(1857-1865)

сокр. от Giffard's Chancery Reports

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Samuel Fox was the son of a weaver's shuttle maker in the hamlet of Bradwell (probably Bradfield, near Sheffield) in the remote hills. He went to Sheffield and served an apprenticeship in the steel trade. Afterwards, he worked with great energy and industry until he acquired sufficient capital to start in business on his own account at Stocksbridge, near Sheffield. It was there that he invented what became known as "Fox's Paragon Frame" for umbrellas. Whalebone or solid steel had previously been used for umbrella ribs, but whalebone was unreliable and steel was heavy. Fox realized that if he grooved the ribs he could make them both lighter and more elastic. In his first patent, taken out in 1852, he described making the ribs and stretchers of parasols and umbrellas from a narrow strip of steel plate partially bent into a trough-like form. He took out five more patents. The first, in 1853, was for strengthening the joints. His next two, in 1856 and 1857, were more concerned with preparing the steel for making the ribs. Another patent in 1857 was basically for improving the formation of the bit at the end of the rib where it was fixed to the stretcher and where the end of the rib has to be formed into a boss: this was so it could have a pin fixed through it to act as a pivot when the umbrella has to be opened or folded and yet support the rib and stretcher. The final patent, in 1865, reverted once more to improving the manufacture of the ribs. He made a fortune before other manufacturers knew what he was doing. Fox established a works at Lille when he found that the French import duties and other fiscal arrangements hindered exporting umbrellas and successful trading there, and was thereby able to develop a large and lucrative business.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Isaac Holden's father, who had the same name, had been a farmer and lead miner at Alston in Cumbria before moving to work in a coal-mine near Glasgow. After a short period at Kilbarchan grammar school, the younger Isaac was engaged first as a drawboy to two weavers and then, after the family had moved to Johnstone, Scotland, worked in a cotton-spinning mill while attending night school to improve his education. He was able to learn Latin and bookkeeping, but when he was about 15 he was apprenticed to an uncle as a shawl-weaver. This proved to be too much for his strength so he returned to scholastic studies and became Assistant to an able teacher, John Kennedy, who lectured on physics, chemistry and history, which he also taught to his colleague. The elder Isaac died in 1826 and the younger had to provide for his mother and younger brother, but in 1828, at the age of 21, he moved to a teaching post in Leeds. He filled similar positions in Huddersfield and Reading, where in October 1829 he invented and demonstrated the lucifer match but did not seek to exploit it. In 1830 he returned because of ill health to his mother in Scotland, where he began to teach again. However, he was recommended as a bookkeeper to William Townend, member of the firm of Townend Brothers, Cullingworth, near Bingley, Yorkshire. Holden moved there in November 1830 and was soon involved in running the mill, eventually becoming a partner.

In 1833 Holden urged Messrs Townend to introduce seven wool-combing machines of Collier's designs, but they were found to be very imperfect and brought only trouble and loss. In 1836 Holden began experimenting on the machines until they showed reasonable success. He decided to concentrate entirely on developing the combing machine and in 1846 moved to Bradford to form an alliance with Samuel Lister. A joint patent in 1847 covered improvements to the Collier combing machine. The "square motion" imitated the action of the hand-comber more closely and was patented in 1856. Five more patents followed in 1857 and others from 1858 to 1862. Holden recommended that the machines should be introduced into France, where they would be more valuable for the merino trade. This venture was begun in 1848 in the joint partnership of Lister \& Holden, with equal shares of profits. Holden established a mill at Saint-Denis, first with Donisthorpe machines and then with his own "square motion" type. Other mills were founded at Rheims and at Croix, near Roubaix. In 1858 Lister decided to retire from the French concerns and sold his share to Holden. Soon after this, Holden decided to remodel all their machinery for washing and carding the gill machines as well as perfecting the square comb. Four years of excessive application followed, during which time £20,000 was spent in experiments in a small mill at Bradford. The result fully justified the expenditure and the Alston Works was built in Bradford.

