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1 Schrötter, Anton von
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 26 November 1802 Olmütz, Austria (now Olomouc, Czech Republic)d. 15 April 1875 Vienna, Austria[br]Austrian scientist known particularly for his discovery in 1845 of red phosphorus, which led to the later development of the safety match.[br]Anton von Schrötter was the son of an apothecary. At the age of 20 he began his studies at the University of Vienna, first in medicine but later in science and mathematics. He specialized in chemistry and then set up a laboratory in Graz. From 1843 he was a professor of chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. Von Schrötter published many papers on various aspects of chemistry, particularly in the field of metallurgy, but it was his demonstration at the Vienna Academy in 1847, which showed that red phosphorus was truly an allotropie form of the element phosphorus, that made him best known. His suggestion that it would be advisable to use such amorphous phosphorus in match manufacture led to Lundström's later development of the safety match and ended the appalling toll that had long been taken on the health of match-factory workers, many of whom had suffered maiming and even death caused by white phosphorus entering the body via defective teeth when they sucked match-heads.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsAcadémie Française Prix Montyon 1856. Légion d'Honneur at Paris Exhibition 1855. General Secretary, Vienna Academy of Sciences 1850–75.Further ReadingMoritz Kohn, 1944, "The discovery of red phosphorus (1847)", Journal of Chemical Education 21.1975, Dictionary of Science Biography, New York: Charles Scribner.DY -
2 Mercer, John
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 21 February 1791 Great Harwood, Lancashire, Englandd. 30 November 1866 Oakenshaw, Lancashire, England[br]English pioneer in textile chemistry.[br]Mercer began work at the age of 9 as a bobbinwinder and then a hand-loom weaver. He had no formal education in chemistry but taught himself and revealed remarkable ability in both theoretical and applied aspects of the subject. He became the acknowledged "father of textile chemistry" and the Royal Society elected him Fellow in 1850. His name is remembered in connection with the lustrous "mercerized" cotton which, although not developed commercially until 1890, arose from his discovery, c. 1844, of the effect of caustic soda on cotton linters. He also discovered that cotton could be dissolved in a solution of copper oxide in ammonia, a phenomenon later exploited in the manufacture of artificial silk. As a youth, Mercer experimented at home with dyeing processes and soon acquired sufficient skill to set up as an independent dyer. Most of his working life was, however, spent with the calico-printing firm of Oakenshaw Print Works in which he eventually became a partner, and it was there that most of his experimental work was done. The association was a very appropriate one, for it was a member of this firm's staff who first recognized Mercer's potential talent and took the trouble in his spare time to teach him reading, writing and arithmetic. Mercer developed manganese-bronze colours and researched into catalysis and the ferrocyanides. Among his innovations was the chlorination of wool in order to make it print as easily as cotton. It was many years later that it was realized that this treatment also conferred valuable shrink-resisting qualities. Becoming interested in photochemistry, he devised processes for photographic printing on fabric. Queen Victoria was presented with a handkerchief printed in this way when she visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, of which Mercer was a juror. A photograph of Mercer himself on cloth is preserved in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. He presented papers to the British Association and was a member of the Chemical Society.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1850.Further ReadingObituary, Manchester Memoirs, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.Dictionary of National Biography.E.A.Parnell, 1886. The Life and Labours of John Mercer, F.R.S., London (biography). 1867, biography, Journal of the Chemical Society.A.E.Musson and E.Robinson, 1969, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (includes a brief reference to Mercer's work).RLH -
3 Porta, Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) della
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. between 3 October and 15 November 1535 Vico Equense, near Naples, Italyd. 4 February 1615 Naples, Italy[br]Italian natural philosopher who published many scientific books, one of which covered ideas for the use of steam.[br]Giambattista della Porta spent most of his life in Naples, where some time before 1580 he established the Accademia dei Segreti, which met at his house. In 1611 he was enrolled among the Oziosi in Naples, then the most renowned literary academy. He was examined by the Inquisition, which, although he had become a lay brother of the Jesuits by 1585, banned all further publication of his books between 1592 and 1598.His first book, the Magiae Naturalis, which covered the secrets of nature, was published in 1558. He had been collecting material for it since the age of 15 and he saw that science should not merely represent theory and contemplation but must arrive at practical and experimental expression. In this work he described the hardening of files and pieces of armour on quite a large scale, and it included the best sixteenth-century description of heat treatment for hardening steel. In the 1589 edition of this work he covered ways of improving vision at a distance with concave and convex lenses; although he may have constructed a compound microscope, the history of this instrument effectively begins with Galileo. His theoretical and practical work on lenses paved the way for the telescope and he also explored the properties of parabolic mirrors.In 1563 he published a treatise on cryptography, De Furtivis Liter arum Notis, which he followed in 1566 with another on memory and mnemonic devices, Arte del Ricordare. In 1584 and 1585 he published treatises on horticulture and agriculture based on careful study and practice; in 1586 he published De Humana Physiognomonia, on human physiognomy, and in 1588 a treatise on the physiognomy of plants. In 1593 he published his De Refractione but, probably because of the ban by the Inquisition, no more were produced until the Spiritali in 1601 and his translation of Ptolemy's Almagest in 1605. In 1608 two new works appeared: a short treatise on military fortifications; and the De Distillatione. There was an important work on meteorology in 1610. In 1601 he described a device similar to Hero's mechanisms which opened temple doors, only Porta used steam pressure instead of air to force the water out of its box or container, up a pipe to where it emptied out into a higher container. Under the lower box there was a small steam boiler heated by a fire. He may also have been the first person to realize that condensed steam would form a vacuum, for there is a description of another piece of apparatus where water is drawn up into a container at the top of a long pipe. The container was first filled with steam so that, when cooled, a vacuum would be formed and water drawn up into it. These are the principles on which Thomas Savery's later steam-engine worked.