England, George

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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England trained with John Penn \& Sons, marine engine and boilermakers, and set up his own business at Hatcham Iron Works, South London, in about 1840. This was initially a general engineering business and made traversing screw jacks, which England had patented, but by 1850 it was building locomotives. One of these, Little England, a 2–2– 2T light locomotive owing much to the ideas of W.Bridges Adams, was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and England then prospered, supplying many railways at home and abroad with small locomotives. In 1863 he built two exceptionally small 0–4–0 tank locomotives for the Festiniog Railway, which enabled the latter's Manager and Engineer C.E. Spooner to introduce steam traction on this line with its gauge of just under 2 ft (60 cm). England's works had a reputation for good workmanship, suggesting he inspired loyalty among his employees, yet he also displayed increasingly tyrannical behaviour towards them: the culmination was a disastrous strike in 1865 that resulted in the loss of a substantial order from the South Eastern Railway. From 1866 George England became associated with development of locomotives to the patent of Robert Fairlie, but in 1869 he retired due to ill health and leased his works to a partnership of his son (also called George England), Robert Fairlie and J.S.Fraser under the title of the Fairlie Engine \& Steam Carriage Company. However, George England junior died within a few months, locomotive production ceased in 1870 and the works was sold off two years later.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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George Stephenson was the son of the fireman of the pumping engine at Wylam colliery, and horses drew wagons of coal along the wooden rails of the Wylam wagonway past the house in which he was born and spent his earliest childhood. While still a child he worked as a cowherd, but soon moved to working at coal pits. At 17 years of age he showed sufficient mechanical talent to be placed in charge of a new pumping engine, and had already achieved a job more responsible than that of his father. Despite his position he was still illiterate, although he subsequently learned to read and write. He was largely self-educated.

In 1801 he was appointed Brakesman of the winding engine at Black Callerton pit, with responsibility for lowering the miners safely to their work. Then, about two years later, he became Brakesman of a new winding engine erected by Robert Hawthorn at Willington Quay on the Tyne. Returning collier brigs discharged ballast into wagons and the engine drew the wagons up an inclined plane to the top of "Ballast Hill" for their contents to be tipped; this was one of the earliest applications of steam power to transport, other than experimentally.

In 1804 Stephenson moved to West Moor pit, Killingworth, again as Brakesman. In 1811 he demonstrated his mechanical skill by successfully modifying a new and unsatisfactory atmospheric engine, a task that had defeated the efforts of others, to enable it to pump a drowned pit clear of water. The following year he was appointed Enginewright at Killingworth, in charge of the machinery in all the collieries of the "Grand Allies", the prominent coal-owning families of Wortley, Liddell and Bowes, with authorization also to work for others. He built many stationary engines and he closely examined locomotives of John Blenkinsop's type on the Kenton \& Coxlodge wagonway, as well as those of William Hedley at Wylam.

It was in 1813 that Sir Thomas Liddell requested George Stephenson to build a steam locomotive for the Killingworth wagonway: Blucher made its first trial run on 25 July 1814 and was based on Blenkinsop's locomotives, although it lacked their rack-and-pinion drive. George Stephenson is credited with building the first locomotive both to run on edge rails and be driven by adhesion, an arrangement that has been the conventional one ever since. Yet Blucher was far from perfect and over the next few years, while other engineers ignored the steam locomotive, Stephenson built a succession of them, each an improvement on the last.

During this period many lives were lost in coalmines from explosions of gas ignited by miners' lamps. By observation and experiment (sometimes at great personal risk) Stephenson invented a satisfactory safety lamp, working independently of the noted scientist Sir Humphry Davy who also invented such a lamp around the same time.

In 1817 George Stephenson designed his first locomotive for an outside customer, the Kilmarnock \& Troon Railway, and in 1819 he laid out the Hetton Colliery Railway in County Durham, for which his brother Robert was Resident Engineer. This was the first railway to be worked entirely without animal traction: it used inclined planes with stationary engines, self-acting inclined planes powered by gravity, and locomotives.

On 19 April 1821 Stephenson was introduced to Edward Pease, one of the main promoters of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway (S \& DR), which by coincidence received its Act of Parliament the same day. George Stephenson carried out a further survey, to improve the proposed line, and in this he was assisted by his 18-year-old son, Robert Stephenson, whom he had ensured received the theoretical education which he himself lacked. It is doubtful whether either could have succeeded without the other; together they were to make the steam railway practicable.

At George Stephenson's instance, much of the S \& DR was laid with wrought-iron rails recently developed by John Birkinshaw at Bedlington Ironworks, Morpeth. These were longer than cast-iron rails and were not brittle: they made a track well suited for locomotives. In June 1823 George and Robert Stephenson, with other partners, founded a firm in Newcastle upon Tyne to build locomotives and rolling stock and to do general engineering work: after its Managing Partner, the firm was called Robert Stephenson \& Co.

