A History of Electrical Engineering

1) развитие

2) результаты (расчета, испытаний)

3) данные (по надежности, качеству)

4) практика; опыт (работы, эксплуатации)

5) использование; применение

6) пример

7) предыстория (какого-л. процесса; напр., нагрева, охлаждения)

8) ретроспектива

9) исследование; анализ

10) состояние (напр., системы)

11) процесс; поведение; картина

12) характеристика (напр., течения)

13) изменение ( во времени); закономерность; зависимость

14) динамика (состояния, изменения; напр., толщины масляной пленки); временная зависимость

15) досье ( комплект предшествующих документов)

16) синон. progress

17) (в грам. знач. прил.) предшествующий

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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Kapp entered the Polytechnic School in Zurich in 1869 and gained a mechanical engineering diploma. He became a member of the engineering staff at the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873, and then spent some time in the Austrian navy before entering the service of Gwynne \& Co. of London, where he designed centrifugal pumps and gas exhausters. Kapp resolved to become an electrical engineer after a visit to the Paris Electrical Exhibition of 1881 and in the following year was appointed Manager of the Crompton Co. works at Chelmsford. There he developed and patented the dynamo with compound field winding. Also at that time, with Crompton, he patented electrical measuring instruments with over-saturated electromagnets. He became a naturalized British subject in 1881.

In 1886 Kapp's most influential paper was published. This described his concept of the magnetic circuit, providing for the first time a sound theoretical basis for dynamo design. The theory was also developed independently by J. Hopkinson. After commencing practice as a consulting engineer in 1884 he carried out design work on dynamos and also electricity-supply and -traction schemes in Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia and Switzerland. From 1891 to 1894 much of his time was spent designing a new generating station in Bristol, officially as Assistant to W.H. Preece. There followed an appointment in Germany as General Secretary of the Verband Deutscher Electrotechniker. For some years he edited the Electrotechnische Zeitschrift and was also a part-time lecturer at the Charlottenberg Technical High School in Berlin. In 1904 Kapp was invited to accept the new Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, which he occupied until 1919. He was the author of several books on electrical machine and transformer design.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Photography, film and optics

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Paul was educated at the City of London School and Finsbury Technical College. He worked first for a short time in the Bell Telephone Works in Antwerp, Belgium, and then in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers in the Strand until 1891, when he opened an instrument-making business at 44 Hatton Garden, London. He specialized in the design and manufacture of electrical instruments, including the Ayrton Mather galvanometer. In 1902, with a purpose-built factory, he began large batch production of his instruments. He also opened a factory in New York, where uncalibrated instruments from England were calibrated for American customers. In 1903 Paul introduced the Unipivot galvanometer, in which the coil was supported at the centre of gravity of the moving system on a single pivot. The pivotal friction was less than in a conventional instrument and could be used without accurate levelling, the sensitivity being far beyond that of any pivoted galvanometer then in existence.

In 1894 Paul was asked by two entrepreneurs to make copies of Edison's kinetoscope, the pioneering peep-show moving-picture viewer, which had just arrived in London. Discovering that Edison had omitted to patent the machine in England, and observing that there was considerable demand for the machine from show-people, he began production, making six before the end of the year. Altogether, he made about sixty-six units, some of which were exported. Although Edison's machine was not patented, his films were certainly copyrighted, so Paul now needed a cinematographic camera to make new subjects for his customers. Early in 1895 he came into contact with Birt Acres, who was also working on the design of a movie camera. Acres's design was somewhat impractical, but Paul constructed a working model with which Acres filmed the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March, and the Derby at Epsom on 29 May. Paul was unhappy with the inefficient design, and developed a new intermittent mechanism based on the principle of the Maltese cross. Despite having signed a ten-year agreement with Paul, Acres split with him on 12 July 1895, after having unilaterally patented their original camera design on 27 May. By the early weeks of 1896, Paul had developed a projector mechanism that also used the Maltese cross and which he demonstrated at the Finsbury Technical College on 20 February 1896. His Theatrograph was intended for sale, and was shown in a number of venues in London during March, notably at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. There the renamed Animatographe was used to show, among other subjects, the Derby of 1896, which was won by the Prince of Wales's horse "Persimmon" and the film of which was shown the next day to enthusiastic crowds. The production of films turned out to be quite profitable: in the first year of the business, from March 1896, Paul made a net profit of £12,838 on a capital outlay of about £1,000. By the end of the year there were at least five shows running in London that were using Paul's projectors and screening films made by him or his staff.

