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1 Whitehead, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 3 January 1823 Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, Englandd. 19 November 1903 Shrivenham, Wiltshire, England[br]English inventor of the torpedo.[br]At the age of 14 Whitehead was apprenticed by his father, who ran a cotton-bleaching business, to an engineering firm in Manchester. He moved in 1847 to join his uncle, who was the Manager of another engineering firm, and three years later Whitehead set up on his own in Milan, where he made mechanical improvements to the silk-weaving industry and designed drainage machines for the Lombardy marshes.In 1848 he was forced to move from Italy because of the revolution and settled in Fiume, which was then part of Austria. There he concen-. trated on designing and building engines for warships, and in 1864 the Austrians invited him to participate in a project to develop a "floating torpedo". In those days the torpedo was synonymous with the underwater mine, and Whitehead believed that he could do better than this proposal and produce an explosive weapon that could propel itself through the water. He set to work with his son John and a mechanic, producing the first version of his torpedo in 1866. It had a range of only 700 yd (640 m) and a speed of just 7 knots (13 km/h), as well as depth-keeping problems, but even so, especially after he had reduced the last problem by the use of a "balance chamber", the Austrian authorities were sufficiently impressed to buy construction rights and to decorate him. Other navies quickly followed suit and within twenty years almost every navy in the world was equipped with the Whitehead torpedo, its main attraction being that no warship, however large, was safe from it. During this time Whitehead continued to improve on his design, introducing a servo-motor and gyroscope, thereby radically improving range, speed and accuracy.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOrder of Max Joseph (Austria) 1868. Légion d'honneur 1884. Whitehead also received decorations from Prussia, Denmark, Portugal, Italy and Greece.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1912, Vol. 3, Suppl. 2, London: Smith, Elder.CM -
2 WHD
1) Американизм: Wage and Hour Division2) Военный термин: Western hemisphere defense, WhiteHead torpedo3) Сокращение: World Habitat Day, World Heart Day4) Физиология: Women, Health and Development Program5) Нефть: wellhead6) Фирменный знак: Western Herb & Dietary Supplements, Inc., Western Heritage Division -
3 whd
1) Американизм: Wage and Hour Division2) Военный термин: Western hemisphere defense, WhiteHead torpedo3) Сокращение: World Habitat Day, World Heart Day4) Физиология: Women, Health and Development Program5) Нефть: wellhead6) Фирменный знак: Western Herb & Dietary Supplements, Inc., Western Heritage Division -
4 Brennan, Louis
[br]b. 28 January 1852 Castlebar, Irelandd. 17 January 1932 Montreux, Switzerland[br]Irish inventor of the Brennan dirigible torpedo, and of a gyroscopically balanced monorail system.[br]The Brennan family, including Louis, emigrated to Australia in 1861. He was an inventive genius from childhood, and while at Melbourne invented his torpedo. Within it were two drums, each with several miles of steel wire coiled upon it and mounted on one of two concentric propeller shafts. The propellers revolved in opposite directions. Wires were led out of the torpedo to winding drums on land, driven by high-speed steam engines: the faster the drums on shore were driven, the quicker the wires were withdrawn from the drums within the torpedo and the quicker the propellers turned. A steering device was operated by altering the speeds of the wires relative to one another. As finally developed, Brennan torpedoes were accurate over a range of 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km), in contrast to contemporary self-propelled torpedoes, which were unreliable at ranges over 400 yards (366 in).Brennan moved to England in 1880 and sold the rights to his torpedo to the British Government for a total of £110,000, probably the highest payment ever made by it to an individual inventor. Brennan torpedoes became part of the defences of many vital naval ports, but never saw active service: improvement of other means of defence meant they were withdrawn in 1906. By then Brennan was deeply involved in the development of his monorail. The need for a simple and cheap form of railway had been apparent to him when in Australia and he considered it could be met by a ground-level monorail upon which vehicles would be balanced by gyroscopes. After overcoming many manufacturing difficulties, he demonstrated first a one-eighth scale version and then a full-size, electrically driven vehicle, which ran on its single rail throughout the summer of 1910 in London, carrying up to fifty passengers at a time. Development had been supported financially by, successively, the War Office, the India Office and the Government of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had no rail access; despite all this, however, no further financial support, government or commercial, was forthcoming.Brennan made many other inventions, worked on the early development of helicopters and in 1929 built a gyroscopically balanced, two-wheeled motor car which, however, never went into production.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCompanion of the Bath 1892.Bibliography1878, British patent no. 3359 (torpedo) 1903, British patent no. 27212 (stability mechanisms).Further ReadingR.E.Wilkes, 1973, Louis Brennan CB, 2 parts, Gillingham (Kent) Public Library. J.R.Day and B.C.Wilson, 1957, Unusual Railways, London: F.Muller.See also: Behr, Fritz Bernhard; Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse; Palmer, Henry Robinson( monorails); Whitehead, Robert( torpedoes).PJGR -
5 WASS
1) Компьютерная техника: Wide Area Storage System2) Военный термин: Wide-Area Surveillance System, wide-area active surveillance system3) Сокращение: Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacqueia (Lightweight torpedo launchers (Italy))
См. также в других словарях:
Whitehead torpedo — White head tor*pe do, or Whitehead White head , n. A form of self propelling torpedo. [Webster 1913 Suppl.] … The Collaborative International Dictionary of English
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Whitehead — torpedo White head tor*pe do, or Whitehead White head , n. A form of self propelling torpedo. [Webster 1913 Suppl.] … The Collaborative International Dictionary of English
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Torpedo boat — A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs rammed enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes, and later designs launched self propelled Whitehead torpedoes. They were created … Wikipedia
Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei — (WASS) ist ein italienisches Rüstungsunternehmen der Finmeccanica Gruppe. Es produziert Torpedos, Torpedoabwehrsysteme und Sonare. Der Sitz des Unternehmens ist heute in Livorno, weitere Produktionsanlagen und Niederlassungen befinden sich in… … Deutsch Wikipedia
