-
1 Alexander
An ancient form of fabric variously described by different authorities, but generally supposed to have been a black and white striped silk, made at Alexandria; first mentioned in a.d. 1327 and used for church vestments (see Burdalisander) -
2 Bain, Alexander
[br]b. October 1810 Watten, Scotlandd. 2 January 1877 Kirkintilloch, Scotland[br]Scottish inventor and entrepreneur who laid the foundations of electrical horology and designed an electromagnetic means of transmitting images (facsimile).[br]Alexander Bain was born into a crofting family in a remote part of Scotland. He was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Wick and during that time he was strongly influenced by a lecture on "Heat, sound and electricity" that he heard in nearby Thurso. This lecture induced him to take up a position in Clerkenwell in London, working as a journeyman clockmaker, where he was able to further his knowledge of electricity by attending lectures at the Adelaide Gallery and the Polytechnic Institution. His thoughts naturally turned to the application of electricity to clockmaking, and despite a bitter dispute with Charles Wheatstone over priority he was granted the first British patent for an electric clock. This patent, taken out on 11 January 1841, described a mechanism for an electric clock, in which an oscillating component of the clock operated a mechanical switch that initiated an electromagnetic pulse to maintain the regular, periodic motion. This principle was used in his master clock, produced in 1845. On 12 December of the same year, he patented a means of using electricity to control the operation of steam railway engines via a steam-valve. His earliest patent was particularly far-sighted and anticipated most of the developments in electrical horology that occurred during the nineteenth century. He proposed the use of electricity not only to drive clocks but also to distribute time over a distance by correcting the hands of mechanical clocks, synchronizing pendulums and using slave dials (here he was anticipated by Steinheil). However, he was less successful in putting these ideas into practice, and his electric clocks proved to be unreliable. Early electric clocks had two weaknesses: the battery; and the switching mechanism that fed the current to the electromagnets. Bain's earth battery, patented in 1843, overcame the first defect by providing a reasonably constant current to drive his clocks, but unlike Hipp he failed to produce a reliable switch.The application of Bain's numerous patents for electric telegraphy was more successful, and he derived most of his income from these. They included a patent of 12 December 1843 for a form of fax machine, a chemical telegraph that could be used for the transmission of text and of images (facsimile). At the receiver, signals were passed through a moving band of paper impregnated with a solution of ammonium nitrate and potassium ferrocyanide. For text, Morse code signals were used, and because the system could respond to signals faster than those generated by hand, perforated paper tape was used to transmit the messages; in a trial between Paris and Lille, 282 words were transmitted in less than one minute. In 1865 the Abbé Caselli, a French engineer, introduced a commercial fax service between Paris and Lyons, based on Bain's device. Bain also used the idea of perforated tape to operate musical wind instruments automatically. Bain squandered a great deal of money on litigation, initially with Wheatstone and then with Morse in the USA. Although his inventions were acknowledged, Bain appears to have received no honours, but when towards the end of his life he fell upon hard times, influential persons in 1873 secured for him a Civil List Pension of £80 per annum and the Royal Society gave him £150.[br]Bibliography1841, British patent no. 8,783; 1843, British patent no. 9,745; 1845, British patent no.10,838; 1847, British patent no. 11,584; 1852, British patent no. 14,146 (all for electric clocks).1852, A Short History of the Electric Clocks with Explanation of Their Principles andMechanism and Instruction for Their Management and Regulation, London; reprinted 1973, introd. W.Hackmann, London: Turner \& Devereux (as the title implies, this pamphlet was probably intended for the purchasers of his clocks).Further ReadingThe best account of Bain's life and work is in papers by C.A.Aked in Antiquarian Horology: "Electricity, magnetism and clocks" (1971) 7: 398–415; "Alexander Bain, the father of electrical horology" (1974) 9:51–63; "An early electric turret clock" (1975) 7:428–42. These papers were reprinted together (1976) in A Conspectus of Electrical Timekeeping, Monograph No. 12, Antiquarian Horological Society: Tilehurst.J.Finlaison, 1834, An Account of Some Remarkable Applications of the Electric Fluid to the Useful Arts by Alexander Bain, London (a contemporary account between Wheatstone and Bain over the invention of the electric clock).J.Munro, 1891, Heroes of the Telegraph, Religious Tract Society.J.Malster \& M.J.Bowden, 1976, "Facsimile. A Review", Radio \&Electronic Engineer 46:55.D.J.Weaver, 1982, Electrical Clocks and Watches, Newnes.T.Hunkin, 1993, "Just give me the fax", New Scientist (13 February):33–7 (provides details of Bain's and later fax devices).See also: Bakewell, Frederick C.DV / KF -
3 Mitscherlich, Alexander
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 28 May 1836 Berlin, Germanyd. 31 May 1918 Oberstdorf, Germany[br]German inventor of sulphite wood pulp for papermaking.[br]Mitscherlich had an impeccable scientific background; his father was the celebrated chemist Eilhardt Mitscherlich, discoverer of the law of isomorphism, and his godfather was Alexander von Humboldt. At first his progress at school failed to live up to this auspicious beginning and his father would only sanction higher studies if he first qualified as a teacher so as to assure a means of livelihood. Alexander rose to the occasion and went on to gain his doctorate at the age of 25 in the field of mineralogical chemistry. He worked for a few years as Assistant to the distinguished chemists Wöhler in Göttingen and Wurtz in Paris. On his father's death in 1863, he succeeded him as teacher of chemistry in the University of Berlin. In 1868 he accepted a post in the newly established Forest Academy in Hannoversch-Munden, teaching chemistry, physics and geology. The post offered little financial advantage, but it left him more time for research. It was there that he invented the process for producing sulphite wood pulp.The paper industry was seeking new raw materials. Since the 1840s pulp had been produced mechanically from wood, but it was unsuitable for making fine papers. From the mid-1860s several chemists began tackling the problem of separating the cellulose fibres from the other constituents of wood by chemical means. The American Benjamin C.Tilghman was granted patents in several countries for the treatment of wood with acid or bisulphite. Carl Daniel Ekman in Sweden and Karl Kellner in Austria also made sulphite pulp, but the credit for devising the process that came into general use belongs to Mitscherlich. His brother Oskar came