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1 Clegg, Samuel
[br]b. 2 March 1781 Manchester, Englandd. 8 January 1861 Haverstock Hill, Hampstead, London, England[br]English inventor and gas engineer.[br]Clegg received scientific instruction from John Dalton, the founder of the atomic theory, and was apprenticed to Boulton \& Watt. While at their Soho factory in Birmingham, he assisted William Murdock with his experiments on coal gas. He left the firm in 1804 and set up as a gas engineer on his own account. He designed and installed gas plant and lighting in a number of factories, including Henry Lodge's cotton mill at Sowerby Bridge and in 1811 the Jesuit College at Stoneyhurst in Lancashire, the first non-industrial establishment to be equipped with gas lighting.Clegg moved to London in 1813 and successfully installed gas lighting at the premises of Rudolf Ackermann in the Strand. His success in the manufacture of gas had earned him the Royal Society of Arts Silver Medal in 1808 for furthering "the art of gas production", and in 1813 it brought him the appointment of Chief Engineer to the first gas company, the Chartered Gas, Light \& Coke Company. He left in 1817, but remained in demand to set up gas works and advise on the formation of gas companies. Throughout this time there flowed from Clegg a series of inventions of fundamental importance in the gas industry. While at Lodge's mill he had begun purifying gas by adding lime to the gas holder, and at Stoneyhurst this had become a separate lime purifier. In 1815, and again in 1818, Clegg patented the wet-meter which proved to be the basis for future devices for measuring gas. He invented the gas governor and, favouring the horizontal retort, developed the form which was to become standard for the next forty years. But after all this, Clegg joined a concern in Liverpool which failed, taking all his possessions with it. He made a fresh start in Lisbon, where he undertook various engineering works for the Portuguese government. He returned to England to find railway construction gathering pace, but he again backed a loser by engaging in the ill-fated atmospheric-rail way project. He was finally discouraged from taking part in further enterprises, but he received a government appointment as Surveying Officer to conduct enquiries in connection with the various Bills on gas that were presented to Parliament. Clegg also contributed to his son's massive treatise on the manufacture of coal gas.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsRoyal Society of Arts Silver Medal 1808.Further ReadingMinutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1862) 21:552–4.S.Everard, 1949, The History of the Gas light and Coke Company, London: Ernest Benn.LRD -
2 Railways and locomotives
Biographical history of technology > Railways and locomotives
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3 Public utilities
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4 Samuda, Joseph d'Aguilar
[br]b. 21 May 1813 London, Englandd. 27 April 1885 London, England[br]English shipbuilder and promoter of atmospheric traction for railways.[br]Joseph Samuda studied as a engineer under his elder brother Jacob and formed a partnership with him in 1832 as builders of marine steam engines. In 1838, with Samuel Clegg, they took out a patent for an atmospheric railway system. In this system a cast-iron tube, with a continuous sealed slot along the top, was laid between the rails; trains were attached to a piston within the tube by an arm, the slot being opened and resealed before and behind it. The tube ahead of the piston was exhausted by a stationary steam engine and the train propelled by atmospheric pressure. The system appeared to offer clean, fast travel and was taken up by noted contemporary railway engineers such as I.K. Brunel and C.B. Vignoles, but it eventually proved a failure as no satisfactory means of sealing the slot could at that time be found. It did, however, lead to experiments in the 1860s with underground, pneumatic-tube railways, in which the vehicle would be its own piston, and Samuda Bros, supplied cast-iron tubes for such a line. Meanwhile, Samuda Bros, had commenced building iron steamships in 1843, and although Jacob Samuda lost his life in 1844 as the result of an accident aboard one of the earliest built, the firm survived to become noted London builders of steamships of many types over the ensuing four decades. Joseph Samuda became a founder member of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1860, and was MP for Tavistock from 1865 to 1868 and for Tower Hamlets from 1868 to 1880.[br]Bibliography1838, jointly with Jacob Samuda and Samuel Clegg, British patent no. 7,920 (atmospheric traction).1861–2, "On the form and materials for iron plated ships", Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 21.Further ReadingObituary, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 81:334 (provides good coverage of his career).C.Hadfield, 1967, Atmospheric Railways, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles (includes a discussion of his railway work).PJGRBiographical history of technology > Samuda, Joseph d'Aguilar