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of Scientific Biography, 1975, Vol. XI, New York: C.Scribner's Sons (contains a full biography).H.W.Dickinson, 1938, A Short History of the Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (contains an account of his contributions to the early development of the steam-engine).C.Singer (ed.), 1957, A History of Technology, Vol. III, Oxford University Press (contains accounts of some of his other discoveries).I.Asimov (ed.), 1982, Biographical Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology, 2nd edn., New York: Doubleday.G.Sarton, 1957, Six wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance, London: Bodley Head, pp. 85–8.RLH / IMcNBiographical history of technology > Porta, Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) della
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4 Weber, Wilhelm Eduard
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 24 October 1804 Wittenberg, Germanyd. 23 June 1891 Göttingen, Germany[br]German physicist, the founder of precise measurement of electrical quantities.[br]Weber began scientific experiments at an early age and entered the University of Halle, where he came under the influence of J.S.C.Schweigger, inventor of the galvanometer. Completing his education with a dissertation on the theory of organ pipes and making important contributions to the science of acoustics, he was awarded a lectureship and later an assistant professorship at Halle. Weber was offered the Chair of Physics at Göttingen in 1831 and jointly with Gauss began investigations into the precision measurement of magnetic quantities. In 1841 he invented the electrodynamometer type of electrical measuring instrument. This was a development of the galvanometer in which, instead of a needle, a small coil was suspended within an outer coil. A current flowing through both coils tended to turn the inner coil, the sine of the angle through which the suspending wires were twisted being proportional to the square of the strength of the current. A variation of the electrodynamometer was capable of measuring directly the power in electrical circuits.The introduction by Weber of a system of absolute units for the measurement of electrical quantities was a most important step in electrical science. He had a considerable influence on the British Association committees on electrical standards organized in 1861 to promote a coherent system of electrical units. Weber's ideas also led him to define elementary electric particles, ascribing mass and charge to them. His name was used for a time before 1883 as the unit of electric current, until the name "ampere" was proposed by Helmholtz. Since 1948 the term "weber" has been used for the SI unit of magnetic flux.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1850. Royal Society Copley Medal 1859.Bibliography1892–4, William Weber's Werke, 6 vols, Berlin.Further ReadingP.Lenard, 1954, Great Men of Science, London, pp. 263–70 (a reliable, short biography). C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1976, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. XIV, New York, pp.203–9 (discusses his theoretical contributions).S.P.Bordeau, 1982, Volts to Herz, Minneapolis, pp. 172 and 181 (discusses Weber's influence on contemporary scientists).GW -
5 Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 18 February 1745 Como, Italyd. 5 March 1827 Como, Italy[br]Italian physicist, discoverer of a source of continuous electric current from a pile of dissimilar metals.[br]Volta had an early command of English, French and Latin, and also learned to read Dutch and Spanish. After completing studies at the Royal Seminary in Como he was involved in the study of physics, chemistry and electricity. He became a teacher of physics in his native town and in 1779 was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Pavia, a post he held for forty years.With a growing international reputation and a wish to keep abreast of the latest developments, in 1777 he began the first of many travels abroad. A journey started in 1781 to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France and England lasted about one year. By 1791 he had been elected to membership of many learned societies, including those in Zurich, Berlin, Berne and Paris. Volta's invention of his pile resulted from a controversy with Luigi Galvani, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bologna. Galvani discovered that the muscles of frogs' legs contracted when touched with two pieces of different metals and attributed this to a phenomenon of the animal tissue. Volta showed that the excitation was due to a chemical reaction resulting from the contact of the dissimilar metals when moistened. His pile comprised a column of zinc and silver discs, each pair separated by paper moistened with brine, and provided a source of continuous current from a simple and accessible source. The effectiveness of the pile decreased as the paper dried and Volta devised his crown of cups, which had a longer life. In this, pairs of dissimilar metals were placed in each of a number of cups partly filled with an electrolyte such as brine. Volta first announced the results of his experiments with dissimilar metals in 1800 in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. This letter, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, has been regarded as one of the most important documents in the history of science. Large batteries were constructed in a number of laboratories soon after Volta's discoveries became known, leading immediately to a series of developments in electrochemistry and eventually in electromagnetism. Volta himself made little further contribution to science. In recognition of his achievement, at a meeting of the International Electrical Congress in Paris in 1881 it was agreed to name the unit of electrical pressure the "volt".[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1791. Royal Society Copley Medal 1794. Knight of the Iron Crown, Austria, 1806. Senator of the Realm of Lombardy 1809.Bibliography1800, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 18:744–6 (Volta's report on his discovery).Further ReadingG.Polvani, 1942, Alessandro Volta, Pisa (the best account available).B.Dibner, 1964, Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery, New York (a detailed account).C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1976, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. XIV, New York, pp.66–82 (includes an extensive biography).F.Soresni, 1988, Alessandro Volta, Milan (includes illustrations of Volta's apparatus, with brief text).GWBiographical history of technology > Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio
