Transactions of the Royal Society

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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Volta had an early command of English, French and Latin, and also learned to read Dutch and Spanish. After completing studies at the Royal Seminary in Como he was involved in the study of physics, chemistry and electricity. He became a teacher of physics in his native town and in 1779 was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Pavia, a post he held for forty years.

With a growing international reputation and a wish to keep abreast of the latest developments, in 1777 he began the first of many travels abroad. A journey started in 1781 to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France and England lasted about one year. By 1791 he had been elected to membership of many learned societies, including those in Zurich, Berlin, Berne and Paris. Volta's invention of his pile resulted from a controversy with Luigi Galvani, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bologna. Galvani discovered that the muscles of frogs' legs contracted when touched with two pieces of different metals and attributed this to a phenomenon of the animal tissue. Volta showed that the excitation was due to a chemical reaction resulting from the contact of the dissimilar metals when moistened. His pile comprised a column of zinc and silver discs, each pair separated by paper moistened with brine, and provided a source of continuous current from a simple and accessible source. The effectiveness of the pile decreased as the paper dried and Volta devised his crown of cups, which had a longer life. In this, pairs of dissimilar metals were placed in each of a number of cups partly filled with an electrolyte such as brine. Volta first announced the results of his experiments with dissimilar metals in 1800 in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. This letter, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, has been regarded as one of the most important documents in the history of science. Large batteries were constructed in a number of laboratories soon after Volta's discoveries became known, leading immediately to a series of developments in electrochemistry and eventually in electromagnetism. Volta himself made little further contribution to science. In recognition of his achievement, at a meeting of the International Electrical Congress in Paris in 1881 it was agreed to name the unit of electrical pressure the "volt".

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Of Quaker stock, his father also being a Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied medicine at University College, London. He qualified, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1852. Wishing to pursue a surgical career, he moved to Edinburgh to study surgery under William Syme, whose daughter he married in 1852, the same year he was appointed Assistant Surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

Until his appointment as Regius Professor of Surgery at Glasgow University and Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1861, he was engaged in a wide variety of investigations into the nature of inflammation and the effects of irritants on wounds. Following his move to Glasgow, he became particularly involved in the major problems arising out of the vast increase in the number of surgical procedures brought about by the recent introduction of general anaesthesia. By 1865 his continuing study of wound inflammation and the microbial studies of Pasteur had led him to institute in the operating theatre a regime of surgical antisepsis involving the use of a carbolic acid spray coupled with the sterilization of instruments, the site of operation and the hands of the operator. Increasingly it was appreciated that the air was the least important origin of infection, and by 1887 the antiseptic approach had been superseded by the aseptic.

In 1869 he succeeded Syme in the Chair at Edinburgh and his methods were widely accepted abroad. In 1877 he moved to the Chair of Surgery at King's College Hospital, London, in the hope of encouraging acceptance of his work in the metropolis. As well as developing a variety of new surgical procedures, he was engaged for many years in the development of surgical ligatures, which had always been a potent stimulant of infection. His choice of catgut as a sterilizable, absorbable material paved the way for major developments in this field. The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine was named in his honour in 1903.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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With an early bias towards science, Daniell's interest in chemistry was formed when he joined a relative's sugar-refining business. He formed a lifelong friendship with W.T.Brande, Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, and together they revived the journal of the Royal Institution, to which Daniell submitted many of his early papers on chemical subjects. He made many contributions to the science of meteorology and in 1820 invented a hydrometer, which became widely used and gave precision to the measurement of atmospheric moisture. As one of the originators of the Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Daniell edited several of its early publications. His work on crystallization established his reputation as a chemist and in 1831 he was appointed the first Professor of Chemistry at King's College, London, where he was largely responsible for establishing its department of applied science. He was also involved in the Chemical Society of London and served as its Vice-President. At King's College he began the research into current electricity with which his name is particularly associated. His investigations into the zinc-copper cell revealed that the rapid decline in power was due to hydrogen gas being liberated at the positive electrode. Daniell's cell, invented in 1836, employed a zinc electrode in dilute sulphuric acid and a copper electrode in a solution of copper sulphate, the electrodes being separated by a porous membrane, typically an unglazed earthenware pot. He was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his invention which avoided the "polarization" of the simple cell and provided a further source of current for electrical research and for commercial applications such as electroplating. Although the high internal resistance of the Daniell cell limited the current and the potential was only 1.1 volts, the voltage was so unchanging that it was used as a reference standard until the 1870s, when J. Lattimer Clark devised an even more stable cell.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Jesse Ramsden was the son of an innkeeper but received a good general education: after attending the free school at Halifax, he was sent at the age of 12 to his uncle for further study, particularly in mathematics. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to a cloth-worker in Halifax and on completion of the apprenticeship in 1755 he moved to London to work as a clerk in a cloth warehouse. In 1758 he became an apprentice in the workshop of a London mathematical instrument-maker named Burton. He quickly gained the skill, particularly in engraving, and by 1762 he was able to set up on his own account. He married in 1765 or 1766 the youngest daughter of the optician John Dollond FRS (1706– 61) and received a share of Dollond's patent for making achromatic lenses.