In 1824 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) invited George Stephenson to resurvey their proposed line in order to reduce opposition to it. William James, a wealthy land agent who had become a visionary protagonist of a national railway network and had seen Stephenson's locomotives at Killingworth, had promoted the L \& MR with some merchants of Liverpool and had carried out the first survey; however, he overreached himself in business and, shortly after the invitation to Stephenson, became bankrupt. In his own survey, however, George Stephenson lacked the assistance of his son Robert, who had left for South America, and he delegated much of the detailed work to incompetent assistants. During a devastating Parliamentary examination in the spring of 1825, much of his survey was shown to be seriously inaccurate and the L \& MR's application for an Act of Parliament was refused. The railway's promoters discharged Stephenson and had their line surveyed yet again, by C.B. Vignoles.

The Stockton \& Darlington Railway was, however, triumphantly opened in the presence of vast crowds in September 1825, with Stephenson himself driving the locomotive Locomotion, which had been built at Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s Newcastle works. Once the railway was at work, horse-drawn and gravity-powered traffic shared the line with locomotives: in 1828 Stephenson invented the horse dandy, a wagon at the back of a train in which a horse could travel over the gravity-operated stretches, instead of trotting behind.

Meanwhile, in May 1826, the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway had successfully obtained its Act of Parliament. Stephenson was appointed Engineer in June, and since he and Vignoles proved incompatible the latter left early in 1827. The railway was built by Stephenson and his staff, using direct labour. A considerable controversy arose c. 1828 over the motive power to be used: the traffic anticipated was too great for horses, but the performance of the reciprocal system of cable haulage developed by Benjamin Thompson appeared in many respects superior to that of contemporary locomotives. The company instituted a prize competition for a better locomotive and the Rainhill Trials were held in October 1829.

Robert Stephenson had been working on improved locomotive designs since his return from America in 1827, but it was the L \& MR's Treasurer, Henry Booth, who suggested the multi-tubular boiler to George Stephenson. This was incorporated into a locomotive built by Robert Stephenson for the trials: Rocket was entered by the three men in partnership. The other principal entrants were Novelty, entered by John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, and Sans Pareil, entered by Timothy Hackworth, but only Rocket, driven by George Stephenson, met all the organizers' demands; indeed, it far surpassed them and demonstrated the practicability of the long-distance steam railway. With the opening of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1830, the age of railways began.

Stephenson was active in many aspects. He advised on the construction of the Belgian State Railway, of which the Brussels-Malines section, opened in 1835, was the first all-steam railway on the European continent. In England, proposals to link the L \& MR with the Midlands had culminated in an Act of Parliament for the Grand Junction Railway in 1833: this was to run from Warrington, which was already linked to the L \& MR, to Birmingham. George Stephenson had been in charge of the surveys, and for the railway's construction he and J.U. Rastrick were initially Principal Engineers, with Stephenson's former pupil Joseph Locke under them; by 1835 both Stephenson and Rastrick had withdrawn and Locke was Engineer-in-Chief. Stephenson remained much in demand elsewhere: he was particularly associated with the construction of the North Midland Railway (Derby to Leeds) and related lines. He was active in many other places and carried out, for instance, preliminary surveys for the Chester \& Holyhead and Newcastle \& Berwick Railways, which were important links in the lines of communication between London and, respectively, Dublin and Edinburgh.

He eventually retired to Tapton House, Chesterfield, overlooking the North Midland. A man who was self-made (with great success) against colossal odds, he was ever reluctant, regrettably, to give others their due credit, although in retirement, immensely wealthy and full of honour, he was still able to mingle with people of all ranks.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Photography, film and optics

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George's father James was a successful lawyer and merchant, engaging in overseas trade.

A devout but necessarily circumspect Catholic, James sent his sons to the English College at Douai, now in northern France. Leaving there in 1651, George began to learn his father's business and spent some fifteen years in Venice. He took an increasingly important part in it, doubtless dealing in Venice's leading products of lace and glass. By 1666 he was back in England and, perhaps because the supply of Venetian glass was beginning to decline, he started to manufacture glass himself. In 1673 he set up a glassworks in the Savoy in London and succeeded so well that in the following year he petitioned the King for the grant of a patent to make glassware. This was granted on 16 May 1674, stimulating the Glass Sellers' Company to enter into an agreement with Ravenscroft to buy the glassware he produced. Later in 1674 the company allowed Ravenscroft to establish a second glasshouse at Henley-onThames. At first his ware was beset with "crizzling", i.e. numerous fine surface cracks. The Glass Sellers probably urged Ravenscroft to cure this defect, and this he achieved in 1675 by replacing crushed flint with increasing amounts of lead oxide, rising finally to a content of 30 per cent. He thereby obtained a relatively soft, heavy glass with high refractive index and dispersive power. This made it amenable to deep cutting, to produce the brilliant prismatic effects of cut glass. At about the same time, the Duke of Buckingham, a considerable promoter of the glass industry, agreed that Ravenscroft should manage his works at Vauxhall for the making of plate glass for mirrors. Ravenscroft terminated his agreement with the Glass Sellers in 1678, the date of the last evidence of his activities as a maker of crystal glass, and the patent expired in 1681. His new glass had immediately rivalled the best Venetian crystal glass and has been a valued product ever since.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Cayley was born into a well-to-do Yorkshire family living at Brompton Hall. He was encouraged to study mathematics, navigation and mechanics, particularly by his mother. In 1792 he succeeded to the baronetcy and took over the daunting task of revitalizing the run-down family estate.