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6 Brewster, Sir David
SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics[br]b. 11 December 1781 Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotlandd. 10 February 1868 Allerly, Scotland[br]Scottish scientist and popularizer of science, inventor of the kaleidoscope and lenticular stereoscope.[br]Originally destined to follow his father into the Church, Brewster studied divinity at Edinburgh University, where he met many distinguished men of science. He began to take a special interest in optics, and eventually abandoned the clerical profession. In 1813 he presented his first paper to the Royal Society on the properties of light, and within months invented the principle of the kaleidoscope. In 1844 Brewster described a binocular form of Wheatstone's reflecting stereoscope where the mirrors were replaced with lenses or prisms. The idea aroused little interest at the time, but in 1850 a model taken to Paris was brought to the notice of L.J. Duboscq, who immediately began to manufacture Brewster's stereoscope on a large scale; shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, it attracted the attention of Queen Victoria. Stereoscopic photography rapidly became one of the fashionable preoccupations of the day arid did much to popularize photography. Although originally marketed as a scientific toy and drawing-room pastime, stereoscopy later found scientific application in such fields as microscopy, photogrammetry and radiography. Brewster was a prolific scientific author throughout his life. His income was derived mainly from his writing and he was one of the nineteenth century's most distinguished popularizers of science.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1832. FRS 1815.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1973, Vol. II, Oxford, pp. 1,207–11.A.D.Morrison-Low and J.R.R.Christie (eds), 1984, Martyr of Science, Edinburgh (proceedings of a Bicentenary Symposium).JW -
7 Allen, Horatio
[br]b. 10 May 1802 Schenectady, New York, USAd. 1 January 1890 South Orange, New Jersey, USA[br]American engineer, pioneer of steam locomotives.[br]Allen was the Resident Engineer for construction of the Delaware \& Hudson Canal and in 1828 was instructed by J.B. Jervis to visit England to purchase locomotives for the canal's rail extension. He drove the locomotive Stourbridge Lion, built by J.U. Rastrick, on its first trial on 9 August 1829, but weak track prevented its regular use.Allen was present at the Rainhill Trials on the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in October 1829. So was E.L.Miller, one of the promoters of the South Carolina Canal \& Rail Road Company, to which Allen was appointed Chief Engineer that autumn. Allen was influential in introducing locomotives to this railway, and the West Point Foundry built a locomotive for it to his design; it was the first locomotive built in the USA for sale. This locomotive, which bore some resemblance to Novelty, built for Rainhill by John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, was named Best Friend of Charleston. On Christmas Day 1830 it hauled the first scheduled steam train to run in America, carrying 141 passengers.In 1832 the West Point Foundry built four double-ended, articulated 2–2–0+0–2–2 locomotives to Horatio Allen's design for the South Carolina railroad. From each end of a central firebox extended two boiler barrels side by side with common smokeboxes and chimneys; wheels were mounted on swivelling sub-frames, one at each end, beneath these boilers. Allen's principal object was to produce a powerful locomotive with a light axle loading.Allen subsequently became a partner in Stillman, Allen \& Co. of New York, builders of marine engines, and in 1843 was President of the Erie Railroad.[br]Further ReadingJ.Marshall, 1978, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.Dictionary of American Biography.R.E.Carlson, 1969, The Liverpool \& Manchester Railway Project 1821–1831, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.J.F.Stover, 1961, American Railroads, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.J.H.White Jr, 1994, "Old debts and new visions", in Common Roots—Separate Branches, London: Science Museum, 79–82.PJGR -
8 Graham, George
SUBJECT AREA: Horology[br]b. c.1674 Cumberland, Englandd. 16 November 1751 London, England[br]English watch-and clockmaker who invented the cylinder escapement for watches, the first successful dead-beat escapement for clocks and the mercury compensation pendulum.[br]Graham's father died soon after his birth, so he was raised by his brother. In 1688 he was apprenticed to the London clockmaker Henry Aske, and in 1695 he gained his freedom. He was employed as a journeyman by Tompion in 1696 and later married his niece. In 1711 he formed a partnership with Tompion and effectively ran the business in Tompion's declining years; he took over the business after Tompion died in 1713. In addition to his horological interests he also made scientific instruments, specializing in those for astronomical use. As a person, he was well respected and appears to have lived up to the epithet "Honest George Graham". He befriended John Harrison when he first went to London and lent him money to further his researches at a time when they might have conflicted with his own interests.The two common forms of escapement in use in Graham's time, the anchor escapement for clocks and the verge escapement for watches, shared the same weakness: they interfered severely with the free oscillation of the pendulum and the balance, and thus adversely affected the timekeeping. Tompion's two frictional rest escapements, the dead-beat for clocks and the horizontal for watches, had provided a partial solution by eliminating recoil (the momentary reversal of the motion of the timepiece), but they had not been successful in practice. Around 