Ramsden's experience and reputation increased rapidly and he was generally regarded as the leading instrument-maker of his time. He opened a shop in the Haymarket and transferred to Piccadilly in 1775. His staff increased to about sixty workers and apprentices, and by 1789 he had constructed nearly 1,000 sextants as well as theodolites, micrometers, balances, barometers, quadrants and other instruments.

One of Ramsden's most important contributions to precision measurement was his development of machines for obtaining accurate division of angular and linear scales. For this work he received a premium from the Commissioners of the Board of Longitude, who published his descriptions of the machines. For the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain, initiated by General William Roy FRS (1726–90) and continued by the Board of Ordnance, Ramsden supplied a 3 ft (91 cm) theodolite and steel measuring chains, and was also engaged to check the glass tubes used to measure the fundamental base line.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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After the death of his father, Seppings at the age of 14 moved to his uncle's home in Plymouth, where shortly after (1782) he was apprenticed to the Master Shipwright. His indentures were honoured fully by 1789 and he commenced his climb up the professional ladder of the ship construction department of the Royal Dockyards. In 1797 he became Assistant Master Shipwright at Plymouth, and in 1804 he was appointed Master Shipwright at Chatham. In 1813 Sir William Rule, Surveyor to the Navy, retired and the number of surveyors was increased to three, with Seppings being appointed the junior. Later he was to become Surveyor to the Royal Navy, a post he held until his retirement in 1832. Seppings introduced many changes to ship construction in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is likely that the introduction of these innovations required positive and confident management, and their acceptance tells us much about Seppings. The best-known changes were the round bow and stern in men-of-war and the alteration to framing systems.

The Seppings form of diagonal bracing ensured that wooden ships, which are notorious for hogging (i.e. drooping at the bow and stern), were stronger and therefore able to be built with greater length. This change was complemented by modifications to the floors, frames and futtocks (analogous to the ribs of a ship). These developments were to be taken further once iron composite construction (wooden sheathing on iron frames) was adopted in the United Kingdom mid-century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Charles Babbage was the son of a banker, Benjamin Babbage, and was a sickly child who had a rather haphazard education at private schools near Exeter and later at Enfield. Even as a child, he was inordinately fond of algebra, which he taught himself. He was conversant with several advanced mathematical texts, so by the time he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1811, he was ahead of his tutors. In his third year he moved to Peterhouse, whence he graduated in 1814, taking his MA in 1817. He first contributed to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1815, and was elected a fellow of that body in 1816. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society in 1820 and served in high office in it.

While he was still at Cambridge, in 1812, he had the first idea of calculating numerical tables by machinery. This was his first difference engine, which worked on the principle of repeatedly adding a common difference. He built a small model of an engine working on this principle between 1820 and 1822, and in July of the latter year he read an enthusiastically received note about it to the Astronomical Society. The following year he was awarded the Society's first gold medal. He submitted details of his invention to Sir Humphry Davy, President of the Royal Society; the Society reported favourably and the Government became interested, and following a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Babbage was awarded a grant of £1,500. Work proceeded and was carried on for four years under the direction of Joseph Clement.

