Thomas iron

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Thomas was educated at Dulwich College and from the age of 17, for the next twelve years, he made his living as a police-court clerk, although he studied chemistry in his spare time as an evening student at Birkbeck College, London. While there, he heard of the difficulties encountered by the Bessemer steelmaking process, which at that time was limited to using phosphorus-free iron. Any of this element present in the iron was oxidized to phosphoric acid, which would not react with the acidic lining in the converter, with the result that it would remain in the iron and render it too brittle to use. Unfortunately, phosphoric iron ores are more common than those free of this harmful element. Thomas was attracted by the view that a fortune awaited anyone who could solve this problem, and was not discouraged by the failure of several august figures in the industry, including Siemens and Lowthian Bell.

Thomas's knowledge of chemistry taught him that whereas an acidic lining allowed the phosphorus to remain in the iron, a basic lining would react with it to form part of the slag, which could then be tapped off. His experiments to find a suitable material were conducted in difficult conditions, in his spare time with meagre apparatus. Finally he found that a converter lined with dolomite, a form of limestone, would succeed, and he appealed to his cousin Percy Carlyle Gilchrist, Chemist at the Blaenavon Ironworks in Monmouthshire, for help in carrying out pilot-scale trials. In 1879 he gave up his police-court job to devote himself to the work, and in the same year they patented the Thomas- Gilchrist process. The first licence to use it was granted to Bolckow, Vaughan \& Co. of Middlesborough, and there the first steel was made in a basic Bessemer converter on 4 April 1879. The process was rapidly taken up and spread widely in Europe and beyond and was applied to other furnaces. Thomas made a fortune, but his health did not long allow him to enjoy it, for he died at the early age of 34.

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n. basic iron

SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Ports and shipping

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Wilson, the son of a sailor, spent his early years on the Forth. Later his father moved home to the west and Wilson served his apprenticeship as a shipwright on the Clyde at the small shipyards of Bowling, fifteen miles (24 km) west of Glasgow and on the river's north bank. In his late thirties Wilson was to take the leading role in what is arguably the most important development in Scotland's distinguished shipbuilding history: the building of the world's first properly constructed iron ship. This ship, the Vulcan, was the culmination of several years' effort by a group of people well connected within the academic establishment of Scotland. The Forth and Clyde Canal Company had passed instructions for investigations to be made into reducing running expenses and a distinguished committee looked into this matter. They included John Robison (Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh), Professor Joseph Black of Glasgow University, James Watt and John Schanck. After a period of consideration it was decided to build a new, fastpassage barge of iron, and tenders were invited from several appropriate contractors. Wilson, with the assistance of two blacksmiths, John and Thomas Smellie, was awarded the work, and the Vulcan was constructed and ultimately launched at Faskine near Glasgow in 1819. The work involved was far beyond the comprehension of engineers of the twentieth century, as Wilson had to arrange puddled-iron plates for the shell and hand-crafted angle irons for the frames. His genius is now apparent as every steel ship worldwide uses a form of construction literally "hammered out on the anvil" between 1818 and 1819. The Vulcan was almost 64 ft (19.5 m) in length and 11 ft (3.4 m) broad. In 1822 Wilson was appointed an inspector of works for the Canal Company, and ultimately he superintended the building of the docks at Grangemouth, where he died in 1873, the same year that the Vulcan was broken up.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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The son of a grist miller, Rowland worked in various jobs until 1859 when he established his own business for the construction of wooden and iron steamships and for structural iron works, in Greenpoint, Long Island, New York. In 1860 he founded the Continental Works and during the American Civil War he started manufacturing gun carriages and mortar beds. He fitted out many vessels for the navy, and as a contractor for John Ericsson he built heavily armoured war vessels.

He continued shipbuilding, but later diversified his business. He devoted great attention to the design of gas-works, constructing innovative storage facilities all over the United States, and he was concerned with the improvement of welding iron and steel plates and other processes in the steel industry. In the late 1860s he also began the manufacture of steam-engines and boilers for use in the new but expanding oil industry. In 1869 he took out a patent for a fixed platform for drilling for oil off-shore up to a depth of 15 m (49 ft). With this idea, just ten years after Edwin Drake's success in on-shore oil drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Rowland pioneered the technology of off-shore drilling for petroleum in which the United States later became the leading nation.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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Telford was the son of a shepherd, who died when the boy was in his first year. Brought up by his mother, Janet Jackson, he attended the parish school at Westerkirk. He was apprenticed to a stonemason in Lochmaben and to another in Langholm. In 1780 he walked from Eskdale to Edinburgh and in 1872 rode to London on a horse that he was to deliver there. He worked for Sir William Chambers as a mason on Somerset House, then on the Eskdale house of Sir James Johnstone. In 1783–4 he worked on the new Commissioner's House and other buildings at Portsmouth dockyard.