The first aeronautical device made by Cayley was a copy of the toy helicopter invented by the Frenchmen Launoy and Bienvenu in 1784. Cayley's version, made in 1796, convinced him that a machine could "rise in the air by mechanical means", as he later wrote. He studied the aerodynamics of flight and broke away from the unsuccessful ornithopters of his predecessors. In 1799 he scratched two sketches on a silver disc: one side of the disc showed the aerodynamic force on a wing resolved into lift and drag, and on the other side he illustrated his idea for a fixed-wing aeroplane; this disc is preserved in the Science Museum in London. In 1804 he tested a small wing on the end of a whirling arm to measure its lifting power. This led to the world's first model glider, which consisted of a simple kite (the wing) mounted on a pole with an adjustable cruciform tail. A full-size glider followed in 1809 and this flew successfully unmanned. By 1809 Cayley had also investigated the lifting properties of cambered wings and produced a low-drag aerofoil section. His aim was to produce a powered aeroplane, but no suitable engines were available. Steam-engines were too heavy, but he experimented with a gunpowder motor and invented the hot-air engine in 1807. He published details of some of his aeronautical researches in 1809–10 and in 1816 he wrote a paper on airships. Then for a period of some twenty-five years he was so busy with other activities that he largely neglected his aeronautical researches. It was not until 1843, at the age of 70, that he really had time to pursue his quest for flight. The Mechanics' Magazine of 8 April 1843 published drawings of "Sir George Cayley's Aerial Carriage", which consisted of a helicopter design with four circular lifting rotors—which could be adjusted to become wings—and two pusher propellers. In 1849 he built a full-size triplane glider which lifted a boy off the ground for a brief hop. Then in 1852 he proposed a monoplane glider which could be launched from a balloon. Late in 1853 Cayley built his "new flyer", another monoplane glider, which carried his coachman as a reluctant passenger across a dale at Brompton, Cayley became involved in public affairs and was MP for Scarborough in 1832. He also took a leading part in local scientific activities and was co-founder of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831 and of the Regent Street Polytechnic Institution in 1838.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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Clymer was born on his father's farm, of a family that emigrated from Switzerland in the early eighteenth century. He attended local schools, helping out on the farm in his spare time, and he showed a particular talent for maintaining farm machinery. At the age of 16 he learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, which he followed in the same district for over twenty-five years. During that time, he showed his talent for mechanical invention in many ways, including the invention of a plough specially adapted to the local soils. Around 1800, he moved to Philadelphia, where his interest was aroused by the erection of the first bridge over the Schuylkill River. He devised a pump to remove water from the cofferdams at a rate of 500 gallons per day, superior to any other pumps then in use. He obtained a US patent for this in 1801, and a British one soon after.

Clymer then turned his attention to the improvement of the printing press. For three and a half centuries after its invention, the old wooden-framed press had remained virtually unchanged except in detail. The first real change came in 1800 with the introduction of the iron press by Earl Stanhope. Modified versions were developed by other inventors, notably George Clymer, who after more than ten years' effort achieved his Columbian press. With its new system of levers, it enabled perfect impressions to be obtained with far less effort by the pressman. The Columbian was also notable for its distinctive cast-iron ornamentation, including a Hermes on each pillar and alligators and other reptiles on the levers. Most spectacular, it was surmounted by an American spread eagle, usually covered in gilt, which also served as a counterweight to raise the platen. The earliest known Columbian, surviving only in an illustration, bears the inscription Columbian Press/No.25/invented by George Clymer/Anno Domini 1813/Made in Philadelphia 1816. Few American printers could afford the US$400 selling price, so in 1817 Clymer went to England, where it was taken up enthusiastically. He obtained a British patent for it the same year, and by the following March it was being manufactured by the engineering firm R.W.Cope, although Clymer was probably making it on his own account soon afterwards. The Columbian was widely used for many years and continued to be made even into the twentieth century. The King of the Netherlands awarded Clymer a gold medal for his invention and the Tsar of Russia gave him a present for installing the press in Russia. Doubtless for business reasons, Clymer spent most of his remaining years in England and Europe.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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He was the son of a merchant, Oliver Train, who had settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. His mother and sister died in a yellow fever epidemic and he was sent to live on his grandmother's farm at Waltham, Massachusetts, where he went to the district school. He left in 1843 and was apprenticed in a grocery store in nearby Cambridge, where, one day, a relative named Enoch Train called to see him. George Train left and went to join his relative's shipping office across the river in Boston; Enoch Train, among other enterprises, ran a packet line to Liverpool and, in 1850, sent George to England to manage his Liverpool office. Three years later, George Train went to Melbourne, Australia, and established his own shipping firm; he is said to have earned £95,000 in his first year there. In 1855 he left Australia to travel in Europe and the Levant where he made many contacts. In the late 1850s and early 1860s he was in England seeking capital for American railroads and promoting the construction of street railways or trams in Liverpool, London and Staffordshire. In 1862 he was back in Boston, where he was put in jail for disturbing a public meeting; in 1870, he achieved momentary fame for travelling around the world in eighty days.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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The son of a printer, Baxter was apprenticed to a wood engraver and there began his search for improved methods of making coloured prints, hitherto the perquisite of the rich, in order to bring them within reach of a wider public. After marriage to the daughter of Robert Harrild, founder of the printing firm of Harrild \& Co., he set up house in London, where he continued his experiments on colour while maintaining the run-of-the-mill work that kept the family.