Paul played a major part in establishing the film business in England through his readiness to sell apparatus at a time when most of his rivals reserved their equipment for sole exploitation. He went on to become a leading producer of films, specializing in trick effects, many of which he pioneered. He was affectionately known in the trade as "Daddy Paul", truly considered to be the "father" of the British film industry. He continued to appreciate fully the possibilities of cinematography for scientific work, and in collaboration with Professor Silvanus P.Thompson films were made to illustrate various phenomena to students.

Paul ended his involvement with film making in 1910 to concentrate on his instrument business; on his retirement in 1920, this was amalgamated with the Cambridge Instrument Company. In his will he left shares valued at over £100,000 to form the R.W.Paul Instrument Fund, to be administered by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, of which he had been a member since 1887. The fund was to provide instruments of an unusual nature to assist physical research.

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BC / GW

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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After completing a mechanical engineering apprenticeship Wilde commenced in business as a telegraph and lightning conductor specialist in Lancashire. Several years spent on the design of an alphabetic telegraph resulted in a number of patents. In 1864 he secured a patent for an electromagnetic generator which gave alternating current from a shuttle-wound armature, the field being excited by a small direct-current magneto. Wilde's invention was described to the Royal Society by Faraday in March 1866. When demonstrated at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, Wilde's machine produced sufficient power to maintain an arc light. The small size of the generator provided a contrast to the large and heavy magnetoelectric machines also exhibited. He discovered, by experiment, that alternators in synchronism could be connected in parallel. At about the same time John Hopkinson arrived at the same conclusions on theoretical grounds.

Between 1866 and 1877 he sold ninety-four machines with commutators for electroplating purposes, a number being purchased by Elkingtons of Birmingham. He also supplied generators for the first use of electric searchlights on battleships. In his early experiments Wilde was extremely close to the discovery of true self-excitation from remnant magnetism, a principle which he was to discover in 1867 on machines intended for electroplating. His patents proved to be financially successful and he retired from business in 1884. During the remaining thirty-five years of his life he published many scientific papers, turning from experimental work to philosophical and, finally, theological matters. His record as an inventor established him as a pioneer of electrical engineering, but his lack of scientific training was to restrict his later contributions.

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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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Although he developed dynamos for electroplating and lighting, Weston's major contribution to technology was his invention of a moving-coil voltmeter and the standard cell which bears his name. After some years as a medical student, during which he gained a knowledge of chemistry, he abandoned his studies. Emigrating to New York in 1870, he was employed by a manufacturer of photographic chemicals. There followed a period with an electroplating company during which he built his first dynamo. In 1877 some business associates financed a company to build these machines and, later, arc-lighting equipment. By 1882 the Weston Company had been absorbed into the United States Electric Lighting Company, which had a counterpart in Britain, the Maxim Weston Company. By the time Weston resigned from the company, in 1886, he had been granted 186 patents. He then began the work in which he made his greatest contribution, the science of electrical measurement.

The Weston meter, the first successful portable measuring instrument with a pivoted coil, was made in 1886. By careful arrangement of the magnet, coil and control springs, he achieved a design with a well-damped movement, which retained its calibration. These instruments were produced commercially on a large scale and the moving-coil principle was soon adopted by many manufacturers. In 1892 he invented manganin, an alloy with a small negative temperature coefficient, for use as resistances in his voltmeters.

