Engineering at Cambridge

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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James Stuart established the teaching of engineering as a university discipline at Cambridge. He was born at Balgonie in Fife, where his father managed a linen mill. He attended the University of St Andrews and then studied mathematics at Cambridge University. In 1867 he took up a post as Assistant Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his skills as a teacher were quickly recognized. The University was at that time adapting itself to the new systems of instruction recommended by the Royal Commission on university reform in the 1850s, and Stuart took an active part in the organization of a new structure of inter-collegiate lecture courses. He made an even more significant contribution to the establishment of extramural courses from which the Cambridge University extension lecture programme developed. This began in 1867, when Stuart took adult classes in Manchester and Crewe. The latter, in particular, brought him into close contact with those involved in practical mechanics and stimulated his interest in the applied sciences. In 1875 he was elected to the newly created Chair of Mechanism and Engineering in Cambridge, and he set out energetically to recruit students and to build up a flourishing unit with its own workshop and foundry, training a new generation of engineers in the applied sciences.

In November 1884 Stuart was elected to Parliament and embarked on an active but somewhat undistinguished career in politics as a radical Liberal, becoming amongst other things a keen supporter of the women's suffrage movement. This did not endear him to his academic colleagues, and the Engineering School suffered from neglect by Stuart until he resigned the Chair in 1890. By the time he left, however, the University was ready to recognize Engineering as a Tripos subject and to accept properly equipped teaching laboratories, so that his successor J.A. Ewing was able to benefit from Stuart's pioneering work. Stuart continued his political activities and was appointed a Privy Councillor in 1909. He married Elizabeth Colman after resigning the Chair, and on the death of his father-in-law in 1898 he moved to Norwich to take on the direction of the family mustard firm, J. \& J.Colman Ltd.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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After receiving his education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Bacon served with C.A. Parsons at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1925 to 1940. From 1946 to 1956 he carried out research on Hydrox fuel cells at Cambridge University and was a consultant on fuel-cell design to a number of organizations throughout the rest of his life.

Sir William Grove was the first to observe that when oxygen and hydrogen were supplied to platinum electrodes immersed in sulphuric acid a current was produced in an external circuit, but he did not envisage this as a practical source of electrical energy. In the 1930s Bacon started work to develop a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that operated at moderate temperatures and pressures using an alkaline electrolyte. In 1940 he was appointed to a post at King's College, London, and there, with the support of the Admiralty, he started full-time experimental work on fuel cells. His brief was to produce a power source for the propulsion of submarines. The following year he was posted as a temporary experimental officer to the Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment at Fairlie, Ayrshire, and he remained there until the end of the Second World War.

In 1946 he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, receiving a small amount of money from the Electrical Research Association. Backing came six years later from the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC), the development of the fuel cell being transferred to Marshalls of Cambridge, where Bacon was appointed Consultant.

By 1959, after almost twenty years of individual effort, he was able to demonstrate a 6 kW (8 hp) power unit capable of driving a small truck. Bacon appreciated that when substantial power was required over long periods the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell associated with high-pressure gas storage would be more compact than conventional secondary batteries.

The development of the fuel-cell system pioneered by Bacon was stimulated by a particular need for a compact, lightweight source of power in the United States space programme. Electro-chemical generators using hydrogen-oxygen cells were chosen to provide the main supplies on the Apollo spacecraft for landing on the surface of the moon in 1969. An added advantage of the cells was that they simultaneously provided water. NRDC was largely responsible for the forma-tion of Energy Conversion Ltd, a company that was set up to exploit Bacon's patents and to manufacture fuel cells, and which was supported by British Ropes Ltd, British Petroleum and Guest, Keen \& Nettlefold Ltd at Basingstoke. Bacon was their full-time consultant. In 1971 Energy Conversion's operation was moved to the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, as Fuel Cells Ltd. Bacon remained with them until he retired in 1973.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Steam and internal combustion engines