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5 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Land transport, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Ports and shipping, Public utilities, Railways and locomotives[br]b. 9 April 1806 Portsea, Hampshire, Englandd. 15 September 1859 18 Duke Street, St James's, London, England[br]English civil and mechanical engineer.[br]The son of Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Kingdom, he was educated at a private boarding-school in Hove. At the age of 14 he went to the College of Caen and then to the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris, after which he was apprenticed to Louis Breguet. In 1822 he returned from France and started working in his father's office, while spending much of his time at the works of Maudslay, Sons \& Field.From 1825 to 1828 he worked under his father on the construction of the latter's Thames Tunnel, occupying the position of Engineer-in-Charge, exhibiting great courage and presence of mind in the emergencies which occurred not infrequently. These culminated in January 1828 in the flooding of the tunnel and work was suspended for seven years. For the next five years the young engineer made abortive attempts to find a suitable outlet for his talents, but to little avail. Eventually, in 1831, his design for a suspension bridge over the River Avon at Clifton Gorge was accepted and he was appointed Engineer. (The bridge was eventually finished five years after Brunel's death, as a memorial to him, the delay being due to inadequate financing.) He next planned and supervised improvements to the Bristol docks. In March 1833 he was appointed Engineer of the Bristol Railway, later called the Great Western Railway. He immediately started to survey the route between London and Bristol that was completed by late August that year. On 5 July 1836 he married Mary Horsley and settled into 18 Duke Street, Westminster, London, where he also had his office. Work on the Bristol Railway started in 1836. The foundation stone of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was laid the same year. Whereas George Stephenson had based his standard railway gauge as 4 ft 8½ in (1.44 m), that or a similar gauge being usual for colliery wagonways in the Newcastle area, Brunel adopted the broader gauge of 7 ft (2.13 m). The first stretch of the line, from Paddington to Maidenhead, was opened to traffic on 4 June 1838, and the whole line from London to Bristol was opened in June 1841. The continuation of the line through to Exeter was completed and opened on 1 May 1844. The normal time for the 194-mile (312 km) run from Paddington to Exeter was 5 hours, at an average speed of 38.8 mph (62.4 km/h) including stops. The Great Western line included the Box Tunnel, the longest tunnel to that date at nearly two miles (3.2 km).Brunel was the engineer of most of the railways in the West Country, in South Wales and much of Southern Ireland. As railway networks developed, the frequent break of gauge became more of a problem and on 9 July 1845 a Royal Commission was appointed to look into it. In spite of comparative tests, run between Paddington-Didcot and Darlington-York, which showed in favour of Brunel's arrangement, the enquiry ruled in favour of the narrow gauge, 274 miles (441 km) of the former having been built against 1,901 miles (3,059 km) of the latter to that date. The Gauge Act of 1846 forbade the building of any further railways in Britain to any gauge other than 4 ft 8 1/2 in (1.44 m).The existence of long and severe gradients on the South Devon Railway led to Brunel's adoption of the atmospheric railway developed by Samuel Clegg and later by the Samuda brothers. In this a pipe of 9 in. (23 cm) or more in diameter was laid between the rails, along the top of which ran a continuous hinged flap of leather backed with iron. At intervals of about 3 miles (4.8 km) were pumping stations to exhaust the pipe. Much trouble was experienced with the flap valve and its lubrication—freezing of the leather in winter, the lubricant being sucked into the pipe or eaten by rats at other times—and the experiment was abandoned at considerable cost.Brunel is to be remembered for his two great West Country tubular bridges, the Chepstow and the Tamar Bridge at Saltash, with the latter opened in May 1859, having two main spans of 465 ft (142 m) and a central pier extending 80 ft (24 m) below high water mark and allowing 100 ft (30 m) of headroom above the same. His timber viaducts throughout Devon and Cornwall became a feature of the landscape. The line was extended ultimately to Penzance.As early as 1835 Brunel had the idea of extending the line westwards across the Atlantic from Bristol to New York by means of a steamship. In 1836 building commenced and the hull left Bristol in July 1837 for fitting out at Wapping. On 31 March 1838 the ship left again for Bristol