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(American Society for Civil Engineers)

  • 1 Американское общество инженеров гражданского строительства

    Русско-английский словарь нормативно-технической терминологии > Американское общество инженеров гражданского строительства

  • 2 Американское общество инженеров гражданского строительства

    2) Sakhalin energy glossary: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE; АОИГС)

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > Американское общество инженеров гражданского строительства

  • 3 Bond, George Meade

    [br]
    b. 17 July 1852 Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA
    d. 6 January 1935 Hartford, Connecticut, USA
    [br]
    American mechanical engineer and metrologist, co-developer of the Rogers- Bond Comparator.
    [br]
    After leaving school at the age of 17, George Bond taught in local schools for a few years before starting an apprenticeship in a machine shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He then worked as a machinist with Phoenix Furniture Company in that city until his savings permitted him to enter the Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1876. He graduated with the degree of Mechanical Engineer in 1880. In his final year he assisted William A.Rogers, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the design of a comparator for checking standards of length. In 1880 he joined the Pratt \& Whitney Company, Hartford, Connecticut, and was Manager of the Standards and Gauge Department from then until 1902. During this period he developed cylindrical, calliper, snap, limit, thread and other gauges. He also designed the Bond Standard Measuring Machine. Bond was elected a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1881 and of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1887, and served on many of their committees relating to standards and units of measurement.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Vice-President, American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1908–10. Honorary degrees of DEng, Stevens Institute of Technology 1921, and MSc, Trinity College, Hartford, 1927.
    Bibliography
    Engineers 3:122.
    1886, "Standard pipe and pipe threads", Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 7:311.
    Further Reading
    "Report of the Committee on Standards and Gauges", 1883, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 4:21–9 (describes the Rogers-Bond Comparator).
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Bond, George Meade

  • 4 Rowland, Thomas Fitch

    [br]
    b. 15 March 1831 New Haven, Connecticut, USA
    d. 13 December 1907 New York City, USA
    [br]
    American engineer and manufacturer, inventor of off-shore drilling.
    [br]
    The son of a grist miller, Rowland worked in various jobs until 1859 when he established his own business for the construction of wooden and iron steamships and for structural iron works, in Greenpoint, Long Island, New York. In 1860 he founded the Continental Works and during the American Civil War he started manufacturing gun carriages and mortar beds. He fitted out many vessels for the navy, and as a contractor for John Ericsson he built heavily armoured war vessels.
    He continued shipbuilding, but later diversified his business. He devoted great attention to the design of gas-works, constructing innovative storage facilities all over the United States, and he was concerned with the improvement of welding iron and steel plates and other processes in the steel industry. In the late 1860s he also began the manufacture of steam-engines and boilers for use in the new but expanding oil industry. In 1869 he took out a patent for a fixed platform for drilling for oil off-shore up to a depth of 15 m (49 ft). With this idea, just ten years after Edwin Drake's success in on-shore oil drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Rowland pioneered the technology of off-shore drilling for petroleum in which the United States later became the leading nation.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    American Society of Civil Engineers: Director 1871–3, Vice-President 1886–7, Honorary Member 1899.
    Further Reading
    "Thomas Fitch Rowland", Dictionary of American Biography.
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Rowland, Thomas Fitch