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John was the third son of David Elder. The father came from a family of millwrights and moved to Glasgow where he worked for the well-known shipbuilding firm of Napier's and was involved with improving marine engines. John was educated at Glasgow High School and then for a while at the Department of Civil Engineering at Glasgow University, where he showed great aptitude for mathematics and drawing. He spent five years as an apprentice under Robert Napier followed by two short periods of activity as a pattern-maker first and then a draughtsman in England. He returned to Scotland in 1849 to become Chief Draughtsman to Napier, but in 1852 he left to become a partner with the Glasgow general engineering company of Randolph Elliott \& Co. Shortly after his induction (at the age of 28), the engineering firm was renamed Randolph Elder \& Co.; in 1868, when the partnership expired, it became known as John Elder \& Co. From the outset Elder, with his partner, Charles Randolph, approached mechanical (especially heat) engineering in a rigorous manner. Their knowledge and understanding of entropy ensured that engine design was not a hit-and-miss affair, but one governed by recognition of the importance of the new kinetic theory of heat and with it a proper understanding of thermodynamic principles, and by systematic development. In this Elder was joined by W.J.M. Rankine, Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Glasgow University, who helped him develop the compound marine engine. Elder and Randolph built up a series of patents, which guaranteed their company's commercial success and enabled them for a while to be the sole suppliers of compound steam reciprocating machinery. Their first such engine at sea was fitted in 1854 on the SS Brandon for the Limerick Steamship Company; the ship showed an improved performance by using a third less coal, which he was able to reduce still further on later designs.

Elder developed steam jacketing and recognized that, with higher pressures, triple-expansion types would be even more economical. In 1862 he patented a design of quadruple-expansion engine with reheat between cylinders and advocated the importance of balancing reciprocating parts. The effect of his improvements was to greatly reduce fuel consumption so that long sea voyages became an economic reality.

His yard soon reached dimensions then unequalled on the Clyde where he employed over 4,000 workers; Elder also was always interested in the social welfare of his labour force. In 1860 the engine shops were moved to the Govan Old Shipyard, and again in 1864 to the Fairfield Shipyard, about 1 mile (1.6 km) west on the south bank of the Clyde. At Fairfield, shipbuilding was commenced, and with the patents for compounding secure, much business was placed for many years by shipowners serving long-distance trades such as South America; the Pacific Steam Navigation Company took up his ideas for their ships. In later years the yard became known as the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd, but it remains today as one of Britain's most efficient shipyards and is known now as Kvaerner Govan Ltd.

In 1869, at the age of only 45, John Elder was unanimously elected President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland; however, before taking office and giving his eagerly awaited presidential address, he died in London from liver disease. A large multitude attended his funeral and all the engineering shops were silent as his body, which had been brought back from London to Glasgow, was carried to its resting place. In 1857 Elder had married Isabella Ure, and on his death he left her a considerable fortune, which she used generously for Govan, for Glasgow and especially the University. In 1883 she endowed the world's first Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow, an act which was reciprocated in 1901 when the University awarded her an LLD on the occasion of its 450th anniversary.

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RLH / FMW

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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James John Guest was educated at Marlborough in 1880–4 and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating as fifth wrangler in 1888. He received practical training in several workshops and spent two years in postgraduate work at the Engineering Department of Cambridge University. After working as a draughtsman in the machine-tool, hydraulic and crane departments of Tangyes Ltd at Birmingham, he was appointed in 1896 Assistant Professor of Engineering at McGill University in Canada. After a short time he moved to the Polytechnic Institute at Worcester, Massachusetts, where he was for three years Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Head of the Engineering Department. In 1899 he returned to Britain and set up as a consulting engineer in Birmingham, being a partner in James J.Guest \& Co. For the next fifteen years he combined this work with research on grinding phenomena. He also developed a theory of grinding which he first published in a paper at the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1914 and elaborated in a paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and in his book Grinding Machinery (1915). During the First World War, in 1916–17, he was in charge of inspection in the Staffordshire and Shropshire Area, Ministry of Munitions. In 1917 he returned to teaching as Reader in Graphics and Structural Engineering at University College London. His final appointment was about 1923 as Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Artillery College, Woolwich, which later became the Military College of Science.