In late 1786 Telford was appointed County Surveyor for Shropshire and moved to Shrewsbury Castle, with work initially on the new infirmary and County Gaol. He designed the church of St Mary Magdalene, Bridgnorth, and also the church at Madley. Telford built his first bridge in 1790–2 at Montford; between 1790 and 1796 he built forty-five road bridges in Shropshire, including Buildwas Bridge. In September 1793 he was appointed general agent, engineer and architect to the Ellesmere Canal, which was to connect the Mersey and Dee rivers with the Severn at Shrewsbury; William Jessop was Principal Engineer. This work included the Pont Cysyllte aqueduct, a 1,000 ft (305 m) long cast-iron trough 127 ft (39 m) above ground level, which entailed an on-site ironworks and took ten years to complete; the aqueduct is still in use today. In 1800 Telford put forward a plan for a new London Bridge with a single cast-iron arch with a span of 600 ft (183 m) but this was not built.

In 1801 Telford was appointed engineer to the British Fisheries Society "to report on Highland Communications" in Scotland where, over the following eighteen years, 920 miles (1,480 km) of new roads were built, 280 miles (450 km) of the old military roads were realigned and rebuilt, over 1,000 bridges were constructed and much harbour work done, all under Telford's direction. A further 180 miles (290 km) of new roads were also constructed in the Lowlands of Scotland. From 1804 to 1822 he was also engaged on the construction of the Caledonian Canal: 119 miles (191 km) in all, 58 miles (93 km) being sea loch, 38 miles (61 km) being Lochs Lochy, Oich and Ness, 23 miles (37 km) having to be cut.

In 1808 he was invited by King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden to assist Count Baltzar von Platen in the survey and construction of a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic. Telford surveyed the 114 mile (183 km) route in six weeks; 53 miles (85 km) of new canal were to be cut. Soon after the plans for the canal were completed, the King of Sweden created him a Knight of the Order of Vasa, an honour that he would have liked to have declined. At one time some 60,000 soldiers and seamen were engaged on the work, Telford supplying supervisors, machinery—including an 8 hp steam dredger from the Donkin works and machinery for two small paddle boats—and ironwork for some of the locks. Under his direction an ironworks was set up at Motala, the foundation of an important Swedish industrial concern which is still flourishing today. The Gotha Canal was opened in September 1832.

In 1811 Telford was asked to make recommendations for the improvement of the Shrewsbury to Holyhead section of the London-Holyhead road, and in 1815 he was asked to survey the whole route from London for a Parliamentary Committee. Construction of his new road took fifteen years, apart from the bridges at Conway and over the Menai Straits, both suspension bridges by Telford and opened in 1826. The Menai bridge had a span of 579 ft (176 m), the roadway being 153 ft (47 m) above the water level.

In 1817 Telford was appointed Engineer to the Exchequer Loan Commission, a body set up to make capital loans for deserving projects in the hard times that followed after the peace of Waterloo. In 1820 he became the first President of the Engineers Institute, which gained its Royal Charter in 1828 to become the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was appointed Engineer to the St Katharine's Dock Company during its construction from 1825 to 1828, and was consulted on several early railway projects including the Liverpool and Manchester as well as a number of canal works in the Midlands including the new Harecastle tunnel, 3,000 ft (914 m) long.

Telford led a largely itinerant life, living in hotels and lodgings, acquiring his own house for the first time in 1821, 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, which was partly used as a school for young civil engineers. He died there in 1834, after suffering in his later years from the isolation of deafness. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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In November 1770, John Mackenzie, owner of a bleaching mill, took his millwright Thomas Bell to Glasgow to consult with James Watt about problems they were having with the calico printing machine invented by Bell some years previously. Bell rolled sheets of copper one eighth of an inch (3 mm) thick into cyliders, and filled them with cement which was held in place by cast iron ends. After being turned true and polished, the cylinders were engraved; they cost about £10 each. The printing machines were driven by a water-wheel, but Bell and Mackenzie appeared to have had problems with the doctor blades which scraped off excess colour, and this may have been why they visited Watt.

