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  • 101 Merritt, William Hamilton

    SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering
    [br]
    b. 3 July 1793 Bedford, Winchester County, New York, USA
    d. 5 July 1862 aboard a vessel on the Cornwall Canal, Canada
    [br]
    American-born Canadian merchant, entrepreneur and promoter of the First and Second Welland Canals bypassing the Niagara Falls and linking Lakes Ontario and Erie.
    [br]
    Although he was born in the USA, his family moved to Canada in 1796. Educated in St Catharines and Niagara, he received a good training in mathematics, navigation and surveying. He served with distinction in the 1812–14 war, although he was captured by the Americans in 1814. After the war he established himself in business operating a sawmill, a flour mill, a small distillery, a potashery, a cooperage and a smithy, as well as running a general store. By 1818 he was one of the leading figures in the area and realized that for real economic progress it was essential to improve communications in the Niagara peninsula; in that year he surveyed a route for a waterway that would carry boats.
    In c. 1820 he began discussions with neighbouring landowners and businessmen, who, on 19 January 1824 together obtained a charter for building the first Welland Canal to link Lakes Ontario and Erie. They were greatly influenced by the realization that the completion of the Erie Canal would attract trade through the United States instead of through Canada. Construction began on 30 November 1824, largely with redundant labour from the Erie Canal. Merritt foresaw the need for financial support and for publicity to sustain interest in the project. Accordingly he started a newspaper, the Farmer's Journal and Welland Canal Intelligencer, which was published until 1835. He also visited York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and obtained some support, but the Government was reluctant to assist financially. He was more successful in raising money in New York. Then in 1828 he visited England to see Telford and persuaded both Telford and the Duke of Wellington, among others, to purchase shares. The Canal opened on 30 November 1829. In 1832 Merritt became a member of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, and after the Union of the Canadas in 1841 he was elected to the new Assembly, later serving as Minister of Public Works and then as President of the Assembly. He advocated improvements to the St Lawrence River and also promoted railways. He pioneered a bridge across the Niagara River that was opened in 1849 and later carried a railway. He was not a canal engineer, but he did pioneer communications in developing territory.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    R.M.Styran and R.R.Taylor, 1988, The Welland Canals. The Growth of Mr Merritt's
    Ditch, Erin, Ont.: Boston Mills Press.
    JHB

    Biographical history of technology > Merritt, William Hamilton

  • 102 Pasley, General Sir Charles William

    SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering
    [br]
    b. 8 September 1780 Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland
    d. 19 April 1861 London, England
    [br]
    Scottish Colonel-Commandant, Royal Engineers.
    [br]
    At first he was educated by Andrew Little of Lan-gholm. At the age of 14 he was sent to school at Selkirk, where he stayed for two years until joining the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in August 1796. He was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and transferred to the Royal Engineers on 1 April 1798. He served at Minorca, Malta, Naples, Sicily, Calabria and in the siege of Copenhagen and in other campaigns. He was promoted First Captain in 1807, and was on the staff of Sir John Moore at the battle of Coruna. He was wounded at the siege of Flushing in 1809 and was invalided for a year, employing his time in learning German.
    In November 1810 he published his Essay on Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire, which ran through four editions. In 1811 he was in command of a company of Royal Military Artificers at Plymouth and there he devised a method of education by which the NCOs and troops could teach themselves without "mathematical masters". His system was a great success and was adopted at Chatham and throughout the corps. In 1812 he was appointed Director of the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He remained at Chatham until 1841, when he was appointed Inspector-General of Railways. During this period he organized improved systems of sapping, mining, telegraphing, pontooning and exploding gunpowder on land or under water, and prepared pamphlets and courses of instruction in these and other subjects. In May 1836 he started what is probably the most important work for which he is remembered. This, was a book on Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortar, Stuccos and Concretes. The general adoption of Joseph Aspdin's Portland Cement was largely due to Pasley's recommendation of the material.
    He was married twice: first in 1814 at Chatham to Harriet Cooper; and then on 30 March 1819 at Rochester to Martha Matilda Roberts, with whom he had six children— she died in 1881.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    KGB 1846. FRS 1816. Honorary DCL, Oxford University 1844.
    Bibliography
    1810, Essay on Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire. Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortar, Stuccos and Concretes.
    Further Reading
    Porter, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers. DNB. Proceedings of the Royal Society.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Pasley, General Sir Charles William