He carried out research on the strength of materials and contributed many articles on the subject to the technical press. He originated Guest's Law for a criterion of failure of materials under combined stresses, first published in 1900. He was a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1900–6 and from 1919 and contributed to their proceedings in many discussions and two major papers.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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

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

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

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After attending Owens College, Manchester, Hopkinson was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1867 to read for the Mathematical Tripos. An appointment in 1872 with the lighthouse department of the Chance Optical Works in Birmingham directed his attention to electrical engineering. His most noteworthy contribution to lighthouse engineering was an optical system to produce flashing lights that distinguished between individual beacons. His extensive researches on the dielectric properties of glass were recognized when he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society at the age of 29. Moving to London in 1877 he became established as a consulting engineer at a time when electricity supply was about to begin on a commercial scale. During the remainder of his life, Hopkinson's researches resulted in fundamental contributions to electrical engineering practice, dynamo design and alternating current machine theory. In making a critical study of the Edison dynamo he developed the principle of the magnetic circuit, a concept also arrived at by Gisbert Kapp around the same time. Hopkinson's improvement of the Edison dynamo by reducing the length of the field magnets almost doubled its output. In 1890, in addition to-his consulting practice, Hopkinson accepted a post as the first Professor of Electrical Engineering and Head of the Siemens laboratory recently established at King's College, London. Although he was not involved in lecturing, the position gave him the necessary facilities and staff and student assistance to continue his researches. Hopkinson was consulted on many proposals for electric traction and electricity supply, including schemes in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. He also advised Mather and Platt when they were acting as contractors for the locomotives and generating plant for the City and South London tube railway. As early as 1882 he considered that an ideal method of charging for the supply of electricity should be based on a two-part tariff, with a charge related to maximum demand together with a charge for energy supplied. Hopkinson was one the foremost expert witnesses of his day in patent actions and was himself the patentee of over forty inventions, of which the three-wire system of distribution and the series-parallel connection of traction motors were his most successful. Jointly with his brother Edward, John Hopkinson communicated the outcome of his investigations to the Royal Society in a paper entitled "Dynamo Electric Machinery" in 1886. In this he also described the later widely used "back to back" test for determining the characteristics of two identical machines. His interest in electrical machines led him to more fundamental research on magnetic materials, including the phenomenon of recalescence and the disappearance of magnetism at a well-defined temperature. For his work on the magnetic properties of iron, in 1890 he was awarded the Royal Society Royal Medal. He was a member of the Alpine Club and a pioneer of rock climbing in Britain; he died, together with three of his children, in a climbing accident.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Ports and shipping

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He was educated at Gresham's School in Holt and at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, where he graduated in engineering in 1931; he was made an Honorary Fellow in 1974. Cockerell entered the engineering firm of W.H.Allen \& Sons of Bedford as a pupil in 1931, and two years later he returned to Cambridge to engage in radio research for a further two years. In 1935 he joined Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, working on very high frequency (VHF) transmitters and direction finders. During the Second World War he worked on airborne navigation and communication equipment, and later he worked on radar. During this period he filed thirty six patents in the fields of radio and navigational systems.

In 1950 Cockerell left Marconi to set up his own boat-hire business on the Norfolk Broads. He began to consider how to increase the speed of boats by means of air lubrication. Since the 1870s engineers had at times sought to reduce the drag on a boat by means of a thin layer of air between hull and water. After his first experiments, Cockerell concluded that a significant reduction in drag could only be achieved with a thick cushion of air. After experimenting with several ways of applying the air-cushion principle, the first true hovercraft "took off" in 1955. It was a model in balsa wood, 2 ft 6 in. (762 mm) long and weighing 4½ oz. (27.6 g); it was powered by a model-aircraft petrol engine and could travel over land or water at 13 mph (20.8 km/h). Cockerell filed his first hovercraft patent on 12 December 1955. The following year he founded Hovercraft Ltd and began the search for a manufacturer. The government was impressed with the invention's military possibilities and placed it on the secret list. The secret leaked out, however, and the project was declassified. In 1958 the National Research and Development Corporation decided to give its backing, and the following year Saunders Roe Ltd with experience of making flying boats, produced the epoch-making SR N1, a hovercraft with an air cushion produced by air jets directed downwards and inwards arranged round the periphery of the craft. It made a successful crossing of the English Channel, with the inventor on board.

Meanwhile Cockerell had modified the hovercraft so that the air cushion was enclosed within flexible skirts. In this form it was taken up by manufacturers throughout the world and found wide application as a passenger-carrying vehicle, for military transport and in scientific exploration and survey work. The hover principle found other uses, such as for air-beds to relieve severely burned patients and for hover mowers.

