Austro-

амер.; разг.

1900-1959

   Nacido en Budapest, este austro-hungaro trasplantado a los Estados Unidos sera siempre recordado como el director de Gilda (1946), en la tercera de las cuatro veces en que dirigio a Rita Hayworth. Sus peliculas en general y sus westerns en particular tienen indudable interes, salvo alguna deshonrosa excepcion, como la tediosa El cisne (The Swan, 1956).

   Dirigio dos biopics musicales, Cancion inolvidable (A Song to Remember, 1945) donde Cornel Wilde interpretaba a Chopin, y Sueno de amor (Song without End, 1960), con Dirk Bogarde como Liszt. Fallecio durante el rodaje de esta pelicula, que debio acabar George Cukor. Rapsodia (Rhapsody, 1954) es tambien una pelicula musical, gran parte de cuyo metra je se dedica a la interpretacion de dos conciertos, uno para violin y otro para piano. Los dos westerns de Vidor son una parte irrelevante de su filmografia.

   FILMOGRAFIA

    The Arizonian (El valiente de Arizona). 1935. 75 minutos. Blanco y Negro. RKO. Richard Dix, Margot Grahame, Preston Foster, Louis Calhern.

    The Desperadoes (Los desesperados). 1943. 85 minutos. Technicolor. Columbia. Randolph Scott, Claire Trevor, Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes.

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Engerth was Chairman of the judges for the Semmering Locomotive Trials, held in 1851 to find locomotives suitable for working the sharply curved and steeply graded section of the Vienna-Trieste railway that was being built over the Semmering Pass, the first of the transalpine main lines. When none of the four locomotives entered proved suitable, Engerth designed his own. Six coupled wheels were at the fore part of the locomotive, with the connecting rods driving the rear pair: at the back of the locomotive the frames of the tender were extended forward on either side of the firebox, the front wheels of the tender were ahead of it, and the two parts were connected by a spherical pivot ahead of these. Part of the locomotive's weight was carried by the tender portion, and the two pairs of tender wheels were coupled by rods and powered by a geared drive from the axle of the rear driving-wheels. The powered drive to the tender wheels proved a failure, but the remaining characteristics of the locomotive, namely short rigid wheel-base, large firebox, flexibility and good tracking on curves (as drawbar pull was close behind the driving axle), were sufficient for the type to be a success. It was used on many railways in Europe and examples in modified form were built in Spain as recently as 1956. Engerth became General Manager of the Austro-Hungarian State Railway Company and designed successful flood-prevention works on the Danube at Vienna.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Recording

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After education in Hungary and a period as an assistant at the Technische Hochschule, Berlin, Goldmark moved to England, where he joined Pye of Cambridge and worked on an experimental thirty-line television system using a cathode ray tube (CRT) for the display. In 1936 he moved to the USA to work at Columbia Broadcasting Laboratories. There, with monochrome television based on the CRT virtually a practical proposition, he devoted his efforts to finding a way of producing colour TV images: in 1940 he gave his first demonstration of a working system. There then followed a series of experimental field-sequential colour TV systems based on segmented red, green and blue colour wheels and drums, where the problem was to find an acceptable compromise between bandwidth, resolution, colour flicker and colour-image breakup. Eventually he arrived at a system using a colour wheel in combination with a CRT containing a panchromatic phosphor screen, with a scanned raster of 405 lines and a primary colour rate of 144 fields per second. Despite the fact that the receivers were bulky, gave relatively poor, dim pictures and used standards totally incompatible with the existing 525-line, sixty fields per second interlaced monochrome (black and white) system, in 1950 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), anxious to encourage postwar revival of the industry, authorized the system for public broadcasting. Within eighteen months, however, bowing to pressure from the remainder of the industry, which had formed its own National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) to develop a much more satisfactory, fully compatible system based on the RCA three-gun shadowmask CRT, the FCC withdrew its approval.

