a+history+of'technology

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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1) Спорт: Strong Horse Team

2) Сокращение: Society for the History of Technology, shower and toilet, Susquehanna Trailways (автобусная компания)

3) Физиология: Short Histidine Tag

4) Нефть: straight hole test, испытания непосредственно в скважине (straight hole test)

5) Транспорт: Segway Human Transporter

6) Фирменный знак: Salzburg Heating Technology

7) Бурение: испытание непосредственно в скважине (straight hole test)

8) Расширение файла: HTML format for WWW (NetScape)

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

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Albert received a sound education in the arts and sciences, carefully designed to fit him for a role as consort to the future Queen Victoria. After their marriage in 1840, Albert threw himself into the task of establishing his position as, eventually, Prince Consort and uncrowned king of England. By his undoubted intellectual gifts, unrelenting hard work and moral rectitude, Albert moulded the British constitutional monarchy into the form it retains to this day. The purchase in 1845 of the Osborne estate in the Isle of Wight provided not only the growing royal family with a comfortable retreat from London and public life, but Albert with full scope for his abilities as architect and planner. With Thomas Cubitt, the eminent engineer and contractor, Albert erected at Osborne one of the most remarkable buildings of the nineteenth century. He went on to design the house and estate at Balmoral in Scotland, another notable creation.

Albert applied his abilities as architect and planner in the promotion of such public works as the London sewer system and, in practical form, the design of cottages for workers, such as those in south London, as well as those on the royal estates. Albert's other main contribution to technology was as educationist in a broad sense. In 1847, he was elected Chancellor of Cambridge University. He was appalled at the low standards and narrow curriculum prevailing there and at Oxford. He was no mere figurehead, but took a close and active interest in the University's affairs. With his powerful influence behind them, the reforming fellows were able to force measures to raise standards and widen the curriculum to take account, in particular, of the rapid progress in the natural sciences. Albert was instrumental in ending the lethargy of centuries and laying the foundations of the modern British university system.

In 1847 the Prince became Secretary of the Royal Society of Arts. With Henry Cole, the noted administrator who shared Albert's concern for the arts, he promoted a series of exhibitions under the auspices of the Society. From these grew the idea of a great exhibition of the products of the decorative and industrial arts. It was Albert who decided that its scope should be international. As Chairman of the organizing committee, by sheer hard work he drove the project through to a triumphant conclusion. The success of the Exhibition earned it a handsome profit for which Albert had found a use even before it closed. The proceeds went towards the purchase of a site in South Kensington, for which he drew up a grand scheme for a complex of museums and colleges for the education of the people in the sciences and the arts. This largely came to fruition and South Kensington today is a fitting memorial to the Prince Consort's wisdom and concern for the public good.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Telecommunications

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After graduating from University College, London, Ayrton became for a short time a pupil of Sir William Thomson in Glasgow. For five years he was employed in the Indian Telegraph Service, eventually as Superintendent, where he assisted in revolutionizing the system, devising methods of fault detection and elimination. In 1873 he was invited by the Japanese Government to assist as Professor of Physics and Telegraphy in founding the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo. There he created a teaching laboratory that served as a model for those he was later to organize in England and which were copied elsewhere. It was in Tokyo that his joint researches with Professor John Perry began, an association that continued after their return to England. In 1879 he became Professor of Technical Physics at the City and Guilds Institute in Finsbury, London, and later was appointed Professor of Physics at the Central Institution in South Kensington.

The inventions of Avrton and Perrv included an electric tricycle in 1882, the first practicable portable ammeter and other electrical measuring instruments. By 1890, when the research partnership ended, they had published nearly seventy papers in their joint names, the emphasis being on a mathematical treatment of subjects including electric motor design, construction of electrical measuring instruments, thermodynamics and the economical use of electric conductors. Ayrton was then employed as a consulting engineer by government departments and acted as an expert witness in many important patent cases.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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The son of a Forfarshire tenant farmer, Patrick Bell obtained an MA from the University of St Andrews. His early association with farming kindled an interest in engineering and mechanics and he was to maintain a workshop not only on his father's farm, but also, in later life, at the parsonage at Carmyllie.