1720 Graham produced his own much improved version of the dead-beat escapement which became a standard feature of regulator clocks, at least in Britain, until its supremacy was challenged at the end of the nineteenth century by the superior accuracy of the Riefler clock. Another feature of the regulator clock owed to Graham was the mercury compensation pendulum, which he invented in 1722 and published four years later. The bob of this pendulum contained mercury, the surface of which rose or fell with changes in temperature, compensating for the concomitant variation in the length of the pendulum rod. Graham devised his mercury pendulum after he had failed to achieve compensation by means of the difference in expansion between various metals. He then turned his attention to improving Tompion's horizontal escapement, and by 1725 the cylinder escapement existed in what was virtually its final form. From the following year he fitted this escapement to all his watches, and it was also used extensively by London makers for their precision watches. It proved to be somewhat lacking in durability, but this problem was overcome later in the century by using a ruby cylinder, notably by Abraham Louis Breguet. It was revived, in a cheaper form, by the Swiss and the French in the nineteenth century and was produced in vast quantities.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1720. Master of the Clockmakers' Company 1722.BibliographyGraham contributed many papers to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in particular "A contrivance to avoid the irregularities in a clock's motion occasion'd by the action of heat and cold upon the rod of the pendulum" (1726) 34:40–4.Further ReadingBritten's Watch \& Clock Maker's Handbook Dictionary and Guide, 1978, rev. Richard Good, 16th edn, London, pp. 81, 84, 232 (for a technical description of the dead-beat and cylinder escapements and the mercury compensation pendulum).A.J.Turner, 1972, "The introduction of the dead-beat escapement: a new document", Antiquarian Horology 8:71.E.A.Battison, 1972, biography, Biographical Dictionary of Science, ed. C.C.Gillespie, Vol. V, New York, 490–2 (contains a résumé of Graham's non-horological activities).DV -
9 Banu Musa ibn Shakir
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]fl. c.850[br]Arab astronomers and engineers.[br]The Banu were the three sons of Musa ibn Shakir. His origins were unpromising, for he was a robber, but the caliph al-Ma'mun, a great patron of science and learning, took the sons into his academy and had them educated. The eldest and most prominent, Muhammed, took up the study of geometry, logic and astronomy, while another, al- Hasan, also studied geometry. The third, Ahmad, turned to mechanics. Together, the Banu established a group for the translation of texts from antiquity, especially Greece, on science and mechanics. They were responsible for compiling the Kitab al-Hiyal (Book of Ingenious Devices), the first of two major works on mechanics that appeared in the medieval Islamic world. The authors drew freely from earlier Greek writers, particularly Hero and Philon. The work is a technical manual for making devices such as lamps, pipes in spring wells and drinking vessels, most depending on differences in air pressure generated by the movement of liquids. These principles were applied to make a self-filling oil lamp. The work also demonstrated the lifting of heavy weights by means of pulleys. In another work, the Qarastun (Book of the Balance), the Banu showed how different weights could be balanced by varying the distance from the fulcrum.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of Scientific Biography.LRD -
10 Bell, Alexander Graham
SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications[br]b. 3 March 1847 Edinburgh, Scotlandd. 3 August 1922 Beinn Bhreagh, Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada[br]Scottish/American inventor of the telephone.[br]Bell's grandfather was a professor of elocution in London and his father an authority on the physiology of the voice and on elocution; Bell was to follow in their footsteps. He was educated in Edinburgh, leaving school at 13. In 1863 he went to Elgin, Morayshire, as a pupil teacher in elocution, with a year's break to study at Edinburgh University; it was in 1865, while still in Elgin, that he first conceived the idea of the electrical transmission of speech. He went as a master to Somersetshire College, Bath (now in Avon), and in 1867 he moved to London to assist his father, who had taken up the grandfather's work in elocution. In the same year, he matriculated at London University, studying anatomy and physiology, and also began teaching the deaf. He continued to pursue the studies that were to lead to the invention of the telephone. At this time he read Helmholtz's The Sensations of Tone, an important work on the theory of sound that was to exert a considerable influence on him.In 1870 he accompanied his parents when they emigrated to Canada. His work for the deaf gained fame in both Canada and the USA, and in 1873 he was apponted professor of vocal physiology and the mechanics of speech at Boston University, Massachusetts. There, he continued to work on his theory that sound wave vibrations could be converted into a fluctuating electric current, be sent along a wire and then be converted back into sound waves by means of a receiver. He approached the problem from the background of the theory of sound and voice production rather than from that of electrical science, and by 1875 he had succeeded in constructing a rough model. On 7 March 1876 Bell spoke the famous command to his assistant, "Mr Watson, come here, I want you": this was the first time a human voice had been transmitted along a wire. Only three days earlier, Bell's first patent for the telephone had been granted. Almost simultaneously, but quite independently, Elisha Gray had achieved a similar result. After a period of litigation, the US Supreme Court awarded Bell priority, although Gray's device was technically superior.In 1877, three years after becoming a naturalized US citizen, Bell married the deaf daughter of his first backer. In August of that year, they travelled to Europe to combine a honeymoon with promotion of the telephone. Bell's patent was possibly the most valuable ever issued, for it gave birth to what later became the world's largest private service organization, the Bell Telephone Company.Bell had other scientific and technological interests: he made improvements in telegraphy and in Edison's gramophone, and he also developed a keen interest in aeronautics, working on Curtiss's flying machine. Bell founded the celebrated periodical Science.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsLegion of Honour; Hughes Medal, Royal Society, 1913.Further ReadingObituary, 7 August 1922, The Times. Dictionary of American Biography.R.Burlingame, 1964, Out of Silence into Sound, London: Macmillan.LRD -