The development of the hovercraft has occupied Cockerell since then and he has been actively involved in the several companies set up to exploit the invention, including Hovercraft Development Ltd and British Hovercraft Corporation. In the 1970s and 1980s he took up the idea of the generation of electricity by wavepower; he was Founder of Wavepower Ltd, of which he was Chairman from 1974 to 1982.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Metallurgy, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Adamson was apprenticed between 1835 and 1841 to Timothy Hackworth, then Locomotive Superintendent on the Stockton \& Darlington Railway. After this he was appointed Draughtsman, then Superintendent Engineer, at that railway's locomotive works until in 1847 he became Manager of Shildon Works. In 1850 he resigned and moved to act as General Manager of Heaton Foundry, Stockport. In the following year he commenced business on his own at Newton Moor Iron Works near Manchester, where he built up his business as an iron-founder and boilermaker. By 1872 this works had become too small and he moved to a 4 acre (1.6 hectare) site at Hyde Junction, Dukinfield. There he employed 600 men making steel boilers, heavy machinery including mill engines fitted with the American Wheelock valve gear, hydraulic plant and general millwrighting. His success was based on his early recognition of the importance of using high-pressure steam and steel instead of wrought iron. In 1852 he patented his type of flanged seam for the firetubes of Lancashire boilers, which prevented these tubes cracking through expansion. In 1862 he patented the fabrication of boilers by drilling rivet holes instead of punching them and also by drilling the holes through two plates held together in their assembly positions. He had started to use steel for some boilers he made for railway locomotives in 1857, and in 1860, only four years after Bessemer's patent, he built six mill engine boilers from steel for Platt Bros, Oldham. He solved the problems of using this new material, and by his death had made c.2,800 steel boilers with pressures up to 250 psi (17.6 kg/cm²).

He was a pioneer in the general introduction of steel and in 1863–4 was a partner in establishing the Yorkshire Iron and Steel Works at Penistone. This was the first works to depend entirely upon Bessemer steel for engineering purposes and was later sold at a large profit to Charles Cammell \& Co., Sheffield. When he started this works, he also patented improvements both to the Bessemer converters and to the engines which provided their blast. In 1870 he helped to turn Lincolnshire into an important ironmaking area by erecting the North Lincolnshire Ironworks. He was also a shareholder in ironworks in South Wales and Cumberland.

He contributed to the development of the stationary steam engine, for as early as 1855 he built one to run with a pressure of 150 psi (10.5 kg/cm) that worked quite satisfactorily. He reheated the steam between the cylinders of compound engines and then in 1861–2 patented a triple-expansion engine, followed in 1873 by a quadruple-expansion one to further economize steam. In 1858 he developed improved machinery for testing tensile strength and compressive resistance of materials, and in the same year patents for hydraulic lifting jacks and riveting machines were obtained.

He was a founding member of the Iron and Steel Institute and became its President in 1888 when it visited Manchester. The previous year he had been President of the Institution of Civil Engineers when he was presented with the Bessemer Gold Medal. He was a constant contributor at the meetings of these associations as well as those of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He did not live to see the opening of one of his final achievements, the Manchester Ship Canal. He was the one man who, by his indomitable energy and skill at public speaking, roused the enthusiasm of the people in Manchester for this project and he made it a really practical proposition in the face of strong opposition.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering

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Bailey was educated at the Leys School, Cambridge, before going to Sheffield University where he studied for a degree in engineering. He joined the Civil Service in 1928 and was posted to the staff of the Experimental Bridging Establishment of the Ministry of Supply at Christchurch, Hampshire. There he continued his boyhood hobby of making model bridges of wood and string. He evolved a design for a prefabricated metal bridge assembled from welded panels linked by pinned joints; this became known as the Bailey bridge. Its design was accepted by the War Office in 1941 and from then on it was used throughout the subsequent conflict of the Second World War. It was a great improvement on its predecessor, the Inglis bridge, designed by a Cambridge University professor of engineering, Charles Inglis, with tubular members that were 10 or 12 ft (3.66 m) long; this bridge was notoriously difficult to construct, particularly in adverse weather conditions, whereas the Bailey bridge's panels and joints were far more manageable and easy to assemble. The simple and standardized component parts of the Bailey bridge made it highly adaptable: it could be strengthened by increasing the number of truss girders, and wide rivers could be crossed by a series of Bailey bridges connected by pontoons. Field Marshal Montgomery is recorded as saying that without the Bailey bridge we should not have won the war'.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stourbridge, where he began to make radio sets and read Wireless World, Wilkes went to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1931, graduating as a Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos in 1934. He then carried out research at the Cavendish Laboratory, becoming a demonstrator in 1937. During the Second World War he worked on radar, differential analysers and operational research at the Bawdsey Research Station and other air-defence establishments. In 1945 he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer and as Acting Director of the Mathematical (later Computer) Laboratory, serving as Director from 1946 to 1970.