He was still studying divinity when he invented his reaping machine. Using garden shears as the basis of his design, he built a model in 1827 and a full-scale prototype the following year. Not wishing the machine to be seen during his early experiments, he and his brother planted a sheaf of oats in soil laid out in a shed, and first tried the machine on this. It cut well enough but left the straw in a mess behind it. A canvas belt system was devised and another secret trial in the barn was followed by a night excursion into a field, where corn was successfully harvested.

Two machines were at work during 1828, apparently achieving a harvest rate of one acre per hour. In 1832 there were ten machines at work, and at least another four had been sent to the United States by this time. Despite their success Bell did not patent his design, feeling that the idea should be given free to the world. In later years he was to regret the decision, feeling that the many badly-made imitations resulted in its poor reputation and prevented its adoption.

Bell's calling took precedence over his inventive interests and after qualifying he went to Canada in 1833, spending four years in Fergus, Ontario. He later returned to Scotland and be-came the minister at Carmyllie, with a living of £150 per annum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Bigelow was born in West Boyleston, Massachusetts, where his father struggled as a farmer, wheelwright, and chairmaker. Before he was 20, Bigelow had many different jobs, among them farm labourer, clerk, violin player and cotton-mill employee. In 1830, he went to Leicester Academy, Massachusetts, but he could not afford to go on to Harvard. He sought work in Boston, New York and elsewhere, making various inventions.

The most important of his early inventions was the power loom of 1837 for making coach lace. This loom contained all the essential features of his carpet looms, which he developed and patented two years later. He formed the Clinton Company for manufacturing carpets at Leicester, Massachusetts, but the factory became so large that its name was adopted for the town. The next twenty years saw various mechanical discoveries, while his range of looms was extended to cover Brussels, Wilton, tapestry and velvet carpets. Bigelow has been justly described as the originator of every fundamental device in these machines, which were amongst the largest textile machines of their time. The automatic insertion and withdrawal of strong wires with looped ends was the means employed to raise the looped pile of the Brussels carpets, while thinner wires with a knife blade at the end raised and then severed the loops to create the rich Wilton pile. At the Great Exhibition in 1851, it was declared that his looms made better carpets than any from hand looms. He also developed other looms for special materials.

He became a noted American economist, writing two books about tariff problems, advocating that the United States should not abandon its protectionist policies. In 1860 he was narrowly defeated in a Congress election. The following year he was a member of the committee that established the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Around 1850, the exciting new metal aluminium began to be produced by the process developed by Sainte-Claire Deville. However, it remained expensive on account of the high cost of one of the raw materials, sodium. It was another thirty years before Castner became the first to work successfully the process for producing sodium, which consisted of heating sodium hydroxide with charcoal at a high temperature. Unable to interest American backers in the process, Castner took it to England and set up a plant at Oldbury, near Birmingham. At the moment he achieved commercial success, however, the demand for cheap sodium plummeted as a result of the development of the electrolytic process for producing aluminium. He therefore sought other uses for cheap sodium, first converting it to sodium peroxide, a bleaching agent much used in the straw-hat industry. Much more importantly, Castner persuaded the gold industry to use sodium instead of potassium cyanide in the refining of gold. With the "gold rush", he established a large market in Australia, the USA, South Africa and elsewhere, but the problem was to meet the demand, so Castner turned to the electrolytic method. At first progress was slow because of the impure nature of the sodium hydroxide, so he used a mercury cathode, with which the released sodium formed an amalgam. It then reacted with water in a separate compartment in the cell to form sodium hydroxide of a purity hitherto unknown in the alkali industry; chlorine was a valuable by-product.