11 Ewing, Sir James Alfred
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 27 March 1855 Dundee, Scotlandd. 1935[br]Scottish engineer and educator.[br]Sir Alfred Ewing was one of the leading engineering academics of his generation. He was the son of a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, and was educated at Dundee High School and Edinburgh University, where he studied engineering under Professor Fleeming Jenkin. On Jenkin's nomination, Ewing was recruited as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tokyo, where he spent five years from 1878 to 1883. While in Tokyo, he devised an instrument for measuring and recording earthquakes. Ewing returned to his home town of Dundee in 1883, as the first Professor of Engineering at the University College recently established there. After seven years building up the department in Dundee, he moved to Cambridge where he succeeded James Stuart as Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics. In thirteen creative years at Cambridge, he established the Engineering Tripos (1892) and founded the first engineering laboratories at the University (1894). From 1903 to 1917 Ewing served the Admiralty as Director of Naval Education, in which role he took a leading part in the revolution in British naval traditions which equipped the Royal Navy to fight the First World War. In that war, Ewing made an important contribution to the intelligence operation of deciphering enemy wireless messages. In 1916 he returned to Edinburgh as Principal and Vice-Chancellor, and following the war he presided over a period of rapid expansion at the University. He retired in 1929.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1887. KCB 1911. President, British Association for the Advancement of Science 1932.BibliographyHe wrote extensively on technical subjects, and his works included Thermodynamics for Engineers (1920). His many essays and papers on more general subjects are elegantly and attractively written.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography Supplement.A.W.Ewing, 1939, Life of Sir Alfred Ewing (biography by his son).ABBiographical history of technology > Ewing, Sir James Alfred
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12 Reynolds, Osborne
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 23 April 1842 Belfast, Irelandd. 1912 Watchet, Somerset, England[br]English engineer and educator.[br]Osborne Reynolds's father, a clergyman and schoolteacher, had been a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge; it was to Queens' that the young Reynolds went to study mathematics, graduating as 7th Wrangler in 1867, and going on in his turn to become a Fellow of the College. Reynolds had developed an interest in practical applications of physics and engineering, and for a short time he entered the office of the London civil engineers Lawson and Mansergh. In 1868 he was appointed to the new Chair of Engineering at Owens College, Manchester, and he remained in this post for thirty-seven years, until he retired in 1905. During this period he presided over a department that grew steadily in size and reputation, and undertook prolonged research projects into phenomena such as lubrication, the laws governing the flow of water in pipes, turbulence and other physical features with practical applications. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1877, being nominated Royal Medallist in 1888. In 1883 he became a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and in 1885 he was awarded the Telford Premium of the Institution. He served as Secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society from 1874 to 1883, and was appointed President in 1888–9 and Dalton Medallist in 1903. He was President of Section G of the British Association for the History of Science in 1887, and in 1884 he received the degree of LLD from Glasgow University. Among his many students at Owens College was J.J. (later Sir Joseph) Thomson (1856–1940), who entered the college in 1871. Reynolds's collected scientific papers were published in 1900–3.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1877. Institution of Civil Engineers Telford Premium 1885. President, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 1888–9. Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Dalton Medal 1903.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography Supplement.D.M.McDowell and J.D.Jackson (eds), 1970, Osborne Reynolds and Engineering Science Today, Manchester: Manchester University Press.AB -
13 Abel, Sir Frederick August
[br]b. 17 July 1827 Woolwich, London, Englandd. 6 September 1902 Westminster, London, England[br]English chemist, co-inventor of cordite find explosives expert.[br]His family came from Germany and he was the son of a music master. He first became interested in science at the age of 14, when visiting his mineralogist uncle in Hamburg, and studied chemistry at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London. In 1845 he became one of the twenty-six founding students, under A.W.von Hofmann, of the Royal College of Chemistry. Such was his aptitude for the subject that within two years he became von Hermann's assistant and demonstrator. In 1851 Abel was appointed Lecturer in Chemistry, succeeding Michael Faraday, at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and it was while there that he wrote his Handbook of Chemistry, which was co-authored by his assistant, Charles Bloxam.Abel's four years at the Royal Military Academy served to foster his interest in explosives, but it was during his thirty-four years, beginning in 1854, as Ordnance Chemist at the Royal Arsenal and at Woolwich that he consolidated and developed his reputation as one of the international leaders in his field. In 1860 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, but it was his studies during the 1870s into the chemical changes that occur during explosions, and which were the subject of numerous papers, that formed the backbone of his work. It was he who established the means of storing gun-cotton without the danger of spontaneous explosion, but he also developed devices (the Abel Open Test and Close Test) for measuring the flashpoint of petroleum. He also became interested in metal alloys, carrying out much useful work on their composition. A further avenue of research occurred in 1881 when he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission set up to investigate safety in mines after the explosion that year in the Sealham Colliery. His resultant study on dangerous dusts did much to further understanding on the use of explosives underground and to improve the safety record of the coal-mining industry. The achievement for which he is most remembered, however, came in 1889, when, in conjunction with Sir James Dewar, he invented cordite. This stable explosive, made of wood fibre, nitric acid and glycerine, had the vital advantage of being a "smokeless powder", which meant that, unlike the traditional ammunition propellant, gunpowder ("black powder"), the firer's position was not given away when the weapon was discharged. Although much of the preliminary work had been done by the Frenchman Paul Vieille, it was Abel who perfected it, with the result that cordite quickly became the British Army's standard explosive.Abel married, and was widowed, twice. He had no children, but died heaped in both scientific honours and those from a grateful country.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsGrand Commander of the Royal Victorian Order 1901. Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath 1891 (Commander 1877). Knighted 1883. Created Baronet 1893. FRS 1860. President, Chemical Society 1875–7. President, Institute of Chemistry 1881–2. President, Institute of Electrical Engineers 1883. President, Iron and Steel Institute 1891. Chairman, Society of Arts 1883–4. Telford Medal 1878, Royal Society Royal Medal 1887, Albert Medal (Society of Arts) 1891, Bessemer Gold Medal 1897. Hon. DCL (Oxon.) 1883, Hon. DSc (Cantab.) 1888.Bibliography1854, with C.L.Bloxam, Handbook of Chemistry: Theoretical, Practical and Technical, London: John Churchill; 2nd edn 1858.Besides writing numerous scientific papers, he also contributed several articles to The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1875–89, 9th edn.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1912, Vol. 1, Suppl. 2, London: Smith, Elder.CMBiographical history of technology > Abel, Sir Frederick August
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14 Ampère, André-Marie
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 22 Jan 1775 Lyon, Franced. 10 June 1836 Marseille, France[br]French physicist and mathematician who established laws and principles relating magnetism and electricity to each other.[br]Ampère was reputed to have mastered all the then-known mathematics by the age of 12. He became Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Bourg in 1801 and a professor of mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1809. Observing a demonstration in 1820 of Oersted's discovery that a magnetic needle was deflected when placed near a current-carrying wire, Ampère was inspired to investigate the subject of electricity, of which he had no previous experience. Within a week he had prepared the first of several important communications on his discoveries to the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Included was a new hypothesis formed on the basis of his experiments on the relation between electricity and magnetism. He investigated the forces exerted on each other by current-carrying conductors and the properties of a solenoid. His mathematical theory describing these phenomena provided the foundations for the development of electro-dynamics and his classic work Théorie mathématique des phénomènes électro-dynamiques was published in 1827.The name "ampere" was adopted to replace the name "weber" as a unit of current after Helmholtz proposed such a change in 1881.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsBibliography1827, Théorie mathématique des phénomènes électro-dynamiques, Paris; repub. 1958, Paris (his chief published work).Further ReadingP.Lenard, 1933, Great Men of Science, London, pp. 223–30 (provides a short account). C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1970, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 1, New York, pp.139–46.GW -
15 Drake, Edwin Laurentine
SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology[br]b. 29 March 1819 Greenville, New York, USAd. 8 November 1880 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA[br]American pioneer oil driller.[br]He worked on his father's farm, was a clerk in a hotel and a store, and then became an express agent at a railway company in Springfield, Massachusetts, c.1845. After he had been working as a railway conductor in New Haven, Connecticut, for eight years, he resigned because of ill health. Owning some stocks in a Pennsylvania rock-oil company, which gathered oil from ground-level seepages mainly for medicinal use, he was engaged by this company and moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania, at the age of almost 40. After studying salt-well drilling by cable tool, which was still percussive, he became enthusiastic about the idea of using the same method to drill for oil, especially after researches in chemistry had revealed this new sort of fossil energy some years before.As a manager of the Seneca Oil Company, which referred to him as "Colonel" in letters of introduction simply to impress people with such titles, Drake began drilling in 1858, almost at the same time as pole-tool drilling for oil was started in Germany. His main contribution to the technology was the use of an iron pipe driven through the quicksand and the bedrock to prevent the bore-hole from filling. After nineteen months he struck oil at a depth of 21 m (69 ft) in August 1859. This was the first time that petroleum was struck at its source and the first proof of the presence of oil reservoirs within the earth's surface. Drake inaugurated the search for and the exploitation of the deep oil resources of the world and he initiated the science of petroleum engineering which became established at the beginning of the twentieth century.Drake failed to patent his drilling method; he was content being an oil commission merchant and Justice of the Peace in Titusville, which like other places in Pennsylvania became a boom town. Four years later he went to New York, where he lost all his money in oil speculations. He became very ill again and lived in poverty in Vermont and New Jersey until 1873, when he moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was pensioned by the state of Pennsylvania. The city of Titusville erected a monument to him and founded the Drake Museum.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of American Biography, Vol. III, pp. 427–8.Ida M.Tarbell, 1904, "The birth of industry", History of the Standard Oil Company, Vol. I, New York (gives a lively description of the booming years in Pennsylvania caused by Drake's successful drilling).H.F.Williamson and A.R.Daum, 1959, The American Petroleum Industry. The Age of Illumination, Evans ton, Ill.WKBiographical history of technology > Drake, Edwin Laurentine