The nineteenth century saw a tremendous advance in methods of printing pictures, produced as separate prints or as book illustrations. For the first three decades colour was supplied by hand, but from the 1830s attempts were made to print in colour, using a separate plate for each one. Coloured prints were produced by chromolithography and relief printing on a small scale. Prints were first made with the latter method on a commercial scale by Baxter with a process that he patented in 1835. He generally used a key plate that was engraved, aquatinted or lithographed; the colours were then printed separately from wood or metal blocks. Baxter was a skilful printer and his work reached a high standard. An early example is the frontispiece to Robert Mudie's Summer (1837). In 1849 he began licensing his patent to other printers, and after the Great Exhibition of 1851 colour relief printing came into its own. Of the plethora of illustrated literature that appeared then, Baxter's Gems of the Great Exhibition was one of the most widely circulated souvenirs of the event.

Baxter remained an active printer through the 1850s, but increasing competition from the German coloured lithographic process undermined his business and in 1860 he gave up the unequal struggle. In May of that year, all his oil pictures, engravings and blocks went up for auction, some 3,000 lots altogether. Baxter retired to Sydenham, then a country place, making occasional visits to London until injuries sustained in a mishap while he was ascending a London omnibus led to his death. Above all, he helped to initiate the change from the black and white world of pre-Victorian literature to the riotously colourful world of today.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Churchward was articled to the Locomotive Superintendent of the South Devon Railway in 1873, and when the South Devon was absorbed by the Great Western Railway in 1876 he moved to the latter's Swindon works. There he rose by successive promotions to become Works Manager in 1896, and in 1897 Chief Assistant to William Dean, who was Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Superintendent, in which capacity Churchward was allowed extensive freedom of action. Churchward eventually succeeded Dean in 1902: his title changed to Chief Mechanical Engineer in 1916.

In locomotive design, Churchward adopted the flat-topped firebox invented by A.J.Belpaire of the Belgian State Railways and added a tapered barrel to improve circulation of water between the barrel and the firebox legs. He designed valves with a longer stroke and a greater lap than usual, to achieve full opening to exhaust. Passenger-train weights had been increasing rapidly, and Churchward produced his first 4–6– 0 express locomotive in 1902. However, he was still developing the details—he had a flair for selecting good engineering practices—and to aid his development work Churchward installed at Swindon in 1904 a stationary testing plant for locomotives. This was the first of its kind in Britain and was based on the work of Professor W.F.M.Goss, who had installed the first such plant at Purdue University, USA, in 1891. For comparison with his own locomotives Churchward obtained from France three 4–4–2 compound locomotives of the type developed by A. de Glehn and G. du Bousquet. He decided against compounding, but he did perpetuate many of the details of the French locomotives, notably the divided drive between the first and second pairs of driving wheels, when he introduced his four-cylinder 4–6–0 (the Star class) in 1907. He built a lone 4–6–2, the Great Bear, in 1908: the wheel arrangement enabled it to have a wide firebox, but the type was not perpetuated because Welsh coal suited narrow grates and 4–6–0 locomotives were adequate for the traffic. After Churchward retired in 1921 his successor, C.B.Collett, was to enlarge the Star class into the Castle class and then the King class, both 4–6–0s, which lasted almost as long as steam locomotives survived in service. In Church ward's time, however, the Great Western Railway was the first in Britain to adopt six-coupled locomotives on a large scale for passenger trains in place of four-coupled locomotives. The 4–6–0 classes, however, were but the most celebrated of a whole range of standard locomotives of advanced design for all types of traffic and shared between them many standardized components, particularly boilers, cylinders and valve gear.

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See also: Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel; Stanier, Sir William Arthur

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Boole was the son of a tradesman, from whom he learned the principles of mathematics and optical-component manufacturing. From the early age of 16 he taught in a number of schools in West Yorkshire, and when only 20 he opened his own school in Lincoln. There, at the Mechanical Institute, he avidly read mathematical journals and the works of great mathematicians such as Lagrange, Laplace and Newton and began to tackle a variety of algebraic problems. This led to the publication of a constant stream of original papers in the newly launched Cambridge Mathematical Journal on topics in the fields of algebra and calculus, for which in 1844 he received the Royal Society Medal.