During the late 1940s, following visits to the USA for computer courses and to see the ENIAC computer, with the collaboration of colleagues he constructed the Cambridge University digital computer EDSAC (for Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer), using ultrasonic delay lines for data storage. In the mid-1950s a second machine, EDSAC2, was constructed using a magnetic-core memory. In 1965 he became Professor of Computer Technology. After retirement he worked for the Digital Electronic Corporation (DEC) from 1981 to 1986, serving also as Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1981 to 1985. In 1990 he became a research strategy consultant to the Olivetti Research Directorate.

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See also: Forrester, Jay Wright; Goldstine, Herman H.; Strachey, Christopher

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Harry Ricardo was the eldest child and only son of Halsey Ricardo (architect) and Catherine Rendel (daughter of Alexander Rendel, senior partner in the firm of consulting civil engineers that later became Rendel, Palmer and Tritton). He was educated at Rugby School and at Cambridge. While still at school, he designed and made a steam engine to drive his bicycle, and by the time he went up to Cambridge in 1903 he was a skilled craftsman. At Cambridge, he made a motor cycle powered by a petrol engine of his own design, and with this he won a fuel-consumption competition by covering almost 40 miles (64 km) on a quart (1.14 1) of petrol. This brought him to the attention of Professor Bertram Hopkinson, who invited him to help with research on turbulence and pre-ignition in internal combustion engines. After leaving Cambridge in 1907, he joined his grandfather's firm and became head of the design department for mechanical equipment used in civil engineering. In 1916 he was asked to help with the problem of loading tanks on to railway trucks. He was then given the task of designing and organizing the manufacture of engines for tanks, and the success of this enterprise encouraged him to set up his own establishment at Shoreham, devoted to research on, and design and development of, internal combustion engines.

Leading on from the work with Hopkinson were his discoveries on the suppression of detonation in spark-ignition engines. He noted that the current paraffinic fuels were more prone to detonation than the aromatics, which were being discarded as they did not comply with the existing specifications because of their high specific gravity. He introduced the concepts of "highest useful compression ratio" (HUCR) and "toluene number" for fuel samples burned in a special variable compression-ratio engine. The toluene number was the proportion of toluene in heptane that gave the same HUCR as the fuel sample. Later, toluene was superseded by iso-octane to give the now familiar octane rating. He went on to improve the combustion in side-valve engines by increasing turbulence, shortening the flame path and minimizing the clearance between piston and head by concentrating the combustion space over the valves. By these means, the compression ratio could be increased to that used by overhead-valve engines before detonation intervened. The very hot poppet valve restricted the advancement of all internal combustion engines, so he turned his attention to eliminating it by use of the single sleeve-valve, this being developed with support from the Air Ministry. By the end of the Second World War some 130,000 such aero-engines had been built by Bristol, Napier and Rolls-Royce before the piston aero-engine was superseded by the gas turbine of Whittle. He even contributed to the success of the latter by developing a fuel control system for it.

