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Dictionary of Scientific Biography

  • 1 Guericke, Otto von

    [br]
    b. 20 November 1602 Magdeburg, Saxony, Germany
    d. 11 May 1686 Hamburg, Germany
    [br]
    German engineer and physicist, inventor of the air pump and investigator of the properties of a vacuum.
    [br]
    Guericke was born into a patrician family in Magdeburg. He was educated at the University of Leipzig in 1617–20 and at the University of Helmstedt in 1620. He then spent two years studying law at Jena, and in 1622 went to Leiden to study law, mathematics, engineering and especially fortification. He spent most of his life in politics, for he was elected an alderman of Magdeburg in 1626. After the destruction of Magdeburg in 1631, he worked in Brunswick and Erfurt as an engineer for the Swedish government, and then in 1635 for the Electorate of Saxony. He was Mayor of Magdeburg for thirty years, between 1646 and 1676. He was ennobled in 1666 and retired from public office in 168land went to Hamburg. It was through his attendances at international congresses and at princely courts that he took part in the exchange of scientific ideas.
    From his student days he was concerned with the definition of space and posed three questions: can empty space exist or is space always filled? How can heavenly bodies affect each other across space and how are they moved? Is space, and so also the heavenly bodies, bounded or unbounded? In c. 1647 Guericke made a suction pump for air and tried to exhaust a beer barrel, but he could not stop the leaks. He then tried a copper sphere, which imploded. He developed a series of spectacular demonstrations with his air pump. In 1654 at Rattisbon he used a vertical cylinder with a well-fitting piston connected over pulleys by a rope to fifty men, who could not stop the piston descending when the cylinder was exhausted. More famous were his copper hemispheres which, when exhausted, could not be drawn apart by two teams of eight horses. They were first demonstrated at Magdeburg in 1657 and at the court in Berlin in 1663. Through these experiments he discovered the elasticity of air and began to investigate its density at different heights. He heard of the work of Torricelli in 1653 and by 1660 had succeeded in making barometric forecasts. He published his famous work New Experiments Concerning Empty Space in 1672. Between 1660 and 1663 Guericke constructed a large ball of sulphur that could be rotated on a spindle. He found that, when he pressed his hand on it and it was rotated, it became strongly electrified; he thus unintentionally became the inventor of the first machine to generate static electricity. He attempted to reach a complete physical explanation of the world and the heavens with magnetism as a primary force and evolved an explanation for the rotation of the heavenly bodies.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1672, Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio (New Experiments Concerning Empty Space).
    Further Reading
    F.W.Hoffmann, 1874, Otto von Guericke (a full biography).
    T.I.Williams (ed.), 1969, A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, London: A. \& C.Black (contains a short account of his life).
    Chambers Concise Dictionary of Scientists, 1989, Cambridge.
    Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V, New York.
    C.Singer (ed.), 1957, A History of Technology, Vols. III and IV, Oxford University Press (includes references to Guericke's inventions).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Guericke, Otto von

  • 2 Wollaston, William Hyde

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy
    [br]
    b. 6 August 1766 East Dereham, Norfolk, England
    d. 22 December 1828 London, England
    [br]
    English chemist and metallurgist who discovered palladium and rhodium, pioneer in the fabrication of platinum.
    [br]
    Wollaston qualified in medicine at Cambridge University but gave up his practice in 1800 to devote himself to chemistry and metallurgy, funded from the profits from making malleable platinum. In partnership with Smithson Tennant, a friend from his Cambridge days, he worked on the extraction of platinum by dissolving it in aqua regia. In 1802 he found that in addition to platinum the solution contained a new metal, which he named palladium. Two years later he identified another new metal, rhodium.
    Wollaston developed a method of forming platinum by means of powder metallurgy and was the first to produce malleable and ductile platinum on a commercial scale. He produced platinum vessels for sulphuric acid manufacture and scientific apparatus such as crucibles. He devised an elegant method for forming fine platinum wire. He also applied his inventive talents to improving scientific apparatus, including the sextant and microscope and a reflecting goniometer for measuring crystal angles. In 1807 he was appointed Joint Secretary of the Royal Society with Sir Humphry Davy, which entailed a heavy workload and required them to referee all the papers submitted to the Society for publication.
    Wollaston's output of platinum began to decline after 1822. Due to ill health he ceased business operations in 1828 and at last made public the details of his secret platinum fabrication process. It was fully described in the Bakerian Lecture he delivered to the Royal Society on 28 November 1828, shortly before his death.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1793.
    Bibliography
    His scientific papers were published in various journals, nearly all listed in the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers.
    Further Reading
    There is no good general biography, the best general account being the entry in
    Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
    D.McDonald, 1960, A History of Platinum from the Earliest Times to the Eighteen- Eighties, London (provides a good discussion of his work on platinum).
    M.E.Weeks, 1939, "The discovery of the elements", Journal of Chemical Education: 184–5.
    ASD