In 1827 Babbage went abroad for a year on medical advice. There he studied foreign workshops and factories, and in 1832 he published his observations in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. While abroad, he received the news that he had been appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He held the Chair until 1839, although he neither resided in College nor gave any lectures. For this he was paid between £80 and £90 a year! Differences arose between Babbage and Clement. Manufacture was moved from Clement's works in Lambeth, London, to new, fireproof buildings specially erected by the Government near Babbage's house in Dorset Square, London. Clement made a large claim for compensation and, when it was refused, withdrew his workers as well as all the special tools he had made up for the job. No work was possible for the next fifteen months, during which Babbage conceived the idea of his "analytical engine". He approached the Government with this, but it was not until eight years later, in 1842, that he received the reply that the expense was considered too great for further backing and that the Government was abandoning the project. This was in spite of the demonstration and perfectly satisfactory operation of a small section of the analytical engine at the International Exhibition of 1862. It is said that the demands made on manufacture in the production of his engines had an appreciable influence in improving the standard of machine tools, whilst similar benefits accrued from his development of a system of notation for the movements of machine elements. His opposition to street organ-grinders was a notable eccentricity; he estimated that a quarter of his mental effort was wasted by the effect of noise on his concentration.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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Lawes's education at Eton and Oxford did little to inform his early taste for chemistry, which he developed largely on his own. By the age of 20 he had fitted up the best bedroom in his house as a fully equipped chemical laboratory. His first interest was in the making of drugs; it was said that he knew the Pharmacopoeia, by heart. He did, however, receive some instruction from Anthony Todd Thomson of University College, London. His father having died in 1822, Lawes entered into possession of the Rothamsted estate when he came of age in 1834. He began experiments with plants with uses as drugs, but following an observation by a neighbouring farmer of the effect of bones on the growth of certain crops Lawes turned to experiments with bones dissolved in sulphuric acid on his turnip crop. The results were so promising that he took out a patent in 1842 for converting mineral and fossil phosphates into a powerful manure by the action of sulphuric acid. The manufacture of these superphosphates became a major industry of tremendous benefit to agriculture. Lawes himself set up a factory at Deptford in 1842 and a larger one in 1857 at Barking Creek, both near London. The profits from these and other chemical manufacturing concerns earned Lawes profits which funded his experimental work at Rothamsted. In 1843, Lawes set up the world's first agricultural experiment station. Later in the same year he was joined by Joseph Henry Gilbert, and together they carried out a considerable number of experiments of great benefit to agriculture, many of the results of which were published in the leading scientific journals of the day, including the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In all, 132 papers were published, most of them jointly with Gilbert. A main theme of the work on plants was the effect of various chemical fertilizers on the growth of different crops, compared with the effects of farm manure and of no treatment at all. On animal rearing, they studied particularly the economical feeding of animals.

The work at Rothamsted soon brought Lawes into prominence; he joined the Royal Agricultural Society in 1846 and became a member of its governing body two years later, a position he retained for over fifty years. Numerous distinctions followed and Rothamsted became a place of pilgrimage for people from many parts of the world who were concerned with the application of science to agriculture. Rothamsted's jubilee in 1893 was marked by a public commemoration headed by the Prince of Wales.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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As a boy, Smeaton showed mechanical ability, making for himself a number of tools and models. This practical skill was backed by a sound education, probably at Leeds Grammar School. At the age of 16 he entered his father's office; he seemed set to follow his father's profession in the law. In 1742 he went to London to continue his legal studies, but he preferred instead, with his father's reluctant permission, to set up as a scientific instrument maker and dealer and opened a shop of his own in 1748. About this time he began attending meetings of the Royal Society and presented several papers on instruments and mechanical subjects, being elected a Fellow in 1753. His interests were turning towards engineering but were informed by scientific principles grounded in careful and accurate observation.

In 1755 the second Eddystone lighthouse, on a reef some 14 miles (23 km) off the English coast at Plymouth, was destroyed by fire. The President of the Royal Society was consulted as to a suitable engineer to undertake the task of constructing a new one, and he unhesitatingly suggested Smeaton. Work began in 1756 and was completed in three years to produce the first great wave-swept stone lighthouse. It was constructed of Portland stone blocks, shaped and pegged both together and to the base rock, and bonded by hydraulic cement, scientifically developed by Smeaton. It withstood the storms of the English Channel for over a century, but by 1876 erosion of the rock had weakened the structure and a replacement had to be built. The upper portion of Smeaton's lighthouse was re-erected on a suitable base on Plymouth Hoe, leaving the original base portion on the reef as a memorial to the engineer.