Concurrent with this was work on the diesel engine. He designed and developed the engine that halved the fuel consumption of London buses. He invented and perfected the "Comet" series of combustion chambers for diesel engines, and the Company was consulted by the vast majority of international internal combustion engine manufacturers. He published and lectured widely and fully deserved his many honours; he was elected FRS in 1929, was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1944–5 and was knighted in 1948. This shy and modest, though very determined man was highly regarded by all who came into contact with him. It was said that research into internal combustion engines, his family and boats constituted all that he would wish from life.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Du Yu was one of the generals who reduced the San Guo state of Wu for the Chin in 280. He is credited with the diffusion of the water-powered trip hammer and the multiple-geared watermill for the grinding of cereals. A battery of trip hammers was developed, operated by several shafts working off one large water-wheel. He was responsible for the construction of the Heyang pontoon bridges over the Yellow River north-east of Leyang in 274 and also devised new designs for water-powered blowing engines, against the advice of the imperial advisors but with the emperor's encouragement.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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First, from 1262, he was engaged in hydraulic-engineering works for Kublai Khan. He began astronomical and calendrical investigations in 1276, and became the greatest astronomer of the Yuan dynasty. He perfected interpolation formulae (a method of finite differences) and was the founder of the study of spherical trigonometry in China; this was applied to the circles of the heavenly sphere. He planned the Ji Zhou, the summit section of the Grand Canal through the Shandong foothills, in 1283. Although the canal had to await further improvement before it could become fully effective, it was nevertheless the world's first successful entirely artificial summit canal.

Guo Shoujing was responsible for the construction of the Tong Hui He (Channel of Communicating Grace) canal with twenty lock gates in 1293, in addition to the overhaul of the entire Grand Canal. He constructed a number of devices, including 40 ft (12 m) gnomons in 1276, with which he made some of the most accurate measurements of the sun's solstitial shadows, the results of which were collected in a book that is now lost. Between 1276 and 1279 he also constructed at least one water-driven mechanical escapement clock with sophisticated jack work, and the Beijing observatory and its equipment.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering

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Li Chun and his pupils founded a school and style of building that was to last for centuries. He was responsible for one of China's greatest engineering achievements, the world's earliest segmental-arch long-span stone bridge. It stretched across the Jiao Shui river flowing out of the Shansi mountains at the edge of the north China plain. The bridge had a span of 123 ft (37.5 m), with a rise of 23 ft 7 in. (7.19 m) above chord level and the spandrels were pierced with two arches on each side.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Ports and shipping

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The youngest son of the Earl of Rosse, he came from a family well known in scientific circles, the six boys growing up in an intellectual atmosphere at Birr Castle, the ancestral home in Ireland, where a forge and large workshop were available to them. Charles, like his brothers, did not go to school but was educated by private tutors of the character of Sir Robert Ball, this type of education being interspersed with overseas holiday trips to France, Holland, Belgium and Spain in the family yacht. In 1871, at the age of 17, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, and after two years he went on to St John's College, Cambridge. This was before the Engineering School had opened, and Parsons studied mechanics and mathematics.

In 1877 he was apprenticed to W.G.Armstrong \& Co. of Elswick, where he stayed for four years, developing an epicycloidal engine that he had designed while at Cambridge. He then moved to Kitson \& Co. of Leeds, where he went half shares in a small experimental shop working on rocket propulsion for torpedoes.

In 1887 he married Katherine Bethell, who contracted rheumatic fever from early-morning outdoor vigils with her husband to watch his torpedo experiments while on their honeymoon! He then moved to a partnership in Clarke, Chapman \& Co. at Gateshead. There he joined the electrical department, initially working on the development of a small, steam-driven marine lighting set. This involved the development of either a low-speed dynamo, for direct coupling to a reciprocating engine, or a high-speed engine, and it was this requirement that started Parsons on the track of the steam turbine. This entailed many problems such as the running of shafts at speeds of up to 40,000 rpm and the design of a DC generator for 18,000 rpm. He took out patents for both the turbine and the generator on 23 April 1884. In 1888 he dissolved his partnership with Clarke, Chapman \& Co. to set up his own firm in Newcastle, leaving his patents with the company's owners. This denied him the use of the axial-flow turbine, so Parsons then designed a radial-flow layout; he later bought back his patents from Clarke, Chapman \& Co. His original patent had included the use of the steam turbine as a means of marine propulsion, and Parsons now set about realizing this possibility. He experimented with 2 ft (61 cm) and 6 ft (183 cm) long models, towed with a fishing line or, later, driven by a twisted rubber cord, through a single-reduction set of spiral gearing.

