american-built+es

= American-built

Ex. Technical difficulties beset the development of the Monotype through the 1890s, and it was not until 1901 that the English Monotype Corporation could offer American-built machines in quantity.

* * *

1 America.

2 America.

* * *

► nombre femenino

1 America

\

América Central Central America

América del Norte North America

América del Sur South America

América Latina Latin America

* * *

* * *

SF (=continente, Norteamérica) America; LAm (=Hispanoamérica) South America, Spanish America, Latin America

* * *

femenino ( continente) America

- América Central/del Norte/del Sur

- América Latina

* * *

= America.

Ex. The fruits of Mr. Kilgour's labors and creations have substantially altered the texture of contemporary America library service = Los frutos de los trabajos y creaciones del Sr. Kilgour han alterado sustancialmente la naturaleza del servicio bibliotecario de la América contemporánea.

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* América Central = Central America.

* América colonial, la = Colonial America.

* América de habla hispana = Spanish America.

* América del Sur = South America.

* América Latina = Latin America.

* con sede en América = American-based.

* hecho en América = American-built.

* norte de América = northern America.

* publicado en América = American-published.

* Sociedad Bibliográfica de America = Bibliographical Society of America.

* * *

femenino ( continente) America

- América Central/del Norte/del Sur

- América Latina

* * *

* * *

A (continente) America

el descubrimiento de América the discovery of America

se usa más en América que en España it's used more in Latin America than in Spain

flora que sólo se da en América flora found only in America o in the Americas

hacerse la América to make a fortune, get rich

Central America

North America

South America

Latin America

B ( Esp) (Estados Unidos) America, the States (pl)

* * *

◊ hacerse la américa to make a fortune, get rich;

* * *

América n

un vocablo típico del español de América a word which is typical of Latin American Spanish;

el comercio de esclavos hacia América the slave trade with the Americas

América Latina Latin America;

América del Norte North America;

América del Sur South America

* * *

f America;

hacer las Américas make a fortune

1 made, done.

2 made, created.

1 done.

2 agreed.

1 fact, point of fact, event, happening.

2 act, feat, deed, action.

past participle of spanish verb: hacer.

* * *

► nombre masculino

1 (realidad) fact

2 (suceso) event, incident

► interjección

► participio pasado

1→ link=hacer hacer

► adjetivo

1 (carne) done

2 (persona) mature

3 (frase, expresión) set

4 (ropa) ready-made

► nombre masculino hecho

1 (realidad) fact

2 (suceso) event, incident

► interjección ¡hecho!

1 done!, agreed!

\

a lo hecho pecho it's no use crying over spilt milk

¡bien hecho! well done!

de hecho in fact

el hecho es que... the fact is that...

eso está hecho figurado that won't take long, that'll only take a minute

estar hecho,-a un,-a... to be...

■ esta habitación está hecha un asco this room is in a right mess

■ está hecho un vago he's a real waster, he's a real layabout

hecho,-a a mano handmade

hecho,-a a máquina machine-made

hecho,-a en casa home-made

hechos son amores actions speak louder than words

lo hecho hecho está what's done is done

muy hecho,-a (carne) well-cooked 2 (pasada) overdone

poco,-a hecho,-a (carne) rare 2 (insuficientemente) underdone

ser un hombre hecho y derecho to be a real man

hecho consumado fait accompli

hecho de armas feat of arms

Hechos de los Apóstoles RELIGIÓN Acts of the Apostles

* * *

1) fact

2) deed

3) event

² = executed.

Ex. What was pinned up ranged from sheets of paper with nothing more written on them than a title and author to elaborate and beautifully executed illustrations.

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* a lo hecho, pecho = no use crying over spilt/spilled milk, you've made your bed, now you must lie in it!.

* bien hecho = well-rendered, well done.

* cartón hecho de paja = strawboard.

* comprar Algo hecho en serie = buy + off-the-shelf.

* comprar Algo ya hecho de antemano = buy + off-the-shelf.

* cosa hecha = plain sailing, walkover.

* dado por hecho = foregone.

* dando por hecho que = based on the understanding that, on the understanding that.

* dar por hecho = take for + granted.

* dejar hecho polvo = screw + Nombre + up.

* dicho y hecho = no sooner said than done.