  • 5 Taylor, David Watson

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 4 March 1864 Louisa County, Virginia, USA
    d. 29 July 1940 Washington, DC, USA
    [br]
    American hydrodynamicist and Rear Admiral in the United States Navy Construction Corps.
    [br]
    Taylor's first years were spent on a farm in Virginia, but at the age of 13 he went to RandolphMacon College, graduating in 1881, and from there to the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. He graduated at the head of his class, had some sea time, and then went to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England, where in 1888 he again came top of the class with the highest-ever marks of any student, British or overseas.
    On his return to the United States he held various posts as a constructor, ending this period at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California. In 1894 he was transferred to Washington, where he joined the Bureau of Construction and started to interest the Navy in ship model testing. Under his direction, the first ship model tank in the United States was built at Washington and for fourteen years operated under his control. The work of this establishment gave him the necessary information to write the highly acclaimed text The Speed and Power of Ships, which with revisions is still in use. By the outbreak of the First World War he was one of the world's most respected naval architects, and had been retained as a consultant by the British Government in the celebrated case of the collision between the White Star Liner Olympic and HMS Hawke.
    In December 1914 Taylor became a Rear-Admiral and was appointed Chief Constructor of the US Navy. His term of office was extremely stressful, with over 1,000 ships constructed for the war effort and with the work of the fledgling Bureau for Aeronautics also under his control. The problems were not over in 1918 as the Washington Treaty required drastic pruning of the Navy and a careful reshaping of the defence force.
    Admiral Taylor retired from active service at the beginning of 1923 but retained several consultancies in aeronautics, shipping and naval architecture. For many years he served as consultant to the ship-design company now known as Gibbs and Cox. Many honours came his way, but the most singular must be the perpetuation of his name in the David Taylor Medal, the highest award of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in the United States. Similarly, the Navy named its ship test tank facility, which was opened in Maryland in 1937, the David W. Taylor Model Basin.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President, Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers 1925–7. United States Distinguished Service Medal. American Society of Civil Engineers John Fritz Medal. Institution of Naval Architects Gold Medal 1894 (the first American citizen to receive it). Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers David W.Taylor Medal 1936 (the first occasion of this award).
    Bibliography
    Resistance of Ships and Screw Propulsion. 1911, The Speed and Power of Ships, New York: Wiley.
    Taylor gave many papers to the Maritime Institutions of both the United States and the United Kingdom.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Taylor, David Watson

  • 6 Whipple, Squire

    SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering
    [br]
    b. 1804 Hardwick, Massachusetts, USA
    d. 15 March 1888 Albany, New York, USA
    [br]
    American civil engineer, author and inventor.
    [br]
    The son of James and Electa Whipple, his father was a farmer and later the owner of a small cotton mil at Hardwick, Massachusetts. In 1817 Squire Whipple moved with his family to Otego County, New York. He helped on the farm and attended the academy at Fairfield, Herkimer County. For a time he taught school pupils, and in 1829 he entered Union College, Schenectady, where he received the degree of AB in 1830; his interest in engineering was probably aroused by the construction of the Erie Canal near his home during his boyhood. He was first employed in a minor capacity in surveys for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and for the Erie Canal. In 1836–7 he was resident engineer for a division of the New York and Erie Railroad and was also employed in a number of other railroad and canal surveys, making surveying instruments in the intervals between these appointments; in 1840, he completed a lock for weighing canal boats.
    Whipple received his first bridge patent on 24 April 1841; this was for a truss of arched upper chord made of cast and wrought iron. Five years later, he devised a trapezoidal truss which was used in the building of many bridges over the succeeding generation. In 1852–3 Whipple used his truss in an iron railroad bridge of 44.5 m (146 ft) span on the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad. He also built a number of bridges with lifting spans.
    Whipple's main contribution to bridge engineering was the publication in 1847 of A Work on Bridge Building. In 1869 he issued a continuation of this treatise, and a fourth edition of both was published in 1883.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Honorary Member, American Society of Civil Engineers.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Whipple, Squire

