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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 Lartigue's pill
s.píldora de Lartigue. -
3 Behr, Fritz Bernhard
[br]b. 9 October 1842 Berlin, Germanyd. 25 February 1927[br]German (naturalized British in 1876) engineer, promoter of the Lartigue monorail system.[br]Behr trained as an engineer in Britain and had several railway engineering appointments before becoming associated with C.F.M.-T. Lartigue in promoting the Lartigue monorail system in the British Isles. In Lartigue's system, a single rail was supported on trestles; vehicles ran on the rail, their bodies suspended pannier-fashion, stabilized by horizontal rollers running against light guide rails fixed to the sides of the trestles. Behr became Managing Director of the Listowel \& Ballybunion Railway Company, which in 1888 opened its Lartigue system line between those two places in the south-west of Ireland. Three locomotives designed by J.T.A. Mallet were built for the line by Hunslet Engine Company, each with two horizontal boilers, one either side of the track. Coaches and wagons likewise were in two parts. Technically the railway was successful, but lack of traffic caused the company to go bankrupt in 1897: the railway continued to operate until 1924.Meanwhile Behr had been thinking in terms far more ambitious than a country branch line. Railway speeds of 150mph (240km/h) or more then lay far in the future: engineers were uncertain whether normal railway vehicles would even be stable at such speeds. Behr was convinced that a high-speed electric vehicle on a substantial Lartigue monorail track would be stable. In 1897 he demonstrated such a vehicle on a 3mile (4.8km) test track at the Brussels International Exhibition. By keeping the weight of the motors low, he was able to place the seats above rail level. Although the generating station provided by the Exhibition authorities never operated at full power, speeds over 75mph (120 km/h) were achieved.Behr then promoted the Manchester-Liverpool Express Railway, on which monorail trains of this type running at speeds up to 110mph (177km/h) were to link the two cities in twenty minutes. Despite strong opposition from established railway companies, an Act of Parliament authorizing it was made in 1901. The Act also contained provision for the Board of Trade to require experiments to prove the system's safety. In practice this meant that seven miles of line, and a complete generating station to enable trains to travel at full speed, must be built before it was known whether the Board would give its approval for the railway or not. Such a condition was too severe for the scheme to attract investors and it remained stillborn.[br]Further ReadingH.Fayle, 1946, The Narrow Gauge Railways of Ireland, Greenlake Publications, Part 2, ch. 2 (describes the Listowel \& Ballybunion Railway and Behr's work there).D.G.Tucker, 1984, "F.B.Behr's development of the Lartigue monorail", Transactions ofthe Newcomen Society 55 (covers mainly the high speed lines).See also: Brennan, LouisPJGR -
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 Land transport
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Austin, HerbertHamilton, Harold LeeIssigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold ConstantineMa JunMorris, William RichardSauerbrun, Charles de -
6 Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole
[br]b. 1837 Geneva, Switzerlandd. November 1919 Nice, France[br]Swiss engineer, inventor of the compound steam locomotive and the Mallet articulated locomotive.[br]Mallet's family moved to Normandy while he was still a child. After working as a civil engineer, in 1867 he turned to machinery, particularly to compound steam engines. He designed the first true compound steam locomotives, which were built for the Bayonne- Biarritz Railway in 1876. They were 0–4–2 tank locomotives with one high-pressure and one low-pressure cylinder. A starting valve controlled by the driver admitted high-pressure steam to the low-pressure cylinder while the high-pressure cylinder exhausted to the atmosphere. At that time it was thought impracticable in a narrow-gauge locomotive to have more than three coupled axles in rigid frames. Mallet patented his system of articulation in 1884 and the first locomotives were built to