The Eddystone lighthouse made Smeaton's reputation and from then on he was constantly in demand as a consultant in all kinds of engineering projects. He carried out a number himself, notably the 38 mile (61 km) long Forth and Clyde canal with thirty-nine locks, begun in 1768 but for financial reasons not completed until 1790. In 1774 he took charge of the Ramsgate Harbour works.

On the mechanical side, Smeaton undertook a systematic study of water-and windmills, to determine the design and construction to achieve the greatest power output. This work issued forth as the paper "An experimental enquiry concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills" and exerted a considerable influence on mill design during the early part of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1753 and 1790 Smeaton constructed no fewer than forty-four mills.

Meanwhile, in 1756 he had returned to Austhorpe, which continued to be his home base for the rest of his life. In 1767, as a result of the disappointing performance of an engine he had been involved with at New River Head, Islington, London, Smeaton began his important study of the steam-engine. Smeaton was the first to apply scientific principles to the steam-engine and achieved the most notable improvements in its efficiency since its invention by Newcomen, until its radical overhaul by James Watt. To compare the performance of engines quantitatively, he introduced the concept of "duty", i.e. the weight of water that could be raised 1 ft (30 cm) while burning one bushel (84 lb or 38 kg) of coal. The first engine to embody his improvements was erected at Long Benton colliery in Northumberland in 1772, with a duty of 9.45 million pounds, compared to the best figure obtained previously of 7.44 million pounds. One source of heat loss he attributed to inaccurate boring of the cylinder, which he was able to improve through his close association with Carron Ironworks near Falkirk, Scotland.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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The younger brother of William Hunter (1718–83), who was of great distinction but perhaps of slightly less achievement in similar fields, he owed much of his early experience to his brother; William, after a period at Glasgow University, moved to St George's Hospital, London. In his later teens, John assisted a brother-in-law with cabinet-making. This appears to have contributed to the lifelong mechanical skill which he displayed as a dissector and surgeon. This skill was particularly obvious when, after following William to London in 1748, he held post at a number of London teaching hospitals before moving to St George's in 1756. A short sojourn at Oxford in 1755 appears to have been unfruitful.

Despite his deepening involvement in the study of comparative anatomy, facilitated by the purchase of animals from the Tower menagerie and travelling show people, he accepted an appointment as a staff surgeon in the Army in 1760, participating in the expedition to Belle Isle and also serving in Portugal. He returned home with over 300 specimens in 1763 and, until his appointment as Surgeon to St George's in 1768, was heavily involved in the examination of this and other material, as well as in studies of foetal testicular descent, placental circulation, the nature of pus and lymphatic circulation. In 1772 he commenced lecturing on the theory and practice of surgery, and in 1776 he was appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to George III.

He is rightly regarded as the founder of scientific surgery, but his knowledge was derived almost entirely from his own experiments and observations. His contemporaries did not always accept or understand the concepts which led to such aphorisms as, "to perform an operation is to mutilate a patient we cannot cure", and his written comment to his pupil Jenner: "Why think. Why not trie the experiment". His desire to establish the aetiology of gonorrhoea led to him infecting himself, as a result of which he also contracted syphilis. His ensuing account of the characteristics of the disease remains a classic of medicine, although it is likely that the sequelae of the condition brought about his death at a relatively early age. From 1773 he suffered recurrent anginal attacks of such a character that his life "was in the hands of any rascal who chose to annoy and tease him". Indeed, it was following a contradiction at a board meeting at St George's that he died.

By 1788, with the death of Percival Pott, he had become unquestionably the leading surgeon in Britain, if not Europe. Elected to the Royal Society in 1767, the extraordinary variety of his collections, investigations and publications, as well as works such as the "Treatise on the natural history of the human teeth" (1771–8), gives testimony to his original approach involving the fundamental and inescapable relation of structure and function in both normal and disease states. The massive growth of his collections led to his acquiring two houses in Golden Square to contain them. It was his desire that after his death his collection be purchased and preserved for the nation. It contained 13,600 specimens and had cost him £70,000. After considerable delay, Par-liament voted inadequate sums for this purpose and the collection was entrusted to the recently rechartered Royal College of Surgeons of England, in whose premises this remarkable monument to the omnivorous and eclectic activities of this outstanding figure in the evolution of medicine and surgery may still be seen. Sadly, some of the collection was lost to bombing during the Second World War. His surviving papers were also extensive, but it is probable that many were destroyed in the early nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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Huygens was born into a cultured and privileged class. His father, Constantijn, was a poet and statesman who had wide interests. Constantijn exerted a strong influence on his son, who was educated at home until he reached the age of 16. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at Ley den University from 1645 to 1647, and continued his studies at the Collegium Arausiacum in Breda until 1649. He then lived at The Hague, where he had the means to devote his time entirely to study. In 1666 he became a Member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and settled there until his return to The Hague in 1681. He also had a close relationship with the Royal Society and visited London on three occasions, meeting Newton on his last visit in 1689. Huygens had a wide range of interests and made significant contributions in mathematics, astronomy, optics and mechanics. He also made technical advances in optical instruments and horology.