  • 7 Whitworth, Sir Joseph

    [br]
    b. 21 December 1803 Stockport, Cheshire, England
    d. 22 January 1887 Monte Carlo, Monaco
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer and pioneer of precision measurement.
    [br]
    Joseph Whitworth received his early education in a school kept by his father, but from the age of 12 he attended a school near Leeds. At 14 he joined his uncle's mill near Ambergate, Derbyshire, to learn the business of cotton spinning. In the four years he spent there he realized that he was more interested in the machinery than in managing a cotton mill. In 1821 he obtained employment as a mechanic with Crighton \& Co., Manchester. In 1825 he moved to London and worked for Henry Maudslay and later for the Holtzapffels and Joseph Clement. After these years spent gaining experience, he returned to Manchester in 1833 and set up in a small workshop under a sign "Joseph Whitworth, Tool Maker, from London".
    The business expanded steadily and the firm made machine tools of all types and other engineering products including steam engines. From 1834 Whitworth obtained many patents in the fields of machine tools, textile and knitting machinery and road-sweeping machines. By 1851 the company was generally regarded as the leading manufacturer of machine tools in the country. Whitworth was a pioneer of precise measurement and demonstrated the fundamental mode of producing a true plane by making surface plates in sets of three. He advocated the use of the decimal system and made use of limit gauges, and he established a standard screw thread which was adopted as the national standard. In 1853 Whitworth visited America as a member of a Royal Commission and reported on American industry. At the time of the Crimean War in 1854 he was asked to provide machinery for manufacturing rifles and this led him to design an improved rifle of his own. Although tests in 1857 showed this to be much superior to all others, it was not adopted by the War Office. Whitworth's experiments with small arms led on to the construction of big guns and projectiles. To improve the quality of the steel used for these guns, he subjected the molten metal to pressure during its solidification, this fluid-compressed steel being then known as "Whitworth steel".
    In 1868 Whitworth established thirty annual scholarships for engineering students. After his death his executors permanently endowed the Whitworth Scholarships and distributed his estate of nearly half a million pounds to various educational and charitable institutions. Whitworth was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1841 and a Member in 1848 and served on its Council for many years. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1847, the year of its foundation.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Baronet 1869. FRS 1857. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1856, 1857 and 1866. Hon. LLD Trinity College, Dublin, 1863. Hon. DCL Oxford University 1868. Member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers 1864. Légion d'honneur 1868. Society of Arts Albert Medal 1868.
    Bibliography
    1858, Miscellaneous Papers on Mechanical Subjects, London; 1873, Miscellaneous Papers on Practical Subjects: Guns and Steel, London (both are collections of his papers to technical societies).
    1854, with G.Wallis, The Industry of the United States in Machinery, Manufactures, and
    Useful and Ornamental Arts, London.
    Further Reading
    F.C.Lea, 1946, A Pioneer of Mechanical Engineering: Sir Joseph Whitworth, London (a short biographical account).
    A.E.Musson, 1963, "Joseph Whitworth: toolmaker and manufacturer", Engineering Heritage, Vol. 1, London, 124–9 (a short biography).
    D.J.Jeremy (ed.), 1984–6, Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol. 5, London, 797–802 (a short biography).
    W.Steeds, 1969, A History of Machine Tools 1700–1910, Oxford (describes Whitworth's machine tools).
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Whitworth, Sir Joseph

  • 8 Appleby, John F.

    [br]
    b. 1840 New York, US A
    d. ? USA
    [br]
    American inventor of the knotting mechanism used on early binders and still found on modern baling machines.
    [br]
    As a young man John Appleby worked as a labourer for a farmer near Whitewater in Wisconsin. He was 18 when the farmer bought a new reaping machine. Appleby believed that the concept had not been progressed far enough and that the machine should be able to bind sheaths as well as to cut the corn. It is claimed that while watching a dog playing with a skipping rope he noticed a particular knot created as the dog removed its head from the loop that had passed over it, and recognized the potential of the way in which this knot had been formed. From a piece of apple wood he carved a device that would produce the knot he had seen. A local school teacher backed Appleby's idea with a $50 loan, but the American Civil War and service in the Union Army prevented any further development until 1869 when he took out a patent on a wire-tying binder. A number of the devices were made for him by a company in Beloit. Trials of wire binders held in 1873 highlighted the danger of small pieces of wire caught up in the hay leading to livestock losses. Appleby looked again at the possibility of twine. In 1875 he successfully operated a machine and the following season four were in operation. A number of other developments, not least Behel's "bill hook" knotting device, were also to have an influence in the final development of Appleby's twine-tying binder. As so often happens, it was the vision of the entrepreneur which ultimately led to the success of Appleby's device. In 1877 Appleby persuaded William Deering to produce and market his binder, and 3,000 twine binders, together with the twine produced for them, were put on the market in 1880, with immediate success. Over the next dozen years all harvesting-machine manufacturers adopted the idea, under licence to Appleby.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    G.Quick and W.Buchele, 1978, The Grain Harvesters, American Society of Agricultural Engineers (provides an account of the development of harvesting machinery and the various tying devices developed for them).
    1927, "Twine knotter history", Wisconsin Magazine of History (a more specific account).
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Appleby, John F.