The Weston standard cell was invented in 1892. Using his chemical knowledge he produced a cell, based on mercury and cadmium, which replaced the Clark cell as a voltage reference source. The Weston cell became the recognized standard at the International Conference on Electrical Units and Standards held in London in 1908.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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After leaving an apprenticeship as a shoemaker, Sturgeon enlisted in the militia. Self-educated during service as a private in the Royal Artillery, he began to construct scientific apparatus. When he left the army in 1820 Sturgeon became an industrious writer, contributing papers to the Philosophical Magazine. In 1823 he was appointed Lecturer in Natural Science at the East India Company's Military College in Addiscombe. His invention in 1823 of an electromagnet with a horseshoe-shaped, soft iron core provided a much more concentrated magnetic field than previously obtained. An electric motor he designed in 1832 embodied his invention of the first metallic commutator. This was used to rotate a meat-roasting jack. Over an extended period he conducted researches into atmospheric electricity and also introduced the practice of amalgamating zinc in primary cells to prevent local action.

Sturgeon became Lecturer at the Adelaide Gallery, London, in 1832, an appointment of short duration, terminating when the gallery closed. In 1836 he established a monthly publication, The Annals of Electricity, Magnetism and Chemistry; and Guardian of Experimental Science, the first journal in England to be devoted to the subject. It was to this journal that James Prescot Joule contributed the results of his own researches in electromagnetism. Due to lack of financial support the publication ceased in 1843 after ten volumes had been issued. At the age of 57 Sturgeon became Superintendent of the Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in Manchester; after this gallery closed, the last five years of his life were spent in considerable poverty.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Born on a cattle ranch, Forrester obtained a BSc in electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska in 1939 and his MSc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained to teach and carry out research. Becoming interested in computing, he established the Digital Computer Laboratory at MIT in 1945 and became involved in the construction of Whirlwind I, an early general-purpose computer completed in March 1951 and used for flight-simulation by the US Army Air Force. Finding the linear memories then available for storing data a major limiting factor in the speed at which computers were able to operate, he developed a three-dimensional store based on the binary switching of the state of small magnetic cores that could be addressed and switched by a matrix of wires carrying pulses of current. The machine used parallel synchronous fixed-point computing, with fifteen binary digits and a plus sign, i.e. 16 bits in all, and contained 5,000 vacuum tubes, eleven semiconductors and a 2 MHz clock for the arithmetic logic unit. It occupied a two-storey building and consumed 150kW of electricity. From his experience with the development and use of computers, he came to realize their great potential for the simulation and modelling of real situations and hence for the solution of a variety of management problems, using data communications and the technique now known as interactive graphics. His later career was therefore in this field, first at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts (1951) and subsequently (from 1956) as Professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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See also: Burks, Arthur Walter; Goldstine, Herman H.; Wilkes, Maurice Vincent; Williams, Sir Frederic Calland

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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Thomson accompanied his parents to Philadelphia in 1858; he received his education at the Central High School there, and afterwards remained as a teacher of chemistry. At this time he constructed several dynamos after studying their design, and was invited by the Franklin Institute to give lectures on the subject. After observing an arc-lighting system operating commercially in Paris in 1878, he collaborated with Edwin J. Houston, a senior colleague at the Central High School, in working out the details of such a system. An automatic regulating device was designed which, by altering the position of the brushes on the dynamo commutator, maintained a constant current irrespective of the number of lamps in use. To overcome the problem of commutation at the high voltages necessary to operate up to forty arc lamps in a series circuit, Thomson contrived a centrifugal blower which suppressed sparking. The resulting system was efficient and reliable with low operating costs. Thomson's invention of the motor meter in 1882 was the first of many such instruments for the measurement of electrical energy. In 1886 he invented electric resistance welding using low-voltage alternating current derived from a transformer of his own design. Thomson's work is recorded in his technical papers and in the 700plus patents granted for his inventions.