Despite the efforts of Burgi there had been no significant improvement in the performance of ordinary clocks and watches from their inception to Huygens's time, as they were controlled by foliots or balances which had no natural period of oscillation. The pendulum appeared to offer a means of improvement as it had a natural period of oscillation that was almost independent of amplitude. Galileo Galilei had already pioneered the use of a freely suspended pendulum for timing events, but it was by no means obvious how it could be kept swinging and used to control a clock. Towards the end of his life Galileo described such a. mechanism to his son Vincenzio, who constructed a model after his father's death, although it was not completed when he himself died in 1642. This model appears to have been copied in Italy, but it had little influence on horology, partly because of the circumstances in which it was produced and possibly also because it differed radically from clocks of that period. The crucial event occurred on Christmas Day 1656 when Huygens, quite independently, succeeded in adapting an existing spring-driven table clock so that it was not only controlled by a pendulum but also kept it swinging. In the following year he was granted a privilege or patent for this clock, and several were made by the clockmaker Salomon Coster of The Hague. The use of the pendulum produced a dramatic improvement in timekeeping, reducing the daily error from minutes to seconds, but Huygens was aware that the pendulum was not truly isochronous. This error was magnified by the use of the existing verge escapement, which made the pendulum swing through a large arc. He overcame this defect very elegantly by fitting cheeks at the pendulum suspension point, progressively reducing the effective length of the pendulum as the amplitude increased. Initially the cheeks were shaped empirically, but he was later able to show that they should have a cycloidal shape. The cheeks were not adopted universally because they introduced other defects, and the problem was eventually solved more prosaically by way of new escapements which reduced the swing of the pendulum. Huygens's clocks had another innovatory feature: maintaining power, which kept the clock going while it was being wound.

Pendulums could not be used for portable timepieces, which continued to use balances despite their deficiencies. Robert Hooke was probably the first to apply a spring to the balance, but his efforts were not successful. From his work on the pendulum Huygens was well aware of the conditions necessary for isochronism in a vibrating system, and in January 1675, with a flash of inspiration, he realized that this could be achieved by controlling the oscillations of the balance with a spiral spring, an arrangement that is still used in mechanical watches. The first model was made for Huygens in Paris by the clockmaker Isaac Thuret, who attempted to appropriate the invention and patent it himself. Huygens had for many years been trying unsuccessfully to adapt the pendulum clock for use at sea (in order to determine longitude), and he hoped that a balance-spring timekeeper might be better suited for this purpose. However, he was disillusioned as its timekeeping proved to be much more susceptible to changes in temperature than that of the pendulum clock.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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Louis Essen joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at Teddington in 1927 after graduating from London University. He spent his whole working life at the NPL and retired in 1972; his research there was recognized by the award of a DSc in 1948. At NPL he joined a team working on the development of frequency standards using quartz crystals and he designed a very successful quartz oscillator, which became known as the "Essen ring". He was also involved with radio frequency oscillators. His expertise in these fields was to play a crucial role in the development of the caesium clock. The idea of an atomic clock had been proposed by I.I.Rabbi in 1945, and an instrument was constructed shortly afterwards at the National Bureau of Standards in the USA. However, this device never realized the full potential of the concept, and after seeing it on a visit to the USA Essen was convinced that a more successful instrument could be built at Teddington. Assisted by J.V.L.Parry, he commenced work in the spring of 1953 and by June 1955 the clock was working reliably, with an accuracy that was equivalent to one second in three hundred years. This was significantly more accurate than the astronomical observations that were used at that time to determine the second: in 1967 the second was redefined in terms of the value for the frequency of vibration of caesium atoms that had been obtained with this clock.