Holden was a Liberal and from 1865 to 1868 he represented Knaresborough in Parliament. Later he became the Member of Parliament for the Northern Division of the Riding, Yorkshire, and then for the town of Keighley after the constituencies had been altered. He was liberal in his support of religious, charitable and political objectives. His house at Oakworth, near Keighley, must have been one of the earliest to have been lit by electricity.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering, Railways and locomotives

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Fox was a pupil of John Ericsson, helped to build the locomotive Novelty, and drove it at the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He became a driver on the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway and then a pupil of Robert Stephenson, who appointed him an assistant engineer for construction of the southern part of the London \& Birmingham Railway, opened in 1837. He was probably responsible for the design of the early bow-string girder bridge which carried the railway over the Regent's Canal. He also invented turnouts with switch blades, i.e. "points". With Robert Stephenson he designed the light iron train sheds at Euston Station, a type of roof that was subsequently much used elsewhere. He then became a partner in Fox, Henderson \& Co., railway contractors and manufacturers of railway equipment and bridges. The firm built the Crystal Palace in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851: Fox did much of the detail design work personally and was subsequently knighted. It also built many station roofs, including that at Paddington. From 1857 Fox was in practice in London as a consulting engineer in partnership with his sons, Charles Douglas Fox and Francis Fox. Sir Charles Fox became an advocate of light and narrow-gauge railways, although he was opposed to break-of-gauge unless it was unavoidable. He was joint Engineer for the Indian Tramway Company, building the first narrow-gauge (3 ft 6 in. or 107 cm) railway in India, opened in 1865, and his firm was Consulting Engineer for the first railways in Queensland, Australia, built to the same gauge at the same period on recommendation of Government Engineer A.C.Fitzgibbon.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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After education at a private school in Marlborough, Hancock spent some time in "mechanical pursuits". He went to London to better himself and c.1819 his interest was aroused in the uses of rubber, which until then had been limited. His first patent, dated 29 April 1820, was for the application of rubber in clothing where some elasticity was useful, such as braces or slip-on boots. He noticed that freshly cut pieces of rubber could be made to adhere by pressure to form larger pieces. To cut up his imported and waste rubber into small pieces, Hancock developed his "masticator". This device consisted of a spiked roller revolving in a hollow cylinder. However, when rubber was fed in to the machine, the product was not the expected shredded rubber, but a homogeneous cylindrical mass of solid rubber, formed by the heat generated by the process and pressure against the outer cylinder. This rubber could then be compacted into blocks or rolled into sheets at his factory in Goswell Road, London; the blocks and sheets could be used to make a variety of useful articles. Meanwhile Hancock entered into partnership with Charles Macintosh in Manchester to manufacture rubberized, waterproof fabrics. Despite these developments, rubber remained an unsatisfactory material, becoming sticky when warmed and losing its elasticity when cold. In 1842 Hancock encountered specimens of vulcanized rubber prepared by Charles Goodyear in America. Hancock worked out for himself that it was made by heating rubber and sulphur, and obtained a patent for the manufacture of the material on 21 November 1843. This patent also included details of a new form of rubber, hardened by heating to a higher temperature, that was later called vulcanite, or ebonite. In 1846 he began making solid rubber tyres for road vehicles. Overall Hancock took out sixteen patents, covering all aspects of the rubber industry; they were a leading factor in the development of the industry from 1820 until their expiry in 1858.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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He was the son of Robert Hoe, a printer who improved the cylinder press invented by David Napier. At the age of 15 he entered his father's business, taking full control of it three years later. Newspaper publishers demanded ever-increasing speeds of output from the printing press, and Hoe was one of those who realized that the speed was limited by the reciprocating action of the flat-bed machine. In 1846 he constructed a rotary press in which a central cylinder carried the type and flat sheets of paper were fed to smaller impression cylinders ranged around it. This kind of press, with four impression cylinders, was first used to print the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1847, and was able to print 8,000 papers per hour. Such presses reigned supreme for newspaper printing in many countries for twenty-five years: in 1857, for example, The Times had a ten-feeder machine making 20,000 impressions per hour. Even so, the quest for speed, now limited by the single-sheet feed, continued. William Bullock (1813–67) introduced continuous roll or web feed for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1865, and the next year The Times followed suit with the web-fed Walter press. In 1871 Hoe devised a machine that combined all the advantages of the existing machines, producing a rotary, web, perfecting (printing on both sides of the paper at once) machine, first used in the office of the New York Tribune. Ten years later the Hoe Company devised a folding machine to fold the copies as they came off the press: the modern newspaper printing press had arrived. In addition to his contributions to the printing industry, Hoe was a good employer, arranging free evening classes and other welfare services for his apprentices.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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After leaving school before the age of 14 Neilson followed his father in tending colliery-steam engines. He continued in this line while apprenticed to his elder brother and afterwards rose to engine-wright at Irvine colliery. That failed and Neilson obtained work as Foreman at the first gasworks to be set up in Glasgow. After five years he became Manager and Engineer to the works, remaining there for thirty years. He introduced a number of improvements into gas manufacture, such as the use of clay retorts, iron sulphate as a purifier and the swallow-tail burner. He had meanwhile benefited from studying physics and chemistry at the Andersonian University in Glasgow.