  • 103 Paul, Robert William

    [br]
    b. 3 October 1869 Highbury, London, England
    d. 28 March 1943 London, England
    [br]
    English scientific instrument maker, inventor of the Unipivot electrical measuring instrument, and pioneer of cinematography.
    [br]
    Paul was educated at the City of London School and Finsbury Technical College. He worked first for a short time in the Bell Telephone Works in Antwerp, Belgium, and then in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers in the Strand until 1891, when he opened an instrument-making business at 44 Hatton Garden, London. He specialized in the design and manufacture of electrical instruments, including the Ayrton Mather galvanometer. In 1902, with a purpose-built factory, he began large batch production of his instruments. He also opened a factory in New York, where uncalibrated instruments from England were calibrated for American customers. In 1903 Paul introduced the Unipivot galvanometer, in which the coil was supported at the centre of gravity of the moving system on a single pivot. The pivotal friction was less than in a conventional instrument and could be used without accurate levelling, the sensitivity being far beyond that of any pivoted galvanometer then in existence.
    In 1894 Paul was asked by two entrepreneurs to make copies of Edison's kinetoscope, the pioneering peep-show moving-picture viewer, which had just arrived in London. Discovering that Edison had omitted to patent the machine in England, and observing that there was considerable demand for the machine from show-people, he began production, making six before the end of the year. Altogether, he made about sixty-six units, some of which were exported. Although Edison's machine was not patented, his films were certainly copyrighted, so Paul now needed a cinematographic camera to make new subjects for his customers. Early in 1895 he came into contact with Birt Acres, who was also working on the design of a movie camera. Acres's design was somewhat impractical, but Paul constructed a working model with which Acres filmed the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March, and the Derby at Epsom on 29 May. Paul was unhappy with the inefficient design, and developed a new intermittent mechanism based on the principle of the Maltese cross. Despite having signed a ten-year agreement with Paul, Acres split with him on 12 July 1895, after having unilaterally patented their original camera design on 27 May. By the early weeks of 1896, Paul had developed a projector mechanism that also used the Maltese cross and which he demonstrated at the Finsbury Technical College on 20 February 1896. His Theatrograph was intended for sale, and was shown in a number of venues in London during March, notably at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. There the renamed Animatographe was used to show, among other subjects, the Derby of 1896, which was won by the Prince of Wales's horse "Persimmon" and the film of which was shown the next day to enthusiastic crowds. The production of films turned out to be quite profitable: in the first year of the business, from March 1896, Paul made a net profit of £12,838 on a capital outlay of about £1,000. By the end of the year there were at least five shows running in London that were using Paul's projectors and screening films made by him or his staff.
    Paul played a major part in establishing the film business in England through his readiness to sell apparatus at a time when most of his rivals reserved their equipment for sole exploitation. He went on to become a leading producer of films, specializing in trick effects, many of which he pioneered. He was affectionately known in the trade as "Daddy Paul", truly considered to be the "father" of the British film industry. He continued to appreciate fully the possibilities of cinematography for scientific work, and in collaboration with Professor Silvanus P.Thompson films were made to illustrate various phenomena to students.
    Paul ended his involvement with film making in 1910 to concentrate on his instrument business; on his retirement in 1920, this was amalgamated with the Cambridge Instrument Company. In his will he left shares valued at over £100,000 to form the R.W.Paul Instrument Fund, to be administered by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, of which he had been a member since 1887. The fund was to provide instruments of an unusual nature to assist physical research.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Fellow of the Physical Society 1920. Institution of Electrical Engineers Duddell Medal 1938.
    Bibliography
    17 March 1903, British patent no. 6,113 (the Unipivot instrument).
    1931, "Some electrical instruments at the Faraday Centenary Exhibition 1931", Journal of Scientific Instruments 8:337–48.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1943, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 90(1):540–1. P.Dunsheath, 1962, A History of Electrical Engineering, London: Faber \& Faber, pp.
    308–9 (for a brief account of the Unipivot instrument).
    John Barnes, 1976, The Beginnings of Cinema in Britain, London. Brian Coe, 1981, The History of Movie Photography, London.
    BC / GW