In 1847 he wrote The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, which applied algebraic symbolism to logical forms, whereby the presence or absence of properties could be represented by binary states and combined, just like normal algebraic equations, to derive logical statements about a series of operations. This laid the foundations for the binary logic used in modern computers, which, being based on binary on-off devices, greatly depend on the use of such operations as "and", "nand" ("not and"), "or" and "nor" ("not or"), etc. Although he lacked any formal degree, this revolutionary work led to his appointment in 1849 to the Chair of Mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, where he continued his work on logic and also produce treatises on differential equations and the calculus of finite differences.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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After early education at the Jonkoping elementary school and the Weixo Gymnasium, George Scheutz entered the University of Lund, gaining a degree in law in 1805. Following five years' legal work, he moved to Stockholm in 1811 to work at the Supreme Court and, in 1814, as a military auditor. In 1816, he resigned, bought a printing business and became editor of a succession of industrial and technical journals, during which time he made inventions relating to the press. It was in 1830 that he learned from the Edinburgh Review of Babbage's ideas for a difference engine and started to make one from wood, pasteboard and wire. In 1837 his 15-yearold student son, Edvard Raphael Scheutz, offered to make it in metal, and by 1840 they had a working machine with two five-digit registers, which they increased the following year and then added a printer. Obtaining a government grant in 1851, by 1853 they had a fully working machine, now known as Swedish Difference Engine No. 1, which with an experienced operator could generate 120 lines of tables per hour and was used to calculate the logarithms of the numbers 1 to 10,000 in under eighty hours. This was exhibited in London and then at the Paris Great Exhibition, where it won the Gold Medal. It was subsequently sold to the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, for US$5,000 and is now in a Chicago museum.

In England, the British Registrar-General, wishing to produce new tables for insurance companies, and supported by the Astronomer Royal, arranged for government finance for construction of a second machine (Swedish Difference Engine No. 2). Comprising over 1,000 working parts and weighing 1,000 lb (450 kg), this machine was used to calculate over 600 tables. It is now in the Science Museum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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He was apprenticed to his uncles, makers of metalware, in 1815 and showed such aptitude for business that he was taken into partnership. On their deaths, Elkington assumed sole ownership of the business. In conjunction with his cousin Henry (1810–52), by unrelenting enterprise, he established an industry for electroplating and electrogilding. Up until c.1840, silver-plated goods were produced by rolling or soldering thin sheets of silver to a base metal, such as copper. Back in 1801, the English chemist William Wollaston had deposited one metal upon another by means of an electric current generated from a voltaic pile or battery. In the 1830s, certain inventors, such as Bessemer used this result to produce plated articles and these efforts in turn induced the Elkingtons to apply the method in their trade. In 1836 and 1837 they took out patents for "mercurial gilding", and one patent of 1838 refers to a separate electric current. In 1840 they bought from John Wright, a Birmingham surgeon, his discovery of what proved to be the best electroplating solution: namely, solutions of cyanides of gold and silver in potassium cyanide. They also purchased rights to use the electric machine invented by J.S. Woolrich. Armed with these techniques, the Elkingtons produced in their large new works in Newhall Street a wide range of gold-and silver-plated decorative and artistic ware. Henry was particularly active on the artistic side of the business, as was their employee Alexander Parkes. For some twenty-five years, Britain enjoyed a virtual monopoly of this kind of ware, due largely to the enterprise of the Elkingtons, although by the end of the century rising tariffs had closed many foreign markets and the lead had passed to Germany. George spent all his working life in Birmingham, taking some part in the public life of the city. He was a governor of King Edward's Grammar School and a borough magistrate. He was also a caring employer, setting up houses and schools for his workers.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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Graham's father died soon after his birth, so he was raised by his brother. In 1688 he was apprenticed to the London clockmaker Henry Aske, and in 1695 he gained his freedom. He was employed as a journeyman by Tompion in 1696 and later married his niece. In 1711 he formed a partnership with Tompion and effectively ran the business in Tompion's declining years; he took over the business after Tompion died in 1713. In addition to his horological interests he also made scientific instruments, specializing in those for astronomical use. As a person, he was well respected and appears to have lived up to the epithet "Honest George Graham". He befriended John Harrison when he first went to London and lent him money to further his researches at a time when they might have conflicted with his own interests.