    Biographical history of technology > Wollaston, William Hyde

  • 3 Carnot, Nicolas Léonard Sadi

    [br]
    b. 1 June 1796 Paris, France
    d. 24 August 1831 Paris, France
    [br]
    French laid the foundations for modern thermodynamics through his book Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu when he stated that the efficiency of an engine depended on the working substance and the temperature drop between the incoming and outgoing steam.
    [br]
    Sadi was the eldest son of Lazare Carnot, who was prominent as one of Napoleon's military and civil advisers. Sadi was born in the Palais du Petit Luxembourg and grew up during the Napoleonic wars. He was tutored by his father until in 1812, at the minimum age of 16, he entered the Ecole Polytechnique to study stress analysis, mechanics, descriptive geometry and chemistry. He organized the students to fight against the allies at Vincennes in 1814. He left the Polytechnique that October and went to the Ecole du Génie at Metz as a student second lieutenant. While there, he wrote several scientific papers, but on the Restoration in 1815 he was regarded with suspicion because of the support his father had given Napoleon. In 1816, on completion of his studies, Sadi became a second lieutenant in the Metz engineering regiment and spent his time in garrison duty, drawing up plans of fortifications. He seized the chance to escape from this dull routine in 1819 through an appointment to the army general staff corps in Paris, where he took leave of absence on half pay and began further courses of study at the Sorbonne, Collège de France, Ecole des Mines and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. He was inter-ested in industrial development, political economy, tax reform and the fine arts.
    It was not until 1821 that he began to concentrate on the steam-engine, and he soon proposed his early form of the Carnot cycle. He sought to find a general solution to cover all types of steam-engine, and reduced their operation to three basic stages: an isothermal expansion as the steam entered the cylinder; an adiabatic expansion; and an isothermal compression in the condenser. In 1824 he published his Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu, which was well received at the time but quickly forgotten. In it he accepted the caloric theory of heat but pointed out the impossibility of perpetual motion. His main contribution to a correct understanding of a heat engine, however, lay in his suggestion that power can be produced only where there exists a temperature difference due "not to an actual consumption of caloric but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body". He used the analogy of a water-wheel with the water falling around its circumference. He proposed the true Carnot cycle with the addition of a final adiabatic compression in which motive power was con sumed to heat the gas to its original incoming temperature and so closed the cycle. He realized the importance of beginning with the temperature of the fire and not the steam in the boiler. These ideas were not taken up in the study of thermodynartiics until after Sadi's death when B.P.E.Clapeyron discovered his book in 1834.
    In 1824 Sadi was recalled to military service as a staff captain, but he resigned in 1828 to devote his time to physics and economics. He continued his work on steam-engines and began to develop a kinetic theory of heat. In 1831 he was investigating the physical properties of gases and vapours, especially the relationship between temperature and pressure. In June 1832 he contracted scarlet fever, which was followed by "brain fever". He made a partial recovery, but that August he fell victim to a cholera epidemic to which he quickly succumbed.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1824, Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu; pub. 1960, trans. R.H.Thurston, New York: Dover Publications; pub. 1978, trans. Robert Fox, Paris (full biographical accounts are provided in the introductions of the translated editions).
    Further Reading
    Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1971, Vol. III, New York: C.Scribner's Sons. T.I.Williams (ed.), 1969, A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, London: A. \& C.
    Black.
    Chambers Concise Dictionary of Scientists, 1989, Cambridge.
    D.S.L.Cardwell, 1971, from Watt to Clausius. The Rise of Thermodynamics in the Early Industrial Age, London: Heinemann (discusses Carnot's theories of heat).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Carnot, Nicolas Léonard Sadi

  • 4 Porta, Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) della

    [br]
    b. between 3 October and 15 November 1535 Vico Equense, near Naples, Italy
    d. 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 Reading
    Dictionary 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 / IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Porta, Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) della