    Biographical history of technology > Paul, Robert William

  • 104 Radcliffe, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. 1761 Mellor, Cheshire, England
    d. 1842 Mellor, Cheshire, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the sizing machine.
    [br]
    Radcliffe was brought up in the textile industry and learned carding and spinning as a child. When he was old enough, he became a weaver. It was a time when there were not enough weavers to work up all the yarn being spun on the recently invented spinning machines, so some yarn was exported. Radcliffe regarded this as a sin; meetings were held to prohibit the export, and Radcliffe promised to use his best endeavours to discover means to work up the yarn in England. He owned a mill at Mellor and by 1801 was employing over 1,000 hand-loom weavers. He wanted to improve their efficiency so they could compete against power looms, which were beginning to be introduced at that time.
    His first step was to divide up as much as possible the different weaving processes, not unlike the plan adopted by Arkwright in spinning. In order to strengthen the warp yarns made of cotton and to reduce their tendency to fray during weaving, it was customary to apply an adhesive substance such as starch paste. This was brushed on as the warp was unwound from the back beam during weaving, so only short lengths could be treated before being dried. Instead of dressing the warp in the loom as was hitherto done, Radcliffe had it dressed in a separate machine, relieving the weaver of the trouble and saving the time wasted by the method previously used. Radcliffe employed a young man names Thomas Johnson, who proved to be a clever mechanic. Radcliffe patented his inventions in Johnson's name to avoid other people, especially foreigners, finding out his ideas. He took out his first patent, for a dressing machine, in March 1803 and a second the following year. The combined result of the two patents was the introduction of a beaming machine and a dressing machine which, in addition to applying the paste to the yarns and then drying them, wound them onto a beam ready for the loom. These machines enabled the weaver to work a loom with fewer stoppages; however, Radcliffe did not anticipate that his method of sizing would soon be applied to power looms as well and lead to the commercial success of powered weaving. Other manufacturers quickly adopted Radcliffe's system, and Radcliffe himself soon had to introduce power looms in his own business.
    Radcliffe improved the hand looms themselves when, with the help of Johnson, he devised a cloth taking-up motion that wound the woven cloth onto a roller automatically as the weaver operated the loom. Radcliffe and Johnson also developed the "dandy loom", which was a more compact form of hand loom and was also later adapted for weaving by power. Radcliffe was among the witnesses before the Parliamentary Committee which in 1808 awarded Edmund Cartwright a grant for his invention of the power loom. Later Radcliffe was unsuccessfully to petition Parliament for a similar reward for his contributions to the introduction of power weaving. His business affairs ultimately failed partly through his own obstinacy and his continued opposition to the export of cotton yarn. He lived to be 81 years old and was buried in Mellor churchyard.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1811, Exportation of Cotton Yarn and Real Cause of the Distress that has Fallen upon the Cotton Trade for a Series of Years Past, Stockport.
    1828, Origin of the New System of Manufacture, Commonly Called "Power-Loom Weaving", Stockport (this should be read, even though it is mostly covers Radcliffe's political aims).
    Further Reading
    A.Barlow, 1870, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London (provides an outline of Radcliffe's life and work).
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (a general background of his inventions). R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (a general background).
    D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s, Oxford (discusses the spread of the sizing machine in America).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Radcliffe, William

  • 105 Rankine, William John Macquorn

    [br]
    b. 5 July 1820 Edinburgh, Scotland
    d. 1872
    [br]
    [br]
    Rankine was educated at Ayr Academy and Glasgow High School, although he appears to have learned much of his basic mathematics and physics through private study. He attended Edinburgh University and then assisted his father, who was acting as Superintendent of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway. This introduction to engineering practice was followed in 1838 by his appointment as a pupil to Sir John MacNeill, and for the next four years he served under MacNeill on his Irish railway projects. While still in his early twenties, Rankine presented pioneering papers on metal fatigue and other subjects to the Institution of Civil Engineers, for which he won a prize, but he appears to have resigned from the Civils in 1857 after an argument because the Institution would not transfer his Associate Membership into full Membership. From 1844 to 1848 Rankine worked on various projects for the Caledonian Railway Company, but his interests were becoming increasingly theoretical and a series of distinguished papers for learned societies established his reputation as a leading scholar in the new science of thermodynamics. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853. At the same time, he remained intimately involved with practical questions of applied science, in shipbuilding, marine engineering and electric telegraphy, becoming associated with the influential coterie of fellow Scots such as the Thomson brothers, Napier, Elder, and Lewis Gordon. Gordon was then the head of a large and successful engineering practice, but he was also Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Glasgow, and when he retired from the Chair to pursue his business interests, Rankine, who had become his Assistant, was appointed in his place.
    From 1855 until his premature death in 1872, Rankine built up an impressive engineering department, providing a firm theoretical basis with a series of text books that he wrote himself and most of which remained in print for many decades. Despite his quarrel with the Institution of Civil Engineers, Rankine took a keen interest in the institutional development of the engineering profession, becoming the first President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, which he helped to establish in 1857. Rankine campaigned vigorously for the recognition of engineering studies as a full university degree at Glasgow, and he achieved this in 1872, the year of his death. Rankine was one of the handful of mid-nineteenth century engineers who virtually created engineering as an academic discipline.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1853. First President, Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, 1857.
    Bibliography
    1858, Manual of Applied Mechanics.
    1859, Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers.
    1862, Manual of Civil Engineering.
    1869, Manual of Machinery and Millwork.
    Further Reading
    J.Small, 1957, "The institution's first president", Proceedings of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland: 687–97.
    H.B.Sutherland, 1972, Rankine. His Life and Times.
    AB

