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1 Vignoles, Charles Blacker
[br]b. 31 May 1793 Woodbrook, Co. Wexford, Irelandd. 17 November 1875 Hythe, Hampshire, England[br]English surveyor and civil engineer, pioneer of railways.[br]Vignoles, who was of Huguenot descent, was orphaned in infancy and brought up in the family of his grandfather, Dr Charles Hutton FRS, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. After service in the Army he travelled to America, arriving in South Carolina in 1817. He was appointed Assistant to the state's Civil Engineer and surveyed much of South Carolina and subsequently Florida. After his return to England in 1823 he established himself as a civil engineer in London, and obtained work from the brothers George and John Rennie.In 1825 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) lost their application for an Act of Parliament, discharged their engineer George Stephenson and appointed the Rennie brothers in his place. They in turn employed Vignoles to resurvey the railway, taking a route that would minimize objections. With Vignoles's route, the company obtained its Act in 1826 and appointed Vignoles to supervise the start of construction. After Stephenson was reappointed Chief Engineer, however, he and Vignoles proved incompatible, with the result that Vignoles left the L \& MR early in 1827.Nevertheless, Vignoles did not sever all connection with the L \& MR. He supported John Braithwaite and John Ericsson in the construction of the locomotive Novelty and was present when it competed in the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He attended the opening of the L \& MR in 1830 and was appointed Engineer to two railways which connected with it, the St Helens \& Runcorn Gap and the Wigan Branch (later extended to Preston as the North Union); he supervised the construction of these.After the death of the Engineer to the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway, Vignoles supervised construction: the railway, the first in Ireland, was opened in 1834. He was subsequently employed in surveying and constructing many railways in the British Isles and on the European continent; these included the Eastern Counties, the Midland Counties, the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyme \& Manchester (which proved for him a financial disaster from which he took many years to recover), and the Waterford \& Limerick. He probably discussed rail of flat-bottom section with R.L. Stevens during the winter of 1830–1 and brought it into use in the UK for the first time in 1836 on the London \& Croydon Railway: subsequently rail of this section became known as "Vignoles rail". He considered that a broader gauge than 4 ft 8½ in. (1.44 m) was desirable for railways, although most of those he built were to this gauge so that they might connect with others. He supported the atmospheric system of propulsion during the 1840s and was instrumental in its early installation on the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway's Dalkey extension. Between 1847 and 1853 he designed and built the noted multi-span suspension bridge at Kiev, Russia, over the River Dnieper, which is more than half a mile (800 m) wide at that point.Between 1857 and 1863 he surveyed and then supervised the construction of the 155- mile (250 km) Tudela \& Bilbao Railway, which crosses the Cantabrian Pyrenees at an altitude of 2,163 ft (659 m) above sea level. Vignoles outlived his most famous contemporaries to become the grand old man of his profession.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFellow of the Royal Astronomical Society 1829. FRS 1855. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1869–70.Bibliography1830, jointly with John Ericsson, British patent no. 5,995 (a device to increase the capability of steam locomotives on grades, in which rollers gripped a third rail).1823, Observations upon the Floridas, New York: Bliss \& White.1870, Address on His Election as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.Further ReadingK.H.Vignoles, 1982, Charles Blacker Vignoles: Romantic Engineer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (good modern biography by his great-grandson).See also: Samuda, Joseph d'AguilarPJGRBiographical history of technology > Vignoles, Charles Blacker
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2 Land transport
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Austin, HerbertHamilton, Harold LeeIssigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold ConstantineMa JunMorris, William RichardSauerbrun, Charles de -
3 Railways and locomotives
Biographical history of technology > Railways and locomotives
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4 Stevens, Robert Livingston
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 18 October 1787 Hoboken, New Jersey, USAd. 20 April 1856 Hoboken, New Jersey, USA[br]American engineer, pioneer of steamboats and railways.[br]R.L.Stevens was the son of John Stevens and was given the technical education his father lacked. He assisted his father with the Little Juliana and the Phoenix, managed the commercial operation of the Phoenix on the Delaware River, and subsequently built many other steamboats.In 1830 he and his brother Edwin A.Stevens obtained a charter from the New Jersey Legislature for the Camden \& Amboy Railroad \& Transportation Company, and he visited Britain to obtain rails and a locomotive. Railway track in the USA then normally comprised longitudinal timber rails with running surfaces of iron straps, but Stevens designed rails of flat-bottom section, which were to become standard, and had the first batch rolled in Wales. He also designed hookheaded spikes for them, and "iron tongues", which became fishplates. From Robert Stephenson \& Co. (see Robert Stephenson) he obtained the locomotive John Bull, which was similar to the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Samson. The Camden \& Amboy Railroad was opened in 1831, but John Bull, a 0–4–0, proved over sensitive to imperfections in the track; Stevens and his mechanic, Isaac Dripps, added a two-wheeled non-swivelling "pilot" at the front to guide it round curves. The locomotive survives at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.[br]Further ReadingH.P.Spratt, 1958, The Birth of the Steamboat, Charles Griffin.J.H.White Jr, 1979, A History of the American Locomotive—Its Development: 1830– 1880, New York: Dover Publications Inc.J.F.Stover, 1961, American Railroads, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.PJGRBiographical history of technology > Stevens, Robert Livingston
См. также в других словарях:
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Charles Blacker Vignoles — Charles Blacker Vignoles. Charles Blacker Vignoles fue un ingeniero ferroviario inglés, mundialmente conocido como el creador del carril Vignoles. Nació en 1793 en Woodbrook (Irlanda) y falleció en 1875 en Hythe, Inglaterra. Se quedó huérfano muy … Wikipedia Español
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Vignoles — Vignoles, Charles Blacker, berühmter Eisenbahn und Brückeningenieur, Verbreiter der nach ihm benannten breitbasigen Schienen (s. Vignoles Schienen), geb. 1792 zu Birmingham, gest. 17. November 1875 zu Hythe bei Southampton; widmete sich… … Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens
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Vignoles — (spr. winjoll ), Charles Blacker, Ingenieur, geb. 1792 aus einer französischen Hugenottenfamilie, diente unter Wellington, besuchte dann Nordamerika, widmete sich dem Eisenbahnwesen und konstruierte die nach ihm benannte V. Schiene, die eine… … Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon
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