  • 5 Weber, Wilhelm Eduard

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 24 October 1804 Wittenberg, Germany
    d. 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 Distinctions
    FRS 1850. Royal Society Copley Medal 1859.
    Bibliography
    1892–4, William Weber's Werke, 6 vols, Berlin.
    Further Reading
    P.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

    Biographical history of technology > Weber, Wilhelm Eduard

  • 6 Torricelli, Evangelista

    [br]
    b. 15 October 1608 Faenza, Italy
    d. 25 October 1647 Florence, Italy
    [br]
    Italian physicist, inventor of the mercury barometer and discoverer of atmospheric pressure.
    [br]
    Torricelli was the eldest child of a textile artisan. Between 1625 and 1626 he attended the Jesuit school at Faenza, where he showed such outstanding aptitude in mathematics and philosophy that his uncle was persuaded to send him to Rome to a school run by Benedetto Castelli, a mathematician and engineer and a former pupil of Galileo Galilei. Between 1630 and 1641, Torricelli was possibly Secretary to Giovanni Ciampoli, Galileo's friend and protector. In 1641 Torricelli wrote a treatise, De motugravium, amplifying Galileo's doctrine on the motion of projectiles, and Galileo accepted him as a pupil. On Galileo's death in 1642, he was appointed as mathematician and philosopher to the court of Grand Duke Ferdinando II of Tuscany. He remained in Florence until his early death in 1647, possibly from typhoid fever. He wrote a great number of mathematical papers on conic sections, the cycloid, the logarithmic curve and other subjects, which made him well known.
    By 1642 Torricelli was producing good lenses for telescopes; he subsequently improved them, and attained near optical perfection. He also constructed a simple microscope with a small glass sphere as a lens. Galileo had looked at problems of raising water with suction pumps, and also with a siphon in 1630. Torricelli brought up the subject again in 1640 and later produced his most important invention, the barometer. He used mercury to fill a glass tube that was sealed at one end and inverted it. He found that the height of mercury in the tube adjusted itself to a well-defined level of about 76 cm (30 in.), higher than the free surface outside. He realized that this must be due to the pressure of the air on the outside surface and predicted that it would fall with increasing altitude. He thus demonstrated the pressure of the atmosphere and the existence of a vacuum on top of the mercury, publishing his findings in 1644. He later noticed that changes in the height of the mercury were related to changes in the weather.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1641, De motu gravium.
    Further Reading
    T.I.Williams (ed.), 1969, A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, London: A. \& C.Black.
    Chambers Concise Dictionary of Scientists, 1989, Cambridge.
    A Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1976, Vol. XIII, New York: C.Scribner's Sons.
    A.Stowers, 1961–2, "Thomas Newcomen's first steam engine 250 years ago and the initial development of steam power", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 34 (provides an account of his mercury barometer).
    W.E.Knowles Middleton, 1964, The History of the Barometer, Baltimore.
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Torricelli, Evangelista

  • 7 Arsonval, Jacques Arsène d'

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 8 June 1851 Boric, France
    d. 31 December 1940 Boric, France
    [br]
    French physician and physicist noted for his invention of the reflecting galvanometer and for contributions to electrotherapy.
    [br]
    After studies at colleges in Limoges and later in Paris, Arsonval became a doctor of medicine in 1877. In 1882 the Collège de France established a laboratory of biophysics with Arsonval as Director, and he was Professor from 1894.
    His most outstanding scientific contributions were in the field of biological applications of electricity. His interest in muscle currents led to a series of inventions to assist in research, including the moving-coil galvanometer. In 1881 he made a significant improvement to the galvanometer by reversing the magnetic elements. It had been usual to suspend a compass needle in the centre of a large, stationary coil, but Arsonval's invention was to suspend a small, light coil between the poles of a powerful fixed magnet. This simple arrangement was independent of the earth's magnetic field and insensitive to vibration. A great increase in sensitivity was achieved by attaching a mirror to the coil in order to reflect a spot of light. For bacterial-research purposes he designed the first constant-temperature incubator controlled by electricity. His experiments on the effects of high-frequency, low-voltage alternating currents on animals led to the first high-frequency heat-therapy unit being established in 1892, and later to methods of physiotherapy becoming a professional discipline.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Académie des Sciences, Prix Montyon 1882. Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur 1884. Grand Cross 1931.
    Bibliography
    1882, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences 94:1347–50 (describes the galvanometer).
    1903, Traité de physique biologique, 2 vols, Paris (an account of his technological work).
    Further Reading
    C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1970, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 1, New York, pp. 302–5.
    D.O.Woodbury, 1949, A Measure for Greatness, New York.
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Arsonval, Jacques Arsène d'