* estar hecho a escala = be to scale.

* estar hecho con la intención de = be intended for/to.

* estar hecho con la mismas dimensiones que el original = be to scale.

* estar hecho el uno para el otro = be two of a kind, be a right pair.

* estar hecho para = be geared to, be intended for/to, mean, be cut out for.

* estar hecho polvo = be + wreck.

* estar hecho un desastre = be a shambles, look like + the wreck of the Hesperus, look like + drag + through a hedge backwards, be (in) a mess.

* estar hecho un esqueleto = be a bag of bones.

* frase hecha = bound phrase, cliche, formulaic words, formulaic phrase.

* hecho a base de parches = patchwork.

* hecho a mano = hand-made, hand-drawn, handcrafted.

* hecho a máquina = machine-made.

* hecho a medida = customised [customized, -USA], purpose-designed, tailored, tailor-made [tailormade], custom-made, custom-built [custom built], custom-designed [custom designed], custom-tailored [custom tailored], bespoke, made to measure, fitted, made-to-order.

* hecho añicos = shattered.

* hecho a propósito = tailor-made [tailormade], custom-made, custom-built [custom built], custom-designed [custom designed], custom-tailored [custom tailored].

* hecho cisco = wrecked.

* hecho como de pasada = throwaway.

* hecho de antemano = off-the-peg, ready-made.

* hecho de encaje = lacy.

* hecho de grava = metalled [metaled, -USA].

* hecho de trozos = piecewise.

* hecho de un modo gratuito = pro bono.

* hecho en América = American-built.

* hecho en casa = homespun, homemade.

* hecho en el extranjero = foreign-made.

* hecho en el Reino Unido = British-made.

* hecho en lugar de otra persona = delegated.

* hecho exclusivamente para = born and bred.

* hecho exclusivamente para la web = Web-centric.

* hecho expresamente para = intended for.

* hecho para una situación específica = niche-specific.

* hecho para una única ocasión = one shot.

* hecho polvo = wrecked, dog tired.

* hecho por el autor = author-designated, author-prepared.

* hecho por el hombre = man-made.

* hecho por encargo = tailor-made [tailormade], bespoke, custom-made, custom-built [custom built], custom-designed [custom designed], custom-tailored [custom tailored], made-to-order, made to measure.

* hecho por la OCLC = OCLC-produced.

* hecho por la propia biblioteca = in-house [inhouse].

* hecho por multicopista = mimeographed.

* hecho por uno mismo = home-grown [home grown/homegrown], home-produced, self-made.

* hecho puré = mashed.

* hecho recientemente = fresh-made.

* hechos el uno para el otro = made for each other.

* hecho una salsa = saucy [saucier -comp., sauciest -sup.].

* hecho una sopa = drenched to the skin, wringing wet, soaked to the skin, soaking wet, wet through to the skin.

* hecho un desastre = in shambles, like the wreck of the Hesperus, upside down.

* hecho un toro = as strong as an ox.

* hecho y derecho = full-bodied, full-scale, full-service, fully-fledged.

* ir hecho un desastre = look like + drag + through a hedge backwards, look like + the wreck of the Hesperus.

* lo hecho hecho está = no use crying over spilt/spilled milk.

* mal hecho para = ill suited to/for.

* medio hecho = halfway done, half done.

* menos hecho = rarer.

* páguese por el uso hecho = pay-as-you-go.

* papel hecho a mano = hand-made paper.

* papel hecho a máquina = machine-made paper.

* papel verjurado hecho a máquina = machine-made laid paper.

* ponerse hecho una fiera = go + ballistic, go + berserk, go + postal, lose + Posesivo + temper.

* ponerse hecho una furia = go + berserk, go + postal, lose + Posesivo + temper.

* ponerse hecho un basilisco = go + ballistic, go + berserk, go + postal, lose + Posesivo + temper.

* ponerse hecho un energúmeno = go + ballistic.

* recién hecho = hot off the griddle.

* resumen hecho para una disciplina concreta = discipline-oriented abstract.

* sistema informático hecho por encargo = tailored system.

* solución hecha = cut-and-dried solution.

* tener Algo hecho a la medida de uno = have + Nombre + cut out.