The first trials of the Turbinia took place in 1894 but were disappointing due to cavitation, a little-understood phenomenon at the time. He used an axial-flow turbine of 2,000 shp running at 2,000 rpm. His work resulted in a far greater understanding of the phenomenon of cavitation than had hitherto existed. Land turbines of up to 350 kW (470 hp) had meanwhile been built. Experiments with the Turbinia culminated in a demonstration which took place at the great Naval Review of 1897 at Spithead, held to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Here, the little Turbinia darted in and out of the lines of heavy warships and destroyers, attaining the unheard of speed of 34.5 knots. The following year the Admiralty placed their first order for a turbine-driven ship, and passenger vessels started operation soon after, the first in 1901. By 1906 the Admiralty had moved over to use turbines exclusively. These early turbines had almost all been direct-coupled to the ship's propeller shaft. For optimum performance of both turbine and propeller, Parsons realized that some form of reduction gearing was necessary, which would have to be extremely accurate because of the speeds involved. Parsons's Creep Mechanism of 1912 ensured that any errors in the master wheel would be distributed evenly around the wheel being cut.

Parsons was also involved in optical work and had a controlling interest in the firm of Ross Ltd of London and, later, in Sir Howard Grubb \& Sons. He he was an enlightened employer, originating share schemes and other benefits for his employees.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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He spent his childhood at The Hall in Bradfordon-Avon. He was educated at Marlborough College, and in 1937 was apprenticed to the Sentinel Steam Wagon Company of Shrewsbury. About that same time he went to King's College, Cambridge, where he took the Mechanical Sciences Tripos. It was then wartime, and he did research on aero-engines at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, where he became Personal Assistant to Sir Roy Fedden. He left Bristol's in 1945 to join his family firm, Spencer \& Moulton, of which he eventually became Technical Director and built up the Research Department. In 1948 he invented his first suspension unit, the "Flexitor", in which an inner shaft and an outer shell were separated by an annular rubber body which was bonded to both.

In 1848 his great-grandfather had founded the family firm in an old woollen mill, to manufacture vulcanized rubber products under Charles Goodyear's patent. The firm remained a family business with Spencer's, consultants in railway engineering, until 1956 when it was sold to the Avon Rubber Company. He then formed Moulton Developments to continue his work on vehicle suspensions in the stables attached to The Hall. Sponsored by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and the Dunlop Rubber Company, he invented a rubber cone spring in 1951 which was later used in the BMC Mini (see Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine): by 1994 over 4 million Minis had been fitted with these springs, made by Dunlop. In 1954 he patented the Hydrolastic suspension system, in which all four wheels were independently sprung with combined rubber springs and damper assembly, the weight being supported by fluid under pressure, and the wheels on each side being interconnected, front to rear. In 1962 he formed Moulton Bicycles Ltd, having designed an improved bicycle system for adult use. The conventional bicycle frame was replaced by a flat-sided oval steel tube F-frame on a novel rubber front and rear suspension, with the wheel size reduced to 41 cm (16 in.) with high-pressure tyres. Raleigh Industries Ltd having refused his offer to produce the Moulton Bicycle under licence, he set up his own factory on his estate, producing 25,000 bicycles between 1963 and 1966. In 1967 he sold out to Raleigh and set up as Bicycle Consultants Ltd while continuing the suspension development of Moulton Developments Ltd. In the 1970s the combined firms employed some forty staff, nearly 50 per cent of whom were graduates.

He won the Queen's Award for Industry in 1967 for technical innovation in Hydrolastic car suspension and the Moulton Bicycle. Since that time he has continued his innovative work on suspensions and the bicycle. In 1983 he introduced the AM bicycle series of very sophisticated space-frame design with suspension and 43 cm (17 in.) wheels; this machine holds the world speed record fully formed at 82 km/h (51 mph). The current Rover 100 and MGF use his Hydragas interconnected suspension. By 1994 over 7 million cars had been fitted with Moulton suspensions. He has won many design awards and prizes, and has been awarded three honorary doctorates of engineering. He is active in engineering and design education.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Joseph Rogers Brown was the eldest son of David Brown, who was modestly established as a maker of and dealer in clocks and watches. Joseph assisted his father during school vacations and at the age of 17 left to obtain training as a machinist. In 1829 he joined his father in the manufacture of tower clocks at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and two years later went into business for himself in Pawtucket making lathes and small tools. In 1833 he rejoined his father in Providence, Rhode Island, as a partner in the manufacture of docks, watches and surveying and mathematical instruments. David Brown retired in 1841.

