Royal George

royal [ˈrɔɪəl]

1. adjective

2. noun

(inf) membre m de la famille royale

• the royals la famille royale

3. compounds

► the Royal Academy (of Arts) noun (British) l'Académie f royale des Beaux-Arts

► the Royal Air Force noun (British) la Royal Air Force

► royal blue noun bleu roi m inv

► royal-blue adjective bleu roi inv

► royal family noun famille f royale

► Royal Highness noun

• Your/His Royal Highness Votre/Son Altesse Royale ► royal jelly noun gelée f royale

► the Royal Mail noun (British) le service postal britannique

► the Royal Marines plural noun (British) l'infanterie f de marine

• a Royal Marine un soldat de l'infanterie de marine ► the Royal Navy noun (British) la marine nationale

► the Royal Shakespeare Company noun (British) troupe de théâtre spécialisée dans le répertoire shakespearien

► the Royal Ulster Constabulary noun la police de l'Irlande du Nord

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La Royal Academy ou Royal Academy of Arts, fondée en 1768 par George III pour encourager la peinture, la sculpture et l'architecture, est située à Burlington House, sur Piccadilly. Une exposition-vente d'œuvres d'artistes contemporains a lieu tous les étés. L'Académie dispense également des cours en peinture, sculpture et architecture.

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adjective royal

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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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

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Almost all of Watson's life was spent in or around the City of Glasgow; his formal education was at the city's High School and at the age of 16 he entered the yard and drawing offices of Robert Napier's Govan Shipyard. Three years later he crossed the River Clyde and started work in the design office of the Pointhouse Shipyard of A. \& J.Inglis, and there received the necessary grounding of a naval architect. Dr John Inglis, the Principal of the firm, encouraged Watson, ensured that he was involved in advanced design work and allowed him to build a yacht in a corner of the shipyard in his spare time.

At the early age of 22 Watson set up as a naval architect with his own company, which is still in existence 120 years later. In 1875, assisted by two carpenters, Watson built the 5-ton yacht Vril to his own design. This vessel was the first with an integral heavy lead keel and its success ensured that design contracts flowed to him for new yachts for the Clyde and elsewhere. His enthusiasm and increasing skill were recognized and soon he was working on the ultimate: the America's Cup challengers Thistle, Valkyrie II, Valkyrie III and Shamrock II. The greatest accolade was the contract for the design of the J Class yacht Britannia, built by D. \& W.Henderson of Glasgow in 1893 for the Prince of Wales.

The company of G.L.Watson became the world's leading designer of steam yachts, and it was usual for it to offer a full design service as well as supervise construction in any part of the world. Watson took a deep interest in the work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and was its technical consultant for many years. One of his designs, the Watson Lifeboat, was a stalwart in its fleet for many years. In public life he lectured, took an active part in the debates on yacht racing and was recognized as Britain's leading designer.

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    бaтaлия, шумнaя ccopa, гopячий cпop

    After dinner that evening there was a battle royal. Freddy was a quick-tempered man, unused to opposition, and he gave George the rough side of his tongue (W. S. Maugham). She wondered if Julian and Caroline were having another one of their battle royals (J. O'Hara)

см тж War of Jenkins' Ear

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Weapons and armour

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Born in Poland, Rickover was brought to the United States early in his life by his father, who settled in Chicago as a tailor. Commissioned into the US Navy in 1922, he specialized in electrical engineering (graduating from the US Naval Postgraduate School, Columbia, in 1929), quali-fied as a Submariner in 1931 and then held various posts until appointed Head of the Electrical Section of the Bureau of Ships in 1939. He held this post until the end of the Second World War.

Rickover was involved briefly in the "Manhattan" atomic bomb project before being assigned to an atomic energy submarine project in 1946. Ultimately he was made responsible for the development and building of the world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. He was convinced of the need to make the nuclear submarine an instrument of strategic importance, and this led to the development of the ballistic missile submarine and the Polaris programme.

Throughout his career he was no stranger to controversy; indeed, his remaining on the active service list as a full admiral until the age of 82 (when forced to retire on the direct intervention of the Navy Secretary) indicates a man beyond the ordinary. He imposed his will on all around him and backed it with a brilliant and clear-thinking brain; his influence was even felt by the Royal Navy during the building of the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought. He made many friends, but he also had many detractors.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport

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Little is known of Shillibeer's early life except that he was for some years resident in France. He served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy before joining the firm of Hatchetts in Long Acre, London, to learn coachbuilding. He set up as a coachbuilder in Paris soon after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and prospered. Early in the 1820s Jacques Laffite ordered two improved buses from Shillibeer. Their success prompted Shillibeer to sell up his business and return to London to start a similar service. His first two buses in London ran for the first time on 4 July 1829, from the Yorkshire Stingo at Paddington to the Bank, a distance of 9 miles (14 km) which had taken three hours by the existing short-stagecoaches. Shillibeer's vehicle was drawn by three horses abreast, carried twenty-two passengers at a charge of one shilling for the full journey or sixpence for a part-journey. These fares were a third of that charged for an inside seat on a short-stagecoach. The conductors were the sons of friends of Shillibeer from his naval days. He was soon earning £1,000 per week, each bus making twelve double journeys a day. Dishonesty was rife among the conductors, so Shillibeer fitted a register under the entrance step to count the passengers; two of the conductors who had been discharged set out to wreck the register and its inventor. Expanded routes were soon being travelled by a larger fleet but the newly formed Metropolitan Police force complained that the buses were too wide, so the next buses had only two horses and carried sixteen passengers inside with two on top. Shillibeer's partner, William Morton, failed as competition grew. Shillibeer sold out in 1834 when he had sixty buses, six hundred horses and stabling for them. He started a long-distance service to Greenwich, but a competing railway opened in 1835 and income declined; the Official Stamp and Tax Offices seized the omnibuses and the business was bankrupted. Shillibeer then set up as an undertaker, and prospered with a new design of hearse which became known as a "Shillibeer".

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Религия: церковь св. Георгия