  • 8 Grove, Sir William Robert

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 11 July 1811 Swansea, Wales
    d. 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 Distinctions
    Knighted 1872. FRS 1840. Fellow of the Chemistry Society 1841. Royal Society Royal Medal 1847.
    Bibliography
    1846, 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 Reading
    Obituary, 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.
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Grove, Sir William Robert

  • 9 Huygens, Christiaan

    SUBJECT AREA: Horology
    [br]
    b. 14 April 1629 The Hague, the Netherlands
    d. 8 June 1695 The Hague, the Netherlands
    [br]
    Dutch scientist who was responsible for two of the greatest advances in horology: the successful application of both the pendulum to the clock and the balance spring to the watch.
    [br]
    Huygens was born into a cultured and privileged class. His father, Constantijn, was a poet and statesman who had wide interests. Constantijn exerted a strong influence on his son, who was educated at home until he reached the age of 16. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at Ley den University from 1645 to 1647, and continued his studies at the Collegium Arausiacum in Breda until 1649. He then lived at The Hague, where he had the means to devote his time entirely to study. In 1666 he became a Member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and settled there until his return to The Hague in 1681. He also had a close relationship with the Royal Society and visited London on three occasions, meeting Newton on his last visit in 1689. Huygens had a wide range of interests and made significant contributions in mathematics, astronomy, optics and mechanics. He also made technical advances in optical instruments and horology.
    Despite the efforts of Burgi there had been no significant improvement in the performance of ordinary clocks and watches from their inception to Huygens's time, as they were controlled by foliots or balances which had no natural period of oscillation. The pendulum appeared to offer a means of improvement as it had a natural period of oscillation that was almost independent of amplitude. Galileo Galilei had already pioneered the use of a freely suspended pendulum for timing events, but it was by no means obvious how it could be kept swinging and used to control a clock. Towards the end of his life Galileo described such a. mechanism to his son Vincenzio, who constructed a model after his father's death, although it was not completed when he himself died in 1642. This model appears to have been copied in Italy, but it had little influence on horology, partly because of the circumstances in which it was produced and possibly also because it differed radically from clocks of that period. The crucial event occurred on Christmas Day 1656 when Huygens, quite independently, succeeded in adapting an existing spring-driven table clock so that it was not only controlled by a pendulum but also kept it swinging. In the following year he was granted a privilege or patent for this clock, and several were made by the clockmaker Salomon Coster of The Hague. The use of the pendulum produced a dramatic improvement in timekeeping, reducing the daily error from minutes to seconds, but Huygens was aware that the pendulum was not truly isochronous. This error was magnified by the use of the existing verge escapement, which made the pendulum swing through a large arc. He overcame this defect very elegantly by fitting cheeks at the pendulum suspension point, progressively reducing the effective length of the pendulum as the amplitude increased. Initially the cheeks were shaped empirically, but he was later able to show that they should have a cycloidal shape. The cheeks were not adopted universally because they introduced other defects, and the problem was eventually solved more prosaically by way of new escapements which reduced the swing of the pendulum. Huygens's clocks had another innovatory feature: maintaining power, which kept the clock going while it was being wound.
    Pendulums could not be used for portable timepieces, which continued to use balances despite their deficiencies. Robert Hooke was probably the first to apply a spring to the balance, but his efforts were not successful. From his work on the pendulum Huygens was well aware of the conditions necessary for isochronism in a vibrating system, and in January 1675, with a flash of inspiration, he realized that this could be achieved by controlling the oscillations of the balance with a spiral spring, an arrangement that is still used in mechanical watches. The first model was made for Huygens in Paris by the clockmaker Isaac Thuret, who attempted to appropriate the invention and patent it himself. Huygens had for many years been trying unsuccessfully to adapt the pendulum clock for use at sea (in order to determine longitude), and he hoped that a balance-spring timekeeper might be better suited for this purpose. However, he was disillusioned as its timekeeping proved to be much more susceptible to changes in temperature than that of the pendulum clock.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1663. Member of the Académie Royale des Sciences 1666.
    Bibliography
    For his complete works, see Oeuvres complètes de Christian Huygens, 1888–1950, 22 vols, The Hague.
    1658, Horologium, The Hague; repub., 1970, trans. E.L.Edwardes, Antiquarian
    Horology 7:35–55 (describes the pendulum clock).
    1673, Horologium Oscillatorium, Paris; repub., 1986, The Pendulum Clock or Demonstrations Concerning the Motion ofPendula as Applied to Clocks, trans.
    R.J.Blackwell, Ames.
    Further Reading
    H.J.M.Bos, 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C.C.Gillispie, Vol. 6, New York, pp. 597–613 (for a fuller account of his life and scientific work, but note the incorrect date of his death).
    R.Plomp, 1979, Spring-Driven Dutch Pendulum Clocks, 1657–1710, Schiedam (describes Huygens's application of the pendulum to the clock).
    S.A.Bedini, 1991, The Pulse of Time, Florence (describes Galileo's contribution of the pendulum to the clock).
    J.H.Leopold, 1982, "L"Invention par Christiaan Huygens du ressort spiral réglant pour les montres', Huygens et la France, Paris, pp. 154–7 (describes the application of the balance spring to the watch).
    A.R.Hall, 1978, "Horology and criticism", Studia Copernica 16:261–81 (discusses Hooke's contribution).
    DV