The two common forms of escapement in use in Graham's time, the anchor escapement for clocks and the verge escapement for watches, shared the same weakness: they interfered severely with the free oscillation of the pendulum and the balance, and thus adversely affected the timekeeping. Tompion's two frictional rest escapements, the dead-beat for clocks and the horizontal for watches, had provided a partial solution by eliminating recoil (the momentary reversal of the motion of the timepiece), but they had not been successful in practice. Around 1720 Graham produced his own much improved version of the dead-beat escapement which became a standard feature of regulator clocks, at least in Britain, until its supremacy was challenged at the end of the nineteenth century by the superior accuracy of the Riefler clock. Another feature of the regulator clock owed to Graham was the mercury compensation pendulum, which he invented in 1722 and published four years later. The bob of this pendulum contained mercury, the surface of which rose or fell with changes in temperature, compensating for the concomitant variation in the length of the pendulum rod. Graham devised his mercury pendulum after he had failed to achieve compensation by means of the difference in expansion between various metals. He then turned his attention to improving Tompion's horizontal escapement, and by 1725 the cylinder escapement existed in what was virtually its final form. From the following year he fitted this escapement to all his watches, and it was also used extensively by London makers for their precision watches. It proved to be somewhat lacking in durability, but this problem was overcome later in the century by using a ruby cylinder, notably by Abraham Louis Breguet. It was revived, in a cheaper form, by the Swiss and the French in the nineteenth century and was produced in vast quantities.

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See also: Barlow, Edward; Guillaume, Charles-Edouard

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Public utilities, Weapons and armour

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The only son of a corn merchant, Alderman William Armstrong, he was educated at private schools in Newcastle and at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. He then became an articled clerk in the office of Armorer Donkin, a solicitor and a friend of his father. During a fishing trip he saw a water-wheel driven by an open stream to work a marble-cutting machine. He felt that its efficiency would be improved by introducing the water to the wheel in a pipe. He developed an interest in hydraulics and in electricity, and became a popular lecturer on these subjects. From 1838 he became friendly with Henry Watson of the High Bridge Works, Newcastle, and for six years he visited the Works almost daily, studying turret clocks, telescopes, papermaking machinery, surveying instruments and other equipment being produced. There he had built his first hydraulic machine, which generated 5 hp when run off the Newcastle town water-mains. He then designed and made a working model of a hydraulic crane, but it created little interest. In 1845, after he had served this rather unconventional apprenticeship at High Bridge Works, he was appointed Secretary of the newly formed Whittle Dene Water Company. The same year he proposed to the town council of Newcastle the conversion of one of the quayside cranes to his hydraulic operation which, if successful, should also be applied to a further four cranes. This was done by the Newcastle Cranage Company at High Bridge Works. In 1847 he gave up law and formed W.G.Armstrong \& Co. to manufacture hydraulic machinery in a works at Elswick. Orders for cranes, hoists, dock gates and bridges were obtained from mines; docks and railways.

Early in the Crimean War, the War Office asked him to design and make submarine mines to blow up ships that were sunk by the Russians to block the entrance to Sevastopol harbour. The mines were never used, but this set him thinking about military affairs and brought him many useful contacts at the War Office. Learning that two eighteen-pounder British guns had silenced a whole Russian battery but were too heavy to move over rough ground, he carried out a thorough investigation and proposed light field guns with rifled barrels to fire elongated lead projectiles rather than cast-iron balls. He delivered his first gun in 1855; it was built of a steel core and wound-iron wire jacket. The barrel was multi-grooved and the gun weighed a quarter of a ton and could fire a 3 lb (1.4 kg) projectile. This was considered too light and was sent back to the factory to be rebored to take a 5 lb (2.3 kg) shot. The gun was a complete success and Armstrong was then asked to design and produce an equally successful eighteen-pounder. In 1859 he was appointed Engineer of Rifled Ordnance and was knighted. However, there was considerable opposition from the notably conservative officers of the Army who resented the intrusion of this civilian engineer in their affairs. In 1862, contracts with the Elswick Ordnance Company were terminated, and the Government rejected breech-loading and went back to muzzle-loading. Armstrong resigned and concentrated on foreign sales, which were successful worldwide.

The search for a suitable proving ground for a 12-ton gun led to an interest in shipbuilding at Elswick from 1868. This necessitated the replacement of an earlier stone bridge with the hydraulically operated Tyne Swing Bridge, which weighed some 1450 tons and allowed a clear passage for shipping. Hydraulic equipment on warships became more complex and increasing quantities of it were made at the Elswick works, which also flourished with the reintroduction of the breech-loader in 1878. In 1884 an open-hearth acid steelworks was added to the Elswick facilities. In 1897 the firm merged with Sir Joseph Whitworth \& Co. to become Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth \& Co. After Armstrong's death a further merger with Vickers Ltd formed Vickers Armstrong Ltd.

In 1879 Armstrong took a great interest in Joseph Swan's invention of the incandescent electric light-bulb. He was one of those who formed the Swan Electric Light Company, opening a factory at South Benwell to make the bulbs. At Cragside, his mansion at Roth bury, he installed a water turbine and generator, making it one of the first houses in England to be lit by electricity.