that design in 1888: they were 0–4–4–0 tanks with two sets of frames. The two rear pairs of wheels carried the rear set of frames and were driven by two high-pressure cylinders; the two front pairs, which were driven by the high-pressure cylinders, carried a separate set of frames that was allowed sideplay, with a centre of rotation between the low-pressure cylinders. In contrast to the patent locomotive of Robert Fairlie, no flexible connections were required to carry steam at boiler pressure. The first Mallet articulated locomotives were small, built to 60 cm (23.6 in.) gauge: the first standard-gauge Mallets were built in 1890, for the St Gotthard Railway, and it was only after the type was adopted by American railways in 1904 that large Mallet locomotives were built, with sizes increasing rapidly to culminate in some of the largest steam locomotives ever produced. In the late 1880s Mallet also designed monorail locomotives, which were built for the system developed by C.F.M.-T. Lartigue.[br]Bibliography1884, French patent no. 162,876 (articulated locomotive).Further ReadingJ.T.van Riemsdijk, 1970, "The compound locomotive, Part I", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 43 (describes Mallet's work on compounding).L.Wiener, 1930, Articulated Locomotives, London: Constable (describes his articulated locomotives).For the Mallet family, see Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz.PJGRBiographical history of technology > Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole
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7 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 -
8 Railways and locomotives
Biographical history of technology > Railways and locomotives
См. также в других словарях:
LARTIGUE (J.-H.) — LARTIGUE JACQUES HENRI (1894 1986) C’est tardivement, au début des années 1960 alors qu’il avait déjà près de soixante dix ans , que Jacques Henri Lartigue s’est vu propulsé dans la lumière médiatique. Sa vie prend brutalement le relief d’une… … Encyclopédie Universelle
Lartigue — can refer to:* The Lartigue Monorail system, invented by the French engineer Charles Lartigue (1834 1907). * Lartigue, a commune in the Gers département , in France * Lartigue, a commune in the Gironde département , in France * Jacques Henri… … Wikipedia
Lartigue — ist der Name von Charles Lartigue (1834 1907), französischer Ingenieur Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 1986), französischer Fotograf und Maler Sonstiges Lartigue Einschienenbahn Diese Seite ist eine … Deutsch Wikipedia
Lartigue — puede referirse a Lartigue, comuna francesa situada en Gers. Lartigue, comuna francesa situada en Gironda. Esta página de desambiguación cataloga artículos relacionados con el mismo título. Si llegaste aquí a través de … Wikipedia Español
Lartigue — (spr. tīgh ), Jean, franz. Seefahrer und Hydrograph, geb. 1791 in Vic Bigorre (Oberpyrenäen), gest. 26. April 1876, bereiste 1820–24 die Küsten von Brasilien, den La Plata und die Südsee, stellte 1844 als Kommandant der westindischen Seedivision… … Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon
Lartigue — [lar tiːg], Jacques Henri, französischer Fotograf und Maler, * Courbevoie 13. 6. 1894, ✝ Nizza 12. 9. 1986; wurde bekannt als Fotograf der Belle Époque, der früh versuchte, Bewegung in seinen Bildern auszudrücken … Universal-Lexikon
Lartigue — Désigne celui qui est originaire d un lieu dit l Artigue, toponyme très répandu dans le Sud Ouest, où il désigne une terre défrichée par brûlis (parfois aussi une terre en friche). Le nom est surtout porté en Gascogne. Variante : Lartigues.… … Noms de famille
Lartigue — Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom. Lartigue est un nom propre apparu dans le Sud Ouest de la France et provenant de artige (terre à défricher). Il possède plusieurs variantes (ex :… … Wikipédia en Français
Lartigue (Gironda) — Lartigue País … Wikipedia Español
Lartigue, Gers — Lartigue is a commune in the Gers department in southwestern France.ee also*Communes of the Gers departmentReferences Based on the article in the French Wikipedia … Wikipedia
Lartigue, Gironde — Lartigue is a commune in the Gironde department in Aquitaine in southwestern France.ee also*Communes of the Gironde departmentReferences Based on the article in the French Wikipedia … Wikipedia