    Biographical history of technology > Rankine, William John Macquorn

  • 106 Abney, William de Wiveleslie

    [br]
    b. 24 July 1843 England
    d. 2 December 1920 England
    [br]
    English photographic scientist, inventor and author.
    [br]
    Abney began his career as an officer in the Army and was an instructor in chemistry in the Royal Engineers at Chatham, where he made substantial use of photography as a working tool. He retired from the Army in 1877 and joined the Science and Art Department at South Kensington. It was at Abney's suggestion that a collection of photographic equipment and processes was established in the South Kensington Museum (later to become the Science Museum Photography Collection).
    Abney undertook significant researches into the nature of gelatine silver halide emulsions at a time when they were being widely adopted by photographers. Perhaps his most important practical innovations were the introduction of hydroquinone as a developing agent in 1880 and silver gelatine citrochloride emulsions for printing-out paper (POP) in 1882. However, Abney was at the forefront of many aspects of photographic research during a period of great innovation and change in photography. He devised new techniques of photomechanical printing and conducted significant researches in the fields of photochemistry and spectral analysis. Abney published throughout his career for both the specialist scientist and the more general photographic practitioner.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    KCB 1900. FRS 1877. Served at different times as President of the Royal Astronomical, Royal Photographic and Physical Societies. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1921, Proceedings of the Royal Society (Series A) 99. J.M.Eder, 1945, History of Photography, trans. E.Epstein, New York.
    JW

    Biographical history of technology > Abney, William de Wiveleslie

  • 107 Bovie, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 11 September 1882 Augusta, Michigan, USA
    d. 1 January 1958 Fairfield, Maine, USA
    [br]
    American biophysicist and inventor of the electrosurgical (electrocoagulating) knife.
    [br]
    Of farming stock, Bovie entered the University of Michigan in 1904 but did not obtain his degree until 1908. During this time he taught geology and biology at Antioch and attended the University of Missouri. In 1910 he moved to Harvard and engaged in plant growth research using an instrument invented by him, the auxometer. In 1914 he gained his PhD in connection with studies on the effects of ultraviolet light on protoplasm. He was Director of the Cancer Commission laboratory and in 1916 investigated the effects of heat and radiation on living tissues and assisted in the development of radium applicators. Bovie's invention, in 1926, of the electrosurgical knife, which permitted the performance of bloodless surgery, came to the attention of Cushing, who was able in 1927 to report on its use in 547 neurosurgical operations. In 1927 Bovie was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biophysics at Northwestern University, Illinois, and in 1929 he moved to Maine to set up his own private laboratory.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    City of Philadelphia John Scott Medal 1928.
    Bibliography
    H.W.Cushing, 1928, "Electrosurgery as an aid to the removal of intracranial tumours", Surg. Obstet. Gynec.
    Kelly and Ward, 1932, Electrosurgery, Philadelphia.
    Further Reading
    1979, "W.T.Bovie: The man and the machine", Ann. Plast. Surg.
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Bovie, William

  • 108 Cooke, William Fothergill

    SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications
    [br]
    b. 1806 Baling, London, England
    d. 25 June 1879 Farnham, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English physicist, pioneer of electric telegraphy.
    [br]
    The son of a surgeon who became Professor of Anatomy at Durham University, Cooke received a conventional classical education, with no science, in Durham and at Edinburgh University. He joined the East India Company's aimy in Madras, but resigned because of ill health in 1833. While convalescent, Cooke travelled in Europe and began making wax models of anatomical sections, possibly as teaching aids for his father. In Germany he saw an experimental electric-telegraph demonstration, and was so impressed with the idea of instantaneous long-distance communication that he dropped the modelling and decided to devote all his energies to developing a practical electric telegraph. His own instruments were not successful: they worked across a room, but not over a mile of wire. His search for scientific advice led him to Charles Wheatstone, who was working on a similar project, and together they obtained a patent for the first practical electric telegraph. Cooke's business drive and Wheatstone's scientific abilities should have made a perfect partnership, but the two men quarrelled and separated. Cooke's energy and enthusiasm got the telegraph established, first on the newly developing railways, then independently. Sadly, the fortune he made from the telegraph was lost in other ventures, and he died a poor man.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    G.Hubbard, 1965, Cooke and Wheatstone and the Invention of the Electric Telegraph, London, Routledge \& Kegan Paul (provides a short account of Cooke's life; there is no full biography).
    BB

