Wide reading is essential

A n. [uc]

1 ( anche polit.) lettura; lettura pubblica: first, second, third reading, prima, seconda, terza lettura ( di un disegno di legge); readings from Shakespeare, letture di Shakespeare; This book makes ( for) interesting [dull] reading, questo libro è interessante [noioso] da leggere; light reading, letture amene; (tecn.) meter reading, lettura del contatore

2 indicazione; valore indicato ( da uno strumento)

3 cultura generale: Wide reading is essential, una vasta cultura generale è essenziale

4 materia di lettura ( in un libro, programma scolastico, ecc.): ‘further reading’, ( alla fine di un saggio, ecc.) ‘ulteriori letture’; background reading, bibliografia; required reading, lettura obbligatoria

5 interpretazione: What is your reading of the facts?, qual è la tua interpretazione dei fatti?

6 ( di codice) lezione; versione: This is the right reading of the passage, questa è la lezione giusta del brano

B a.

1 che legge: the reading public, il pubblico dei lettori

2 da (o per) leggere: reading material, materiale di lettura; reading list, ( all'università, ecc.) elenco bibliografico

● reading age –: She has a reading age of 12, legge come un bambino di 12 anni □ reading copy, copia saggio; campione □ reading desk, leggio □ (comput.) reading device, lettore □ reading glass, lente per leggere □ reading group, gruppo di lettura □ reading knowledge, capacità di lettura ( di una lingua) □ reading lamp, lampada da tavolo □ reading room, sala di lettura □ reading stand, leggio.

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Heathcote was the son of a small farmer who became blind, obliging the family to move to Long Whatton, near Loughborough, c.1790. He was apprenticed to W.Shepherd, a hosiery-machine maker, and became a frame-smith in the hosiery industry. He moved to Nottingham where he entered the employment of an excellent machine maker named Elliott. He later joined William Caldwell of Hathern, whose daughter he had married. The lace-making apparatus they patented jointly in 1804 had already been anticipated, so Heathcote turned to the problem of making pillow lace, a cottage industry in which women made lace by arranging pins stuck in a pillow in the correct pattern and winding around them thread contained on thin bobbins. He began by analysing the complicated hand-woven lace into simple warp and weft threads and found he could dispense with half the bobbins. The first machine he developed and patented, in 1808, made narrow lace an inch or so wide, but the following year he made much broader lace on an improved version. In his second patent, in 1809, he could make a type of net curtain, Brussels lace, without patterns. His machine made bobbin-net by the use of thin brass discs, between which the thread was wound. As they passed through the warp threads, which were arranged vertically, the warp threads were moved to each side in turn, so as to twist the bobbin threads round the warp threads. The bobbins were in two rows to save space, and jogged on carriages in grooves along a bar running the length of the machine. As the strength of this fabric depended upon bringing the bobbin threads diagonally across, in addition to the forward movement, the machine had to provide for a sideways movement of each bobbin every time the lengthwise course was completed. A high standard of accuracy in manufacture was essential for success. Called the "Old Loughborough", it was acknowledged to be the most complicated machine so far produced. In partnership with a man named Charles Lacy, who supplied the necessary capital, a factory was established at Loughborough that proved highly successful; however, their fifty-five frames were destroyed by Luddites in 1816. Heathcote was awarded damages of £10,000 by the county of Nottingham on the condition it was spent locally, but to avoid further interference he decided to transfer not only his machines but his entire workforce elsewhere and refused the money. In a disused woollen factory at Tiverton in Devonshire, powered by the waters of the river Exe, he built 300 frames of greater width and speed. By continually making inventions and improvements until he retired in 1843, his business flourished and he amassed a large fortune. He patented one machine for silk cocoon-reeling and another for plaiting or braiding. In 1825 he brought out two patents for the mechanical ornamentation or figuring of lace. He acquired a sound knowledge of French prior to opening a steam-powered lace factory in France. The factory proved to be a successful venture that lasted many years. In 1832 he patented a monstrous steam plough that is reputed to have cost him over £12,000 and was claimed to be the best in its day. One of its stated aims was "improved methods of draining land", which he hoped would develop agriculture in Ireland. A cable was used to haul the implement across the land. From 1832 to 1859, Heathcote represented Tiverton in Parliament and, among other benefactions, he built a school for his adopted town.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Railways and locomotives

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Outram's father was one of the principal promoters of the Cromford Canal, Derbyshire, and Benjamin Outram became Assistant to the canal's Engineer, William Jessop. In 1789 Outram was appointed Superintendent in charge of construction, and his responsibilities included the 2,978 yd (2,723 m) Butterley Tunnel; while the tunnel was being driven, coal and iron ore were encountered. Outram and a partner purchased the Butterley Hall estate above the tunnel and formed Outram \& Co. to exploit the coal and iron: a wide length of the tunnel beneath the company's furnace was linked to the surface by shafts to become in effect an underground wharf. Jessop soon joined the company, which grew and prospered to eventually become the long-lived Butterley Company.

As a canal engineer, Outram's subsequent projects included the Derby, Huddersfield Narrow and Peak Forest Canals. On the Derby Canal he built a small iron aqueduct, which though designed later than the Longdon Aqueduct of Thomas Telford was opened earlier, in 1796, to become the first iron aqueduct.

It is as a tramroad engineer that Outram is best known. In 1793 he completed a mile-long (1.6 km) tramroad from Outram \& Co.'s limestone quarry at Crich to the Cromford Canal, for which he used plate rails of the type recently developed by John Curr. He was, however, able to use a wider gauge—3 ft 6 in. (1.07 m) between the flanges—and larger wagons than Curr had been able to use underground in mines. It appears to have been Outram's idea to mount the rails on stone blocks, rather than wooden sleepers.

Outram then engineered tramroads to extend the lines of the Derby and Peak Forest Canals. He encouraged construction of such tramroads in many parts of Britain, often as feeders of traffic to canals. He acted as Engineer, and his company often provided the rails and sometimes undertook the entire construction of a line. Foreseeing that lines would be linked together, he recommended a gauge of 4 ft 2 in. (1.27 m) between the flanges as standard, and for twenty years or so Outram's plateways, with horses or gravity as motive power, became the usual form of construction for new railways. However, experience then showed that edge rails, weight for weight, could carry greater load, and were indeed almost essential for the introduction of steam locomotives.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology, Metallurgy, Paper and printing, Textiles

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Song was an outstanding encyclopedist in the field of technology and industrial processes. He produced the Tian Gong Kai Wu (The Exploitation of the Works of Nature) of 1637, China's greatest technological classic, which dealt with agriculture and industry rather than engineering. It covered a wide range of subjects, including hydraulic devices and irrigation, silk and other textiles, salt and sugar technology, ceramics, pearls and jade, papermaking and ink, metallurgy of iron, bronze, silver, tin and lead, and transport. The work incorporated the finest Chinese illustrations on these subjects. Strangely, it fell into obscurity and it was a copy preserved in Japan that became the basis for later editions.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Traquair graduated in medicine at Edinburgh in 1901. After a period in Germany and South Africa occasioned by tuberculosis, a recurrence of which led to his death, he specialized in ophthalmology and filled a succession of appointments at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, until his retirement in 1943 from his post as Senior Ophthalmic Surgeon.

Apart from a wide involvement in the full range of the speciality, he was particularly concerned, in association with neurologists and neurosurgeons, with the assessment and diagnosis of affections of the intracranial visual path-ways. He refined the previously haphazard methods of field charting into perimetry, an exact and repeatable diagnostic routine. His work constituted an essential element in the development of modern surgical neurology.

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