to him at the Academy with plans for producing pulp by the action of soda, but the results were inferior, so Mitscherlich substituted calcium bisulphite and in the laboratory obtained good results. To extend this to a large-scale process, he was forced to set up his own mill, where he devised the characteristic towers for making the calcium bisulphite, in which water trickling down through packed lime met a rising current of sulphur dioxide. He was granted a patent in Luxembourg in 1874 and a German one four years later. The sulphite process did not make him rich, for there was considerable opposition to it; government objected to the smell of sulphur dioxide, forestry authorities were anxious about the inroads that might be made into the forests and his patents were contested. In 1883, with the support of an inheritance from his mother, Mitscherlich resigned his post at the Academy to devote more time to promoting his invention. In 1897 he at last succeeded in settling the patent disputes and achieving recognition as the inventor of sulphite pulp. Without this raw material, the paper industry could never have satisfied the insatiable appetite of the newspaper presses.[br]Further ReadingH.Voorn "Alexander Mitscherlich, inventor of sulphite wood pulp", Paper Maker 23(1): 41–4.LRDBiographical history of technology > Mitscherlich, Alexander
-
4 Kennedy, Sir Alexander Blackie William
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 17 March 1847 Stepney, London, England d. 1928[br]English marine engineer and educator.[br]Sir Alexander Kennedy was trained as a marine engineer. The son of a Congregational minister, he was educated at the City of London School and the School of Mines, Jermyn Street. He was then apprenticed to J. \& W.Dudgeon of Millwall, marine engineers, and went on to become a draughtsman to Sir Charles Marsh Palmer of Jarrow (with whom he took part in the development of the compound steam-engine for marine use) and T.M.Tennant \& Co. of Leith. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Engineering at University College, London. He built up an influential School of Engineering, being the first in England to integrate laboratory work as a regular feature of instruction. The engineering laboratory that he established in 1878 has been described as "the first of its kind in England" (Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers). He and his students conducted important experiments on the strength and elasticity of materials, boiler testing and related subjects. He followed the teaching of Franz Reuleaux, whose Kinematics of Machinery he translated from the German.While thus breaking new educational ground at University College, Kennedy concurrently established a very thriving private practice as a consulting engineer in partnership with Bernard Maxwell Jenkin (the son of Fleeming Jenkin), to pursue which he relinquished his academic posts in 1889. He planned and installed the whole electricity system for the Westminster Electric Supply Corporation, and other electricity companies. He was also heavily involved in the development of electrically powered transport systems. During the First World War he served on a panel of the Munitions Invention Department, and after the war he undertook to record photographically the scenes of desolation in his book From Ypres to Verdun (1921). Towards the end of his life, he pursued his interest in archaeology with the exploration of Petra, recorded in a monograph: Petra. Its History and Monuments (1925). He also joined the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1879, becoming the President of that body in 1894, and he joined the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1890. Kennedy was thus something of an engineering polymath, as well as being an outstanding engineering educationalist.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1887. Knighted 1905. Member, Institution of Civil Engineers 1879; President, 1906. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1894.Bibliography1921, From Ypresto Verdum.1925, Petra. Its History and Monuments.Further ReadingDNB supplement.1928–9, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 221:269–75.ABBiographical history of technology > Kennedy, Sir Alexander Blackie William
-
5 Moulton, Alexander
[br]b. 9 April 1920 Stratford-on-Avon[br]English inventor of vehicle suspension systems and the Moulton bicycle.[br]He spent his childhood at The Hall in Bradfordon-Avon. He was educated at Marlborough College, and in 1937 was apprenticed to the Sentinel Steam Wagon Company of Shrewsbury. About that same time he went to King's College, Cambridge, where he took the Mechanical Sciences Tripos. It was then wartime, and he did research on aero-engines at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, where he became Personal Assistant to Sir Roy Fedden. He left Bristol's in 1945 to join his family firm, Spencer \& Moulton, of which he eventually became Technical Director and built up the Research Department. In 1948 he invented his first suspension unit, the "Flexitor", in which an inner shaft and an outer shell were separated by an annular rubber body which was bonded to both.In 1848 his great-grandfather had founded the family firm in an old woollen mill, to manufacture vulcanized rubber products under Charles Goodyear's patent. The firm remained a family business with Spencer's, consultants in railway engineering, until 1956 when it was sold to the Avon Rubber Company. He then formed Moulton Developments to continue his work on vehicle suspensions in the stables attached to The Hall. Sponsored by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and the Dunlop Rubber Company, he invented a rubber cone spring in 1951 which was later used in the BMC Mini (see Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine): by 1994 over 4 million Minis had been fitted with these springs, made by Dunlop. In 1954 he patented the Hydrolastic suspension system, in which all four wheels were independently sprung with combined rubber springs and damper assembly, the weight being supported by fluid under pressure, and the wheels on each side being interconnected, front to rear. In 1962 he formed Moulton Bicycles Ltd, having designed an improved bicycle system for adult use. The conventional bicycle frame was replaced by a flat-sided oval steel tube F-frame on a novel rubber front and rear suspension, with the wheel size reduced to 41 cm (16 in.) with high-pressure tyres. Raleigh Industries Ltd having refused his offer to produce the Moulton Bicycle under licence, he set up his own factory on his estate, producing 25,000 bicycles between 1963 and 1966. In 1967 he sold out to Raleigh and set up as Bicycle Consultants Ltd while continuing the suspension development of Moulton Developments Ltd. In the 1970s the combined firms employed some forty staff, nearly 50 per cent of whom were graduates.He won the Queen's Award for Industry in 1967 for technical innovation in Hydrolastic car suspension and the Moulton Bicycle. Since that time he has continued his innovative work on suspensions and the bicycle. In 1983 he introduced the AM bicycle series of very sophisticated space-frame design with suspension and 43 cm (17 in.) wheels; this machine holds the world speed record fully formed at 82 km/h (51 mph). The current Rover 100 and MGF use his Hydragas interconnected suspension. By 1994 over 7 million cars had been fitted with Moulton suspensions. He has won many design awards and prizes, and has been awarded three honorary doctorates of engineering. He is active in engineering and design education.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsQueen's Award for Industry 1967; CBE; RDI. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.Further ReadingP.R.Whitfield, 1975, Creativity in Industry, London: Penguin Books.IMcN -