  • 9 Parkhurst, Edward G.

    [br]
    b. 29 August 1830 Thompson, Connecticut, USA
    d. 31 July 1901 Hartford, Connecticut, USA
    [br]
    American mechanical engineer and inventor.
    [br]
    Little is known of the early training of Edward G. Parkhurst, but at the time of Civil War (1861–5) he was employed by the Savage Arms Company of Middletown, Connecticut. In 1869 he joined the Pratt \& Whitney Company of Hartford, Connecticut, as Assistant Superintendent and later took charge of their gun department. He was the inventor of many improvements in machine tools and armaments. Among these was an automatic rod feeder for turret lathes, in which movement of a single lever enabled bar stock to be fed through the lathe spindle and gripped by a collet chuck while the machine was in motion. This was patented in August 1871 and was followed by other patents, particularly for improvements in machine guns and their accessories. Parkhurst retired from Pratt \& Whitney c. 1895 but was afterwards associated with the American Ordnance Company and the Bethlehem Steel Company. He was a founder member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1880 and served his home city of Hartford as Councillor and Alderman. In 1900 he contributed to the journal American Machinist some articles of reminiscences dealing with the early history of the American machine-tool industry and, in particular, the earliest milling machines and the origin of the turret lathe.
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Parkhurst, Edward G.

  • 10 Bodmer, Johann Georg

    [br]
    b. 9 December 1786 Zurich, Switzerland
    d. 30 May 1864 Zurich, Switzerland
    [br]
    Swiss mechanical engineer and inventor.
    [br]
    John George Bodmer (as he was known in England) showed signs of great inventive ability even as a child. Soon after completing his apprenticeship to a local millwright, he set up his own work-shop at Zussnacht. One of his first inventions, in 1805, was a shell which exploded on impact. Soon after this he went into partnership with Baron d'Eichthal to establish a cotton mill at St Blaise in the Black Forest. Bodmer designed the water-wheels and all the machinery. A few years later they established a factory for firearms and Bodmer designed special machine tools and developed a system of interchangeable manufacture comparable with American developments at that time. More inventions followed, including a detachable bayonet for breech-loading rifles and a rifled, breech-loading cannon for 12 lb (5.4 kg) shells.
    Bodmer was appointed by the Grand Duke of Baden to the posts of Director General of the Government Iron Works and Inspector of Artillery. He left St Blaise in 1816 and entered completely into the service of the Grand Duke, but before taking up his duties he visited Britain for the first time and made an intensive five-month tour of textile mills, iron works, workshops and similar establishments.
    In 1821 he returned to Switzerland and was engaged in setting up cotton mills and other engineering works. In 1824 he went back to England, where he obtained a patent for his improvements in cotton machinery and set up a mill near Bolton incorporating his ideas. His health failing, he was obliged to return to Switzerland in 1828, but he was soon busy with engineering works there and in France. In 1833 he went to England again, first to Bolton and four years later to Manchester in partnership with H.H.Birley. In the next ten years he patented many more inventions in the fields of textile machinery, steam engines and machine tools. These included a balanced steam engine, a mechanical stoker, steam engine valve gear, gear-cutting machines and a circular planer or vertical lathe, anticipating machines of this type later developed in America by E.P. Bullard. The metric system was used in his workshops and in gearing calculations he introduced the concept of diametral pitch, which then became known as "Manchester Pitch". The balanced engine was built in stationary form and in two locomotives, but although their running was remarkably smooth the additional complication prevented their wider use.
    After the death of H.H.Birley in 1846, Bodmer removed to London until 1848, when he went to Austria. About 1860 he returned to his native town of Zurich. He remained actively engaged in all kinds of inventions up to the end of his life. He obtained fourteen British patents, each of which describes many inventions; two of these patents were extended beyond the normal duration of fourteen years. Two others were obtained on his behalf, one by his brother James in 1813 for his cannon and one relating to railways by Charles Fox in 1847. Many of his inventions had little direct influence but anticipated much later developments. His ideas were sound and some of his engines and machine tools were in use for over sixty years. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1835.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1845, "The advantages of working stationary and marine engines with high-pressure steam, expansively and at great velocities; and of the compensating, or double crank system", Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 4:372–99.
    1846, "On the combustion of fuel in furnaces and steam-boilers, with a description of Bodmer's fire-grate", Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 5:362–8.
    Further Reading
    H.W.Dickinson, 1929–30, "Diary of John George Bodmer, 1816–17", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 10:102–14.
    D.Brownlie, 1925–6, John George Bodmer, his life and work, particularly in relation to the evolution of mechanical stoking', Transactions of the Newcomen Society 6:86–110.
    W.O.Henderson (ed.), 1968, Industrial Britain Under the Regency: The Diaries of Escher, Bodmer, May and de Gallois 1814–1818, London: Frank Cass (a more complete account of his visit to Britain).
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Bodmer, Johann Georg