* tenerlo todo hecho = have + an easy ride.

* un trabajo bien hecho = a job well done.

(n.) = difficulties + beset

Ex. Technical difficulties beset the development of the Monotype through the 1890s, and it was not until 1901 that the English Monotype Corporation could offer American-built machines in quantity.

* * *

= through + Década

Ex. Technical difficulties beset the development of the Monotype through the 1890s, and it was not until 1901 that the English Monotype Corporation could offer American-built machines in quantity.

* * *

monotype.

* * *

SF Monotype ®

* * *

= Monotype.

Ex. Technical difficulties beset the development of the Monotype through the 1890s, and it was not until 1901 that the English Monotype Corporation could offer American-built machines in quantity.

* * *

* * *

monotipia nf, monotipo nm

monotype

(v.) = offer + in quantity

Ex. Technical difficulties beset the development of the Monotype through the 1890s, and it was not until 1901 that the English Monotype Corporation could offer American-built machines in quantity.

* * *

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Allen was the Resident Engineer for construction of the Delaware \& Hudson Canal and in 1828 was instructed by J.B. Jervis to visit England to purchase locomotives for the canal's rail extension. He drove the locomotive Stourbridge Lion, built by J.U. Rastrick, on its first trial on 9 August 1829, but weak track prevented its regular use.

Allen was present at the Rainhill Trials on the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in October 1829. So was E.L.Miller, one of the promoters of the South Carolina Canal \& Rail Road Company, to which Allen was appointed Chief Engineer that autumn. Allen was influential in introducing locomotives to this railway, and the West Point Foundry built a locomotive for it to his design; it was the first locomotive built in the USA for sale. This locomotive, which bore some resemblance to Novelty, built for Rainhill by John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, was named Best Friend of Charleston. On Christmas Day 1830 it hauled the first scheduled steam train to run in America, carrying 141 passengers.

In 1832 the West Point Foundry built four double-ended, articulated 2–2–0+0–2–2 locomotives to Horatio Allen's design for the South Carolina railroad. From each end of a central firebox extended two boiler barrels side by side with common smokeboxes and chimneys; wheels were mounted on swivelling sub-frames, one at each end, beneath these boilers. Allen's principal object was to produce a powerful locomotive with a light axle loading.

Allen subsequently became a partner in Stillman, Allen \& Co. of New York, builders of marine engines, and in 1843 was President of the Erie Railroad.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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After apprenticeship as a jeweller, Baldwin set up a machinery manufacturing business, and built stationary steam engines and, in 1832, his first locomotive, Old Ironsides, for the then-new Philadelphia, Germantown \& Norristown Railroad. Old Ironsides achieved only 1 mph (1.6 km/h) on trial, but after experimentation reached 28 mph (45 km/h). Over the next ten years Baldwin built many stationary engines and ten more locomotives, and subsequently built locomotives exclusively.

He steadily introduced detail improvements in locomotive design; standardized components by means of templates and gauges from 1838 onwards; introduced the cylinder cast integrally with half of the smokebox saddle in 1858; and in 1862 imported steel tyres, which had first been manufactured in Germany by Krupp of Essen in 1851, and began the practice in the USA of shrinking them on to locomotive wheels. At the time of Matthias Baldwin's death, the Baldwin Locomotive Works had built some 1,500 locomotives: it went on to become the largest locomotive building firm to develop from a single foundation, and by the time it built its last steam locomotive, in 1955, had produced about 75,000 in total.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Automotive engineering, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Metallurgy, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities, Recording, Telecommunications

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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He was the son of an Irish immigrant farmer, William Ford, and the oldest son to survive of Mary Litogot; his mother died in 1876 with the birth of her sixth child. He went to the village school, and at the age of 16 he was apprenticed to Flower brothers' machine shop and then at the Drydock \& Engineering Works in Detroit. In 1882 he left to return to the family farm and spent some time working with a 1 1/2 hp steam engine doing odd jobs for the farming community at $3 per day. He was then employed as a demonstrator for Westinghouse steam engines. He met Clara Jane Bryant at New Year 1885 and they were married on 11 April 1888. Their only child, Edsel Bryant Ford, was born on 6 November 1893.