6 Bell, Alexander Graham
SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications[br]b. 3 March 1847 Edinburgh, Scotlandd. 3 August 1922 Beinn Bhreagh, Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada[br]Scottish/American inventor of the telephone.[br]Bell's grandfather was a professor of elocution in London and his father an authority on the physiology of the voice and on elocution; Bell was to follow in their footsteps. He was educated in Edinburgh, leaving school at 13. In 1863 he went to Elgin, Morayshire, as a pupil teacher in elocution, with a year's break to study at Edinburgh University; it was in 1865, while still in Elgin, that he first conceived the idea of the electrical transmission of speech. He went as a master to Somersetshire College, Bath (now in Avon), and in 1867 he moved to London to assist his father, who had taken up the grandfather's work in elocution. In the same year, he matriculated at London University, studying anatomy and physiology, and also began teaching the deaf. He continued to pursue the studies that were to lead to the invention of the telephone. At this time he read Helmholtz's The Sensations of Tone, an important work on the theory of sound that was to exert a considerable influence on him.In 1870 he accompanied his parents when they emigrated to Canada. His work for the deaf gained fame in both Canada and the USA, and in 1873 he was apponted professor of vocal physiology and the mechanics of speech at Boston University, Massachusetts. There, he continued to work on his theory that sound wave vibrations could be converted into a fluctuating electric current, be sent along a wire and then be converted back into sound waves by means of a receiver. He approached the problem from the background of the theory of sound and voice production rather than from that of electrical science, and by 1875 he had succeeded in constructing a rough model. On 7 March 1876 Bell spoke the famous command to his assistant, "Mr Watson, come here, I want you": this was the first time a human voice had been transmitted along a wire. Only three days earlier, Bell's first patent for the telephone had been granted. Almost simultaneously, but quite independently, Elisha Gray had achieved a similar result. After a period of litigation, the US Supreme Court awarded Bell priority, although Gray's device was technically superior.In 1877, three years after becoming a naturalized US citizen, Bell married the deaf daughter of his first backer. In August of that year, they travelled to Europe to combine a honeymoon with promotion of the telephone. Bell's patent was possibly the most valuable ever issued, for it gave birth to what later became the world's largest private service organization, the Bell Telephone Company.Bell had other scientific and technological interests: he made improvements in telegraphy and in Edison's gramophone, and he also developed a keen interest in aeronautics, working on Curtiss's flying machine. Bell founded the celebrated periodical Science.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsLegion of Honour; Hughes Medal, Royal Society, 1913.Further ReadingObituary, 7 August 1922, The Times. Dictionary of American Biography.R.Burlingame, 1964, Out of Silence into Sound, London: Macmillan.LRD -
7 Forsyth, Alexander John
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 28 December 1769 Belhevie, Aberdeenshire, Scotlandd. 11 June 1843 Belhevie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland[br]Scottish cleric and ammunition designer.[br]The son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Forsyth also took Holy Orders and took over his father's parish on his death. During his spare time he experimented with explosives and in 1805 he succeeded in developing mercury fulminate as a percussion cap for use in small-arms ammunition, thus paving the way for the eventual design of the self-contained metallic cartridge and contact fuse. This he did by rolling the compound into small pellets, which he placed in a nipple at the breech end of the barrel, where they could be detonated by the falling hammer of the gun. In spring 1806 he went to London, and so impressed was the Master-General of the Ordnance by Forsyth's concept that he gave him facilities in the Tower of London in order to allow him to perfect it. Unfortunately, the Master-General of the Ordnance was replaced shortly afterwards and his successor abruptly stopped the project. Forsyth returned to Scotland and his parish, and it was only after much persuasion by his friends that he eventually petitioned Parliament for recognition of his invention. He was ultimately awarded a small state pension, but died before he received any of it.CMBiographical history of technology > Forsyth, Alexander John
-
8 Houston, Sir Alexander Cruickshank
SUBJECT AREA: Public utilities[br]b. 18 September 1865 Settle, Yorkshire, Englandd. 29 October 1933 London, England[br]English physician and bacteriologist, pioneer of the chlorination of water supplies.[br]Son of an Army surgeon-general, he graduated in Edinburgh in 1889. Specializing in public health and forensic matters, he worked from 1897 to 1905 for the Local Government Board on lead poisoning resulting from moorland water supplies. He also acted as Bacteriologist to the Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal from 1890 to 1905. In 1905 he was appointed Director of Water Examinations to the Metropolitan Water Board, with whom he served until his death. Shortly before he joined the Board, he was involved in the investigation of an outbreak of typhoid at Lincoln and was instrumental in establishing a chlorination plant of a rudimentary nature there, and also in organizing the comprehensive chlorinating system which was then applied to London's water supply. He also advised on water supplies in Egypt and Canada.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1918. Commander of the Royal Victorian Order 1919. FRS 1931. Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize, Edinburgh 1892.Bibliography1914, Studies in Water Supply.1918, Rural Water Supplies and their Purification.1953, London's Water Supply, 1903–1953, London: Metropolitan Water Board.MGBiographical history of technology > Houston, Sir Alexander Cruickshank
-
9 Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine (Alec)