    Biographical history of technology > Huygens, Christiaan

  • 10 Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 18 February 1745 Como, Italy
    d. 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 Distinctions
    FRS 1791. Royal Society Copley Medal 1794. Knight of the Iron Crown, Austria, 1806. Senator of the Realm of Lombardy 1809.
    Bibliography
    1800, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 18:744–6 (Volta's report on his discovery).
    Further Reading
    G.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).
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Volta, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio

  • 11 Ampère, André-Marie

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 22 Jan 1775 Lyon, France
    d. 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 Distinctions
    Bibliography
    1827, Théorie mathématique des phénomènes électro-dynamiques, Paris; repub. 1958, Paris (his chief published work).
    Further Reading
    P.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

    Biographical history of technology > Ampère, André-Marie

  • 12 Banu Musa ibn Shakir

    [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 Reading
    Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Banu Musa ibn Shakir

  • 13 Chevenard, Pierre Antoine Jean Sylvestre

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy
    [br]
    b. 31 December 1888 Thizy, Rhône, France
    d. 15 August 1960 Fontenoy-aux-Roses, France
    [br]
    French metallurgist, inventor of the alloys Elinvar and Platinite and of the method of strengthening nickel-chromium alloys by a precipitate ofNi3Al which provided the basis of all later super-alloy development.
    [br]
    Soon after graduating from the Ecole des Mines at St-Etienne in 1910, Chevenard joined the Société de Commentry Fourchambault et Decazeville at their steelworks at Imphy, where he remained for the whole of his career. Imphy had for some years specialized in the production of nickel steels. From this venture emerged the first austenitic nickel-chromium steel, containing 6 per cent chromium and 22–4 per cent nickel and produced commercially in 1895. Most of the alloys required by Guillaume in his search for the low-expansion alloy Invar were made at Imphy. At the Imphy Research Laboratory, established in 1911, Chevenard conducted research into the development of specialized nickel-based alloys. His first success followed from an observation that some of the ferro-nickels were free from the low-temperature brittleness exhibited by conventional steels. To satisfy the technical requirements of Georges Claude, the French cryogenic pioneer, Chevenard was then able in 1912 to develop an alloy containing 55–60 per cent nickel, 1–3 per cent manganese and 0.2–0.4 per cent carbon. This was ductile down to −190°C, at which temperature carbon steel was very brittle.
    By 1916 Elinvar, a nickel-iron-chromium alloy with an elastic modulus that did not vary appreciably with changes in ambient temperature, had been identified. This found extensive use in horology and instrument manufacture, and even for the production of high-quality tuning forks. Another very popular alloy was Platinite, which had the same coefficient of thermal expansion as platinum and soda glass. It was used in considerable quantities by incandescent-lamp manufacturers for lead-in wires. Other materials developed by Chevenard at this stage to satisfy the requirements of the electrical industry included resistance alloys, base-metal thermocouple combinations, magnetically soft high-permeability alloys, and nickel-aluminium permanent magnet steels of very high coercivity which greatly improved the power and reliability of car magnetos. Thermostatic bimetals of all varieties soon became an important branch of manufacture at Imphy.