They had, presumably, solved the technical problems when Bell took out a patent in 1783 which describes him as "the Elder", but there are no further details about the man himself. The machine is described as having six printing rollers arranged around the top of the circumference of a large central bowl. In later machines, the printing rollers were placed all round a smaller cylinder. All of the printing rollers, each printing a different colour, were driven by gearing to keep them in register. The patent includes steel doctor blades which would have scraped excess colour off the printing rollers. Another patent, taken out in 1784, shows a smaller three-colour machine. The printing rollers had an iron core covered with copper, which could be taken off at pleasure so that fresh patterns could be cut as desired. Bell's machine was used at Masney, near Preston, England, by Messrs Livesey, Hargreaves, Hall \& Co in 1786. Although copper cylinders were difficult to make and engrave, and the soldered seams often burst, these machines were able to increase the output of the cheaper types of printed cloth.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors, Metallurgy

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Boulsover, originally a small-scale manufacturer of cutlery, is believed to have specialized in making knife-handle components. About 1742 he found that a thin sheet of silver could be fused to copper sheet by rolling or beating to flatten it. Thus he developed the plating of silver, later called Sheffield plate.

The method when perfected consisted of copper sheet overlaid by thin sheet silver being annealed by red heat. Protected by iron sheeting, the copper and silver were rolled together, becoming fused to a single plate capable of undergoing further manufacturing processes. Later developments included methods of edging the fused sheets and the placing of silver sheet on both lower and upper surfaces of copper, to produce high-quality silver plate, in much demand by the latter part of the century. Boulsover himself is said to have produced only small articles such as buttons and snuff boxes from this material, which by 1758 was being exploited more commercially by Joseph Hancock in Sheffield making candlesticks, hot-water pots and coffee pots. Matthew Boulton introduced its manufacture in very high-quality products during the 1760s to Birmingham, where the technique was widely adopted later. By the 1770s Boulsover was engaged in rolling his plated copper for industry elsewhere, also trading in iron and purchasing blister steel which he converted by the Huntsman process to crucible steel. Blister steel was converted on his behalf to shear steel by forging. He is thought to have also been responsible for improving this product further, introducing "double-shear steel", by repeating the forging and faggoting of shear steel bars. Thomas Boulsover had become a Sheffield entrepreneur, well known for his numerous skills with metals.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Automotive engineering, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Metallurgy, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities, Recording, Telecommunications

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He was the son of Samuel Edison, who was in the timber business. His schooling was delayed due to scarlet fever until 1855, when he was 8½ years old, but he was an avid reader. By the age of 14 he had a job as a newsboy on the railway from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles (101 km). He worked a fourteen-hour day with a stopover of five hours, which he spent in the Detroit Free Library. He also sold sweets on the train and, later, fruit and vegetables, and was soon making a profit of $20 a week. He then started two stores in Port Huron and used a spare freight car as a laboratory. He added a hand-printing press to produce 400 copies weekly of The Grand Trunk Herald, most of which he compiled and edited himself. He set himself to learn telegraphy from the station agent at Mount Clements, whose son he had saved from being run over by a freight car.

At the age of 16 he became a telegraphist at Port Huron. In 1863 he became railway telegraphist at the busy Stratford Junction of the Grand Trunk Railroad, arranging a clock with a notched wheel to give the hourly signal which was to prove that he was awake and at his post! He left hurriedly after failing to hold a train which was nearly involved in a head-on collision. He usually worked the night shift, allowing himself time for experiments during the day. His first invention was an arrangement of two Morse registers so that a high-speed input could be decoded at a slower speed. Moving from place to place he held many positions as a telegraphist. In Boston he invented an automatic vote recorder for Congress and patented it, but the idea was rejected. This was the first of a total of 1180 patents that he was to take out during his lifetime. After six years he resigned from the Western Union Company to devote all his time to invention, his next idea being an improved ticker-tape machine for stockbrokers. He developed a duplex telegraphy system, but this was turned down by the Western Union Company. He then moved to New York.

Edison found accommodation in the battery room of Law's Gold Reporting Company, sleeping in the cellar, and there his repair of a broken transmitter marked him as someone of special talents. His superior soon resigned, and he was promoted with a salary of $300 a month. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the sole rights on future improvements on the duplex telegraph, and he moved to Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey, where he employed a gathering of specialist engineers. Within a year, he married one of his employees, Mary Stilwell, when she was only 16: a daughter, Marion, was born in 1872, and two sons, Thomas and William, in 1876 and 1879, respectively.