At that time Henry worked on steam engine repairs for the Edison Illuminating Company, where he became Chief Engineer. He became one of a group working to develop a "horseless carriage" in 1896 and in June completed his first vehicle, a "quadri cycle" with a two-cylinder engine. It was built in a brick shed, which had to be partially demolished to get the carriage out.

Ford became involved in motor racing, at which he was more successful than he was in starting a car-manufacturing company. Several early ventures failed, until the Ford Motor Company of 1903. By October 1908 they had started with production of the Model T. The first, of which over 15 million were built up to the end of its production in May 1927, came out with bought-out steel stampings and a planetary gearbox, and had a one-piece four-cylinder block with a bolt-on head. This was one of the most successful models built by Ford or any other motor manufacturer in the life of the motor car.

Interchangeability of components was an important element in Ford's philosophy. Ford was a pioneer in the use of vanadium steel for engine components. He adopted the principles of Frederick Taylor, the pioneer of time-and-motion study, and installed the world's first moving assembly line for the production of magnetos, started in 1913. He installed blast furnaces at the factory to make his own steel, and he also promoted research and the cultivation of the soya bean, from which a plastic was derived.

In October 1913 he introduced the "Five Dollar Day", almost doubling the normal rate of pay. This was a profit-sharing scheme for his employees and contained an element of a reward for good behaviour. About this time he initiated work on an agricultural tractor, the "Fordson" made by a separate company, the directors of which were Henry and his son Edsel.

In 1915 he chartered the Oscar II, a "peace ship", and with fifty-five delegates sailed for Europe a week before Christmas, docking at Oslo. Their objective was to appeal to all European Heads of State to stop the war. He had hoped to persuade manufacturers to replace armaments with tractors in their production programmes. In the event, Ford took to his bed in the hotel with a chill, stayed there for five days and then sailed for New York and home. He did, however, continue to finance the peace activists who remained in Europe. Back in America, he stood for election to the US Senate but was defeated. He was probably the father of John Dahlinger, illegitimate son of Evangeline Dahlinger, a stenographer employed by the firm and on whom he lavished gifts of cars, clothes and properties. He became the owner of a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which became the medium for the expression of many of his more unorthodox ideas. He was involved in a lawsuit with the Chicago Tribune in 1919, during which he was cross-examined on his knowledge of American history: he is reputed to have said "History is bunk". What he actually said was, "History is bunk as it is taught in schools", a very different comment. The lawyers who thus made a fool of him would have been surprised if they could have foreseen the force and energy that their actions were to release. For years Ford employed a team of specialists to scour America and Europe for furniture, artefacts and relics of all kinds, illustrating various aspects of history. Starting with the Wayside Inn from South Sudbury, Massachusetts, buildings were bought, dismantled and moved, to be reconstructed in Greenfield Village, near Dearborn. The courthouse where Abraham Lincoln had practised law and the Ohio bicycle shop where the Wright brothers built their first primitive aeroplane were added to the farmhouse where the proprietor, Henry Ford, had been born. Replicas were made of Independence Hall, Congress Hall and the old City Hall in Philadelphia, and even a reconstruction of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory was installed. The Henry Ford museum was officially opened on 21 October 1929, on the fiftieth anniversary of Edison's invention of the incandescent bulb, but it continued to be a primary preoccupation of the great American car maker until his death.

Henry Ford was also responsible for a number of aeronautical developments at the Ford Airport at Dearborn. He introduced the first use of radio to guide a commercial aircraft, the first regular airmail service in the United States. He also manufactured the country's first all-metal multi-engined plane, the Ford Tri-Motor.

Edsel became President of the Ford Motor Company on his father's resignation from that position on 30 December 1918. Following the end of production in May 1927 of the Model T, the replacement Model A was not in production for another six months. During this period Henry Ford, though officially retired from the presidency of the company, repeatedly interfered and countermanded the orders of his son, ostensibly the man in charge. Edsel, who died of stomach cancer at his home at Grosse Point, Detroit, on 26 May 1943, was the father of Henry Ford II. Henry Ford died at his home, "Fair Lane", four years after his son's death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Domestic appliances and interiors

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Breuer began his student days following an art course in Vienna, but joined the Bauhaus at Weimar, where he later graduated, in 1920. When Gropius re-established the school in purpose-built structures at Dessau, Breuer became a member of the teaching staff in charge of the carpentry and furniture workshops. Much of his time there was spent in design and research into new materials being applied to furniture and interior decoration. The essence of his contribution was to relate the design of furniture to industrial production; in this field he developed the tubular-steel structure, especially in chair design, and experimented with aluminium as a furniture material as well as pieces of furniture made up from modular units. His furniture style was characterized by an elegance of line and a careful avoidance of superfluous detail. By 1926 he had furnished the Bauhaus with such furniture in chromium-plated steel, and two years later had developed a cantilevered chair.