Neilson is best known for introducing hot blast into ironmaking. At that time, ironmasters believed that cold blast produced the best results, since furnaces seemed to make more and better iron in the winter than the summer. Neilson found that by leading the air blast through an iron chamber heated by a coal fire beneath it, much less fuel was needed to convert the iron ore to iron. He secured a patent in 1828 and managed to persuade Clyde Ironworks in Glasgow to try out the device. The results were immediately favourable, and the use of hot blast spread rapidly throughout the country and abroad. The equipment was improved, raising the blast temperature to around 300°C (572°F), reducing the amount of coal, which was converted into coke, required to produce a tonne of iron from 10 tonnes to about 3. Neilson entered into a partnership with Charles Macintosh and others to patent and promote the process. Successive, and successful, lawsuits against those who infringed the patent demonstrates the general eagerness to adopt hot blast. Beneficial though it was, the process did not become really satisfactory until the introduction of hot-blast stoves by E.A. Cowper in 1857.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Pihl trained as an engineer at Göteborg, Sweden, and then moved to London, where he worked under Robert Stephenson during 1845 and 1846. In 1850 he returned to Norway and worked with the English contractors building the first railway in Norway, the Norwegian Trunk Railway from Kristiania to Eidsvold, for which the English standard gauge was used. Subsequently he worked in England for a year, but in 1856 joined the Norwegian government's Road Department, which was to have responsibility for railways. In 1865 a distinct Railway Department was set up, and Pihl became Director for State Railway Construction. Because of the difficulties of the terrain and limited traffic, Pihl recommended that in the case of two isolated lines to be built the outlay involved in ordinary railways would not be justified, and that they should be built to the narrow gauge of 3 ft 6 in. (1.07 m). His recommendation was accepted by the Government in 1857 and the two lines were built to this gauge and opened during 1861–4. Six of their seven locomotives, and all their rolling stock, were imported from Britain. The lines cost £3,000 and £5,000 per mile, respectively; a standard-gauge line built in the same period cost £6,400 per mile.

Subsequently, many hundreds of miles of Norwegian railways were built to 3 ft 6 in. (1.07 m) gauge under Pihl's direction. They influenced construction of railways to this gauge in Australia, Southern Africa, New Zealand, Japan and elsewhere. However, in the late 1870s controversy arose in Norway over the economies that could in fact be gained from the 3 ft 6 in. (1,07 m) gauge. This controversy in the press, in discussion and in the Norwegian parliament became increasingly acrimonious during the next two decades; the standard-gauge party may be said to have won with the decision in 1898, the year after Pihl's death, to build the Bergen-Oslo line to standard gauge.

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See also: Fox, Sir Charles; Inoue Masaru; Spooner, Charles Easton

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Much of Walter's work was in neo-classical style, of which the Founders' Hall at Girard College in Philadelphia, built 1833–47, is a fine example. On the exterior this is a large-scale Corinthian temple of peripteral octastyle form. Inside, Walter showed his awareness of modern needs with his brick fireproof vaulting. In 1851 Walter was appointed by President Millard Fillmore as Architect to the Capitol in Washington, DC, to enlarge the building to accommodate the greater needs of the day. Between this time and 1865 Walter extended the side wings considerably to provide more space for the House of Representatives and the Senate and, to balance the composition of this much longer elevation, built a new great dome. In style, the dome and drum resemble those of Wren's St Paul's Cathedral in London, but the scale is much greater and the internal construction largely of cast iron: internally the dome measures 98 ft (29.9 m) in diameter and has a total height of 222 ft (67.7 m).

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