but the boiler lagging caught fire and Brunel was injured in the subsequent confusion. On 8 April the ship set sail for New York (under steam), its rival, the 703-ton Sirius, having left four days earlier. The 1,340-ton Great Western arrived only a few hours after the Sirius. The hull was of wood, and was copper-sheathed. In 1838 Brunel planned a larger ship, some 3,000 tons, the Great Britain, which was to have an iron hull.The Great Britain was screwdriven and was launched on 19 July 1843,289 ft (88 m) long by 51 ft (15.5 m) at its widest. The ship's first voyage, from Liverpool to New York, began on 26 August 1845. In 1846 it ran aground in Dundrum Bay, County Down, and was later sold for use on the Australian run, on which it sailed no fewer than thirty-two times in twenty-three years, also serving as a troop-ship in the Crimean War. During this war, Brunel designed a 1,000-bed hospital which was shipped out to Renkioi ready for assembly and complete with shower-baths and vapour-baths with printed instructions on how to use them, beds and bedding and water closets with a supply of toilet paper! Brunel's last, largest and most extravagantly conceived ship was the Great Leviathan, eventually named The Great Eastern, which had a double-skinned iron hull, together with both paddles and screw propeller. Brunel designed the ship to carry sufficient coal for the round trip to Australia without refuelling, thus saving the need for and the cost of bunkering, as there were then few bunkering ports throughout the world. The ship's construction was started by John Scott Russell in his yard at Millwall on the Thames, but the building was completed by Brunel due to Russell's bankruptcy in 1856. The hull of the huge vessel was laid down so as to be launched sideways into the river and then to be floated on the tide. Brunel's plan for hydraulic launching gear had been turned down by the directors on the grounds of cost, an economy that proved false in the event. The sideways launch with over 4,000 tons of hydraulic power together with steam winches and floating tugs on the river took over two months, from 3 November 1857 until 13 January 1858. The ship was 680 ft (207 m) long, 83 ft (25 m) beam and 58 ft (18 m) deep; the screw was 24 ft (7.3 m) in diameter and paddles 60 ft (18.3 m) in diameter. Its displacement was 32,000 tons (32,500 tonnes).The strain of overwork and the huge responsibilities that lay on Brunel began to tell. He was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease, or nephritis, and spent the winter travelling in the Mediterranean and Egypt, returning to England in May 1859. On 5 September he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed, and he died ten days later at his Duke Street home.[br]Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1957, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, London: Longmans Green. J.Dugan, 1953, The Great Iron Ship, Hamish Hamilton.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
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6 Winsor, Frederick Albert
SUBJECT AREA: Public utilities[br]b. 1763 Brunswick, Germanyd. 11 May 1830 Paris, France[br]German pioneer of gas lighting,[br]He was born Frederic Albrecht Winzer but anglicized his name after settling in England. His interest in gas lighting was aroused by the experiments of Philippe Lebon in Paris in 1802. Winsor had little scientific knowledge or engineering ability, but was well endowed with confidence and enterprise. He alone among the early practitioners of gas-making envisaged a central plant supplying a number of users through gas mains. He managed to discover the essentials of Lebon's process and tried without success to exploit it on the European continent. So he moved to England in 1803 and settled first in Grosvenor Square and then in Pall Mall. He gave public demonstrations of gas lighting at the Lyceum Theatre in London and in 1804 took out his first patent. In December he lit Pall Mall, the first street to be illuminated by gas. Winsor then began to promote a grandiose scheme for the formation of a National Light and Heat Company. He struggled against bitter opposition both in and out of Parliament to obtain sanction for his company, and it was only after the third attempt that the Gas Light \& Coke Company received its charter in 1812. However, Winsor lacked the knowledge to devise successful gas-producing plant, even with the help of the German immigrant chemist F.C.Accum. Winsor was dismissed in 1812 and returned to Paris the following year, while the company recovered with the appointment of an able engineer, Samuel Clegg. Winsor formed a company in Paris to install gas lighting, but that failed in 1819.[br]Further ReadingW.Matthew, 1827, An Historical Sketch of the Origin, Progress and Present State of Gaslighting, London.E.G.Stewart, 1958, Town Gas, Its Manufacture and Distribution, London: Science Museum.LRDBiographical history of technology > Winsor, Frederick Albert
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