  • 11 Appleton, Sir Edward Victor

    [br]
    b. 6 September 1892 Bradford, England
    d. 21 April 1965 Edinburgh, Scotland
    [br]
    English physicist awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the ionospheric layer, named after him, which is an efficient reflector of short radio waves, thereby making possible long-distance radio communication.
    [br]
    After early ambitions to become a professional cricketer, Appleton went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he studied under J.J.Thompson and Ernest Rutherford. His academic career interrupted by the First World War, he served as a captain in the Royal Engineers, carrying out investigations into the propagation and fading of radio signals. After the war he joined the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, as a demonstrator in 1920, and in 1924 he moved to King's College, London, as Wheatstone Professor of Physics.
    In the following decade he contributed to developments in valve oscillators (in particular, the "squegging" oscillator, which formed the basis of the first hard-valve time-base) and gained international recognition for research into electromagnetic-wave propagation. His most important contribution was to confirm the existence of a conducting ionospheric layer in the upper atmosphere capable of reflecting radio waves, which had been predicted almost simultaneously by Heaviside and Kennelly in 1902. This he did by persuading the BBC in 1924 to vary the frequency of their Bournemouth transmitter, and he then measured the signal received at Cambridge. By comparing the direct and reflected rays and the daily variation he was able to deduce that the Kennelly- Heaviside (the so-called E-layer) was at a height of about 60 miles (97 km) above the earth and that there was a further layer (the Appleton or F-layer) at about 150 miles (240 km), the latter being an efficient reflector of the shorter radio waves that penetrated the lower layers. During the period 1927–32 and aided by Hartree, he established a magneto-ionic theory to explain the existence of the ionosphere. He was instrumental in obtaining agreement for international co-operation for ionospheric and other measurements in the form of the Second Polar Year (1932–3) and, much later, the International Geophysical Year (1957–8). For all this work, which made it possible to forecast the optimum frequencies for long-distance short-wave communication as a function of the location of transmitter and receiver and of the time of day and year, in 1947 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
    He returned to Cambridge as Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1939, and with M.F. Barnett he investigated the possible use of radio waves for radio-location of aircraft. In 1939 he became Secretary of the Government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, a post he held for ten years. During the Second World War he contributed to the development of both radar and the atomic bomb, and subsequently served on government committees concerned with the use of atomic energy (which led to the establishment of Harwell) and with scientific staff.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted (KCB 1941, GBE 1946). Nobel Prize for Physics 1947. FRS 1927. Vice- President, American Institute of Electrical Engineers 1932. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1933. Institute of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1946. Vice-Chancellor, Edinburgh University 1947. Institution of Civil Engineers Ewing Medal 1949. Royal Medallist 1950. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1962. President, British Association 1953. President, Radio Industry Council 1955–7. Légion d'honneur. LLD University of St Andrews 1947.
    Bibliography
    1925, joint paper with Barnett, Nature 115:333 (reports Appleton's studies of the ionosphere).
    1928, "Some notes of wireless methods of investigating the electrical structure of the upper atmosphere", Proceedings of the Physical Society 41(Part III):43. 1932, Thermionic Vacuum Tubes and Their Applications (his work on valves).
    1947, "The investigation and forecasting of ionospheric conditions", Journal of the
    Institution of Electrical Engineers 94, Part IIIA: 186 (a review of British work on the exploration of the ionosphere).
    with J.F.Herd \& R.A.Watson-Watt, British patent no. 235,254 (squegging oscillator).
    Further Reading
    Who Was Who, 1961–70 1972, VI, London: A. \& C.Black (for fuller details of honours). R.Clark, 1971, Sir Edward Appleton, Pergamon (biography).
    J.Jewkes, D.Sawers \& R.Stillerman, 1958, The Sources of Invention.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Appleton, Sir Edward Victor