J.R.Brown invented and built in 1850 a linear dividing engine which was the first automatic machine for graduating rules in the United States. In 1851 he brought out the vernier calliper, the first application of a vernier scale in a workshop measuring tool. Lucian Sharpe was taken into partnership in 1853 and the firm became J.R.Brown \& Sharpe; in 1868 the firm was incorporated as the Brown \& Sharpe Manufacturing Company.

In 1855 Brown invented a precision gear-cutting machine to make clock gears. The firm obtained in 1861 a contract to make Wilcox \& Gibbs sewing machines and gave up the manufacture of clocks. At about this time F.W. Howe of the Providence Tool Company arranged for Brown \& Sharpe to make a turret lathe required for the manufacture of muskets. This was basically Howe's design, but Brown added a few features, and it was the first machine tool built for sale by the Brown \& Sharpe Company. It was followed in 1862 by the universal milling machine invented by Brown initially for making twist drills. Particularly for cutting gear teeth, Brown invented in 1864 a formed milling cutter which could be sharpened without changing its profile. In 1867 the need for an instrument for checking the thickness of sheet material became apparent, and in August of that year J.R.Brown and L.Sharpe visited the Paris Exhibition and saw a micrometer calliper invented by Jean Laurent Palmer in 1848. They recognized its possibilities and with a few developments marketed it as a convenient, hand-held measuring instrument. Grinding lathes were made by Brown \& Sharpe in the early 1860s, and from 1868 a universal grinding machine was developed, with the first one being completed in 1876. The patent for this machine was granted after Brown's sudden death while on holiday.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Porter graduated from Hamilton College, New York, in 1845, read law in his father's office, and in the autumn of 1847 was admitted to the Bar. He practised for six or seven years in Rochester, New York, and then in New York City. He was drawn into engineering when aged about 30, first through a client who claimed to have invented a revolutionary type of engine and offered Porter the rights to it as payment of a debt. Having lent more money, Porter saw neither the man nor the engine again. Porter followed this with a similar experience over a patent for a stone dressing machine, except this time the machine was built. It proved to be a failure, but Porter set about redesigning it and found that it was vastly improved when it ran faster. His improved machine went into production. It was while trying to get the steam engine that drove the stone dressing machine to run more smoothly that he made a discovery that formed the basis for his subsequent work.

Porter took the ordinary Watt centrifugal governor and increased the speed by a factor of about ten; although he had to reduce the size of the weights, he gained a motion that was powerful. To make the device sufficiently responsive at the right speed, he balanced the centrifugal forces by a counterweight. This prevented the weights flying outwards until the optimum speed was reached, so that the steam valves remained fully open until that point and then the weights reacted more quickly to variations in speed. He took out a patent in 1858, and its importance was quickly recognized. At first he manufactured and sold the governors himself in a specially equipped factory, because this was the only way he felt he could get sufficient accuracy to ensure a perfect action. For marine use, the counterweight was replaced by a spring.

Higher speed had brought the advantage of smoother running and so he thought that the same principles could be applied to the steam engine itself, but it was to take extensive design modifications over several years before his vision was realized. In the winter of 1860–1, J.F. Allen met Porter and sketched out his idea of a new type of steam inlet valve. Porter saw the potential of this for his high-speed engine and Allen took out patents for it in 1862. The valves were driven by a new valve gear designed by Pius Fink. Porter decided to display his engine at the International Exhibition in London in 1862, but it had to be assembled on site because the parts were finished in America only just in time to be shipped to meet the deadline. Running at 150 rpm, the engine caused a sensation, but as it was non-condensing there were few orders. Porter added condensing apparatus and, after the failure of Ormerod Grierson \& Co., entered into an agreement with Joseph Whitworth to build the engines. Four were exhibited at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle, but Whitworth and Porter fell out and in 1868 Porter returned to America.

Porter established another factory to build his engine in America, but he ran into all sorts of difficulties, both mechanical and financial. Some engines were built, and serious production was started c. 1874, but again there were further problems and Porter had to leave his firm. High-speed engines based on his designs continued to be made until after 1907 by the Southwark Foundry and Machine Company, Philadelphia, so Porter's ideas were proved viable and led to many other high-speed designs.

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