He continued to work on the automatic telegraph, a device to send out messages faster than they could be tapped out by hand: that is, over fifty words per minute or so. An earlier machine by Alexander Bain worked at up to 400 words per minute, but was not good over long distances. Edison agreed to work on improving this feature of Bain's machine for the Automatic Telegraph Company (ATC) for $40,000. He improved it to a working speed of 500 words per minute and ran a test between Washington and New York. Hoping to sell their equipment to the Post Office in Britain, ATC sent Edison to England in 1873 to negotiate. A 500-word message was to be sent from Liverpool to London every half-hour for six hours, followed by tests on 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of cable at Greenwich. Only confused results were obtained due to induction in the cable, which lay coiled in a water tank. Edison returned to New York, where he worked on his quadruplex telegraph system, tests of which proved a success between New York and Albany in December 1874. Unfortunately, simultaneous negotiation with Western Union and ATC resulted in a lawsuit.

Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for a telephone in March 1876 while Edison was still working on the same idea. His improvements allowed the device to operate over a distance of hundreds of miles instead of only a few miles. Tests were carried out over the 106 miles (170 km) between New York and Philadelphia. Edison applied for a patent on the carbon-button transmitter in April 1877, Western Union agreeing to pay him $6,000 a year for the seventeen-year duration of the patent. In these years he was also working on the development of the electric lamp and on a duplicating machine which would make up to 3,000 copies from a stencil. In 1876–7 he moved from Newark to Menlo Park, twenty-four miles (39 km) from New York on the Pennsylvania Railway, near Elizabeth. He had bought a house there around which he built the premises that would become his "inventions factory". It was there that he began the use of his 200- page pocket notebooks, each of which lasted him about two weeks, so prolific were his ideas. When he died he left 3,400 of them filled with notes and sketches.

Late in 1877 he applied for a patent for a phonograph which was granted on 19 February 1878, and by the end of the year he had formed a company to manufacture this totally new product. At the time, Edison saw the device primarily as a business aid rather than for entertainment, rather as a dictating machine. In August 1878 he was granted a British patent. In July 1878 he tried to measure the heat from the solar corona at a solar eclipse viewed from Rawlins, Wyoming, but his "tasimeter" was too sensitive.

Probably his greatest achievement was "The Subdivision of the Electric Light" or the "glow bulb". He tried many materials for the filament before settling on carbon. He gave a demonstration of electric light by lighting up Menlo Park and inviting the public. Edison was, of course, faced with the problem of inventing and producing all the ancillaries which go to make up the electrical system of generation and distribution-meters, fuses, insulation, switches, cabling—even generators had to be designed and built; everything was new. He started a number of manufacturing companies to produce the various components needed.

In 1881 he built the world's largest generator, which weighed 27 tons, to light 1,200 lamps at the Paris Exhibition. It was later moved to England to be used in the world's first central power station with steam engine drive at Holborn Viaduct, London. In September 1882 he started up his Pearl Street Generating Station in New York, which led to a worldwide increase in the application of electric power, particularly for lighting. At the same time as these developments, he built a 1,300yd (1,190m) electric railway at Menlo Park.

On 9 August 1884 his wife died of typhoid. Using his telegraphic skills, he proposed to 19-year-old Mina Miller in Morse code while in the company of others on a train. He married her in February 1885 before buying a new house and estate at West Orange, New Jersey, building a new laboratory not far away in the Orange Valley.

Edison used direct current which was limited to around 250 volts. Alternating current was largely developed by George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, using transformers to step up the current to a higher voltage for long-distance transmission. The use of AC gradually overtook the Edison DC system.

In autumn 1888 he patented a form of cinephotography, the kinetoscope, obtaining film-stock from George Eastman. In 1893 he set up the first film studio, which was pivoted so as to catch the sun, with a hinged roof which could be raised. In 1894 kinetoscope parlours with "peep shows" were starting up in cities all over America. Competition came from the Latham Brothers with a screen-projection machine, which Edison answered with his "Vitascope", shown in New York in 1896. This showed pictures with accompanying sound, but there was some difficulty with synchronization. Edison also experimented with captions at this early date.

In 1880 he filed a patent for a magnetic ore separator, the first of nearly sixty. He bought up deposits of low-grade iron ore which had been developed in the north of New Jersey. The process was a commercial success until the discovery of iron-rich ore in Minnesota rendered it uneconomic and uncompetitive. In 1898 cement rock was discovered in New Village, west of West Orange. Edison bought the land and started cement manufacture, using kilns twice the normal length and using half as much fuel to heat them as the normal type of kiln. In 1893 he met Henry Ford, who was building his second car, at an Edison convention. This started him on the development of a battery for an electric car on which he made over 9,000 experiments. In 1903 he sold his patent for wireless telegraphy "for a song" to Guglielmo Marconi.