While all this was going on, Goldmark had also been working on ideas for overcoming the poor reproduction, noise quality, short playing-time (about four minutes) and limited robustness and life of the long-established 78 rpm 12 in. (30 cm) diameter shellac gramophone record. The recent availability of a new, more robust, plastic material, vinyl, which had a lower surface noise, enabled him in 1948 to reduce the groove width some three times to 0.003 in. (0.0762 mm), use a more lightly loaded synthetic sapphire stylus and crystal transducer with improved performance, and reduce the turntable speed to 33 1/3 rpm, to give thirty minutes of high-quality music per side. This successful development soon led to the availability of stereophonic recordings, based on the ideas of Alan Blumlein at EMI in the 1930s.

In 1950 Goldmark became a vice-president of CBS, but he still found time to develop a scan conversion system for relaying television pictures to Earth from the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. He also almost brought to the market a domestic electronic video recorder (EVR) system based on the thermal distortion of plastic film by separate luminance and coded colour signals, but this was overtaken by the video cassette recorder (VCR) system, which uses magnetic tape.

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See also: Baird, John Logie

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Orphaned at the age of 10, Maybach was destined to become one of the world's most renowned engine designers. From 1868 he was apprenticed as a draughtsman at the Briiderhaus Engineering Works in Reurlingen, where his talents were recognized by Gottlieb Daimler, who was Manager and Technical Director. Nikolaus Otto had by then developed his atmospheric engine and reorganized his company, Otto \& Langen, into Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz, of which he appointed Daimler Manager. After employment at a machine builders in Karlsruhe, in 1872 Maybach followed Daimler to Deutz where he worked as a partner on the design of high-speed engines: his engines ran at up to 900 rpm, some three times as fast as conventional engines of the time. Maybach made improvements to the timing, carburation and other features. In 1881 Daimler left the Deutz Company and set up on his own as a freelance inventor, moving with his family to Bad Cannstatt; in April 1882 Maybach joined him as Engineer and Designer to set up a partnership to develop lightweight high-speed engines suitable for vehicles. A motor cycle appeared in 1885 and a modified horse-drawn carriage was fitted with a Maybach engine in 1886. Other applications to small boats, fire-engine pumps and small locomotives quickly followed, and the Vee engine of 1890 that was fitted into the French Peugeot automobiles had a profound effect upon the new sport of motor racing. In 1895 Daimler won the first international motor race and the same year Maybach became Technical Director of the Daimler firm. In 1899 Emil Jellinek, Daimler agent in France and also Austro-Hungarian consul, required a car to compete with Panhard and Levassor, who had been victorious in the Paris-Bordeaux race; he wanted more power and a lower centre of gravity, and turned to Maybach with his requirements, the 35 hp Daimler- Simplex of 1901 being the outcome. Its performance and road holding superseded those of all others at the time; it was so successful that Jellinek immediately placed an order for thirty-six cars. His daughter's name was Mercedes, after whom, when the merger of Daimler and Benz came about, the name Mercedes-Benz was adopted.

In his later years, Maybach designed the engine for the Zeppelin airships. He retired from the Daimler Company in 1907.

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KAB / IMcN

SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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The son of an engineer, Szilard, after service in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, studied electrical engineering at the University of Berlin. Obtaining his doctorate there in 1922, he joined the faculty and concentrated his studies on thermodynamics. He later began to develop an interest in nuclear physics, and in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, Szilard emigrated to Britain because of his Jewish heritage.

In 1934 he conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction through the breakdown of beryllium into helium and took out a British patent on it, but later realized that this process would not work. In 1937 he moved to the USA and continued his research at the University of Columbia, and the following year Hahn and Meitner discovered nuclear fission with uranium; this gave Szilard the breakthrough he needed. In 1939 he realized that a nuclear chain reaction could be produced through nuclear fission and that a weapon with many times the destructive power of the conventional high-explosive bomb could be produced. Only too aware of the progress being made by German nuclear scientists, he believed that it was essential that the USA should create an atomic bomb before Hitler. Consequently he drafted a letter to President Roosevelt that summer and, with two fellow Hungarian émigrés, persuaded Albert Einstein to sign it. The result was the setting up of the Uranium Committee.