In 1894 Castner began to seek international patents for the cell, but found he had been anticipated in Germany by Kellner, an Austrian chemist. Preferring negotiation to legal confrontation, Castner exchanged patents and processes with Kellner, although the latter's had been less successful. The cell became known as the Castner-Kellner cell, but the process needed cheap electricity and salt, neither of which was available near Oldbury, so he set up the Castner-Kellner Alkali Company works at Runcorn in Cheshire; at the same time, a pilot plant was set up in the USA at Saltville, Virginia, with a larger plant being established at Niagara Falls.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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After early education at the Jonkoping elementary school and the Weixo Gymnasium, George Scheutz entered the University of Lund, gaining a degree in law in 1805. Following five years' legal work, he moved to Stockholm in 1811 to work at the Supreme Court and, in 1814, as a military auditor. In 1816, he resigned, bought a printing business and became editor of a succession of industrial and technical journals, during which time he made inventions relating to the press. It was in 1830 that he learned from the Edinburgh Review of Babbage's ideas for a difference engine and started to make one from wood, pasteboard and wire. In 1837 his 15-yearold student son, Edvard Raphael Scheutz, offered to make it in metal, and by 1840 they had a working machine with two five-digit registers, which they increased the following year and then added a printer. Obtaining a government grant in 1851, by 1853 they had a fully working machine, now known as Swedish Difference Engine No. 1, which with an experienced operator could generate 120 lines of tables per hour and was used to calculate the logarithms of the numbers 1 to 10,000 in under eighty hours. This was exhibited in London and then at the Paris Great Exhibition, where it won the Gold Medal. It was subsequently sold to the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, for US$5,000 and is now in a Chicago museum.

In England, the British Registrar-General, wishing to produce new tables for insurance companies, and supported by the Astronomer Royal, arranged for government finance for construction of a second machine (Swedish Difference Engine No. 2). Comprising over 1,000 working parts and weighing 1,000 lb (450 kg), this machine was used to calculate over 600 tables. It is now in the Science Museum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mining and extraction technology

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Having been employed in railway construction in Sardinia, Sommeiller was working as an engineer at the University of Turin when, in 1857, he was commissioned to take charge of the French part in the construction of the 13 km (8 mile) tunnel under Mont Cénis between Modane, France, and Bardonècchia, Italy. This was to be the first long-distance tunnel through rock in the Alps driven from two headings with no intervening shafts; it is a landmark in the history of technology thanks to the use of a number of pioneering techniques in its construction.

As steam power was unsuitable because of the difficulties in transmitting power over long distances, Sommeiller developed ideas for the use of compressed-air machinery, first mooted by Daniel Colladon of Geneva in 1855; this also solved the problems of ventilation. He also decided to adapt the principle of his compressed-air ram to supply extra power to locomotives on steep gradients. In 1860 he took out a patent in France for a combined compressor-pump, and in 1861 his first percussion drill, mounted on a carriage, was introduced. Although it was of little use at first, Sommeiller improved his drill through trial and error, including the use of the diamond drill-crowns patented by Georges Auguste Leschot in 1862. The invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel contributed decisively to the speedy completion of the tunnel by the end of 1870, several years ahead of schedule.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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In the earliest draw looms, the pattern to be woven was selected by means of loops of string that were loosely tied round the appropriate leashes, which had to be lifted to make that pick of the pattern by raising the appropriate warp threads. In Isfahan, Persia, looms were seen in the 1970s where a boy sat in the top of the loom. Before the weaver could weave the next pick, the boy selected the appropriate loop of string, pulled out those leashes which were tied in it and lifted them up by means of a forked stick. The weaver below him held up these leashes by a pair of wooden sticks and sent the shuttle through that shed while the boy was sorting out the next loop of string with its leashes. When the pick had been completed, the first loop was dropped further down the leashes and, presumably, when the whole sequence of that pattern was finished, all the loops had be pushed up the leashes to the top of the loom again.