  • 12 Fox, Samson

    [br]
    b. 11 July 1838 Bowling, near Bradford, Yorkshire, England
    d. 24 October 1903 Walsall, Staffordshire, England
    [br]
    English engineer who invented the corrugated boiler furnace.
    [br]
    He was the son of a cloth mill worker in Leeds and at the age of 10 he joined his father at the mill. Showing a mechanical inclination, he was apprenticed to a firm of machine-tool makers, Smith, Beacock and Tannett. There he rose to become Foreman and Traveller, and designed and patented tools for cutting bevelled gears. With his brother and one Refitt, he set up the Silver Cross engineering works for making special machine tools. In 1874 he founded the Leeds Forge Company, acting as Managing Director until 1896 and then as Chairman until shortly before his death.
    It was in 1877 that he patented his most important invention, the corrugated furnace for steam-boilers. These furnaces could withstand much higher pressures than the conventional form, and higher working pressures in marine boilers enabled triple-expansion engines to be installed, greatly improving the performance of steamships, and the outcome was the great ocean-going liners of the twentieth century. The first vessel to be equipped with the corrugated furnace was the Pretoria of 1878. At first the furnaces were made by hammering iron plates using swage blocks under a steam hammer. A plant for rolling corrugated plates was set up at Essen in Germany, and Fox installed a similar mill at his works in Leeds in 1882.
    In 1886 Fox installed a Siemens steelmaking plant and he was notable in the movement for replacing wrought iron with steel. He took out several patents for making pressed-steel underframes for railway wagons. The business prospered and Fox opened a works near Chicago in the USA, where in addition to wagon underframes he manufactured the first American pressed-steel carriages. He later added a works at Pittsburgh.
    Fox was the first in England to use water gas for his metallurgical operations and for lighting, with a saving in cost as it was cheaper than coal gas. He was also a pioneer in the acetylene industry, producing in 1894 the first calcium carbide, from which the gas is made.
    Fox took an active part in public life in and around Leeds, being thrice elected Mayor of Harrogate. As a music lover, he was a benefactor of musicians, contributing no less than £45,000 towards the cost of building the Royal College of Music in London, opened in 1894. In 1897 he sued for libel the author Jerome K.Jerome and the publishers of the Today magazine for accusing him of misusing his great generosity to the College to give a misleading impression of his commercial methods and prosperity. He won the case but was not awarded costs.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Society of Arts James Watt Silver Medal and Howard Gold Medal. Légion d'honneur 1889.
    Bibliography
    1877, British Patent nos. 1097 and 2530 (the corrugated furnace or "flue", as it was often called).
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1903, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers: 919–21.
    Obituary, 1903, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (the fullest of the many obituary notices).
    G.A.Newby, 1993, "Behind the fire doors: Fox's corrugated furnace 1877 and the high pressure steamship", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 64.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Fox, Samson