[br]b. 18 November 1906 Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkeyd. 2 October 1988 Birmingham, England[br]British automobile designer whose work included the Morris Minor and the Mini series.[br]His father was of Greek descent but was a naturalized British subject in Turkey who ran a marine engineering business. After the First World War, the British in Turkey were evacuated by the Royal Navy, the Issigonis family among them. His father died en route in Malta, but the rest of the family arrived in England in 1922. Alec studied engineering at Battersea Polytechnic for three years and in 1928 was employed as a draughtsman by a firm of consulting engineers in Victoria Street who were working on a form of automatic transmission. He had occasion to travel frequently in the Midlands at this time and visited many factories in the automobile industry. He was offered a job in the drawing office at Humber and lived for a couple of years in Kenilworth. While there he met Robert Boyle, Chief Engineer of Morris Motors (see Morris, William Richard), who offered him a job at Cowley. There he worked at first on the design of independent front suspension. At Morris Motors, he designed the Morris Minor, which entered production in 1948 and continued to be manufactured until 1971. Issigonis disliked mergers, and after the merger of Morris with Austin to form the British Motor Corporation (BMC) he left to join Alvis in 1952. The car he designed there, a V8 saloon, was built as a prototype but was never put into production. Following his return to BMC to become Technical Director in 1955, his most celebrated design was the Mini series, which entered production in 1959. This was a radically new concept: it was unique for its combination of a transversely mounted engine in unit with the gearbox, front wheel drive and rubber suspension system. This suspension system, designed in cooperation with Alex Moulton, was also a fundamental innovation, developed from the system designed by Moulton for the earlier Alvis prototype. Issigonis remained as Technical Director of BMC until his retirement.[br]Further ReadingPeter King, 1989, The Motor Men. Pioneers of the British Motor Industry, London: Quiller Press.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine (Alec)
-
10 Kirk, Alexander Carnegie
[br]b. c.1830 Barry, Angus, Scotlandd. 5 October 1892 Glasgow, Scotland[br]Scottish marine engineer, advocate of multiple-expansion in steam reciprocating engines.[br]Kirk was a son of the manse, and after attending school at Arbroath he proceeded to Edinburgh University. Following graduation he served an apprenticeship at the Vulcan Foundry, Glasgow, before serving first as Chief Draughtsman with the Thames shipbuilders and engineers Maudslay Sons \& Field, and later as Engineer of Paraffin Young's Works at Bathgate and West Calder in Lothian. He was credited with the inventions of many ingenious appliances and techniques for improving production in these two establishments. About 1866 Kirk returned to Glasgow as Manager of the Cranstonhill Engine Works, then moved to Elder's Shipyard (later known as the Fairfield Company) as Engineering Manager. There he made history in producing the world's first triple-expansion engines for the single-screw steamship Propontis in 1874. That decade was to confirm the Clyde's leading role as shipbuilders to the world and to establish the iron ship with efficient reciprocating machinery as the workhorse of the British Merchant Marine. Upon the death of the great Clyde shipbuilder Robert Napier in 1876, Kirk and others took over as partners in the shipbuilding yard and engine shops of Robert Napier \& Sons. There in 1881 they built a ship that is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of British shipbuilding: the SS Aberdeen for George Thompson's Aberdeen Line to the Far East. In this ship the fullest advantage was taken of high steam temperatures and pressures, which were expanded progressively in a three-cylinder configuration. The Aberdeen, in its many voyages from London to China and Japan, was to prove the efficiency of these engines that had been so carefully designed in Glasgow. In the following years Dr Kirk (he has always been known as Doctor, although his honorary LLD was only awarded by Glasgow University in 1888) persuaded the Admiralty and several shipping companies to accept not only triple-expansion machinery but also the use of mild steel in ship construction. The successful SS Parisian, built for the Allan Line of Glasgow, was one of these pioneer ships.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.FMWBiographical history of technology > Kirk, Alexander Carnegie
-
11 Mavor, Henry Alexander
[br]b. 1858 Stranraer, Scotlandd. 16 July 1915 Mauchline, Ayrshire, Scotland[br]Scottish engineer who pioneered the use of electricity for lighting, power and the propulsion of ships.[br]Mavor came from a distinguished Scottish family with connections in medicine, industry and the arts. On completion of his education at Glasgow University, he joined R.J.Crompton \& Co.; then in 1883, along with William C.Muir, he established the Glasgow firm which later became well known as Mavor and Coulson. It pioneered the supply of electricity to public undertakings and equipped the first two generating stations in Scotland. Mavor and his fellow directors appreciated the potential demand by industry in Glasgow for electricity. Two industries were especially well served; first, the coal-mines, where electric lighting and power transformed efficiency and safety beyond recognition; and second, marine engineering. Here Mavor recognized the importance of the variable-speed motor in working with marine propellers which have a tighter range of efficient working speeds. In 1911 he built a 50 ft (15 m) motor launch, appropriately named Electric Arc, at Dumbarton and fitted it with an alternating-current motor driven by a petrol engine and dynamo. Within two years British shipyards were building electrically powered ships, and by the beginning of the First World War the United States Navy had a 20,000-ton collier with this new form of propulsion.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsVice-President, Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland 1894–6.BibliographyMavor published several papers on electric power supply, distribution and the use of electricity for marine purposes in the Transactions of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland between the years 1890 and 1912.Further ReadingMavor and Coulson Ltd, 1911, Electric Propulsion of Ships, Glasgow.FMW -
12 Parkes, Alexander