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See also: Marrison, Warren Alvin

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: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Wedgwood came from prolific farming stock who, in the seventeenth century, had turned to pot-making. At the age of 9 his education was brought to an end by his father's death and he was set to work in one of the family potteries. Two years later an attack of smallpox left him with a weakness in his right knee which prevented him from working the potter's wheel. This forced his attention to other aspects of the process, such as design and modelling. He was apprenticed to his brother Thomas in 1744, and in 1752 was in partnership with Thomas Whieldon, a leading Staffordshire potter, until probably the first half of 1759, when he became a master potter and set up in business on his own account at Ivy House Works in Burslem.

Wedgwood was then able to exercise to the full his determination to improve the quality of his ware. This he achieved by careful attention to all aspects of the work: artistic judgement of form and decoration; chemical study of the materials; and intelligent management of manufacturing processes. For example, to achieve greater control over firing conditions, he invented a pyrometer, a temperature-measuring device by which the shrinkage of prepared clay cylinders in the furnace gave an indication of the temperature. Wedgwood was the first potter to employ steam power, installing a Boulton \& Watt engine for crushing and other operations in 1782. Beyond the confines of his works, Wedgwood concerned himself in local issues such as improvements to the road and canal systems to facilitate transport of raw materials and products.

During the first ten years, Wedgwood steadily improved the quality of his cream ware, known as "Queen's ware" after a set of ware was presented to Queen Charlotte in 1762. The business prospered and his reputation grew. In 1766 he was able to purchase an estate on which he built new works, a mansion and a village to which he gave the name Etruria. Four years after the Etruria works were opened in 1769, Wedgwood began experimenting with a barium compound combined in a fine-textured base allied to a true porcelain. The result was Wedgwood's most original and distinctive ware similar to jasper, made in a wide variety of forms.

Wedgwood had many followers and imitators but the merit of initiating and carrying through a large-scale technical and artistic development of English pottery belongs to Wedgwood.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Following secondary education at Ashton-inMakerfield Grammar School, Randall entered Manchester University to read physics, gaining a first class BSc in 1925 and his MSc in 1926. From 1926 to 1937 he was a research physicist at the General Electric Company (GEC) laboratories, where he worked on luminescent powders, following which he became Warren Research Fellow of the Royal Society at Birmingham University, studying electronic processes in luminescent solids. With the outbreak of the Second World War he became an honorary member of the university staff and transferred to a group working on the development of centrimetric radar. With Boot he was responsible for the development of the cavity magnetron, which had a major impact on the development of radar.

When Birmingham resumed its atomic research programme in 1943, Randall became a temporary lecturer at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. The following year he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, but in 1946 he moved again to the Wheatstone Chair of Physics at King's College, London. There his developing interest in biophysical research led to the setting up of a multi-disciplinary group in 1951 to study connective tissues and other biological components, and in 1950– 5 he was joint Editor of Progress in Biophysics. From 1961 until his retirement in 1970 he was Professor of Biophysics at King's College and for most of that time he was also Chairman of the School of Biological Sciences. In addition, for many years he was honorary Director of the Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit.

After he retired he returned to Edinburgh and continued to study biological problems in the university zoology laboratory.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Public utilities, Telecommunications

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After education at King's College, London, in 1852 Preece entered the office of Edwin Clark with the intention of becoming a civil engineer, but graduate studies at the Royal Institution under Faraday fired his enthusiasm for things electrical. His earliest work, as connected with telegraphy and in particular its application for securing the safe working of railways; in 1853 he obtained an appointment with the Electric and National Telegraph Company. In 1856 he became Superintendent of that company's southern district, but four years later he moved to telegraph work with the London and South West Railway. From 1858 to 1862 he was also Engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company. When the various telegraph companies in Britain were transferred to the State in 1870, Preece became a Divisional Engineer in the General Post Office (GPO). Promotion followed in 1877, when he was appointed Chief Electrician to the Post Office. One of the first specimens of Bell's telephone was brought to England by Preece and exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1877. From 1892 to 1899 he served as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. During this time he made a number of important contributions to telegraphy, including the use of water as part of telegraph circuits across the Solent (1882) and the Bristol Channel (1888). He also discovered the existence of inductive effects between parallel wires, and with Fleming showed that a current (thermionic) flowed between the hot filament and a cold conductor in an incandescent lamp.