In 1910 Edison designed a prefabricated concrete house. In December 1914 fire destroyed three-quarters of the West Orange plant, but it was at once rebuilt, and with the threat of war Edison started to set up his own plants for making all the chemicals that he had previously been buying from Europe, such as carbolic acid, phenol, benzol, aniline dyes, etc. He was appointed President of the Navy Consulting Board, for whom, he said, he made some forty-five inventions, "but they were pigeonholed, every one of them". Thus did Edison find that the Navy did not take kindly to civilian interference.

In 1927 he started the Edison Botanic Research Company, founded with similar investment from Ford and Firestone with the object of finding a substitute for overseas-produced rubber. In the first year he tested no fewer than 3,327 possible plants, in the second year, over 1,400, eventually developing a variety of Golden Rod which grew to 14 ft (4.3 m) in height. However, all this effort and money was wasted, due to the discovery of synthetic rubber.

In October 1929 he was present at Henry Ford's opening of his Dearborn Museum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the incandescent lamp, including a replica of the Menlo Park laboratory. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He died in 1931 at his home, Glenmont; throughout the USA, lights were dimmed temporarily on the day of his funeral.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology, Ports and shipping

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Williams was articled by his father, Owen Williams of Treffos in Anglesey, to the prominent Flintshire lawyer John Lloyd, whose daughter Catherine he is believed to have married. By 1769 Williams, lessee of the mansion and estate of Llanidan, was an able lawyer with excellent connections in Anglesey. His life changed dramatically when he agreed to act on behalf of the Lewis and Hughes families of Llysdulas, who had begun a lawsuit against Sir Nicholas Bayly of Plas Newydd concerning the ownership and mineral rights of copper mines on the western side of Parys mountain. During a prolonged period of litigation, Williams managed these mines for Margaret Lewis on behalf of Edward Hughes, who was established after a judgement in Chancery in 1776 as one of two legal proprietors, the other being Nicholas Bayly. The latter then decided to lease his portion to the London banker John Dawes, who in 1778 joined Hughes and Thomas Williams when they founded the Parys Mine Company.

As the active partner in this enterprise, Williams began to establish his own smelting and fabricating works in South Wales, Lancashire and Flintshire, where coal was cheap. He soon broke the power of Associated Smelters, a combine holding the Anglesey mine owners to ransom. The low production cost of Anglesey ore gave him a great advantage over the Cornish mines and he secured very profitable contracts for the copper sheathing of naval and other vessels. After several British and French copper-bottomed ships were lost because of corrosion failure of the iron nails and bolts used to secure the sheathing, Williams introduced a process for manufacturing heavily work-hardened copper bolts and spikes which could be substituted directly for iron fixings, avoiding the corrosion difficulty. His new product was adopted by the Admiralty in 1784 and was soon used extensively in British and European dockyards.

In 1785 Williams entered into partnership with Lord Uxbridge, son and heir of Nicholas Bayly, to run the Mona Mine Company at the Eastern end of Parys Mountain. This move ended much enmity and litigation and put Williams in effective control of all Anglesey copper. In the same year, Williams, with Matthew Boulton and John Wilkinson, persuaded the Cornish miners to establish a trade cooperative, the Cornish Metal Company, to market their ores. When this began to fall in 1787, Williams took over its administration, assets and stocks and until 1792 controlled the output and sale of all British copper. He became known as the "Copper King" and the output of his many producers was sold by the Copper Offices he established in London, Liverpool and Birmingham. In 1790 he became Member of Parliament for the borough of Great Marlow, and in 1792 he and Edward Hughes established the Chester and North Wales Bank, which in 1900 was absorbed by the Lloyds group.

After 1792 the output of the Anglesey mines started to decline and Williams began to buy copper from all available sources. The price of copper rose and he was accused of abusing his monopoly. By this time, however, his health had begun to deteriorate and he retreated to Bath.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Newcomen was probably born at a house on the quay at Dartmouth, Devon, England, the son of Elias Newcomen and Sarah Trenhale. Nothing is known of his education, and there is only dubious evidence of his apprenticeship to an ironmonger in Exeter. He returned to Dartmouth and established himself there as an "ironmonger". The term "ironmonger" at that time meant more than a dealer in ironmongery: a skilled craftsman working in iron, nearer to today's "blacksmith". In this venture he had a partner, John Calley or Caley, who was a plumber and glazier. Besides running his business in Dartmouth, it is evident that Newcomen spent a good deal of time travelling round the mines of Devon and Cornwall in search of business.