    Biographical history of technology > Cooke, William Fothergill

  • 109 Dunne, John William

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 2 December 1875 Co. Kildare, Ireland
    d. 24 August 1949 Oxfordshire, England
    [br]
    Irish inventor who pioneered tailless aircraft designed to be inherently stable.
    [br]
    After serving in the British Army during the Boer War. Dunne returned home convinced that aeroplanes would be more suitable than balloons for reconnaissance work. He built models to test his ideas for a tailless design based on the winged seed of a Javanese climbing plant. In 1906 Dunne joined the staff of the Balloon Factory at Farnborough, where the Superintendent, Colonel J.E.Capper, was also interested in manned kites and aeroplanes. Since 1904 the colourful American "Colonel" S.F. Cody had been experimenting at Farnborough with manned kites, and in 1908 his "British Army Dirigible No. 1" made the first powered flight in Britain. Dunne's first swept-wing tailless glider was ready to fly in the spring of 1907, but it was deemed to be a military secret and flying it at Farnborough would be too public. Dunne, Colonel Capper and a team of army engineers took the glider to a remote site at Blair Atholl in Scotland for its test flights. It was not a great success, although it attracted snoopers, with the result that it was camouflaged. Powered versions made short hops in 1908, but then the War Office withdrew its support. Dunne and his associates set up a syndicate to continue the development of a new tailless aeroplane, the D 5; this was built by Short Brothers (see Short, Hugh Oswald) and flew successfully in 1910. It had combined elevators and ailerons on the wing tips (or elevons as they are now called when fitted to modern delta-winged aircraft). In 1913 an improved version of the D 5 was demonstrated in France, where the pilot left his cockpit and walked along the wing in flight. Dunne had proved his point and designed a stable aircraft, but his health was suffering and he retired. During the First World War, however, it was soon learned that military aircraft needed to be manoeuvrable rather than stable.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1913, "The theory of the Dunne aeroplane", Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (April).
    After he left aviation, Dunne became well known for his writings on the nature of the universe and the interpretation of dreams. His best known-work was An Experiment
    With Time (1927; and reprints).
    Further Reading
    P.B.Walker, 1971, Early Aviation at Farnborough, Vol. I, London; 1974, Vol. II (provides a detailed account of Dunne's early work; Vol. II is the more relevant).
    P.Lewis, 1962, British Air craft 1809–1914, London (for details of Dunne's aircraft).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Dunne, John William

  • 110 Garratt, Herbert William

    [br]
    b. 8 June 1864 London, England
    d. 25 September 1913 Richmond, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English engineer, inventor of the Beyer-Garratt articulated locomotive.
    [br]
    After apprenticeship at the North London Railway's locomotive works, Garratt had a varied career which included responsibility for the locomotive departments of several British-owned railways overseas. This gave him an insight into the problems of such lines: locomotives, which were often inadequate, had to be operated over lines with weak bridges, sharp curves and steep gradients. To overcome these problems, he designed an articulated locomotive in which the boiler, mounted on a girder frame, was sus pended between two power bogies. This enabled a wide firebox and large-diameter boiler barrel to be combined with large driving-wheels and good visibility. Coal and water containers were mounted directly upon the bogies to keep them steady. The locomotive was inherently stable on curves because the central line of the boiler between its pivots lay within the curve of the centre line of the track. Garratt applied for a patent for his locomotive in 1907 and manufacture was taken up by Beyer, Peacock \& Co. under licence: the type became known as the Beyer-Garratt. The earliest Beyer-Garratt locomotives were small, but subsequent examples were larger. Sadly, only twenty-six locomotives of the type had been built or were under construction when Garratt died in 1913. Subsequent classes came to include some of the largest and most powerful steam locomotives: they were widely used and particularly successful in Central and Southern Africa, where examples continue to give good service in the 1990s.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    H.W.Garratt took out nine British patents, of which the most important is: 1907, British patent no. 17,165, "Improvements in and Relating to Locomotive Engines".
    Further Reading
    R.L.Hills, 1979–80, "The origins of the Garratt locomotive", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 51:175 (a good description of Garratt's career and the construction of the earliest Beyer-Garratt locomotives).
    A.E.Durrant, 1981, Garratt Locomotives of the World, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles. L.Wiener, 1930, Articulated Locomotives, London: Constable \& Co.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Garratt, Herbert William