[br]b. 29 December 1813 Birmingham, Englandd. 29 June 1890 West Dulwich, England[br]English chemist and inventor who made the first plastic material.[br]After serving apprentice to brassfounders in Birmingham, Parkes entered Elkington's, the celebrated metalworking firm, and took charge of their casting department. They were active in introducing electroplating and Parkes's first patent, of 1841, was for the electroplating of works of art. The electrodeposition of metals became a lifelong interest.Notably, he achieved the electroplating of fragile objects, such as flowers, which he patented in 1843. When Prince Albert visited Elkington's, he was presented with a spider's web coated with silver. Altogether, Parkes was granted sixty-six patents over a period of forty-six years, mainly relating to metallurgy.In 1841 he patented a process for waterproofing textiles by immersing them in a solution of indiarubber in carbon disulphide. Elkingtons manufactured such fabrics until they sold the process to Mackintosh Company, which continued making them for many years. While working for Elkingtons in south Wales, Parkes developed the use of zinc for desilvering lead. He obtained a patent in 1850 for this process, which was one of his most important inventions and became widely used.The year 1856 saw Parkes's first patent on pyroxylin, later called Xylonite or celluloid, the first plastic material. Articles made of Parkesine, as it came to be called, were shown at the International Exhibition in London in 1862, and he was awarded a medal for his work. Five years later, Parkesine featured at the Paris Exhibition. Even so, Parkes's efforts to promote the material commercially, particularly as a substitute for ivory, remained stubbornly unsuccessful.[br]Bibliography1850, British patent no. 13118 (the desilvering of lead). 1856, British patent no. 235 (the first on Parkesine).1865, Parkes gave an account of his invention of Parkesine in J.Roy.Arts, (1865), 14, 81–.Further ReadingObituary, 1890, Engineering, (25 July): 111.Obituary, 1890, Mining Journal (26 July): 855.LRD -
13 Pilkington, Sir Lionel Alexander Bethune (Alastair)
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 7 January 1920 Calcutta, India[br]English inventor of the float-glass process.[br]Pilkington was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in mechanical science. He spent one year at Cambridge followed by war service, which lasted until 1945. He returned to complete his degree and then joined Pilkington, the well-known glass manufacturer at St Helens' Lancashire, in 1947. Sir Alastair is not, however, related to the Pilkington family of glassmakers.The forming of perfectly flat glass that retained its fire finish had eluded glassmakers for centuries. Until the 1950s the only way of making really flat glass was to form plate glass by continuous casting between steel rollers. This destroyed the fire finish, which had to be restored by expensive grinding and polishing. The process entailed the loss of 20 per cent of good glass. The idea of floating glass on molten metal occurred to Sir Alastair in October 1952, and thereafter he remained in charge of development until commercial success had been achieved. The idea of floating molten glass on molten tin had been patented in the United States as early as 1902, but had never been pursued. The Pilkington process in essence was to float a ribbon of molten glass on a bath of molten tin in an inert atmosphere of nitrogen, to prevent oxidation of the tin. It was patented in Britain in 1957 and in the USA two years later. The first production glass issued from the plant in May 1957, although the first good glass did not appear until July 1958. The process was publicly announced the following year and was quickly taken up by the industry. It is now the universal method for manufacturing high quality flat glass.Having seen through the greatest single advance in glassmaking and one of the most important technological developments this century, Sir Alastair became Chairman of Pilkingtons until 1980 and President thereafter.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1970. FRS 1969. Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1991.Bibliography1969, "Float glass process—the review lecture", Royal Society (13 February). 1975, "Floating windows", Proceedings of the Royal Institution, Vol. 48.1976, "Float glass—evolution and revolution over 60 years", Glass Technology, Vol. 17, no. 5.1963, "The development of float glass", Glass Industry, (February).Further ReadingJ.Jewkes et al., 1969, The Sources of Invention, 2nd ed., London: Macmillan.LRDBiographical history of technology > Pilkington, Sir Lionel Alexander Bethune (Alastair)
-
14 Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew
[br]b. 25 March 1892 Kazan District, Russiad. 24 October 1980[br]Russian (naturalized American in 1932) electrical engineer responsible for the development of the professional tape recorder and the first commercially-successful video tape recorder (VTR).[br]Poniatoff was educated at the University of Kazan, the Imperial College in Moscow, and the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, gaining degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He was in Germany when the First World War broke out, but he managed to escape back to Russia, where he served as an Air Force pilot with the Imperial Russian Navy. During the Russian Revolution he was a pilot with the White Russian Forces, and escaped into China in 1920; there he found work as an assistant engineer in the Shanghai Power Company. In 1927 he immigrated to the USA, becoming a US citizen in 1932. He obtained a post in the research and development department of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, and later at Dalmo Victor, San Carlos, California. During the Second World War he was involved in the development of airborne radar for the US Navy.In 1944, taking his initials to form the title, Poniatoff founded the AMPEX Corporation to manufacture components for the airborne radar developed at General Electric, but in 1946 he turned to the production of audio tape recorders developed from the German wartime Telefunken Magnetophon machine (the first tape recorder in the truest sense). In this he was supported by the entertainer Bing Crosby, who needed high-quality replay facilities for broadcasting purposes, and in 1947 he was able to offer a professional-quality product and the business prospered.With the rapid post-war boom in television broadcasting in the USA, a need soon arose for a video recorder to provide "time-shifting" of live TV programmes between the different US time zones. Many companies therefore endeavoured to produce a video tape recorder (VTR) using the same single-track, fixed-head, longitudinal-scan system used for audio, but the very much higher bandwidth required involved an unacceptably high tape-speed. AMPEX attempted to solve the problem by using twelve parallel tracks and a machine was demonstrated in 1952, but it proved unsatisfactory.The development team, which included Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby, then devised a four-head transverse-scan system in which a quadruplex head rotating at 14,400 rpm was made to scan across the width of a 2 in. (5 cm) tape with a tape-to-head speed of the order of 160 ft/sec (about 110 mph; 49 m/sec or 176 km/h) but with a longitudinal tape speed of only 15 in./sec (0.38 m/sec). In this way, acceptable picture quality was obtained with an acceptable tape consumption. Following a public demonstration on 14 April 1956, commercial produc-tion of studio-quality machines began to revolutionize the production and distribution of TV programmes, and the perfecting of time-base correctors which could stabilize the signal timing to a few nanoseconds made colour VTRs a practical proposition. However, AMPEX did not rest on its laurels and in the face of emerging competition from helical scan machines, where the tracks are laid diagonally on the tape, the company was able to demonstrate its own helical machine in 1957. Another development was the Videofile system, in which 250,000 pages of facsimile could be recorded on a single tape, offering a new means of archiving information. By 1986, quadruplex VTRs were obsolete, but Poniatoff's role in making television recording possible deserves a place in history.Poniatoff was President of AMPEX Corporation until 1955 and then became Chairman of the Board, a position he held until 1970.