Preece was distinguished by his administrative ability, some scientific insight, considerable engineering intuition and immense energy. He held erroneous views about telephone transmission and, not accepting the work of Oliver Heaviside, made many errors when planning trunk circuits. Prior to the successful use of Hertzian waves for wireless communication Preece carried out experiments, often on a large scale, in attempts at wireless communication by inductive methods. These became of historic interest only when the work of Maxwell and Hertz was developed by Guglielmo Marconi. It is to Preece that credit should be given for encouraging Marconi in 1896 and collaborating with him in his early experimental work on radio telegraphy.

While still employed by the Post Office, Preece contributed to the development of numerous early public electricity schemes, acting as Consultant and often supervising their construction. At Worcester he was responsible for Britain's largest nineteenth-century public hydro-electric station. He received a knighthood on his retirement in 1899, after which he continued his consulting practice in association with his two sons and Major Philip Cardew. Preece contributed some 136 papers and printed lectures to scientific journals, ninety-nine during the period 1877 to 1894.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Froude was educated at a preparatory school at Buckfastleigh, and then at Westminster School, London, before entering Oriel College, Oxford, to read mathematics and classics. Between 1836 and 1838 he served as a pupil civil engineer, and then he joined the staff of Isambard Kingdom Brunel on various railway engineering projects in southern England, including the South Devon Atmospheric Railway. He retired from professional work in 1846 and lived with his invalid father at Dartington Parsonage. The next twenty years, while apparently unproductive, were important to Froude as he concentrated his mind on difficult mathematical and scientific problems. Froude married in 1839 and had five children, one of whom, Robert Edmund Froude (1846–1924), was to succeed him in later years in his research work for the Admiralty. Following the death of his father, Froude moved to Paignton, and there commenced his studies on the resistance of solid bodies moving through fluids. Initially these were with hulls towed through a house roof storage tank by wires taken over a pulley and attached to falling weights, but the work became more sophisticated and was conducted on ponds and the open water of a creek near Dartmouth. Froude published work on the rolling of ships in the second volume of the Transactions of the then new Institution of Naval Architects and through this became acquainted with Sir Edward Reed. This led in 1870 to the Admiralty's offer of £2,000 towards the cost of an experimental tank for ship models at Torquay. The tank was completed in 1872 and tests were carried out on the model of HMS Greyhound following full-scale towing trials which had commenced on the actual ship the previous year. From this Froude enunciated his Law of Comparisons, which defines the rules concerning the relationship of the power required to move geometrically similar floating bodies across fluids. It enabled naval architects to predict, from a study of a much less expensive and smaller model, the resistance to motion and the power required to move a full-size ship. The work in the tank led Froude to design a model-cutting machine, dynamometers and machinery for the accurate ruling of graph paper. Froude's work, and later that of his son, was prodigious and covered many fields of ship design, including powering, propulsion, rolling, steering and stability. In only six years he had stamped his academic authority on the new science of hydrodynamics, served on many national committees and corresponded with fellow researchers throughout the world. His health suffered and he sailed for South Africa to recuperate, but he contracted dysentery and died at Simonstown. He will be remembered for all time as one of the greatest "fathers" of naval architecture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Joshua Field was educated at a boarding school in Essex until the age of 16, when he obtained employment at the Royal Dockyards at Portsmouth under the Chief Mechanical Superintendent, Simon Goodrich (1773–1847), and later in the drawing office at the Admiralty in Whitehall. At this time, machinery for the manufacture of ships' blocks was being made for the Admiralty by Henry Maudslay, who was in need of a competent draughtsman, and Goodrich recommended Joshua Field. This was the beginning of Field's long association with Maudslay; he later became a partner in the firm which was for many years known as Maudslay, Sons \& Field. They undertook a variety of mechanical engineering work but were renowned for marine steam engines, with Field being responsible for much of the design work in the early years. Joshua Field was the eldest of the eight young men who in 1818 founded the Institution of Civil Engineers; he was the first Chairman of the Institution and later became a vice-president. He was the only one of the founders to be elected President and was the first mechanical engineer to hold that office. James Nasmyth in his autobiography relates that Joshua Field kept a methodical account of his technical discussions in a series of note books which were later indexed. Some of these diaries have survived, and extracts from the notes he made on a tour of the industrial areas of the Midlands and the North West in 1821 have been published.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Little is known of Tossach (a Tossach matriculated at Glasgow University in 1727), but in 1771 he published an account of the resuscitation of a miner, James Blair, who had been rescued from a coal-mine fire. Tossach found "there was not the least pulse in either heart or arteries and not the least breathing could be observed; so that he was in all appearance dead, I applied my mouth close to his, and blowed my breath as strong as I could: but having neglected to close his nostrils all the air came out of them: Wherefore taking hold of them with one hand and holding my other on his breast at the left pap I blew again my breath as strong as I could, raising his chest fully with it; and immediately I felt six or seven very quick beats of the heart." Blair recovered consciousness in an hour and walked home within four.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Synthetic materials, Textiles