It was not, however, until December 1941 that active steps began to be taken to produce such a weapon and it was a further nine months before the project was properly co-ordinated under the umbrella of the Manhattan Project. In the meantime, Szilard moved to join Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago and it was here, at the end of 1942, in a squash court under the football stadium, that they successfully developed the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reactor. Szilard, who became an American citizen in 1943, continued to work on the Manhattan Project. In 1945, however, when the Western Allies began to believe that only the atomic bomb could bring the war against Japan to an end, Szilard and a number of other Manhattan Project scientists objected that it would be immoral to use it against populated targets.

Although he would continue to campaign against nuclear warfare for the rest of his life, Szilard now abandoned nuclear research. In 1946 he became Professor of Biophysics at the University of Chicago and devoted himself to experimental work on bacterial mutations and biochemical mechanisms, as well as theoretical research on ageing and memory.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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He entered the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army in 1842 and, as a lieutenant, fought against the Piedmontese in 1848. In January 1849 he deserted to the Piedmontese and tried to form a Hungarian legion against Austria. Defeated at Novara he fled to London and intrigued with Kossuth and Pulszky against Austria. In 1852 he was Kossuth's agent in Italy and was involved with Mazzini in the Milan rising of 1853. He was expelled from Italy and joined the Turkish army as a volunteer until 1854. The Crimean War saw him as a British agent procuring horses in the Balkans for the British forces, but he was caught by the Austrians and sentenced to death as a deserter. Through English intervention the sentence was commuted to banishment. He was ill until 1859, but then returned to Genoa and offered his services to Garibaldi, becoming his Aide-de-Camp in the invasion of Sicily in 1860. On the unification of Italy he joined the regular Italian army as a general, and from 1870 was Honorary Aide-de-Camp to King Victor Emanuel II.

From then on he was more interested in peaceful projects. Jointly with Lucien Wyse, he obtained a concession in 1875 from the Columbian government to build a canal across Panama and formed the Société Civile Internationale du Canal Interocéanique du Darien. In 1879 he sold the concession to de Lesseps, and with the money negotiated a concession from King George of Greece for building the Corinth Canal. A French company undertook the work in April 1882, but financial problems led to the collapse of the company in 1889, at the same time as de Lesseps's financial storm. A Greek company then took over and completed the canal in 1893.

The canal was formally opened on 6 August 1893 by King George on his royal yacht; the king paid tribute to General Turr, who was accompanying him, saying that he had completed the work the Romans had begun. The general's later years were devoted to peace propaganda and he attended every peace conference held during those years.

region 1. область, регион; зона; район; 2. часть тела

region of growth зона роста

region of homology область гомологии

region of pairing область спаривания

region of plant alimentation площадь питания растений

acceptance region область принятия гипотезы

allosteric region аллостерическая регуляция

Amazonian region биогеогр. Амазония

animal region анимальная область (яйца)

antibody constant region постоянный участок антитела

antibody variable region вариабельный участок антитела

antiboreal region антибореальная область

Arctrogaeic region биогеогр. Арктогея

Australian region биогеогр. австралийская область

Austro-Columbian region биогеогр. неотропическая область

boreal region бореальная область

chromosome region участок хромосомы

confidence region биом. доверительная область

critical region биом. критическая область

crossover region область кроссинговера

Ethiopian region биогеогр. эфиопская область

faunal region фаунистическая область

fine-control region тонкая регуляция

floral region флористическая область

hinge region шарнирная область

Holarctic region биогеогр. голарктическая область

indifferent region биом. область безразличия

inert chromosome region инертный участок хромосомы

intergenic region межгенная область

Nearctic region биогеогр. неарктическая область

Neotropic region биогеогр. неотропическая область

Oriental region биогеогр. восточная область

Palaearctic region биогеогр. палеарктическая область

preference region биом. область предпочтения

rejection region критическая область, область неприятия гипотезы

similar region биом. (статистически) подобная область

source region материнский регион; территория, послужившая источником колонизации

spectral region спектральная область

vegetal region вегетативная область (яйца)