The American Electric Company, founded to exploit the Thomson patents, later became the Thomson-Houston Company, which was destined to be a leader in the electrical manufacturing industry. They entered the field of electric power in 1887, supplying railway equipment and becoming a major innovator of electric railways. Thomson-Houston and Edison General Electric were consolidated to form General Electric in 1892. Thomson remained associated with this company throughout his career.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Following education at Stockport Grammar School, Williams entered Manchester University in 1929, gaining his BSc in 1932 and MSc in 1933. After a short time as a college apprentice with Metropolitan Vickers, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study for a DPhil, which he was awarded in 1936. He returned to Manchester University that year as an assistant lecturer, gaining his DSc in 1939. Following the outbreak of the Second World War he worked for the Scientific Civil Service, initially at the Bawdsey Research Station and then at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern, Worcestershire. There he was involved in research on non-incandescent amplifiers and diode rectifiers and the development of the first practical radar system capable of identifying friendly aircraft. Later in the war, he devised an automatic radar system suitable for use by fighter aircraft.

After the war he resumed his academic career at Manchester, becoming Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the University Electrotechnical Laboratory in 1946. In the same year he succeeded in developing a data-memory device based on the cathode ray tube, in which the information was stored and read by electron-beam scanning of a charge-retaining target. The Williams storage tube, as it became known, not only found obvious later use as a means of storing single-frame, still television images but proved to be a vital component of the pioneering Manchester University MkI digital computer. Because it enabled both data and program instructions to be stored in the computer, it was soon used worldwide in the development of the early stored-program computers.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Public utilities

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After an education at Nunhead Grammar School, Hammond founded engineering businesses in Middlesbrough and London. Obtaining the first concession from the Anglo- American Brush Company for the exploitation of their system in Britain, he was instrumental in popularizing the Brush arc-lighting generator. Schemes using this system, which he established at Chesterfield, Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings in 1881–2, were the earliest public electricity-supply ventures in Britain. On the invention of the incandescent lamp, high-voltage Brush dynamos were employed to operate both arc and incandescent lamps. The limitations of this arrangement led Hammond to become the sole agent for the Ferranti alternator, introduced in 1882. Commencing practice as a consulting engineer, Hammond was responsible for the construction of many electricity works in the United Kingdom, of which the most notable were those at Leeds, Hackney (London) and Dublin, in addition to many abroad. Appreciating the need for trained engineers for the new electrical industry and profession then being created, in 1882 he established the Hammond Electrical Engineering College. Later, in association with Francis Ince, he founded Faraday House, a training school that pioneered the concept of "sandwich courses" for engineers. Between 1883 and 1903 he paid several visits to the United States to study developments in electric traction and was one of the advisers to the Postmaster General on the acquisition of the telephone companies.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Recording

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Poniatoff was educated at the University of Kazan, the Imperial College in Moscow, and the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, gaining degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He was in Germany when the First World War broke out, but he managed to escape back to Russia, where he served as an Air Force pilot with the Imperial Russian Navy. During the Russian Revolution he was a pilot with the White Russian Forces, and escaped into China in 1920; there he found work as an assistant engineer in the Shanghai Power Company. In 1927 he immigrated to the USA, becoming a US citizen in 1932. He obtained a post in the research and development department of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, and later at Dalmo Victor, San Carlos, California. During the Second World War he was involved in the development of airborne radar for the US Navy.

In 1944, taking his initials to form the title, Poniatoff founded the AMPEX Corporation to manufacture components for the airborne radar developed at General Electric, but in 1946 he turned to the production of audio tape recorders developed from the German wartime Telefunken Magnetophon machine (the first tape recorder in the truest sense). In this he was supported by the entertainer Bing Crosby, who needed high-quality replay facilities for broadcasting purposes, and in 1947 he was able to offer a professional-quality product and the business prospered.

With the rapid post-war boom in television broadcasting in the USA, a need soon arose for a video recorder to provide "time-shifting" of live TV programmes between the different US time zones. Many companies therefore endeavoured to produce a video tape recorder (VTR) using the same single-track, fixed-head, longitudinal-scan system used for audio, but the very much higher bandwidth required involved an unacceptably high tape-speed. AMPEX attempted to solve the problem by using twelve parallel tracks and a machine was demonstrated in 1952, but it proved unsatisfactory.