  • 111 Holabird, William

    [br]
    b. 11 September 1854 American Union, New York, USA
    d. 19 July 1923 Evanston, Illinois, USA
    [br]
    American architect who contributed to the development of steel framing, a type of structure that rendered possible the erection of the skyscraper.
    [br]
    The American skyscraper was, in the 1870s and 1880s, very much the creation of what came to be known as the Chicago school of architecture. It was the most important American contribution to the urban architectural scene. At this time conditions were ripe for this type of office development, and in the big cities, notably Chicago and New York, steeply rising land values provided the incentive to build high; the structural means to do so had been triggered by the then low costs of making quality iron and steel. The skyscraper appeared after the invention of the passenger lift by Otis and the pioneer steel-frame work of Jenney. In 1875 Holabird was working in Jenney's office in Chicago. By 1883 he had set up in private practice, joined by another young architect, Martin Roche (1855–1927), and together they were responsible for the Tacoma Building (1887–9) in Chicago. In this structure the two front façades were entirely non-load-bearing and were carried by an internal steel skeleton; only the rear walls were load-bearing. The design of the building was not revolutionary (this had to wait for L.H. Sullivan) but was traditional in form. It was the possibility of being able to avoid load-bearing outer walls that enabled a building to rise above some nine storeys, and the thirteen-storeyed Tacoma Building pointed the way to the future development of the skyscraper. The firm of Holabird \& Roche continued in the following decades in Chicago to design and construct further high-quality, although lower, commercial buildings such as those in South Michigan Avenue and the McClurg Building. However, they are best remembered for their contribution in engineering to the development of high-rise construction.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    F.Mujica, 1929, History of the Skyscraper, Paris: Archaeology and Architecture Press. C.W.Condit, 1964, The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and
    Public Building in the Chicago Area 1875–1925, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. J.W.Rudd (compiler), 1966, Holabird and Roche: Chicago Architects, American Association of Architectural Bibliographers.
    DY

    Biographical history of technology > Holabird, William

  • 112 Praed, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Canals
    [br]
    b. 24 June 1747 Trevethoe, Leland, St Ives, Cornwall, England
    d. 9 October 1833 Trevethoe, Leland, St Ives, Cornwall, England
    [br]
    English banker and Member of Parliament.
    [br]
    Born into a wealthy Cornish family, he was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He was elected Member of Parliament for St Ives in 1774, but it was alleged that his father, who was a banker, had acted as agent for both his son and Drummond, the other candidate for the same party, in the course of which he advanced money to voters "on their notes payable with interest to the bank of Truro (Praed's bank)" but with the understanding that repayment would not be demanded from those who had voted for Praed and Drummond. Praed's election was therefore declared void on 8 May 1775. He was re-elected in 1780, by which time St Ives was virtually a Praed family monopoly. He served in successive Parliaments until 1806 and then represented Banbury until 1808. Meanwhile, in 1779 he had become a partner in his father's Truro bank, c. 1801 founded the London bank of Praed \& Co. at 189 Fleet Street.
    While in Parliament, he was instrumental in obtaining and carrying into effect the Bill for the Grand Junction Canal from Braunston to London. He was elected Chairman of the company formed for constructing the canal and proved an excellent choice, serving the company faithfully for nearly thirty years until his resignation in 1821. Upon his marriage to Elizabeth Tyringham in 1778 he made his home at Tyringham Hall in Buckinghamshire and so was very much in the Grand Junction Canal Company's area. London's Praed Street, in which Paddington Station stands, is named in his honour and the canal basin is at the rear of this street. His monument in Tyringham Church bears a relief illustrating a pair of lock gates and a canal boat.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    Alan H.Faulkner, 1972, The Grand Junction Canal, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles. L.S.Presnell, 1956, Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 295–6.
    G.C.Boase and W.P.Courtney, 1874, Biblio-theca Cornubiensis, Vol. II, London: Longmans, p. 524.
    JHB