    During the remainder of his career at Imphy, Chevenard brilliantly elaborated the work on nickel-chromium-tungsten alloys to make stronger pressure vessels for the Haber and other chemical processes. Another famous alloy that he developed, ATV, contained 35 per cent nickel and 11 per cent chromium and was free from the problem of stress-induced cracking in steam that had hitherto inhibited the development of high-power steam turbines. Between 1912 and 1917, Chevenard recognized the harmful effects of traces of carbon on this type of alloy, and in the immediate postwar years he found efficient methods of scavenging the residual carbon by controlled additions of reactive metals. This led to the development of a range of stabilized austenitic stainless steels which were free from the problems of intercrystalline corrosion and weld decay that then caused so much difficulty to the manufacturers of chemical plant.
    Chevenard soon concluded that only the nickel-chromium system could provide a satisfactory basis for the subsequent development of high-temperature alloys. The first published reference to the strengthening of such materials by additions of aluminium and/or titanium occurs in his UK patent of 1929. This strengthening approach was adopted in the later wartime development in Britain of the Nimonic series of alloys, all of which depended for their high-temperature strength upon the precipitated compound Ni3Al.
    In 1936 he was studying the effect of what is now known as "thermal fatigue", which contributes to the eventual failure of both gas and steam turbines. He then published details of equipment for assessing the susceptibility of nickel-chromium alloys to this type of breakdown by a process of repeated quenching. Around this time he began to make systematic use of the thermo-gravimetrie balance for high-temperature oxidation studies.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President, Société de Physique. Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur.
    Bibliography
    1929, Analyse dilatométrique des matériaux, with a preface be C.E.Guillaume, Paris: Dunod (still regarded as the definitive work on this subject).
    The Dictionary of Scientific Biography lists around thirty of his more important publications between 1914 and 1943.
    Further Reading
    "Chevenard, a great French metallurgist", 1960, Acier Fins (Spec.) 36:92–100.
    L.Valluz, 1961, "Notice sur les travaux de Pierre Chevenard, 1888–1960", Paris: Institut de France, Académie des Sciences.
    ASD

    Biographical history of technology > Chevenard, Pierre Antoine Jean Sylvestre

  • 14 Gascoigne, William

    [br]
    b. 1612 (?) near Leeds, Yorkshire, England
    d. 2 July 1644 Marston Moor, Yorkshire, England
    [br]
    English astronomer and inventor of the micrometer.
    [br]
    As the son of a country gentleman, William Gascoigne would have had opportunities to receive reasonable schooling, but there is no record of how or where he was educated. However, by the late 1630s he had acquired a considerable knowledge of astronomy and was in correspondence with other scholars. About 1638 he invented an instrument to measure small angles in a telescope, consisting of two parallel wires in the eye piece moved by a calibrated screw. His invention remained unknown until it was reinvented thirty years later. He is said to have left the manuscript of a treatise on optics, but this did not survive. He was killed fighting for the royalist side at the battle of Marston Moor.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    C.C.Gillespie (ed.), 1970–6, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York, s.v.Gascoigne; Towneley.
    A.F.Burstall, 1963, A History of Mechanical Engineering, London, p. 159 (includes a drawing of Gascoigne's micrometer).
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Gascoigne, William