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16 Dyer, Joseph Chessborough
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 15 November 1780 Stonnington Point, Connecticut, USAd. 2 May 1871 Manchester, England[br]American inventor of a popular type of roving frame for cotton manufacture.[br]As a youth, Dyer constructed an unsinkable life-boat but did not immediately pursue his mechanical bent, for at 16 he entered the counting-house of a French refugee named Nancrède and succeeded to part of the business. He first went to England in 1801 and finally settled in 1811 when he married Ellen Jones (d. 1842) of Gower Street, London. Dyer was already linked with American inventors and brought to England Perkins's plan for steel engraving in 1809, shearing and nail-making machines in 1811, and also received plans and specifications for Fulton's steamboats. He seems to have acted as a sort of British patent agent for American inventors, and in 1811 took out a patent for carding engines and a card clothing machine. In 1813 there was a patent for spinning long-fibred substances such as hemp, flax or grasses, and in 1825 there was a further patent for card making machinery. Joshua Field, on his tour through Britain in 1821, saw a wire drawing machine and a leather splitting machine at Dyer's works as well as the card-making machines. At first Dyer lived in Camden Town, London, but he had a card clothing business in Birmingham. He moved to Manchester c.1816, where he developed an extensive engineering works under the name "Joseph C.Dyer, patent card manufacturers, 8 Stanley Street, Dale Street". In 1832 he founded another works at Gamaches, Somme, France, but this enterprise was closed in 1848 with heavy losses through the mismanagement of an agent. In 1825 Dyer improved on Danforth's roving frame and started to manufacture it. While it was still a comparatively crude machine when com-pared with later versions, it had the merit of turning out a large quantity of work and was very popular, realizing a large sum of money. He patented the machine that year and must have continued his interest in these machines as further patents followed in 1830 and 1835. In 1821 Dyer had been involved in the foundation of the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) and he was linked with the construction of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He was not so successful with the ill-fated Bank of Manchester, of which he was a director and in which he lost £98,000. Dyer played an active role in the community and presented many papers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He helped to establish the Royal Institution in London and the Mechanics Institution in Manchester. In 1830 he was a member of the delegation to Paris to take contributions from the town of Manchester for the relief of those wounded in the July revolution and to congratulate Louis-Philippe on his accession. He called for the reform of Parliament and helped to form the Anti-Corn Law League. He hated slavery and wrote several articles on the subject, both prior to and during the American Civil War.[br]Bibliography1811, British patent no. 3,498 (carding engines and card clothing machine). 1813, British patent no. 3,743 (spinning long-fibred substances).1825, British patent no. 5,309 (card making machinery).1825, British patent no. 5,217 (roving frame). 1830, British patent no. 5,909 (roving frame).1835, British patent no. 6,863 (roving frame).Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography.J.W.Hall, 1932–3, "Joshua Field's diary of a tour in 1821 through the Midlands", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 6.Evan Leigh, 1875, The Science of Modern Cotton Spinning, Vol. II, Manchester (provides an account of Dyer's roving frame).D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of TextileTechnologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s, Oxford (describes Dyer's links with America).See also: Arnold, AzaRLHBiographical history of technology > Dyer, Joseph Chessborough
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17 Grove, Sir William Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 11 July 1811 Swansea, Walesd. 1 August 1896 London, England[br]Welsh chemist and physicist, inventor of the Grove electrochemical primary cell.[br]After education at Brasenose College, Oxford, Grove was called to the Bar in 1835. Instead of immediately practising, he became involved in electrical research, devising in 1839 the cell that bears his name. He became Professor of Experimental Philosophy at the London Institution from 1840 to 1845; it was during this period that he built up his high reputation among physicists. In 1846 he published On the Correlation of Physical Forces, which was based on a course of his lectures. He returned to the practice of law, becoming a judge in 1871, but retained his interest in scientific research during his sixteen-year occupancy of the Bench. He served as a member of the Council of the Royal Society in 1846 and 1847 and played a leading part in its reform. Contributing to the science of electrochemistry, he invented the Grove cell, which together with its modification by Bunsen became an important source of electrical energy during the middle of the nineteenth century, before mechanically driven generators became available. The Grove cell had a platinum electrode immersed in strong nitric acid, separated by a porous diaphragm from a zinc electrode in weak sulphuric acid. The hydrogen formed at the platinum electrode was immediately oxidized by the acid, turning it into water. This avoided the polarization which occurred in the early copper-zinc cells. It was a very powerful primary cell with a high voltage and a low internal resistance, but it produced objectionable fumes. Grove also invented his "gas battery", the earliest fuel cell, in which a current resulted from the chemical energy released from combining oxygen and hydrogen. This was developed by Rawcliffe and others, and found applications as a power source in manned spacecraft.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1872. FRS 1840. Fellow of the Chemistry Society 1841. Royal Society Royal Medal 1847.Bibliography1846, On the Correlation of Physical Forces, London; 1874, 6th edn, with reprints of many of Grove's papers (his only book, an early view on the conservation of energy).1839, "On a small voltaic battery of great energy", Philosophical Magazine 15:287–93 (his account of his cell).Further ReadingObituary, 1896, Electrician 37:483–4.K.R.Webb, 1961, "Sir William Robert Grove (1811–1896) and the origin of the fuel cell", Journal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry 85: 291–3 (for the present-day significance of Grove's experiments).C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V, New York, pp. 559–61.GWBiographical history of technology > Grove, Sir William Robert