Breuer left the Bauhaus in 1928 and set up an architectural practice in Berlin. In the early 1930s he also spent some time in Switzerland. Notable from these years was his Harnischmacher Haus in Wiesbaden and his apartment buildings in the Dolderthal area of Zurich. His architectural work was at first influenced by constructivism, and then by that of Le Corbusier (see Charles-Edouard Jeanneret). In 1935 he moved to England, where in partnership with F.R.S. Yorke he built some houses and continued to practise furniture design. The Isokon Furniture Co. commissioned him to develop ideas that took advantage of the new bending and moulding processes in laminated wood, one result being his much-copied reclining chair.

In 1937, like so many of the European architectural refugees from Nazism, he found himself under-occupied due to the reluctance of English clients to embrace the modern architectural movement. He went to the United States at Gropius's invitation to join him as a professor at Harvard. Breuer and Gropius were influential in training a new generation of American architects, and in particular they built a number of houses. This partnership ended in 1941 and Breuer set up practice in New York. His style of work from this time on was still modern, but became more varied. In housing, he adapted his style to American needs and used local materials in a functional manner. In the Whitney Museum (1966) he worked in a sculptural, granite-clad style. Often he utilized a bold reinforced-concrete form, as in his collaboration with Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss in the Paris UNESCO Building (1953–8) and the US Embassy in the Hague (1954–8). He displayed his masterly handling of poured concrete used in a strikingly expressionistic, sculptural manner in his St John's Abbey (1953–61) in Collegeville, Minnesota, and in 1973 his Church of St Francis de Sale in Michigan won him the top award of the American Institute of Architects.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Winans arrived in Baltimore in 1828 to sell horses to the Baltimore \& Ohio Railroad (B \& O), which was then under construction. To reduce friction in rail vehicles, he devised a system of axles which ran in oil-baths, with outside bearings. He demonstrated a hand-driven wagon with this system at the Rainhill Trials; the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway bought some wagons fitted with the system, but found them on test to be inferior to wagons with grease axle boxes. Back in Baltimore, Winans assisted Peter Cooper in building Tom Thumb. He took charge of the B \& O shops c.1834; he is said to have built the first eight-wheeled passenger coach and to have been the first to mount such a coach on two four-wheeled trucks or bogies. The arrangement soon became standard American practice, and, with partners, he built over 100 locomotives for the B \& O. In 1847 he pioneered the use of anthracite as locomotive fuel, and from 1848 he built his "Camel" locomotives with the driver's cab above the boiler.

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See also: Stephenson, George

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Wright began his career in 1887 working in the Chicago offices of Adler \& Sullivan. He conceived a great admiration for Sullivan, who was then concentrating upon large commercial projects in modern mode, producing functional yet decorative buildings which took all possible advantage of new structural methods. Wright was responsible for many of the domestic commissions.

In 1893 Wright left the firm in order to set up practice on his own, thus initiating a career which was to develop into three distinct phases. In the first of these, up until the First World War, he was chiefly designing houses in a concept in which he envisaged "the house as a shelter". These buildings displayed his deeply held opinion that detached houses in country areas should be designed as an integral part of the landscape, a view later to be evidenced strongly in the work of modern Finnish architects. Wright's designs were called "prairie houses" because so many of them were built in the MidWest of America, which Wright described as a "prairie". These were low and spreading, with gently sloping rooflines, very plain and clean lined, built of traditional materials in warm rural colours, blending softly into their settings. Typical was W.W.Willit's house of 1902 in Highland Park, Illinois.