  • 13 Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander

    [br]
    b. 13 April 1892 Brechin, Angus, Scotland
    d. 6 December 1973 Inverness, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish engineer and scientific adviser known for his work on radar.
    [br]
    Following education at Brechin High School, Watson-Watt entered University College, Dundee (then a part of the University of St Andrews), obtaining a BSc in engineering in 1912. From 1912 until 1921 he was Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews, but during the First World War he also held various posts in the Meteorological Office. During. this time, in 1916 he proposed the use of cathode ray oscillographs for radio-direction-finding displays. He joined the newly formed Radio Research Station at Slough when it was opened in 1924, and 3 years later, when it amalgamated with the Radio Section of the National Physical Laboratory, he became Superintendent at Slough. At this time he proposed the name "ionosphere" for the ionized layer in the upper atmosphere. With E.V. Appleton and J.F.Herd he developed the "squegger" hard-valve transformer-coupled timebase and with the latter devised a direction-finding radio-goniometer.
    In 1933 he was asked to investigate possible aircraft counter-measures. He soon showed that it was impossible to make the wished-for radio "death-ray", but had the idea of using the detection of reflected radio-waves as a means of monitoring the approach of enemy aircraft. With six assistants he developed this idea and constructed an experimental system of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) in which arrays of aerials were used to detect the reflected signals and deduce the bearing and height. To realize a practical system, in September 1936 he was appointed Director of the Bawdsey Research Station near Felixstowe and carried out operational studies of radar. The result was that within two years the East Coast of the British Isles was equipped with a network of radar transmitters and receivers working in the 7–14 metre band—the so-called "chain-home" system—which did so much to assist the efficient deployment of RAF Fighter Command against German bombing raids on Britain in the early years of the Second World War.
    In 1938 he moved to the Air Ministry as Director of Communications Development, becoming Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, then Deputy Chairman of the War Cabinet Radio Board in 1943. After the war he set up Sir Robert Watson-Watt \& Partners, an industrial consultant firm. He then spent some years in relative retirement in Canada, but returned to Scotland before his death.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1942. CBE 1941. FRS 1941. US Medal of Merit 1946. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1948. Franklin Institute Elliot Cresson Medal 1957. LLD St Andrews 1943. At various times: President, Royal Meteorological Society, Institute of Navigation and Institute of Professional Civil Servants; Vice-President, American Institute of Radio Engineers.
    Bibliography
    1923, with E.V.Appleton \& J.F.Herd, British patent no. 235,254 (for the "squegger"). 1926, with J.F.Herd, "An instantaneous direction reading radio goniometer", Journal of
    the Institution of Electrical Engineers 64:611.
    1933, The Cathode Ray Oscillograph in Radio Research.
    1935, Through the Weather Hours (autobiography).
    1936, "Polarisation errors in direction finders", Wireless Engineer 13:3. 1958, Three Steps to Victory.
    1959, The Pulse of Radar.
    1961, Man's Means to his End.
    Further Reading
    S.S.Swords, 1986, Technical History of the Beginnings of Radar, Stevenage: Peter Peregrinus.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander

  • 14 Perret, Auguste

    [br]
    b. 12 February 1874 Ixelles, near Brussels, Belgium
    d. 26 February 1954 Le Havre (?), France
    [br]
    French architect who pioneered and established building design in reinforced concrete in a style suited to the modern movement.
    [br]
    Auguste Perret belonged to the family contracting firm of A. \& G.Perret, which early specialized in the use of reinforced concrete. His eight-storey building at 25 bis Rue Franklin in Paris, built in 1902–3, was the first example of frame construction in this material and established its viability for structural design. Both ground plan and façade are uncompromisingly modern, the simplicity of the latter being relieved by unobtrusive faience decoration. The two upper floors, which are set back, and the open terrace roof garden set a pattern for future schemes. All of Perret's buildings had reinforced-concrete structures and this was clearly delineated on the façade designs. The concept was uncommon in Europe at the time, when eclecticism still largely ruled, but was derived from the late nineteenth-century skyscraper façades built by Louis Sullivan in America. In 1905–6 came Perret's Garage Ponthieu in Paris; a striking example of exposed concrete, it had a central façade window glazed in modern design in rich colours. By the 1920s ferroconcrete was in more common use, but Perret still led the field in France with his imaginative, bold use of the material. His most original structure is the Church of Notre Dame at Le Raincy on the outskirts of Paris (1922–3). The imposing exterior with its tall tower in diminishing stages is finely designed, but the interior has magnificence. It is a wide, light church, the segmented vaulted roof supported on slender columns. The whole structure is in concrete apart from the glass window panels, which extend the full height of the walls all around the church. They provide a symphony of colour culminating in deep blue behind the altar. Because of the slenderness of the columns and the richness of the glass, this church possesses a spiritual atmosphere and unimpeded sight and sound of and from the altar for everyone. It became the prototype for churches all over Europe for decades, from Moser in prewar Switzerland to Spence's postwar Coventry Cathedral.
    In a long working life Perret designed buildings for a wide range of purposes, adhering to his preference for ferroconcrete and adapting its use according to each building's needs. In the 1940s he was responsible for the railway station at Amiens, the Atomic Centre at Saclay and, one of his last important works, the redevelopment after wartime damage of the town centre of Le Havre. For the latter, he laid out large open squares enclosed by prefabricated units, which display a certain monotony, despite the imposing town hall and Church of St Joseph in the Place de L'Hôtel de Ville.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President des Réunions Internationales des Architectes. American Society of the French Legion of Honour Gold Medal 1950. Elected after the Second World War to the Institut de France. First President of the International Union of Architects on its creation in 1948. RIBA Royal Gold Medal 1948.
    Further Reading
    P.Blater, 1939, "Work of the architect A.Perret", Architektura SSSR (Moscow) 7:57 (illustrated article).
    1848 "Auguste Perret: a pioneer in reinforced concrete", Civil Engineers' Review, pp.
    296–300.
    Peter Collins, 1959, Concrete: The Vision of a New Architecture: A Study of Auguste Perret and his Precursors, Faber \& Faber.
    Marcel Zahar, 1959, D'Une Doctrine d'Architecture: Auguste Perret, Paris: Vincent Fréal.
    DY

    Biographical history of technology > Perret, Auguste

  • 15 Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo

    [br]
    b. 25 April 1874 Bologna, Italy
    d. 20 July 1937 Rome, Italy
    [br]
    Italian radio pioneer whose inventiveness and business skills made radio communication a practical proposition.
    [br]
    Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.
    The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.
    His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.
    With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Nobel Prize for Physics (jointly with K.F. Braun) 1909. Russian Order of S t Anne. Commander of St Maurice and St Lazarus. Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown (i.e. Knight) of Italy 1902. Freedom of Rome 1903. Honorary DSc Oxford. Honorary LLD Glasgow. Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy 1905. Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal. Honorary knighthood (GCVO) 1914. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1920. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1924. Created Marquis (Marchese) 1929. Nominated to the Italian Senate 1929. President, Italian Academy 1930. Rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1934.
    Bibliography
    1896, "Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and in apparatus thereof", British patent no. 12,039.
    1 June 1898, British patent no. 12,326 (transformer or "jigger" resonant circuit).
    1901, British patent no. 7,777 (selective tuning).
    1904, British patent no. 763,772 ("four circuit" tuning arrangement).
    Further Reading
    D.Marconi, 1962, My Father, Marconi.
    W.J.Baker, 1970, A History of the Marconi Company, London: Methuen.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo

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