The development team, which included Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby, then devised a four-head transverse-scan system in which a quadruplex head rotating at 14,400 rpm was made to scan across the width of a 2 in. (5 cm) tape with a tape-to-head speed of the order of 160 ft/sec (about 110 mph; 49 m/sec or 176 km/h) but with a longitudinal tape speed of only 15 in./sec (0.38 m/sec). In this way, acceptable picture quality was obtained with an acceptable tape consumption. Following a public demonstration on 14 April 1956, commercial produc-tion of studio-quality machines began to revolutionize the production and distribution of TV programmes, and the perfecting of time-base correctors which could stabilize the signal timing to a few nanoseconds made colour VTRs a practical proposition. However, AMPEX did not rest on its laurels and in the face of emerging competition from helical scan machines, where the tracks are laid diagonally on the tape, the company was able to demonstrate its own helical machine in 1957. Another development was the Videofile system, in which 250,000 pages of facsimile could be recorded on a single tape, offering a new means of archiving information. By 1986, quadruplex VTRs were obsolete, but Poniatoff's role in making television recording possible deserves a place in history.

Poniatoff was President of AMPEX Corporation until 1955 and then became Chairman of the Board, a position he held until 1970.

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KF / GB-N

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Laithwaite's education at Kirkham Grammar School and Regent Street Polytechnic, London, was followed by service in the Royal Air Force. After entering Manchester University in 1946 and graduating in 1949, he joined the university staff and became Secretary to the Inaugural Conference of the Ferranti Mark I computer. In 1964 he moved to Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and became Professor of Heavy Electrical Engineering. From 1967 to 1976 he also held the post of External Professor of Applied Electricity at the Royal Institution. Research into the use of linear induction motors as shuttle drives in weaving looms was followed by investigations into their application to conveyors in industrial processes and as high-speed propulsion units for railway vehicles. With considerable involvement in a tracked hovercraft project in the 1960s and 1970s, he proposed the concept of transverse flux and the magnetic river high-speed linear induction machine. Linear motors and electromagnetic levitation have been applied to high-speed propulsion in the United States, France and Japan.

Laithwaite has written five books and over one hundred papers on the subjects of linear motors and electromagnetic levitation. Two series of Christmas lectures were presented by him at the Royal Institution.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Weapons and armour

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Born in Poland, Rickover was brought to the United States early in his life by his father, who settled in Chicago as a tailor. Commissioned into the US Navy in 1922, he specialized in electrical engineering (graduating from the US Naval Postgraduate School, Columbia, in 1929), quali-fied as a Submariner in 1931 and then held various posts until appointed Head of the Electrical Section of the Bureau of Ships in 1939. He held this post until the end of the Second World War.

Rickover was involved briefly in the "Manhattan" atomic bomb project before being assigned to an atomic energy submarine project in 1946. Ultimately he was made responsible for the development and building of the world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. He was convinced of the need to make the nuclear submarine an instrument of strategic importance, and this led to the development of the ballistic missile submarine and the Polaris programme.

Throughout his career he was no stranger to controversy; indeed, his remaining on the active service list as a full admiral until the age of 82 (when forced to retire on the direct intervention of the Navy Secretary) indicates a man beyond the ordinary. He imposed his will on all around him and backed it with a brilliant and clear-thinking brain; his influence was even felt by the Royal Navy during the building of the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought. He made many friends, but he also had many detractors.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Public utilities, Telecommunications

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After education at King's College, London, in 1852 Preece entered the office of Edwin Clark with the intention of becoming a civil engineer, but graduate studies at the Royal Institution under Faraday fired his enthusiasm for things electrical. His earliest work, as connected with telegraphy and in particular its application for securing the safe working of railways; in 1853 he obtained an appointment with the Electric and National Telegraph Company. In 1856 he became Superintendent of that company's southern district, but four years later he moved to telegraph work with the London and South West Railway. From 1858 to 1862 he was also Engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company. When the various telegraph companies in Britain were transferred to the State in 1870, Preece became a Divisional Engineer in the General Post Office (GPO). Promotion followed in 1877, when he was appointed Chief Electrician to the Post Office. One of the first specimens of Bell's telephone was brought to England by Preece and exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1877. From 1892 to 1899 he served as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. During this time he made a number of important contributions to telegraphy, including the use of water as part of telegraph circuits across the Solent (1882) and the Bristol Channel (1888). He also discovered the existence of inductive effects between parallel wires, and with Fleming showed that a current (thermionic) flowed between the hot filament and a cold conductor in an incandescent lamp.