Armstrong was a noted philanthropist, building houses for his workforce, and endowing schools, hospitals and parks. His last act of charity was to purchase Bamburgh Castle, Northumbria, in 1894, intending to turn it into a hospital or a convalescent home, but he did not live long enough to complete the work.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The young Eastman was a clerk-bookkeeper in the Rochester Savings Bank when in 1877 he took up photography. Taking lessons in the wet-plate process, he became an enthusiastic amateur photographer. However, the cumbersome equipment and noxious chemicals used in the process proved an obstacle, as he said, "It seemed to be that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack-horse load." Then he came across an account of the new gelatine dry-plate process in the British Journal of Photography of March 1878. He experimented in coating glass plates with the new emulsions, and was soon so successful that he decided to go into commercial manufacture. He devised a machine to simplify the coating of the plates, and travelled to England in July 1879 to patent it. In April 1880 he prepared to begin manufacture in a rented building in Rochester, and contacted the leading American photographic supply house, E. \& H.T.Anthony, offering them an option as agents. A local whip manufacturer, Henry A.Strong, invested $1,000 in the enterprise and the Eastman Dry Plate Company was formed on 1 January 1881. Still working at the Savings Bank, he ran the business in his spare time, and demand grew for the quality product he was producing. The fledgling company survived a near disaster in 1882 when the quality of the emulsions dropped alarmingly. Eastman later discovered this was due to impurities in the gelatine used, and this led him to test all raw materials rigorously for quality. In 1884 the company became a corporation, the Eastman Dry Plate \& Film Company, and a new product was announced. Mindful of his desire to simplify photography, Eastman, with a camera maker, William H.Walker, designed a roll-holder in which the heavy glass plates were replaced by a roll of emulsion-coated paper. The holders were made in sizes suitable for most plate cameras. Eastman designed and patented a coating machine for the large-scale production of the paper film, bringing costs down dramatically, the roll-holders were acclaimed by photographers worldwide, and prizes and medals were awarded, but Eastman was still not satisfied. The next step was to incorporate the roll-holder in a smaller, hand-held camera. His first successful design was launched in June 1888: the Kodak camera. A small box camera, it held enough paper film for 100 circular exposures, and was bought ready-loaded. After the film had been exposed, the camera was returned to Eastman's factory, where the film was removed, processed and printed, and the camera reloaded. This developing and printing service was the most revolutionary part of his invention, since at that time photographers were expected to process their own photographs, which required access to a darkroom and appropriate chemicals. The Kodak camera put photography into the hands of the countless thousands who wanted photographs without complications. Eastman's marketing slogan neatly summed up the advantage: "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest." The Kodak camera was the last product in the design of which Eastman was personally involved. His company was growing rapidly, and he recruited the most talented scientists and technicians available. New products emerged regularly—notably the first commercially produced celluloid roll film for the Kodak cameras in July 1889; this material made possible the introduction of cinematography a few years later. Eastman's philosophy of simplifying photography and reducing its costs continued to influence products: for example, the introduction of the one dollar, or five shilling, Brownie camera in 1900, which put photography in the hands of almost everyone. Over the years the Eastman Kodak Company, as it now was, grew into a giant multinational corporation with manufacturing and marketing organizations throughout the world. Eastman continued to guide the company; he pursued an enlightened policy of employee welfare and profit sharing decades before this was common in industry. He made massive donations to many concerns, notably the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and supported schemes for the education of black people, dental welfare, calendar reform, music and many other causes, he withdrew from the day-to-day control of the company in 1925, and at last had time for recreation. On 14 March 1932, suffering from a painful terminal cancer and after tidying up his affairs, he shot himself through the heart, leaving a note: "To my friends: My work is done. Why wait?" Although Eastman's technical innovations were made mostly at the beginning of his career, the organization which he founded and guided in its formative years was responsible for many of the major advances in photography over the years.

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Communications: George

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Atwood was educated at Westminster School and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1765 with a scholarship. He graduated with high honours (third wrangler) in 1796, and went on to become a fellow and tutor of his college. In 1776 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Eight years later, William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) appointed him a senior officer of the Customs, this being a means of reimbursing him for the arduous and continuing task of calculating the national revenue. As a lecturer he was greatly renowned and his abilities as a calculator and as a musician were of a high order.

In the late 1790s Atwood presented a paper to the Royal Society that showed a means of obtaining the righting lever on a ship inclined from the vertical; this was a major step forward in the study of ship stability. Among his other inventions was a machine to exhibit the accelerative force of gravity.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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He acquired a considerable knowledge of wire-making in his father's works before he took a position in 1839 at the works of James Edleston at Warrington. From there, in 1851, he went to Manchester as Manager of Richard Johnson \& Sons' wire mill, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was there that he initiated several important improvements in the manufacture of wire. These included a system of circulating puddling furnace water bottoms and sides, and a galvanizing process. His most important innovation, however, was the continuous mill for producing iron rod for wiredrawing. Previously the red-hot iron billets had to be handled repeatedly through a stand or set of rolls to reduce the billet to the required shape, with time and heat being lost at each handling. In Bedson's continuous mill, the billet entered the first of a succession of stands placed as closely to each other as possible and emerged from the final one as rod suitable for wiredrawing, without any intermediate handling. A second novel feature was that alternate rolls were arranged vertically to save turning the piece manually through a right angle. That improved the quality as well as the speed of production. Bedson's first continuous mill was erected in Manchester in 1862 and had sixteen stands in tandem. A mill on this principle had been patented the previous year by Charles While of Pontypridd, South Wales, but it was Bedson who made it work and brought it into use commercially. A difficult problem to overcome was that as the piece being rolled lengthened, its speed increased, so that each pair of rolls had to increase correspondingly. The only source of power was a steam engine working a single drive shaft, but Bedson achieved the greater speeds by using successively larger gear-wheels at each stand.