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Cross was educated at the universities of London, Zurich and Manchester. It was at Owens College, Manchester, that Cross first met E.J. Bevan and where these two first worked together on the nature of cellulose. After gaining some industrial experience, Cross joined Bevan to set up a partnership in London as analytical and consulting chemists, specializing in the chemistry and technology of cellulose and lignin. They were at the Jodrell laboratory, Kew Gardens, for a time and then set up their own laboratory at Station Avenue, Kew Gardens. In 1888, the first edition of their joint publication A Textbook of Paper-making, appeared. It went into several editions and became the standard reference and textbook on the subject. The long introductory chapter is a discourse on cellulose.

In 1892, Cross, Bevan and Clayton Beadle took out their historic patent on the solution and regeneration of cellulose. The modern artificial-fibre industry stems from this patent. They made their discovery at New Court, Carey Street, London: wood-pulp (or another cheap form of cellulose) was dissolved in a mixture of carbon disulphide and aqueous alkali to produce sodium xanthate. After maturing, it was squirted through fine holes into dilute acid, which set the liquid to give spinnable fibres of "viscose". However, it was many years before the process became a commercial operation, partly because the use of a natural raw material such as wood involved variations in chemical content and each batch might react differently. At first it was thought that viscose might be suitable for incandescent lamp filaments, and C.H.Stearn, a collaborator with Cross, continued to investigate this possibility, but the sheen on the fibres suggested that viscose might be made into artificial silk. The original Viscose Spinning Syndicate was formed in 1894 and a place was rented at Erith in Kent. However, it was not until some skeins of artificial silk (a term to which Cross himself objected) were displayed in Paris that textile manufacturers began to take an interest in it. It was then that Courtaulds decided to investigate this new fibre, although it was not until 1904 that they bought the English patents and developed the first artificial silk that was later called "rayon". Cross was also concerned with the development of viscose films and of cellulose acetate, which became a rival to rayon in the form of "Celanese". He retained his interest in the paper industry and in publishing, in 1895 again collaborating with Bevan and publishing a book on Cellulose and other technical articles. He was a cultured man and a good musician. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1917.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Paper and printing

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It was intended that Bryan Donkin should follow his father's profession of surveyor and land agent, so he spent a year or so in that occupation before he was apprenticed to John Hall, millwright of Dartford, Kent. Donkin remained with the firm after completing his apprenticeship, and when the Fourdrinier brothers in 1802 introduced from France an invention for making paper in continuous lengths they turned to John Hall for help in developing the machine: Donkin was chosen to undertake the work. In 1803 the Fourdriniers established their own works in Bermondsey, with Bryan Donkin in charge. By 1808 Donkin had acquired the works, but he continued to manufacture paper-making machines, paying a royalty to the patentees. He also undertook other engineering work including water-wheels for driving paper and other mills. He was also involved in the development of printing machinery and the preservation of food in airtight containers. Some of these improvements were patented, and he also obtained patents relating to gearing, steel pens, paper-making and railway wheels. Other inventions of Bryan Donkin that were not patented concerned revolution counters and improvements in accurate screw threads for use in graduating mathematical scales. Donkin was elected a member of the Society of Arts in 1803 and was later Chairman of the Society's Committee of Mechanics and a Vice-President of the society. He was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1818 a group of eight young men founded the Institution of Civil Engineers; two of them were apprentices of Bryan Donkin and he encouraged their enterprise. After a change in the rules permitted the election of members over the age of 35, he himself became a member in 1821. He served on the Council and became a Vice- President, but he resigned from the Institution in 1848.

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