Preece was distinguished by his administrative ability, some scientific insight, considerable engineering intuition and immense energy. He held erroneous views about telephone transmission and, not accepting the work of Oliver Heaviside, made many errors when planning trunk circuits. Prior to the successful use of Hertzian waves for wireless communication Preece carried out experiments, often on a large scale, in attempts at wireless communication by inductive methods. These became of historic interest only when the work of Maxwell and Hertz was developed by Guglielmo Marconi. It is to Preece that credit should be given for encouraging Marconi in 1896 and collaborating with him in his early experimental work on radio telegraphy.

While still employed by the Post Office, Preece contributed to the development of numerous early public electricity schemes, acting as Consultant and often supervising their construction. At Worcester he was responsible for Britain's largest nineteenth-century public hydro-electric station. He received a knighthood on his retirement in 1899, after which he continued his consulting practice in association with his two sons and Major Philip Cardew. Preece contributed some 136 papers and printed lectures to scientific journals, ninety-nine during the period 1877 to 1894.

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GW / KF

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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Colpitts obtained Bachelor's degrees at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, and Harvard in 1894 and 1896, respectively, followed by a Master's degree at Harvard in 1897. After two years as assistant to the professor of physics there, he joined the American Bell Telephone Company. When the Bell Company was reorganized in 1907, he moved to the Western Electric branch of the company in New York as Head of the Physical Laboratories. In 1911 he became a director of the Research Laboratories, and in 1917 he became Assistant Chief Engineer of the company. During this time he invented both the push-pull amplifier and the Colpitts oscillator, both major developments in communications. In 1917, during the First World War, he spent some time in France helping to set up the US Signal Corps Research Laboratories. Afterwards he continued to do much, both technically and as a manager, to place telephone communications on a firm scientific basis, retiring as Vice-President of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1937. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1941 he was recalled from retirement and appointed Director of the Engineering Foundation to work on submarine warfare techniques, particularly echo-ranging.

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See also: Hartley, Ralph V.L.

SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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Kompfner obtained a degree in engineering from the Vienna Technische Hochschule in 1931 and qualified as a Diplom-Ingenieur in Architecture two years later. The following year, with a worsening political situation in Austria, he moved to England and became an architectural apprentice. In 1936 he became Managing Director of a building firm owned by a relative, but at the same time he was avidly studying physics and electronics. His first patent, for a television pick-up device, was filed in 1935 and granted in 1937, but was not in fact taken up. In June 1940 he was interned on the Isle of Man, but as a result of a paper previously sent by him to the Editor of Wireless Engineer he was released the following December and sent to join the group at Birmingham University working on centimetric radar. There he worked on klystrons, with little success, but as a result of the experience gained he eventually invented the travelling-wave tube (TWT), which was based on a helical transmission line. After disbandment of the Birmingham team, in 1946 Kompfner moved to the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford and in 1947 he became a British subject. At the Clarendon Laboratory he met J.R. Pierce of Bell Laboratories, who worked out the theory of operation of the TWT. After gaining his DPhil at Oxford in 1951, Kompfner accepted a post as Principal Scientific Officer at Signals Electronic Research Laboratories, Baldock, but very soon after that he was invited by Pierce to work at Bell on microwave tubes. There, in 1952, he invented the backward-wave oscillator (BWO). He was appointed Director of Electronics Research in 1955 and Director of Communications Research in 1962, having become a US citizen in 1957. In 1958, with Pierce, he designed Echo 1, the first (passive) satellite, which was launched in August 1960. He was also involved with the development of Telstar, the first active communications satellite, which was launched in 1962. Following his retirement from Bell in 1973, he continued to pursue research, alternately at Stanford, California, and Oxford, England.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Sir Alexander Kennedy was trained as a marine engineer. The son of a Congregational minister, he was educated at the City of London School and the School of Mines, Jermyn Street. He was then apprenticed to J. \& W.Dudgeon of Millwall, marine engineers, and went on to become a draughtsman to Sir Charles Marsh Palmer of Jarrow (with whom he took part in the development of the compound steam-engine for marine use) and T.M.Tennant \& Co. of Leith. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Engineering at University College, London. He built up an influential School of Engineering, being the first in England to integrate laboratory work as a regular feature of instruction. The engineering laboratory that he established in 1878 has been described as "the first of its kind in England" (Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers). He and his students conducted important experiments on the strength and elasticity of materials, boiler testing and related subjects. He followed the teaching of Franz Reuleaux, whose Kinematics of Machinery he translated from the German.