Bedson's first mill was highly successful, and a second one was erected at the Manchester works; however, its application was limited to the production of small bars, rods and sections. Nevertheless, Bedson's mill established an important principle of rolling-mill design that was to have wider applications in later years.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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Blickensderfer was educated at the academy in Erie and at Allegheny College. He seems to have followed a business career, and in the course of his travels he became aware of the need for a simple, durable, but portable typewriter. He was in business in Stanford, Connecticut, where he developed but did not patent a number of typewriters, including a machine in which a type wheel could print short words such as "an" and "as" by depressing a single key. In 1889 he set up the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company to perfect and mass-produce the machine he had in mind. He needed two years to test and perfect the model, and in 1891 work started on the factory that was to manufacture it. On the verge of mass-production in 1893, he produced a few machines for the Chicago World Exhibition in that year. Their success was sensational, and the "Blickensderfer" received the highest accolades from the judges, who hailed it as "extraordinary progress in the art of typewriting". The "Blickensderfer" appeared with successive modifications in the following years: they were durable, lightweight machines, with interchangeable type wheels, and were the first widely-used readily-portable typewriters.

Around 1902 Blickensderfer produced the first electric typewriter. A few electric machines were produced and some were sent to Europe, including England, but they are now very rare. One Blick Electric has been preserved in the Beeching Typewriter Collection in Bournemouth, England.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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George Forrester \& Co. built locomotives at the Vauxhall Foundry, Liverpool, between 1834 and c.1847. The first locomotives built by them, in 1834, were three for the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway and one for the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway; they were the first locomotives to have outside horizontal cylinders and the first to have four fixed eccentrics to operate the valves, in place of two loose eccentrics. Two locomotives built by Forrester in 1835 for the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway were the first tank locomotives to run regularly on a public railway, and two more supplied in 1836 to the London \& Greenwich Railway were the first such locomotives in England. Little appears to be known about Forrester himself. In the 1841 census his profession is shown as "civil engineer, residence 1 Lord Nelson Street". Directories for Liverpool, contemporary with Forrester \& Co.'s locomotive building period, describe the firm variously as engineers, iron founders and boilermakers, located at (successively) 234,224 and 40 Vauxhall Road. Works Manager until 1840 was Alexander Allan, who subsequently used the experience he had gained with Forrester in the design of his "Crewe Type" outside-cylinder locomotive, which became widely used.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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George Robinson is said to have been a Scots migrant who settled at Burwell, near Nottingham, in 1737, but there is no record of his occupation until 1771, when he was noticed as a bleacher. By 1783 he and his son were describing themselves as "merchants and thread manufacturers" as well as bleachers. For their thread, they were using the system of spinning on the waterframe, but it is not known whether they held a licence from Arkwright. Between 1776 and 1791, the firm G.J. \& J.Robinson built a series of six cotton mills with a complex of dams and aqueducts to supply them in the relatively flat land of the Leen valley, near Papplewick, to the north of Nottingham. By careful conservation they were able to obtain considerable power from a very small stream. Castle mill was not only the highest one owned by the Robinsons, but it was also the highest mill on the stream and was fed from a reservoir. The Robinsons might therefore have expected to have enjoyed uninterrupted use of the water, but above them lived Lord Byron in his estate of Newstead Priory. The fifth Lord Byron loved making ornamental ponds on his property so that he could have mock naval battles with his servants, and this tampered with the water supplies so much that the Robinsons found they were unable to work their mills.

In 1785 they decided to order a rotative steam engine from the firm of Boulton \& Watt. It was erected by John Rennie; however, misfortune seemed to dog this engine, for parts went astray to Manchester and when the engine was finally running at the end of February 1786 it was found to be out of alignment so may not have been very successful. At about the same time, the lawsuit against Lord Byron was found in favour of the Robinsons, but the engine continued in use for at least twelve years and was the first of the type which was to power virtually all steamdriven mills until the 1850s to be installed in a textile mill. It was a low-pressure double-acting condensing beam engine, with a vertical cylinder, parallel motion connecting the piston toone end of a rocking beam, and a connecting rod at the other end of the beam turning the flywheel. In this case Watt's sun and planet motion was used in place of a crank.

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