Eighteenth-century writers and others found it impossible to believe that a provincial ironmonger could have invented the steam-engine, the concept of which had occupied the best scientific brains in Europe, and postulated a connection between Newcomen and Savery or Papin, but scholars in recent years have failed to find any evidence of this. Certainly Savery was in Dartmouth at the same time as Newcomen but there is nothing to indicate that they met, although it is possible. The most recent biographer of Thomas Newcomen is of the opinion that he was aware of Savery and his work, that the two men had met by 1705 and that, although Newcomen could have taken out his own patent, he could not have operated his own engines without infringing Savery's patent. In the event, they came to an agreement by which Newcomen was enabled to sell his engines under Savery's patent.

The first recorded Newcomen engine is dated 1712, although this may have been preceded by a good number of test engines built at Dartmouth, possibly following a number of models. Over one hundred engines were built to Newcomen's design during his lifetime, with the first engine being installed at the Griff Colliery near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.

On the death of Thomas Savery, on 15 May 1715, a new company, the Proprietors of the Engine Patent, was formed to carry on the business. The Company was represented by Edward Elliot, "who attended the Sword Blade Coffee House in Birchin Lane, London, between 3 and 5 o'clock to receive enquiries and to act as a contact for the committee". Newcomen was, of course, a member of the Proprietors.

A staunch Baptist, Newcomen married Hannah Waymouth, who bore him two sons and a daughter. He died, it is said of a fever, in London on 5 August 1729 and was buried at Bunhill Fields.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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In 1841, while studying at Cambridge, Sutton became interested in photography and tried out the current processes, daguerreotype, calotype and cyanotype among them. He subsequently settled in Jersey, where he continued his photographic studies. In 1855 he opened a photographic printing works in Jersey, in partnership with L.-D. Blanquart- Evrard, exploiting the latter's process for producing developed positive prints. He started and edited one of the first photographic periodicals, Photographic Notes, in 1856; until its cessation in 1867, his journal presented a fresher view of the world of photography than that given by its London-based rivals. He also drew up the first dictionary of photography in 1858.

In 1859 Sutton designed and patented a wideangle lens in which the space between two meniscus lenses, forming parts of a sphere and sealed in a metal rim, was filled with water; the lens so formed could cover an angle of up to 120 degrees at an aperture of f12. Sutton's design was inspired by observing the images produced by the water-filled sphere of a "snowstorm" souvenir brought home from Paris! Sutton commissioned the London camera-maker Frederick Cox to make the Panoramic camera, demonstrating the first model in January 1860; it took panoramic pictures on curved glass plates 152×381 mm in size. Cox later advertised other models in a total of four sizes. In January 1861 Sutton handed over manufacture to Andrew Ross's son Thomas Ross, who produced much-improved lenses and also cameras in three sizes. Sutton then developed the first single-lens reflex camera design, patenting it on 20 August 1961: a pivoted mirror, placed at 45 degrees inside the camera, reflected the image from the lens onto a ground glass-screen set in the top of the camera for framing and focusing. When ready, the mirror was swung up out of the way to allow light to reach the plate at the back of the camera. The design was manufactured for a few years by Thomas Ross and J.H. Dallmeyer.

In 1861 James Clerk Maxwell asked Sutton to prepare a series of photographs for use in his lecture "On the theory of three primary colours", to be presented at the Royal Institution in London on 17 May 1861. Maxwell required three photographs to be taken through red, green and blue filters, which were to be printed as lantern slides and projected in superimposition through three projectors. If his theory was correct, a colour reproduction of the original subject would be produced. Sutton used liquid filters: ammoniacal copper sulphate for blue, copper chloride for the green and iron sulphocyanide for the red. A fourth exposure was made through lemon-yellow glass, but was not used in the final demonstration. A tartan ribbon in a bow was used as the subject; the wet-collodion process in current use required six seconds for the blue exposure, about twice what would have been needed without the filter. After twelve minutes no trace of image was produced through the green filter, which had to be diluted to a pale green: a twelve-minute exposure then produced a serviceable negative. Eight minutes was enough to record an image through the red filter, although since the process was sensitive only to blue light, nothing at all should have been recorded. In 1961, R.M.Evans of the Kodak Research Laboratory showed that the red liquid transmitted ultraviolet radiation, and by an extraordinary coincidence many natural red dye-stuffs reflect ultraviolet. Thus the red separation was made on the basis of non-visible radiation rather than red, but the net result was correct and the projected images did give an identifiable reproduction of the original. Sutton's photographs enabled Maxwell to establish the validity of his theory and to provide the basis upon which all subsequent methods of colour photography have been founded.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Like so many of his contemporaries, Hopper made extensive use of cast iron, both structurally and decoratively. A notable example of this was his Conservatory, added to Carlton House in London in 1807–12 for the Prince of Wales: it was demolished in 1827–8. Constructed with cast iron and stained glass, the Conservatory took the form of slender, tall piers supporting an elaborate fan vault, the design of which was based upon that of the sixteenth-century Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering

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In 1775 Pritchard designed the Ironbridge bridge, which was built over the River Severn by Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale in 1777–9. It is constructed of five parallel arch ribs almost 200 ft (61 m) in length. The spandrels are filled by circles and ogee arch heads, while the roadway above is made from cast-iron plates 2½ in. (64 mm) thick. The bridge, which weighs 400 tons, was made in the Coalbrookdale foundry and took only three months to erect.

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Much of Walter's work was in neo-classical style, of which the Founders' Hall at Girard College in Philadelphia, built 1833–47, is a fine example. On the exterior this is a large-scale Corinthian temple of peripteral octastyle form. Inside, Walter showed his awareness of modern needs with his brick fireproof vaulting. In 1851 Walter was appointed by President Millard Fillmore as Architect to the Capitol in Washington, DC, to enlarge the building to accommodate the greater needs of the day. Between this time and 1865 Walter extended the side wings considerably to provide more space for the House of Representatives and the Senate and, to balance the composition of this much longer elevation, built a new great dome. In style, the dome and drum resemble those of Wren's St Paul's Cathedral in London, but the scale is much greater and the internal construction largely of cast iron: internally the dome measures 98 ft (29.9 m) in diameter and has a total height of 222 ft (67.7 m).

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Telecommunications

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After private education and an engineering apprenticeship, Crampton worked under Marc Brunel, Daniel Gooch and the Rennie brothers before setting up as a civil engineer in 1848. His developing ideas on locomotive design were expressed through a series of five patents taken out between 1842 and 1849, each making a multiplicity of claims. The most typical feature of the Crampton locomotive, however, was a single pair of driving wheels set to the rear of the firebox. This meant they could be of large diameter, while the centre of gravity of the locomotive remained low, for the boiler barrel, though large, had only small carrying-wheels beneath it. The cylinders were approximately midway along the boiler and were outside the frames, as was the valve gear. The result was a steady-riding locomotive which neither pitched about a central driving axle nor hunted from side to side, as did other contemporary locomotives, and its working parts were unusually accessible for maintenance. However, adhesive weight was limited and the long wheelbase tended to damage track. Locomotives of this type were soon superseded on British railways, although they lasted much longer in Germany and France. Locomotives built to the later patents incorporated a long, coupled wheelbase with drive through an intermediate crankshaft, but they mostly had only short lives. In 1851 Crampton, with associates, laid the first successful submarine electric telegraph cable. The previous year the brothers Jacob and John Brett had laid a cable, comprising a copper wire insulated with gutta-percha, beneath the English Channel from Dover to Cap Gris Nez: signals were passed but within a few hours the cable failed. Crampton joined the Bretts' company, put up half the capital needed for another attempt, and designed a much stronger cable. Four gutta-percha-insulated copper wires were twisted together, surrounded by tarred hemp and armoured by galvanized iron wires; this cable was successful.