  • 15 Gramme, Zénobe Théophile

    [br]
    b. 4 April 1826 Jehay-Bodignée, Belgium
    d. 20 January 1901 Bois de Colombes, Paris, France
    [br]
    Belgian engineer whose improvements to the dynamo produced a machine ready for successful commercial exploitation.
    [br]
    Gramme trained as a carpenter and showed an early talent for working with machinery. Moving to Paris he found employment in the Alliance factory as a model maker. With a growing interest in electricity he left to become an instrument maker with Heinrich Daniel Rühmkorff. In 1870 he patented the uniformly wound ring-armature dynamo with which his name is associated. Together with Hippolyte Fontaine, in 1871 Gramme opened a factory to manufacture his dynamos. They rapidly became a commercial success for both arc lighting and electrochemical purposes, international publicity being achieved at exhibitions in Vienna, Paris and Philadelphia. It was the realization that a Gramme machine was capable of running as a motor, i.e. the reversibility of function, that illustrated the entire concept of power transmission by electricity. This was first publicly demonstrated in 1873. In 1874 Gramme reduced the size and increased the efficiency of his generators by relying completely on the principle of self-excitation. It was the first practical machine in which were combined the features of continuity of commutation, self-excitation, good lamination of the armature core and a reasonably good magnetic circuit. This dynamo, together with the self-regulating arc lamps then available, made possible the innumerable electric-lighting schemes that followed. These were of the greatest importance in demonstrating that electric lighting was a practical and economic means of illumination. Gramme also designed an alternator to operate Jablochkoff candles. For some years he took an active part in the operations of the Société Gramme and also experimented in his own workshop without collaboration, but made no further contribution to electrical technology.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knight Commander, Order of Leopold of Belgium 1897. Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. Chevalier, Order of the Iron Crown, Austria.
    Bibliography
    9 June 1870, British patent no. 1,668 (the ring armature machine).
    1871, Comptes rendus 73:175–8 (Gramme's first description of his invention).
    Further Reading
    W.J.King, 1962, The Development of Electrical Technology in the 19th Century, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, Paper 30, pp. 377–90 (an extensive account of Gramme's machines).
    S.P.Thompson, 1901, obituary, Electrician 66: 509–10.
    C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V, New York, p. 496.
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Gramme, Zénobe Théophile

  • 16 Bell, Sir Isaac Lowthian

    [br]
    b. 15 February 1816 Newcastle upon Tyne, England
    d. 20 December 1904 Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire, England
    [br]
    English ironworks proprietor, chemical manufacturer and railway director, widely renowned for his scientific pronouncements.
    [br]
    Following an extensive education, in 1835 Bell entered the Tyneside chemical and iron business where his father was a partner; for about five years from 1845 he controlled the ironworks. In 1844, he and his two brothers leased an iron blast-furnace at Wylam on Tyne. In 1850, with partners, he started chemical works at Washington, near Gateshead. A few years later, with his two brothers, he set up the Clarence Ironworks on Teesside. In the 1880s, salt extraction and soda-making were added there; at that time the Bell Brothers' enterprises, including collieries, employed 6,000 people.
    Lowthian Bell was a pioneer in applying thermochemistry to blast-furnace working. Besides his commercial interests, scientific experimentation and international travel, he found time to take a leading part in the promotion of British technical organizations; upon his death he left evidence of a prodigious level of personal activity.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Created baronet 1885. FRS 1875. Légion d'honneur 1878. MP, Hartlepool, 1875–80. President: British Iron Trade Association; Iron and Steel Institute; Institution of Mechanical Engineers; North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers; Institution of Mining Engineers; Society of the Chemical Industry. Iron and Steel Institute Bessemer Gold Medal 1874 (the first recipient). Society of Arts Albert Medal 1895.
    Bibliography
    The first of several books, Bell's Chemical Phenomena of Iron Smelting… (1872), was soon translated into German, French and Swedish. He was the author of more than forty technical articles.
    Further Reading
    1900–1910, Dictionary of National Biography.
    C.Wilson, 1984, article in Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol. I, ed. J.Jeremy, Butterworth (a more discursive account).
    D.Burn, 1940, The Economic History of Steelmaking, 1867–1939: A Study in Competition, Cambridge (2nd edn 1961).
    JKA

    Biographical history of technology > Bell, Sir Isaac Lowthian

  • 17 Brewster, Sir David

    [br]
    b. 11 December 1781 Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland
    d. 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 Distinctions
    Knighted 1832. FRS 1815.
    Further Reading
    Dictionary 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

    Biographical history of technology > Brewster, Sir David

  • 18 Abel, Sir Frederick August

    [br]
    b. 17 July 1827 Woolwich, London, England
    d. 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 Distinctions
    Grand 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.
    Bibliography
    1854, 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 Reading
    Dictionary of National Biography, 1912, Vol. 1, Suppl. 2, London: Smith, Elder.
    CM