    Biographical history of technology > Praed, William

  • 113 Shortt, William Hamilton

    SUBJECT AREA: Horology
    [br]
    b. 28 September 1881
    d. 4 February 1971
    [br]
    British railway engineer and amateur horologist who designed the first successful free-pendulum clock.
    [br]
    Shortt entered the Engineering Department of the London and South Western Railway as an engineering cadet in 1902, remaining with the company and its successors until he retired in 1946. He became interested in precision horology in 1908, when he designed an instrument for recording the speed of trains; this led to a long and fruitful collaboration with Frank HopeJones, the proprietor of the Synchronome Company. This association culminated in the installation of a free-pendulum clock, with an accuracy of the order of one second per year, at Edinburgh Observatory in 1921. The clock's performance was far better than that of existing clocks, such as the Riefler, and a slightly modified version was produced commercially by the Synchronome Company. These clocks provided the time standard at Greenwich and many other observatories and scientific institutions across the world until they were supplanted by the quartz clock.
    The period of a pendulum is constant if it swings freely with a constant amplitude in a vacuum. However, this ideal state cannot be achieved in a clock because the pendulum must be impulsed to maintain its amplitude and the swings have to be counted to indicate time. The free-pendulum clock is an attempt to approach this ideal as closely as possible. In 1898 R.J. Rudd used a slave clock, synchronized with a free pendulum, to time the impulses delivered to the free pendulum. This clock was not successful, but it provided the inspiration for Shortt's clock, which operates on the same principle. The Shortt clock used a standard Synchronome electric clock as the slave, and its pendulum was kept in step with the free pendulum by means of the "hit and miss" synchronizer that Shortt had patented in 1921. This allowed the pendulum to swing freely (in a vacuum), apart from the fraction of a second in which it received an impulse each half-minute.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Master of the Clockmakers' Company 1950. British Horological Society Gold Medal 1931. Clockmakers' Company Tompion Medal 1954. Franklin Institute John Price Wetherill Silver Medal.
    Bibliography
    1929, "Some experimental mechanisms, mechanical and otherwise, for the maintenance of vibration of a pendulum", Horological Journal 71:224–5.
    Further Reading
    F.Hope-Jones, 1949, Electrical Timekeeping, 2nd edn, London (a detailed but not entirely impartial account of the development of the free-pendulum clock).
    DV

    Biographical history of technology > Shortt, William Hamilton

  • 114 Wollaston, William Hyde

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy
    [br]
    b. 6 August 1766 East Dereham, Norfolk, England
    d. 22 December 1828 London, England
    [br]
    English chemist and metallurgist who discovered palladium and rhodium, pioneer in the fabrication of platinum.
    [br]
    Wollaston qualified in medicine at Cambridge University but gave up his practice in 1800 to devote himself to chemistry and metallurgy, funded from the profits from making malleable platinum. In partnership with Smithson Tennant, a friend from his Cambridge days, he worked on the extraction of platinum by dissolving it in aqua regia. In 1802 he found that in addition to platinum the solution contained a new metal, which he named palladium. Two years later he identified another new metal, rhodium.
    Wollaston developed a method of forming platinum by means of powder metallurgy and was the first to produce malleable and ductile platinum on a commercial scale. He produced platinum vessels for sulphuric acid manufacture and scientific apparatus such as crucibles. He devised an elegant method for forming fine platinum wire. He also applied his inventive talents to improving scientific apparatus, including the sextant and microscope and a reflecting goniometer for measuring crystal angles. In 1807 he was appointed Joint Secretary of the Royal Society with Sir Humphry Davy, which entailed a heavy workload and required them to referee all the papers submitted to the Society for publication.
    Wollaston's output of platinum began to decline after 1822. Due to ill health he ceased business operations in 1828 and at last made public the details of his secret platinum fabrication process. It was fully described in the Bakerian Lecture he delivered to the Royal Society on 28 November 1828, shortly before his death.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1793.
    Bibliography
    His scientific papers were published in various journals, nearly all listed in the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers.
    Further Reading
    There is no good general biography, the best general account being the entry in
    Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
    D.McDonald, 1960, A History of Platinum from the Earliest Times to the Eighteen- Eighties, London (provides a good discussion of his work on platinum).
    M.E.Weeks, 1939, "The discovery of the elements", Journal of Chemical Education: 184–5.
    ASD