Crampton was also active in railway civil engineering and in water and gas engineering, and c. 1882 he invented a hydraulic tunnel-boring machine intended for a Channel tunnel.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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When he was 14 years old Davenport was apprenticed to a blacksmith for seven years. At the close of his apprenticeship in 1823 he opened a blacksmith's shop in Brandon, Vermont. He began experimenting with electromagnets after observing one in use at the Penfield Iron Works at Crown Point, New York, in 1831. He saw the device as a possible source of power and by July 1834 had constructed his first electric motor. Having totally abandoned his regular business, Davenport built and exhibited a number of miniature machines; he utilized an electric motor to propel a model car around a circular track in 1836, and this became the first recorded instance of an electric railway. An application for a patent and a model were destroyed in a fire at the United States Patent Office in December 1836, but a second application was made and Davenport received a patent the following year for Improvements in Propelling Machinery by Magnetism and Electromagnetism. A British patent was also obtained. A workshop and laboratory were established in New York, but Davenport had little financial backing for his experiments. He built a total of over one hundred motors but was defeated by the inability to obtain an inexpensive source of power. Using an electric motor of his own design to operate a printing press in 1840, he undertook the publication of a journal, The Electromagnet and Mechanics' Intelligencer. This was the first American periodical on electricity, but it was discontinued after a few issues. In failing health he retired to Vermont where in the last year of his life he continued experiments in electromagnetism.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Thomas Rickman trained first in medicine and then, after practising for a short while, became an insurance clerk. During his thirties, having taught himself draughtsmanship, he travelled the country drawing, and recording some 3,000 medieval churches. He became deeply interested in and knowledgeable about ecclesiastical medieval architecture and in 1817 he began architectural practice. Rickman was responsible for a great deal of collegiate and ecclesiastical building. His understanding of true medieval materials and construction was much greater than that of his contemporaries, but like them he saw nothing incongruous about using modern materials such as plaster and cast iron for vault supports and tracery, so changing the structural proportions from medieval precepts. Characteristic of his work was St George Edgbaston (1819–22; demolished 1960) and Hartlebury Church (1836–7). Rickman is known primarily for his book An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation, in which he suggested classifying periods of architecture as Norman, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. These terms are still largely accepted even today.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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Little is known about Tompion's early life except that he was born into a family of blacksmiths. When he was admitted into the Clockmakers' Company in 1671 he was described as a "Great Clockmaker", which meant a maker of turret clocks, and as these clocks were made of wrought iron they would have required blacksmithing skills. Despite this background, he also rapidly established his reputation as a watchmaker. In 1674 he moved to premises in Water Lane at the sign of "The Dial and Three Crowns", where his business prospered and he remained for the rest of his life. Assisted by journeymen and up to eleven apprentices at any one time, the output from his workshop was prodigious, amounting to over 5,000 watches and 600 clocks. In his lifetime he was famous for his watches, as these figures suggest, but although they are of high quality they do not differ markedly from those produced by other London watchmakers of that period. He is now known more for the limited number of elaborate clocks that he produced, such as the equation clock and the spring-driven clock of a year's duration, which he made for William III. Around 1711 he took into partnership his nephew by marriage, George Graham, who carried on the business after his death.

Although Tompion does not seem to have been particularly innovative, he lived at a time when great advances were being made in horology, which his consummate skill as a craftsman enabled him to exploit. In this he was greatly assisted by his association with Robert Hooke, for whom Tompion constructed a watch with a balance spring in 1675; at that time Hooke was trying to establish his priority over Huygens for this invention. Although this particular watch was not successful, it made Tompion aware of the potential of the balance spring and he became the first person in England to apply Huygens's spiral spring to the balance of a watch. Although Thuret had constructed such a watch somewhat earlier in France, the superior quality of Tompion's wheel work, assisted by Hooke's wheel-cutting engine, enabled him to dominate the market. The anchor escapement (which reduced the amplitude of the pendulum's swing) was first applied to clocks around this time and produced further improvements in accuracy which Tompion and other makers were able to utilize. However, the anchor escapement, like the verge escapement, produced recoil (the clock was momentarily driven in reverse). Tompion was involved in attempts to overcome this defect with the introduction of the dead-beat escapement for clocks and the horizontal escapement for watches. Neither was successful, but they were both perfected later by George Graham.

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SUBJECT AREA: Railways and locomotives

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Brassey was initially a surveyor and road builder; his first railway contract was for ten miles (16 km) of the Grand Junction Railway in 1835, for which the engineer was Joseph Locke, with whom Brassey became closely associated. Gaining a justified reputation for integrity, Brassey built much of the London \& Southampton, Chester \& Crewe, and Sheffield Ashton-under-Lyne \& Manchester Railways, the Le Havre \& Rouen Railway and many others: by the late 1840s he was employing some 75,000 workers on his contracts. Subsequently, as sole contractor or with partners, Brassey built railways in many European countries, and in Canada, India, Australia and other countries. Between 1848 and 1861 he constructed 2,374 miles (3,820 km) of railway.

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1) Engineering: Thomas iron, Thomas pig iron, basic Bessemer pig iron, basic converter pig iron, basic pig iron, basis Bessemer cast iron, basis Bessemer pig iron, phosphoric iron

2) Railway term: basic pig

3) Automation: basic (Bessemer) pig iron