    Biographical history of technology > Abel, Sir Frederick August

  • 19 Singer, Isaac Merritt

    [br]
    b. 27 October 1811 Pittstown, New York, USA
    d. 23 July 1875 Torquay, Devonshire, England
    [br]
    American inventor of a sewing machine, and pioneer of mass production.
    [br]
    The son of a millwright, Singer was employed as an unskilled labourer at the age of 12, but later gained wide experience as a travelling machinist. He also found employment as an actor. On 16 May 1839, while living at Lockport, Illinois, he obtained his first patent for a rock-drilling machine, but he soon squandered the money he made. Then in 1849, while at Pittsburgh, he secured a patent for a wood-and metal-carving machine that he had begun five years previously; however, a boiler explosion in the factory destroyed his machine and left him penniless.
    Near the end of 1850 Singer was engaged to redesign the Lerow \& Blodgett sewing machine at the Boston shop of Orson C.Phelps, where the machine was being repaired. He built an improved version in eleven days that was sufficiently different for him to patent on 12 August 1851. He formed a partnership with Phelps and G.B. Zieber and they began to market the invention. Singer soon purchased Phelps's interest, although Phelps continued to manufacture the machines. Then Edward Clark acquired a one-third interest and with Singer bought out Zieber. These two, with dark's flair for promotion and marketing, began to create a company which eventually would become the largest manufacturer of sewing machines exported worldwide, with subsidiary factories in England.
    However, first Singer had to defend his patent, which was challenged by an earlier Boston inventor, Elias Howe. Although after a long lawsuit Singer had to pay royalties, it was the Singer machine which eventually captured the market because it could do continuous stitching. In 1856 the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important pooling arrangement in American history, was formed to share the various patents so that machines could be built without infringements and manufacture could be expanded without fear of litigation. Singer contributed his monopoly on the needle-bar cam with his 1851 patent. He secured twenty additional patents, so that his original straight-needle vertical design for lock-stitching eventually included such refinements as a continuous wheel-feed, yielding presser-foot, and improved cam for moving the needle-bar. A new model, introduced in 1856, was the first to be intended solely for use in the home.
    Initially Phelps made all the machines for Singer. Then a works was established in New York where the parts were assembled by skilled workers through filing and fitting. Each machine was therefore a "one-off" but Singer machines were always advertised as the best on the market and sold at correspondingly high prices. Gradually, more specialized machine tools were acquired, but it was not until long after Singer had retired to Europe in 1863 that Clark made the change to mass production. Sales of machines numbered 810 in 1853 and 21,000 ten years later.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    12 August 1851, US patent no. 8,294 (sewing machine)
    Further Reading
    Biographies and obituaries have appeared in Appleton's Cyclopedia of America, Vol. V; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol XVII; New York Times 25 July 1875; Scientific American (1875) 33; and National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.
    D.A.Hounshell, 1984, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. The
    Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore (provides a thorough account of the development of the Singer sewing machine, the competition it faced from other manufacturers and production methods).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Singer, Isaac Merritt

  • 20 Barlow, Peter

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 13 October 1776 Norwich, England
    d. 1 March 1862 Kent, England
    [br]
    English mathematician, physicist and optician.
    [br]
    Barlow had little formal academic education, but by his own efforts rectified this deficiency. His contributions to various periodicals ensured that he became recognized as a man of considerable scientific understanding. In 1801, through competitive examination, he became Assistant Mathematics Master at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and some years later was promoted to Professor. He resigned from this post in 1847, but retained full salary in recognition of his many public services.
    He is remembered for several notable achievements, and for some experiments designed to overcome problems such as the deviation of compasses in iron ships. Here, he proposed the use of small iron plates designed to overcome other attractions: these were used by both the British and Russian navies. Optical experiments commenced around 1827 and in later years he carried out tests to optimize the size and shape of many parts used in the railways that were spreading throughout Britain and elsewhere at that time.
    In 1814 he published mathematical tables of squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots and reciprocals of all integers from 1 to 10,000. This volume was of great value in ship design and other engineering processes where heavy numerical effort is required; it was reprinted many times, the last being in 1965 when it had been all but superseded by the calculator and the computer. In the preface to the original edition, Barlow wrote, "the only motive which prompted me to engage in this unprofitable task was the utility that I conceived might result from my labour… if I have succeeded in facilitating abstruse arithmetical calculations, then I have obtained the object in view."
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1823; Copley Medal (for discoveries in magnetism) 1825. Honorary Member, Institution of Civil Engineers 1820.
    Bibliography
    1811, An Elementary Investigation of the Theory of Numbers.
    1814, Barlow's Tables (these have continued to be published until recently, one edition being in 1965 (London: Spon); later editions have taken the integers up to 12,500).
    1817, Essay on the Strength of Timber and Other Materials.
    Further Reading
    Dictionary of National Biography.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Barlow, Peter

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