[br]Further ReadingA.Abrahamson, 1953, "A short history of television recording", Part I, JSMPTE 64:73; 1973, Part II, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 82:188 (provides a fuller background).Audio Biographies, 1961, ed. G.A.Briggs, Wharfedale Wireless Works, pp. 255–61 (contains a few personal details about Poniatoff's escape from Germany to join the Russian Navy).E.Larsen, 1971, A History of Invention.Charles Ginsburg, 1981, "The horse or the cowboy. Getting television on tape", Journal of the Royal Television Society 18:11 (a brief account of the AMPEX VTR story).KF / GB-NBiographical history of technology > Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew
-
15 Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander
[br]b. 13 April 1892 Brechin, Angus, Scotlandd. 6 December 1973 Inverness, Scotland[br]Scottish engineer and scientific adviser known for his work on radar.[br]Following education at Brechin High School, Watson-Watt entered University College, Dundee (then a part of the University of St Andrews), obtaining a BSc in engineering in 1912. From 1912 until 1921 he was Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews, but during the First World War he also held various posts in the Meteorological Office. During. this time, in 1916 he proposed the use of cathode ray oscillographs for radio-direction-finding displays. He joined the newly formed Radio Research Station at Slough when it was opened in 1924, and 3 years later, when it amalgamated with the Radio Section of the National Physical Laboratory, he became Superintendent at Slough. At this time he proposed the name "ionosphere" for the ionized layer in the upper atmosphere. With E.V. Appleton and J.F.Herd he developed the "squegger" hard-valve transformer-coupled timebase and with the latter devised a direction-finding radio-goniometer.In 1933 he was asked to investigate possible aircraft counter-measures. He soon showed that it was impossible to make the wished-for radio "death-ray", but had the idea of using the detection of reflected radio-waves as a means of monitoring the approach of enemy aircraft. With six assistants he developed this idea and constructed an experimental system of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) in which arrays of aerials were used to detect the reflected signals and deduce the bearing and height. To realize a practical system, in September 1936 he was appointed Director of the Bawdsey Research Station near Felixstowe and carried out operational studies of radar. The result was that within two years the East Coast of the British Isles was equipped with a network of radar transmitters and receivers working in the 7–14 metre band—the so-called "chain-home" system—which did so much to assist the efficient deployment of RAF Fighter Command against German bombing raids on Britain in the early years of the Second World War.In 1938 he moved to the Air Ministry as Director of Communications Development, becoming Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, then Deputy Chairman of the War Cabinet Radio Board in 1943. After the war he set up Sir Robert Watson-Watt \& Partners, an industrial consultant firm. He then spent some years in relative retirement in Canada, but returned to Scotland before his death.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1942. CBE 1941. FRS 1941. US Medal of Merit 1946. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1948. Franklin Institute Elliot Cresson Medal 1957. LLD St Andrews 1943. At various times: President, Royal Meteorological Society, Institute of Navigation and Institute of Professional Civil Servants; Vice-President, American Institute of Radio Engineers.Bibliography1923, with E.V.Appleton \& J.F.Herd, British patent no. 235,254 (for the "squegger"). 1926, with J.F.Herd, "An instantaneous direction reading radio goniometer", Journal ofthe Institution of Electrical Engineers 64:611.1933, The Cathode Ray Oscillograph in Radio Research.1935, Through the Weather Hours (autobiography).1936, "Polarisation errors in direction finders", Wireless Engineer 13:3. 1958, Three Steps to Victory.1959, The Pulse of Radar.1961, Man's Means to his End.Further ReadingS.S.Swords, 1986, Technical History of the Beginnings of Radar, Stevenage: Peter Peregrinus.KFBiographical history of technology > Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander
-
16 Wood, Henry Alexander Wise
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 1 March 1866 New York, USAd. 9 April 1939 USA[br]American manufacturer and inventor of printing machinery, including a stereotype casting machine.[br]The son of a Congressman and mayor of New York, Wood was educated at Media Academy in Pennsylvania, specializing in scientific subjects. The death of his father in 1881 prevented his going on to college and he went to work at the Campbell Printing and Manufacturing Company, of which he became President in 1896. In the meantime, he had married the daughter of J.L.Brower, the previous head of the company. Later business consolidations brought into being the Wood Newspaper Machine Corporation.Wood was responsible for a series of inventions that brought great benefit to the newspaperprinting processes. Most notable was the Autoplate, patented first in 1900 and finally in 1903. This enabled a whole page of newspaper type to be cast in metal at once, saving much time and effort in the forming of stereotypes; this invention earned him the Elliott Cresson gold medal of the Franklin Institute in 1909. Other inventions were the Autoreel, a high-speed press-feeder device, and the Autopaster, which automatically replaced a spent paper roll with a new one in a newspaper press, without the need to stop the press. Wood's improved presses and inventions increased the speed of newspaper production from 24,000 to 60,000 copies per hour, printed and folded.He was also much interested in aviation and was an early member of the Aero Club of America, becoming its Vice-President for six years. He helped to found the magazine Flying and was its Editor from 1911 to 1919. He had predicted the part played by aircraft and submarines during the Second World War and was invited to join a panel of consulting inventors and engineers to assist the development of the US Navy. He was soon at odds with the authorities, however, and he resigned in 1915. After the war, he spent time in vigorous campaigning against immigration, America's entry into the League of Nations and on many other issues, in all of which he was highly controversial. Nevertheless, he retained his interest in the newspaper-machinery business, remaining President of his company until 1935 and Chairman of the Board thereafter. In 1934 he became Chairman of the NRA Code Authority of the newspaper-machine industry.[br]Further ReadingObituary, 1939, New York Times (10 April). Obituary, 1939, New York Herald Tribune (10 April).LRDBiographical history of technology > Wood, Henry Alexander Wise