While thus breaking new educational ground at University College, Kennedy concurrently established a very thriving private practice as a consulting engineer in partnership with Bernard Maxwell Jenkin (the son of Fleeming Jenkin), to pursue which he relinquished his academic posts in 1889. He planned and installed the whole electricity system for the Westminster Electric Supply Corporation, and other electricity companies. He was also heavily involved in the development of electrically powered transport systems. During the First World War he served on a panel of the Munitions Invention Department, and after the war he undertook to record photographically the scenes of desolation in his book From Ypres to Verdun (1921). Towards the end of his life, he pursued his interest in archaeology with the exploration of Petra, recorded in a monograph: Petra. Its History and Monuments (1925). He also joined the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1879, becoming the President of that body in 1894, and he joined the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1890. Kennedy was thus something of an engineering polymath, as well as being an outstanding engineering educationalist.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Telecommunications

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After graduating from University College, London, Ayrton became for a short time a pupil of Sir William Thomson in Glasgow. For five years he was employed in the Indian Telegraph Service, eventually as Superintendent, where he assisted in revolutionizing the system, devising methods of fault detection and elimination. In 1873 he was invited by the Japanese Government to assist as Professor of Physics and Telegraphy in founding the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo. There he created a teaching laboratory that served as a model for those he was later to organize in England and which were copied elsewhere. It was in Tokyo that his joint researches with Professor John Perry began, an association that continued after their return to England. In 1879 he became Professor of Technical Physics at the City and Guilds Institute in Finsbury, London, and later was appointed Professor of Physics at the Central Institution in South Kensington.

The inventions of Avrton and Perrv included an electric tricycle in 1882, the first practicable portable ammeter and other electrical measuring instruments. By 1890, when the research partnership ended, they had published nearly seventy papers in their joint names, the emphasis being on a mathematical treatment of subjects including electric motor design, construction of electrical measuring instruments, thermodynamics and the economical use of electric conductors. Ayrton was then employed as a consulting engineer by government departments and acted as an expert witness in many important patent cases.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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After education in Sweden at the High School and University of Lund and the Royal Institution of Technology in Stockholm, Alexanderson took a postgraduate course at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Engineering College. In 1901 he began work for the Swedish C \& C Electric Company, joining the General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York, the following year. There, in 1906, together with Fessenden, he developed a series of high-power, high-frequency alternators, which had a dramatic effect on radio communications and resulted in the first real radio broadcast. His early interest in television led to working demonstrations in his own home in 1925 and at the General Electric laboratories in 1927, and to the first public demonstration of large-screen (7 ft (2.13 m) diagonal) projection TV in 1930. Another invention of significance was the "amplidyne", a sensitive manufacturing-control system subsequently used during the Second World War for controlling anti-aircraft guns. He also contributed to developments in electric propulsion and radio aerials.

He retired from General Electric in 1948, but continued television research as a consultant for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), filing his 321st patent in 1955.

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