In the second phase of his career Wright began to build more extensively in modern materials, utilizing advanced means of construction. A notable example was his remarkable Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, carefully designed and built in 1916–22 (now demolished), with special foundations and structure to withstand (successfully) strong earthquake tremors. He also became interested in the possibilities of reinforced concrete; in 1906 he built his church at Oak Park, Illinois, entirely of this material. In the 1920s, in California, he abandoned his use of traditional materials for house building in favour of precast concrete blocks, which were intended to provide an "organic" continuity between structure and decorative surfacing. In his continued exploration of the possibilities of concrete as a building material, he created the dramatic concept of'Falling Water', a house built in 1935–7 at Bear Run in Pennsylvania in which he projected massive reinforced-concrete terraces cantilevered from a cliff over a waterfall in the woodlands. In the later 1930s an extraordinary run of original concepts came from Wright, then nearing 70 years of age, ranging from his own winter residence and studio, Taliesin West in Arizona, to the administration block for Johnson Wax (1936–9) in Racine, Wisconsin, where the main interior ceiling was supported by Minoan-style, inversely tapered concrete columns rising to spreading circular capitals which contained lighting tubes of Pyrex glass.

Frank Lloyd Wright continued to work until four days before his death at the age of 91. One of his most important and certainly controversial commissions was the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York. This had been proposed in 1943 but was not finally built until 1956–9; in this striking design the museum's exhibition areas are ranged along a gradually mounting spiral ramp lit effectively from above. Controversy stemmed from the unusual and original design of exterior banding and interior descending spiral for wall-display of paintings: some critics strongly approved, while others, equally strongly, did not.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Ports and shipping, Railways and locomotives

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Stevens, a wealthy landowner with an estate at Hoboken on the Hudson River, had his attention drawn to the steamboat of John Fitch in 1786, and thenceforth devoted much of his time and fortune to developing steamboats and mechanical transport. He also had political influence and it was at his instance that Congress in 1790 passed an Act establishing the first patent laws in the USA. The following year Stevens was one of the first recipients of a US patent. This referred to multi-tubular boilers, of both watertube and firetube types, and antedated by many years the work of both Henry Booth and Marc Seguin on the latter.

A steamboat built in 1798 by John Stevens, Nicholas J.Roosevelt and Stevens's brother-in-law, Robert R.Livingston, in association was unsuccessful, nor was Stevens satisfied with a boat built in 1802 in which a simple rotary steam-en-gine was mounted on the same shaft as a screw propeller. However, although others had experimented earlier with screw propellers, when John Stevens had the Little Juliana built in 1804 he produced the first practical screw steamboat. Steam at 50 psi (3.5 kg/cm²) pressure was supplied by a watertube boiler to a single-cylinder engine which drove two contra-rotating shafts, upon each of which was mounted a screw propeller. This little boat, less than 25 ft (7.6 m) long, was taken backwards and forwards across the Hudson River by two of Stevens's sons, one of whom, R.L. Stevens, was to help his father with many subsequent experiments. The boat, however, was ahead of its time, and steamships were to be driven by paddle wheels until the late 1830s.

In 1807 John Stevens declined an invitation to join with Robert Fulton and Robert R.Living-ston in their development work, which culminated in successful operation of the PS Clermont that summer; in 1808, however, he launched his own paddle steamer, the Phoenix. But Fulton and Livingston had obtained an effective monopoly of steamer operation on the Hudson and, unable to reach agreement with them, Stevens sent Phoenix to Philadelphia to operate on the Delaware River. The intervening voyage over 150 miles (240 km) of open sea made Phoenix the first ocean-going steamer.

From about 1810 John Stevens turned his attention to the possibilities of railways. He was at first considered a visionary, but in 1815, at his instance, the New Jersey Assembly created a company to build a railway between the Delaware and Raritan Rivers. It was the first railway charter granted in the USA, although the line it authorized remained unbuilt. To demonstrate the feasibility of the steam locomotive, Stevens built an experimental locomotive in 1825, at the age of 76. With flangeless wheels, guide rollers and rack-and-pinion drive, it ran on a circular track at his Hoboken home; it was the first steam locomotive to be built in America.