-
17 Ports and shipping
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Armstrong, Sir William GeorgeEgerton, FrancisLi GaoPeter the GreatShen GuaStanhope, Charles -
18 Automotive engineering
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Austin, HerbertIssigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold ConstantineMorris, William Richard -
19 Chemical technology
-
20 Edison, Thomas Alva
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Automotive engineering, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Metallurgy, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities, Recording, Telecommunications[br]b. 11 February 1847 Milan, Ohio, USAd. 18 October 1931 Glenmont[br]American inventor and pioneer electrical developer.[br]He was the son of Samuel Edison, who was in the timber business. His schooling was delayed due to scarlet fever until 1855, when he was 8½ years old, but he was an avid reader. By the age of 14 he had a job as a newsboy on the railway from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles (101 km). He worked a fourteen-hour day with a stopover of five hours, which he spent in the Detroit Free Library. He also sold sweets on the train and, later, fruit and vegetables, and was soon making a profit of $20 a week. He then started two stores in Port Huron and used a spare freight car as a laboratory. He added a hand-printing press to produce 400 copies weekly of The Grand Trunk Herald, most of which he compiled and edited himself. He set himself to learn telegraphy from the station agent at Mount Clements, whose son he had saved from being run over by a freight car.At the age of 16 he became a telegraphist at Port Huron. In 1863 he became railway telegraphist at the busy Stratford Junction of the Grand Trunk Railroad, arranging a clock with a notched wheel to give the hourly signal which was to prove that he was awake and at his post! He left hurriedly after failing to hold a train which was nearly involved in a head-on collision. He usually worked the night shift, allowing himself time for experiments during the day. His first invention was an arrangement of two Morse registers so that a high-speed input could be decoded at a slower speed. Moving from place to place he held many positions as a telegraphist. In Boston he invented an automatic vote recorder for Congress and patented it, but the idea was rejected. This was the first of a total of 1180 patents that he was to take out during his lifetime. After six years he resigned from the Western Union Company to devote all his time to invention, his next idea being an improved ticker-tape machine for stockbrokers. He developed a duplex telegraphy system, but this was turned down by the Western Union Company. He then moved to New York.Edison found accommodation in the battery room of Law's Gold Reporting Company, sleeping in the cellar, and there his repair of a broken transmitter marked him as someone of special talents. His superior soon resigned, and he was promoted with a salary of $300 a month. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the sole rights on future improvements on the duplex telegraph, and he moved to Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey, where he employed a gathering of specialist engineers. Within a year, he married one of his employees, Mary Stilwell, when she was only 16: a daughter, Marion, was born in 1872, and two sons, Thomas and William, in 1876 and 1879, respectively.He continued to work on the automatic telegraph, a device to send out messages faster than they could be tapped out by hand: that is, over fifty words per minute or so. An earlier machine by Alexander Bain worked at up to 400 words per minute, but was not good over long distances. Edison agreed to work on improving this feature of Bain's machine for the Automatic Telegraph Company (ATC) for $40,000. He improved it to a working speed of 500 words per minute and ran a test between Washington and New York. Hoping to sell their equipment to the Post Office in Britain, ATC sent Edison to England in 1873 to negotiate. A 500-word message was to be sent from Liverpool to London every half-hour for six hours, followed by tests on 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of cable at Greenwich. Only confused results were obtained due to induction in the cable, which lay coiled in a water tank. Edison returned to New York, where he worked on his quadruplex telegraph system, tests of which proved a success between New York and Albany in December 1874. Unfortunately, simultaneous negotiation with Western Union and ATC resulted in a lawsuit.Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for a telephone in March 1876 while Edison was still working on the same idea. His improvements allowed the device to operate over a distance of hundreds of miles instead of only a few miles. Tests were carried out over the 106 miles (170 km) between New York and Philadelphia. Edison applied for a patent on the carbon-button transmitter in April 1877, Western Union agreeing to pay him $6,000 a year for the seventeen-year duration of the patent. In these years he was also working on the development of the electric lamp and on a duplicating machine which would make up to 3,000 copies from a stencil. In 1876–7 he moved from Newark to Menlo Park, twenty-four miles (39 km) from New York on the Pennsylvania Railway, near Elizabeth. He had bought a house there around which he built the premises that would become his "inventions factory". It was there that he began the use of his 200- page pocket notebooks, each of which lasted him about two weeks, so prolific were his ideas. When he died he left 3,400 of them filled with notes and sketches.Late in 1877 he applied for a patent for a phonograph which was granted on 19 February 1878, and by the end of the year he had formed a company to manufacture this totally new product. At the time, Edison saw the device primarily as a business aid rather than for entertainment, rather as a dictating machine. In August 1878 he was granted a British patent. In July 1878 he tried to measure the heat from the solar corona at a solar eclipse viewed from Rawlins, Wyoming, but his "tasimeter" was too sensitive.Probably his greatest achievement was "The Subdivision of the Electric Light" or the "glow bulb". He tried many materials for the filament before settling on carbon. He gave a demonstration of electric light by lighting up Menlo Park and inviting the public. Edison was, of course, faced with the problem of inventing and producing all the ancillaries which go to make up the electrical system of generation and distribution-meters, fuses, insulation, switches, cabling—even generators had to be designed and built; everything was new. He started a number of manufacturing companies to produce the various components needed.In 1881 he