about 6 hp (4.5 kW). After showing it off to the public, Smith tried it out at sea, from Ramsgate round to Dover and Hythe, returning in stormy weather. The screw performed well in both calm and rough water. The engineering world seemed opposed to the new method of propulsion, but the Admiralty gave cautious encouragement in 1839 by ordering that the 237 ton Archimedes be equipped with a screw. It showed itself superior to the Vulcan, one of the fastest paddle-driven ships in the Navy. The ship was put through its paces in several ports, including Bristol, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel was constructing his Great Britain, the first large iron ocean-going vessel. Brunel was so impressed that he adapted his ship for screw propulsion.

Meanwhile, in spite of favourable reports, the Admiralty were dragging their feet and ordered further trials, fitting Smith's four-bladed propeller to the Rattler, then under construction and completed in 1844. The trials were a complete success and propelled their lordships of the Admiralty to a decision to equip twenty ships with screw propulsion, under Smith's supervision.

At last the superiority of screw propulsion was generally accepted and virtually universally adopted. Yet Smith gained little financial reward for his invention and in 1850 he retired to Guernsey to resume his farming life. In 1860 financial pressures compelled him to accept the position of Curator of Patent Models at the Patent Museum in South Kensington, London, a post he held until his death. Belated recognition by the Government, then headed by Lord Palmerston, came in 1855 with the grant of an annual pension of £200. Two years later Smith received unofficial recognition when he was presented with a national testimonial, consisting of a service of plate and nearly £3,000 in cash subscribed largely by the shipbuilding and engineering community. Finally, in 1871 Smith was honoured with a knighthood.

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