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See also: Allen, Horatio; Cooper, Peter

SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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Richard S.Lawrence received only an elementary education and as a young man worked on local farms and later in a woodworking shop. His work there included making carpenters' and joiners' tools and he spent some of his spare time in a local gunsmith's shop. After a brief period of service in the Army, he obtained employment in 1838 with N.Kendall \& Co. of Windsor, Vermont, making guns at the Windsor prison. Within six months he was put in charge of the work, continuing in this position until 1842 when the gun-making ceased; he remained at the prison for a time in charge of the carriage shop. In 1843 he opened a gun shop in Windsor in partnership with Kendall, and the next year S.E. Robbins, a businessman, helped them obtain a contract from the Federal Government for 10,000 rifles. A new company, Robbins, Kendall \& Lawrence, was formed and a factory was built at Windsor. Three years later Kendall's share of the business was purchased by his partners and the firm became Robbins \& Lawrence. Lawrence supervised the design and production and, to improve methods of manufacture, developed new machine tools with the aid of F.W. Howe. In 1850 Lawrence introduced the lubrication of bullets, which practice ensured the success of the breech-loading rifle. Also in 1850, the company undertook to manufacture railway cars, but this involved them in a considerable financial loss. The company took to the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, England, a set of rifles built on the interchangeable system. The interest this created resulted in a visit of some members of the British Royal Small Arms Commission to America and subsequently an order for 150 machine tools, jigs and fixtures from Robbins \& Lawrence, to be installed at the small-arms factory at Enfield. In 1852 the company contracted to manufacture Sharps rifles and carbines at a new factory to be built at Hartford, Connecticut. Lawrence moved to Hartford in 1853 to superintend the building and equipment of the plant. Shortly afterwards, however, a promised order for a large number of rifles failed to materialize and, following its earlier financial difficulties, Robbins \& Lawrence was forced into bankruptcy. The Hartford plant was acquired by the Sharps Rifle Company in 1856 and Lawrence remained there as Superintendent until 1872. From then he was for many years Superintendent of Streets in the city of Hartford and he also served on the Water Board, the Board of Aldermen and as Chairman of the Fire Board.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors, Textiles

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The son of a millwright, Singer was employed as an unskilled labourer at the age of 12, but later gained wide experience as a travelling machinist. He also found employment as an actor. On 16 May 1839, while living at Lockport, Illinois, he obtained his first patent for a rock-drilling machine, but he soon squandered the money he made. Then in 1849, while at Pittsburgh, he secured a patent for a wood-and metal-carving machine that he had begun five years previously; however, a boiler explosion in the factory destroyed his machine and left him penniless.

Near the end of 1850 Singer was engaged to redesign the Lerow \& Blodgett sewing machine at the Boston shop of Orson C.Phelps, where the machine was being repaired. He built an improved version in eleven days that was sufficiently different for him to patent on 12 August 1851. He formed a partnership with Phelps and G.B. Zieber and they began to market the invention. Singer soon purchased Phelps's interest, although Phelps continued to manufacture the machines. Then Edward Clark acquired a one-third interest and with Singer bought out Zieber. These two, with dark's flair for promotion and marketing, began to create a company which eventually would become the largest manufacturer of sewing machines exported worldwide, with subsidiary factories in England.

However, first Singer had to defend his patent, which was challenged by an earlier Boston inventor, Elias Howe. Although after a long lawsuit Singer had to pay royalties, it was the Singer machine which eventually captured the market because it could do continuous stitching. In 1856 the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important pooling arrangement in American history, was formed to share the various patents so that machines could be built without infringements and manufacture could be expanded without fear of litigation. Singer contributed his monopoly on the needle-bar cam with his 1851 patent. He secured twenty additional patents, so that his original straight-needle vertical design for lock-stitching eventually included such refinements as a continuous wheel-feed, yielding presser-foot, and improved cam for moving the needle-bar. A new model, introduced in 1856, was the first to be intended solely for use in the home.

Initially Phelps made all the machines for Singer. Then a works was established in New York where the parts were assembled by skilled workers through filing and fitting. Each machine was therefore a "one-off" but Singer machines were always advertised as the best on the market and sold at correspondingly high prices. Gradually, more specialized machine tools were acquired, but it was not until long after Singer had retired to Europe in 1863 that Clark made the change to mass production. Sales of machines numbered 810 in 1853 and 21,000 ten years later.

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