built the world's largest generator, which weighed 27 tons, to light 1,200 lamps at the Paris Exhibition. It was later moved to England to be used in the world's first central power station with steam engine drive at Holborn Viaduct, London. In September 1882 he started up his Pearl Street Generating Station in New York, which led to a worldwide increase in the application of electric power, particularly for lighting. At the same time as these developments, he built a 1,300yd (1,190m) electric railway at Menlo Park.On 9 August 1884 his wife died of typhoid. Using his telegraphic skills, he proposed to 19-year-old Mina Miller in Morse code while in the company of others on a train. He married her in February 1885 before buying a new house and estate at West Orange, New Jersey, building a new laboratory not far away in the Orange Valley.Edison used direct current which was limited to around 250 volts. Alternating current was largely developed by George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, using transformers to step up the current to a higher voltage for long-distance transmission. The use of AC gradually overtook the Edison DC system.In autumn 1888 he patented a form of cinephotography, the kinetoscope, obtaining film-stock from George Eastman. In 1893 he set up the first film studio, which was pivoted so as to catch the sun, with a hinged roof which could be raised. In 1894 kinetoscope parlours with "peep shows" were starting up in cities all over America. Competition came from the Latham Brothers with a screen-projection machine, which Edison answered with his "Vitascope", shown in New York in 1896. This showed pictures with accompanying sound, but there was some difficulty with synchronization. Edison also experimented with captions at this early date.In 1880 he filed a patent for a magnetic ore separator, the first of nearly sixty. He bought up deposits of low-grade iron ore which had been developed in the north of New Jersey. The process was a commercial success until the discovery of iron-rich ore in Minnesota rendered it uneconomic and uncompetitive. In 1898 cement rock was discovered in New Village, west of West Orange. Edison bought the land and started cement manufacture, using kilns twice the normal length and using half as much fuel to heat them as the normal type of kiln. In 1893 he met Henry Ford, who was building his second car, at an Edison convention. This started him on the development of a battery for an electric car on which he made over 9,000 experiments. In 1903 he sold his patent for wireless telegraphy "for a song" to Guglielmo Marconi.In 1910 Edison designed a prefabricated concrete house. In December 1914 fire destroyed three-quarters of the West Orange plant, but it was at once rebuilt, and with the threat of war Edison started to set up his own plants for making all the chemicals that he had previously been buying from Europe, such as carbolic acid, phenol, benzol, aniline dyes, etc. He was appointed President of the Navy Consulting Board, for whom, he said, he made some forty-five inventions, "but they were pigeonholed, every one of them". Thus did Edison find that the Navy did not take kindly to civilian interference.In 1927 he started the Edison Botanic Research Company, founded with similar investment from Ford and Firestone with the object of finding a substitute for overseas-produced rubber. In the first year he tested no fewer than 3,327 possible plants, in the second year, over 1,400, eventually developing a variety of Golden Rod which grew to 14 ft (4.3 m) in height. However, all this effort and money was wasted, due to the discovery of synthetic rubber.In October 1929 he was present at Henry Ford's opening of his Dearborn Museum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the incandescent lamp, including a replica of the Menlo Park laboratory. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He died in 1931 at his home, Glenmont; throughout the USA, lights were dimmed temporarily on the day of his funeral.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the American Academy of Sciences. Congressional Gold Medal.Further ReadingM.Josephson, 1951, Edison, Eyre \& Spottiswode.R.W.Clark, 1977, Edison, the Man who Made the Future, Macdonald \& Jane.IMcN
Страницы
См. также в других словарях:
Alexander I. — Alexander hießen folgende Herrscher: Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Herrscher namens Alexander 1.1 Alexander I. 1.2 Alexander II. 1.3 Alexander III. 1.4 Alexander IV … Deutsch Wikipedia
Alexander — stammt vom altgriechischen Namen Αλέξανδρος, Aléxandros, und bedeutet so viel wie Der die (fremden) Männer abwehrt und Der Beschützer. Die Bedeutung des Namens wird auch in Zusammenhang mit einem Golem in der jüdischen Mythologie gebracht,… … Deutsch Wikipedia
Alexander — Alexander, Christopher Alexander, islas de Alexander, sir Harold * * * (as used in expressions) William Alexander Abbott Agassiz, Alexander (Emmanuel Rodolphe) Alexander, archipiélago Alexander, Harold (Rupert Leofric George) Alexander, 1 conde… … Enciclopedia Universal
Alexander VI — Pope Alexander VI † Catholic Encyclopedia ► Pope Alexander VI Rodrigo Borgia, born at Xativa, near Valencia, in Spain, 1 January, 1431; died in Rome, 18 August, 1503. His parents were Jofre Lançol and Isabella Borja, sister of … Catholic encyclopedia
ALEXANDER° — ALEXANDER°, name of three Russian czars. ALEXANDER I, czar of Russia 1801–25. Alexander I s character and actions were to a large extent shaped by the vicissitudes he experienced in his struggle against napoleon . His ties with Metternich and the … Encyclopedia of Judaism
Alexander — puede refererirse a: Alexander Artículos en Wikipedia Todas las páginas que comienzan por «Alexander» Contenido 1 Personajes 2 … Wikipedia Español
Alexander V — • Pietro Philarghi, born c. 1339, on the island of Crete (Candia), whence his appellation, Peter of Candia; elected 26 June, 1409; died at Bologna, 3 May, 1410 Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006. Alexander V … Catholic encyclopedia
Alexander — Alexander, AR U.S. town in Arkansas Population (2000): 614 Housing Units (2000): 305 Land area (2000): 0.448323 sq. miles (1.161152 sq. km) Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km) Total area (2000): 0.448323 sq. miles (1.161152 sq … StarDict's U.S. Gazetteer Places
Alexander I — may refer to:*Alexander I of Macedon, king of Macedon 495 450 B.C. *Alexander I of Epirus King of Epirus about 342 B.C. *Pope Alexander I, Pope from 106 to 115 *Alexander I of Scotland (c. 1078 1124), King of Scotland *Alexandru I cel Bun… … Wikipedia
ALEXANDER° — ALEXANDER°, name of seven popes. The following are the most significant for Jewish history: ALEXANDER II, reigned 1061–73, consistently followed the policy set by Pope gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century of applying suasion rather… … Encyclopedia of Judaism
ALEXANDER — (c. 36–7 B.C.E.), son of herod and mariamne . As Herod s heir presumptive, Alexander was educated in Rome with his younger brother Aristobulus from c. 23–17 B.C.E. On his return to Judea he married Glaphyra, the daughter of Archelaus, king of… … Encyclopedia of Judaism