Models in the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, show that in 1725 Bouchon, a worker in Lyon, dispensed with the loops of string and selected the appropriate leashes by employing a band of pierced paper pressed against a row of horizontal wires by the drawboy using a hand-bar so as to push forward those which happened to lie opposite the blank spaces. These connected with loops at the lower extremity of vertical wires linked to the leashes at the top of the loom. The vertical wires could be pulled down by a comb-like rack beside the drawboy at the side of the loom in order to pull up the appropriate leashes to make the next shed. Bouchon seems to have had only one row of needles or wires, which must have limited the width of the patterns. This is an early form of mechanical memory, used in computers much later. The apparatus was improved subsequently by Falcon and Jacquard.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Branca practised architecture at Loretto. In 1629 he published Le Machine: volume nuovo et di molto artificio, in which he described various mechanisms. One was the application of rolls for working copper, lead or the precious metals gold and silver. The rolls were powered by a form of smokejack with the gases from the fire passing up a long tube forming a chimney which, through gearing, turned the rolls. Another device used a jet of steam from a boiler issuing from a mouthpiece shaped like the head of a person to impinge upon blades around the circumference of a horizontal wheel, connected through triple reduction gearing to drop stamps, for pounding drugs. This was a form of impulse turbine and has been claimed as the first machine worked by steam to do a particular operation since Heron's temple doors.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Robert Kay improved his father John's flying shuttle by inventing the drop box, in which up to four shuttles could be stored one below the other. The weaver's left hand controlled levers and catches to raise or lower the drop box in order to bring the appropriate shuttle into line with the shuttle race on the slay. The shuttle could then be driven across the loom, leaving its particular type or colour of weft. On the earliest power looms of Edmund Cartwright in 1785, and for many years later, it was possible to use only one shuttle. In 1845 Squire Diggle of Bury, Lancashire, took out a patent for mechanizing the drop box so that different types or colours of weft could be woven without the weaver attending to the shuttles. He used an endless chain on which plates of different heights could be fixed to raise the boxes to the required height; later this would be operated by either the dobby or Jacquard pattern-selecting mechanisms. He took out further patents for improvements to looms. One, in 1854, was for taking up the cloth with a positive motion. Two more, in 1858, improved his drop box mechanism: the first was for actually operating the drop box, while the second was for tappet chains which operated the timing for raising the boxes.

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See also: Kay, John

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Giffard entered the works of the Western Railway of France at the age of 16 but became absorbed by the problem of steam-powered aerial navigation. He proposed a steam-powered helicopter in 1847, but he then turned his attention to an airship. He designed a lightweight coke-burning, single-cylinder steam engine and boiler which produced just over 3 hp (2.2 kW) and mounted it below a cigar-shaped gas bag 44 m (144 ft) in length. A triangular rudder was fitted at the rear to control the direction of flight. On 24 September 1852 Giffard took off from Paris and, at a steady 8 km/h (5 mph), he travelled 28 km (17 miles) to Trappes. This can be claimed to be the first steerable lighter-than-air craft, but with a top speed of only 8 km/h (5 mph) even a modest headwind would have reduced the forward speed to nil (or even negative). Giffard built a second airship, which crashed in 1855, slightly injuring Giffard and his companion; a third airship was planned with a very large gas bag in order to lift the inherently heavy steam engine and boiler, but this was never built. His airships were inflated by coal gas and refusal by the gas company to provide further supplies brought these promising experiments to a premature end.