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18 Hodgkinson, Eaton
[br]b. 26 February 1789 Anderton, Cheshire, Englandd. 18 June 1861 near Manchester, England[br]English engineer who devised d new form of cast-iron girder.[br]Eaton Hodgkinson's father, a farmer, died when he was 6 years old, but his mother was a resourceful woman who set up a business in Salford and ensured that her son received a sound schooling. Most important for his education, however, was his friendship with the Manchester scientific luminary Dr. Dalton, who instructed him in practical mathematics. These studies led Hodgkinson to devise a new form of cast-iron girder, carefully tested by experiments and which was widely adopted for fire-proof structures in the nineteenth century. Following Dalton, Hodgkinson became an active member of the Manchester Philosophical Society, of which he was elected President in 1848. He also became an active member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Hodgkinson's work on cast-iron girders secured him a Fellowship of the Royal Society, and the Royal Medal of the Society, in 1841. It was Hodgkinson also who verified the mathematical value of the pioneering experiments carried out by William Fairbairn for Robert Stephenson's proposed wrought-iron tube structure which, in 1849, became the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits. He received a Silver Medal for this work at the Paris Exhibition of 1858. Hodgkinson served as a member of the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into the application of iron to railway structures. In 1847 he was appointed Professor of the Mechanical Principles of Engineering at University College, London, but his health began to fail shortly after. He was elected an Honorary Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1851. Described as "singularly simple and guileless", he was widely admired and respected.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, Manchester Philosophical Society 1848. FRS 1841. Royal Society Medal 1841.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, London.Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 21:542–5.AB -
19 Marcus, Siegfried
[br]b. 18 September 1831 Malchin, Mecklenburgd. 30 June 1898 Vienna, Austria[br]German inventor, builder of the world's first self-propelled vehicle driven by an internal combustion engine.[br]Marcus was apprenticed as a mechanic and was employed in the newly founded enterprise of Siemens \& Halske in Berlin. He then went to Vienna and, from 1853, was employed in the workshop of the Imperial Court Mechanic, Kraft, and in the same year he was a mechanic in the Royal and Imperial Institute of Physics of the University of Vienna. In 1860 he became independent of the Imperial Court, but he installed an electrical bell system for the Empress Elizabeth and instructed the Crown Prince Rudolf in natural science.Marcus was granted thirty-eight patents in Austria, as well as many foreign patents. The magnetic electric ignition engine, for which he was granted a patent in 1864, brought him the biggest financial reward; it was introduced as the "Viennese Ignition" engine by the Austrian Navy and the pioneers of the Prussian and Russian armies. The engine was exhibited at the World Fair in Paris in 1867 together with the "Thermoscale" which was also constructed by Marcus; this was a magnetic/electric rotative engine for electric lighting and field telegraphy.Marcus's reputation is due mainly to his attempts to build a new internal combustion engine. By 1870 he had assembled a simple, direct-working internal combustion engine on a primitive chassis. This was, in fact, the first petrol-engined vehicle with electric ignition, and tradition records that when Marcus drove the vehicle in the streets of Vienna it made so much noise that the police asked him to remove it; this he did and did not persist with his experiments. Thus ended the trials of the world's first petrol-engined vehicle; it was running in 1875, ten years before Daimler and Benz were carrying out their early trials in Stuttgart.[br]Further ReadingAustrian Dictionary of National Biography.IMcN -
20 Shrapnel, General Henry
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 3 June 1761 Bradford-on-Avon, Englandd. 13 March 1842 Southampton, England[br]English professional soldier and inventor of shrapnel ammunition.[br]The youngest of nine children, Shrapnel was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in July 1779. His early military service was in Newfoundland and it was on his return to England in 1784 that he began to interest himself in artillery ammunition. His particular concern was to develop a round that would be more effective against infantry than the existing solid cannon-ball and canister round. The result was a hollow, spherical shell filled with lead musket balls and fitted with a bursting charge and fuse. His development of the shell was interrupted by active service in the Low Countries in 1793–4, during which he was wounded, and duty in the West Indies. Nevertheless, in 1803 the British Army adopted his shell, which during the next twelve years played a significant part on the battlefield.In 1804 Shrapnel was appointed Assistant Inspector of Artillery and made further contributions to the science of gunnery, drawing up a series of range tables to improve accuracy of fire, inventing the brass tangent slide for better sighting of guns, and improving the production of howitzers and mortars by way of the invention of parabolic chambers. His services were recognized in 1814 by a Treasury grant of £1,200 per annum for life. He was promoted Major-General in 1819 and appointed a Colonel-Commandant of the Royal Artillery in 1827, and in the 1830s there was talk of him being made a baronet, but nothing came of it. Shrapnel remains a current military term, although modern bursting shells rely on the fragmentation of the casing of the projectile for their effect rather than his original concept of having shot inside them.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsColonel-Commandant of the Royal Artillery 1827.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1897, Vol. 52, London: Smith, Elder.CMBiographical history of technology > Shrapnel, General Henry
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