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1 Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse
[br]b. 1834 Toulouse, France d. 1907[br]French engineer and businessman, inventor of the Lartigue monorail.[br]Lartigue worked as a civil engineer in Algeria and while there invented a simple monorail for industrial or agricultural use. It comprised a single rail carried on trestles; vehicles comprised a single wheel with two tubs suspended either side, like panniers. These were pushed or pulled by hand or, occasionally, hauled by mule. Such lines were used in Algerian esparto-grass plantations.In 1882 he patented a monorail system based on this arrangement, with important improvements: traction was to be mechanical; vehicles were to have two or four wheels and to be able to be coupled together; and the trestles were to have, on each side, a light guide rail upon which horizontal rollers beneath the vehicles would bear. Early in 1883 the Lartigue Railway Construction Company was formed in London and two experimental prototype monorails were subsequently demonstrated in public. One, at the Paris Agricultural Exhibition, had an electric locomotive that was built in two parts, one either side of the rail to maintain balance, hauling small wagons. The other prototype, in London, had a small, steam locomotive with two vertical boilers and was designed by Anatole Mallet. By now Lartigue had become associated with F.B. Behr. Behr was Managing Director of the construction company and of the Listowel \& Ballybunion Railway Company, which obtained an Act of Parliament in 1886 to built a Lartigue monorail railway in the South West of Ireland between those two places. Its further development and successful operation are described in the article on Behr in this volume.A much less successful attempt to establish a Lartigue monorail railway took place in France, in the départment of Loire. In 1888 the council of the département agreed to a proposal put forward by Lartigue for a 10 1/2 mile (17 km) long monorail between the towns of Feurs and Panissières: the agreement was reached on the casting vote of the Chairman, a contact of Lartigue. A concession was granted to successive companies with which Lartigue was closely involved, but construction of the line was attended by muddle, delay and perhaps fraud, although it was completed sufficiently for trial trains to operate. The locomotive had two horizontal boilers, one either side of the track. But the inspectors of the department found deficiencies in the completeness and probable safety of the railway; when they did eventually agree to opening on a limited scale, the company claimed to have insufficient funds to do so unless monies owed by the department were paid. In the end the concession was forfeited and the line dismantled. More successful was an electrically operated Lartigue mineral line built at mines in the eastern Pyrenees.It appears to have reused equipment from the electric demonstration line, with modifications, and included gradients as steep as 1 in 12. There was no generating station: descending trains generated the electricity to power ascending ones. This line is said to have operated for at least two years.[br]Bibliography1882, French patent no. 149,301 (monorail system). 1882, British patent no. 2,764 (monorail system).Further ReadingD.G.Tucker, 1984, "F.B.Behr's development of the Lartigue monorail", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 55 (describes Lartigue and his work).P.H.Chauffort and J.-L.Largier, 1981, "Le monorail de Feurs à Panissières", Chemin defer régionaux et urbains (magazine of the Fédération des Amis des Chemins de FerSecondaires) 164 (in French; describes Lartigue and his work).PJGRBiographical history of technology > Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse
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2 Land transport
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Austin, HerbertHamilton, Harold LeeIssigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold ConstantineMa JunMorris, William RichardSauerbrun, Charles de -
3 Railways and locomotives
Biographical history of technology > Railways and locomotives
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4 Brennan, Louis
[br]b. 28 January 1852 Castlebar, Irelandd. 17 January 1932 Montreux, Switzerland[br]Irish inventor of the Brennan dirigible torpedo, and of a gyroscopically balanced monorail system.[br]The Brennan family, including Louis, emigrated to Australia in 1861. He was an inventive genius from childhood, and while at Melbourne invented his torpedo. Within it were two drums, each with several miles of steel wire coiled upon it and mounted on one of two concentric propeller shafts. The propellers revolved in opposite directions. Wires were led out of the torpedo to winding drums on land, driven by high-speed steam engines: the faster the drums on shore were driven, the quicker the wires were withdrawn from the drums within the torpedo and the quicker the propellers turned. A steering device was operated by altering the speeds of the wires relative to one another. As finally developed, Brennan torpedoes were accurate over a range of 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km), in contrast to contemporary self-propelled torpedoes, which were unreliable at ranges over 400 yards (366 in).Brennan moved to England in 1880 and sold the rights to his torpedo to the British Government for a total of £110,000, probably the highest payment ever made by it to an individual inventor. Brennan torpedoes became part of the defences of many vital naval ports, but never saw active service: improvement of other means of defence meant they were withdrawn in 1906. By then Brennan was deeply involved in the development of his monorail. The need for a simple and cheap form of railway had been apparent to him when in Australia and he considered it could be met by a ground-level monorail upon which vehicles would be balanced by gyroscopes. After overcoming many manufacturing difficulties, he demonstrated first a one-eighth scale version and then a full-size, electrically driven vehicle, which ran on its single rail throughout the summer of 1910 in London, carrying up to fifty passengers at a time. Development had been supported financially by, successively, the War Office, the India Office and the Government of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had no rail access; despite all this, however, no further financial support, government or commercial, was forthcoming.Brennan made many other inventions, worked on the early development of helicopters and in 1929 built a gyroscopically balanced, two-wheeled motor car which, however, never went into production.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCompanion of the Bath 1892.Bibliography1878, British patent no. 3359 (torpedo) 1903, British patent no. 27212 (stability mechanisms).Further ReadingR.E.Wilkes, 1973, Louis Brennan CB, 2 parts, Gillingham (Kent) Public Library. J.R.Day and B.C.Wilson, 1957, Unusual Railways, London: F.Muller.See also: Behr, Fritz Bernhard; Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse; Palmer, Henry Robinson( monorails); Whitehead, Robert( torpedoes).PJGR -
5 Palmer, Henry Robinson
[br]b. 1795 Hackney, London, Englandd. 12 September 1844[br]English civil engineer and monorail pioneer.[br]Palmer was an assistant to Thomas Telford for ten years from 1816. In 1818 he arranged a meeting of young engineers from which the Institution of Civil Engineers originated. In the early 1820s he invented a monorail system, the first of its kind, in which a single rail of wood, with an iron strip spiked on top to form a running surface, was supported on posts. Wagon bodies were supported pannier fashion from a frame attached to grooved wheels and were propelled by men or horses. An important object was to minimize friction, and short lines were built on this principle at Deptford and Cheshunt. In 1826 Palmer was appointed Resident Engineer to the London Docks and was responsible for the construction of many of them. He was subsequently consulted about many important engineering works.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1831. Vice-President, Institution of Civil Engineers.Bibliography1821, British patent no. 4,618 (monorail).1823, Description of a Railway on a New Principle…, London (describes his monorail).Further ReadingObituary, 1845, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 4. C.von Oeynhausen and H.von Dechen, 1971, Railways in England 1826 and 1827, London: Newcomen Society (a contemporary description of the monorails). M.J.T.Lewis, 1970, Early Wooden Railways, London: Routledge \& Kegan Paul.See also: Lartigue, Charles François Marie-ThérèsePJGR
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