As a draughtsman Giffard had the opportunity to travel on locomotives and he observed the inadequacies of the feed pumps then used to supply boiler feedwater. To overcome these problems he invented the injector with its series of three cones: in the first cone (convergent), steam at or below boiler pressure becomes a high-velocity jet; in the second (also convergent), it combines with feedwater to condense and impart high velocity to it; and in the third (divergent), that velocity is converted into pressure sufficient to overcome the pressure of steam in the boiler. The injector, patented by Giffard, was quickly adopted by railways everywhere, and the royalties provided him with funds to finance further experiments in aviation. These took the form of tethered hydrogen-inflated balloons of successively larger size. At the Paris Exposition of 1878 one of these balloons carried fifty-two passengers on each tethered "flight". The height of the balloon was controlled by a cable attached to a huge steam-powered winch, and by the end of the fair 1,033 ascents had been made and 35,000 passengers had seen Paris from the air. This, and similar balloons, greatly widened the public's interest in aeronautics. Sadly, after becoming blind, Giffard committed suicide; however, he died a rich man and bequeathed large sums of money to the State for humanitarian an scientific purposes.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Holly was educated in mechanics and millwrighting work. He was an indefatigable inventor and took out over 150 patents for his ideas. He became Superintendent and later Proprietor of a millwrighting shop in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Then at Seneca Falls, New York, he began manufacturing hydraulic machinery with the firm of Silsby, Race \& Holly. He made the Silsby fire-engine famous through his invention in 1852 of a rotary pump which was later developed into a steam fire pump. In 1866 he introduced at Lockport, New York, a pressurized water-supply system using a pump rather than an elevated reservoir or standpipe. While this installation at Lockport was powered by a water-wheel, a second one in Dunkirk, New York, used steam-driven pumps, which had a significant effect on the history of steam pumping engines.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Jacquard was apprenticed at the age of 12 to bookbinding, and later to type-founding and cutlery. His parents, who had some connection with weaving, left him a small property upon their death. He made some experiments with pattern weaving, but lost all his inheritance; after marrying, he returned to type-founding and cutlery. In 1790 he formed the idea for his machine, but it was forgotten amidst the excitement of the French Revolution, in which he fought for the Revolutionists at the defence of Lyons. The machine he completed in 1801 combined earlier inventions and was for weaving net. He was sent to Paris to demonstrate it at the National Exposition and received a bronze medal. In 1804 Napoleon granted him a patent, a pension of 1,500 francs and a premium on each machine sold. This enabled him to study and work at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers to perfect his mechanism for pattern weaving. A method of selecting any combination of leashes at each shoot of the weft had to be developed, and Jacquard's mechanism was the outcome of various previous inventions. By taking the cards invented by Falcon in 1728 that were punched with holes like the paper of Bouchon in 1725, to select the needles for each pick, and by placing the apparatus above the loom where Vaucanson had put his mechanism, Jacquard combined the best features of earlier inventions. He was not entirely successful because his invention failed in the way it pressed the card against the needles; later modifications by Breton in 1815 and Skola in 1819 were needed before it functioned reliably. However, the advantage of Jacquard's machine was that each pick could be selected much more quickly than on the earlier draw looms, which meant that John Kay's flying shuttle could be introduced on fine pattern looms because the weaver no longer had to wait for the drawboy to sort out the leashes for the next pick. Robert Kay's drop box could also be used with different coloured wefts. The drawboy could be dispensed with because the foot-pedal operating the Jacquard mechanism could be worked by the weaver. Patterns could be changed quickly by replacing one set of cards with another, but the scope of the pattern was more limited than with the draw loom. Some machines that were brought into use aroused bitter hostility. Jacquard suffered physical violence, barely escaping with his life, and his machines were burnt by weavers at Lyons. However, by 1812 his mechanism began to be generally accepted and had been applied to 11,000 draw-looms in France. In 1819 Jacquard received a gold medal and a Cross of Honour for his invention. His machines reached England c.1816 and still remain the basic way of weaving complicated patterns.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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John Kay was the youngest of five sons of a yeoman farmer of Walmersley, near Bury, Lancashire, who died before his birth. John was apprenticed to a reedmaker, and just before he was 21 he married a daughter of John Hall of Bury and carried on his trade in that town until 1733. It is possible that his first patent, taken out in 1730, was connected with this business because it was for an engine that made mohair thread for tailors and twisted and dressed thread; such thread could have been used to bind up the reeds used in looms. He also improved the reeds by making them from metal instead of cane strips so they lasted much longer and could be made to be much finer. His next patent in 1733, was a double one. One part of it was for a batting machine to remove dust from wool by beating it with sticks, but the patent is better known for its description of the flying shuttle. Kay placed boxes to receive the shuttle at either end of the reed or sley. Across the open top of these boxes was a metal rod along which a picking peg could slide and drive the shuttle out across the loom. The pegs at each end were connected by strings to a stick that was held in the right hand of the weaver and which jerked the shuttle out of the box. The shuttle had wheels to make it "fly" across the warp more easily, and ran on a shuttle race to support and guide it. Not only was weaving speeded up, but the weaver could produce broader cloth without any aid from a second person. This invention was later adapted for the power loom. Kay moved to Colchester and entered into partnership with a baymaker named Solomon Smith and a year later was joined by William Carter of Ballingdon, Essex. His shuttle was received with considerable hostility in both Lancashire and Essex, but it was probably more his charge of 15 shillings a year for its use that roused the antagonism. From 1737 he was much involved with lawsuits to try and protect his patent, particularly the part that specified the method of winding the thread onto a fixed bobbin in the shuttle. In 1738 Kay patented a windmill for working pumps and an improved chain pump, but neither of these seems to have been successful. In 1745, with Joseph Stell of Keighley, he patented a narrow fabric loom that could be worked by power; this type may have been employed by Gartside in Manchester soon afterwards. It was probably through failure to protect his patent rights that Kay moved to France, where he arrived penniless in 1747. He went to the Dutch firm of Daniel Scalongne, woollen manufacturers, in Abbeville. The company helped him to apply for a French patent for his shuttle, but Kay wanted the exorbitant sum of £10,000. There was much discussion and eventually Kay set up a workshop in Paris, where he received a pension of 2,500 livres. However, he was to face the same problems as in England with weavers copying his shuttle without permission. In 1754 he produced two machines for making card clothing: one pierced holes in the leather, while the other cut and sharpened the wires. These were later improved by his son, Robert Kay. Kay returned to England briefly, but was back in France in 1758. He was involved with machines to card both cotton and wool and tried again to obtain support from the French Government. He was still involved with developing textile machines in 1779, when he was 75, but he must have died soon afterwards. As an inventor Kay was a genius of the first rank, but he was vain, obstinate and suspicious and was destitute of business qualities.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Otto's involvement in internal combustion engines was first prompted by his interest in Lenoir's coal-gas engine of 1860. He built his first engine in 1861; in 1864, Otto's engine came to the attention of Eugen Langen, who arranged for the capital to set up the world's first engine company, N.A.Otto and Company, in Cologne. In 1867 the Otto- Langen free-piston internal combustion engine was exhibited at the Paris Exposition, where it won the gold medal. The company continued to expand, and five years after the Paris triumph its name was changed to the Gasmotoren Fabrik; amongst Otto's colleagues at this time were Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach .

Otto is most famous for the development of the four-stroke cycle which was to bear his name. He patented his version of this in 1876, although the principle of the four-stroke cycle had been patented by Alphonse Beau de Rochas fourteen years previously; Otto was the first, however, to put the principle into practice with the "Otto Silent Engine". Many thousands of Otto fourstroke engines had already been built by 1886, when a German patent lawyer successfully claimed that Otto had infringed the Beau de Rochas patent, and Otto's patent was declared invalid.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Until the mid-nineteenth century, washing with soap and water was the only way to clean clothes. Around 1850 a kind of turpentine, camphene, began to be used (see J.B. Jolly- Bellin), but this necessitated taking the garments apart and resewing together after they had been cleaned. When benzene was introduced in 1866 by Pullars of Perth, Scotland, garments no longer needed to be taken apart. In 1897 Ludwig Anthelm of Leipzig started to use carbon tetrachloride (tetrachloromethane); however this was found to corrode the equipment and was dangerous to breathe, and it was replaced in Britain with trichlorethylene in 1918.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Fastenings are an essential component of the majority of garments. Great advances were made in Germany with press studs in the late nineteenth century after the original invention by Louis Hannart in 1863. In 1885, Bauer patented a spring and stud fastener.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Daniel Bourn may well have been a native of Lancashire. He set up a fourth Paul-Wyatt cotton-spinning mill at Leominster, Herefordshire, possibly in 1744, although the earliest mention of it is in 1748. His only known partner in this mill was Henry Morris, a yarn dealer who in 1743 had bought a grant of spindles from Paul at the low rate of 30 shillings or 40 shillings per spindle when the current price was £3 or £4. When Bourn patented his carding engine in 1748, he asked Wyatt for a grant of spindles, to which Wyatt agreed because £100 was offered immedi-ately. The mill, which was probably the only one outside the control of Paul and his backers, was destroyed by fire in 1754 and was not rebuilt, although Bourn and his partners had considerable hopes for it. Bourn was said to have lost over £1,600 in the venture.

Daniel Bourn described himself as a wool and cotton dealer of Leominster in his patent of 1748 for his carding engine. The significance of this invention is the use of rotating cylinders covered with wire clothing. The patent drawing shows four cylinders, one following the other to tease out the wool, but Bourn was unable to discover a satisfactory method of removing the fibres from the last cylinder. It is possible that Robert Peel in Lancashire obtained one of these engines through Morris, and that James Hargreaves tried to improve it; if so, then some of the early carding engines in the cotton industry were derived from Bourn's.

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