    Biographical history of technology > Wollaston, William Hyde

  • 115 Spelling and punctuation

    This table presents a useful way of clarifying difficulties when you are spelling names etc.
    A comme Anatole means A for Anatole, and so on.
    When spelling aloud…
    A A comme Anatole
    B B comme Berthe
    C C comme Célestin
    ç c cédille
    D D comme Désiré
    E E comme Eugène
    é e accent aigu
    è e accent grave
    ê e accent circonflexe
    ë e tréma
    F F comme François
    G G comme Gaston
    H H comme Henri
    I I comme Irma
    J J comme Joseph
    K K comme Kléber
    L L comme Louis
    M M comme Marcel
    N N comme Nicolas
    O O comme Oscar
    P P comme Pierre
    Q Q comme Quintal
    R R comme Raoul
    S S comme Suzanne
    T T comme Thérèse
    U U comme Ursule
    V V comme Victor
    W W comme William
    X X comme Xavier
    Y Y comme Yvonne
    Z Z comme Zoé
    Spelling
    capital B
    = B majuscule
    small b
    = b minuscule
    it has got a capital B
    = cela s’écrit avec un B majuscule
    in small letters
    = en minuscules
    double t
    = deux t
    double n
    = deux n
    apostrophe
    = apostrophe
    d apostrophe
    = d apostrophe
    hyphen
    = trait d’union
    rase-mottes has got a hyphen
    = rase-mottes s’écrit avec un trait d’union
    Dictating punctuation
    . point or un point ( full stop)
    , virgule ( comma)
    : deux points ( colon)
    ; point-virgule ( semicolon)
    ! point d’exclamation† ( exclamation mark)
    ? point d’interrogation† ( interrogation mark)
    à la ligne ( new paragraph)
    ( ouvrez la parenthèse ( open brackets)
    ) fermez la parenthèse ( close brackets)
    () entre parenthèses ( in brackets)
    [] entre crochets ( in square brackets)
    - tiret ( dash)
    … points de suspension ( three dots)
    « ou " ouvrez les guillemets ( open inverted commas)
    » ou " fermez les guillemets ( close inverted commas)
    «» ou "" entre guillemets ( in inverted commas)
    The use of inverted commas in French
    In novels and short stories, direct speech is punctuated differently from English:
    The inverted commas lie on the line, e.g.
    «Tiens, dit-elle, en ouvrant les rideaux, les voilà!»‡
    This example also shows that the inverted commas are not closed after each stretch of direct speech. In modern texts they are often omitted altogether (though this is still sometimes frowned on):
    Il l’interrogea:
    - Vous êtes arrivé quand?
    - Pourquoi cette question? Je n’ai rien fait de mal.
    - C’est ce que nous allons voir.
    Note the short dash in this case that introduces each new speaker. Even if inverted commas had been used in the above dialogue, they would have been opened before vous and closed after voir, and not used at other points.
    English-style inverted commas are used in French to highlight words in a text:
    Le ministre a voulu "tout savoir" sur la question.
    † Note that, unlike English, French has a space before ! and ? and: and ;, e.g. Jamais !, Pourquoi ? etc. This is not usual, however, in dictionaries, where it would take up too much room.
    ‡ Single inverted commas are not much used in French.

    Big English-French dictionary > Spelling and punctuation

  • 116 Baldwin, Matthias William

    [br]
    b. 10 November 1795 Elizabethtown, New Jersey, USA
    d. 7 September 1866 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
    [br]
    American builder of steam locomotives, founder of Baldwin Locomotive Works.
    [br]
    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.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    J.H.White Jr, 1979, A History of the American Locomotive—Its Development 1830–
    1880, New York: Dover Publications Inc.
    J.Marshall, 1978, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.
    Dictionary of American Biography.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Baldwin, Matthias William

  • 117 Bickford, William

    [br]
    b. 1774 Devonshire, England
    d. 1834 Tuckingmill, Cornwall, England
    [br]
    English leather merchant, inventor of the safety fuse.
    [br]
    Having tried in vain to make his living as a currier in Truro, Cornwall, he set up as a leather merchant in Tuckingmill and became aware of the high casualty rates suffered by local tin-miners in shot-firing accidents. He therefore started attempts to discover a safe means of igniting charges, and came up with a form of safety fuse that made the operation of blasting much less hazardous. It was patented in 1831 and consisted of a cable of jute and string containing a thin core of powder; it provided a dependable means for conveying the flame to the charge so that the danger of hang fires was almost eliminated. Its accurate and consistent timing allowed the firing of several holes at a time without the fusing of the last being destroyed by the blast from the first. By 1840, a gutta-percha fuse had been developed which could be used in wet conditions and was an improvement until the use of dynamite for shot-firing.
    Accounts of the invention, after it had been described in the Report from the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines (1835, London) were widespread in various foreign mining journals, and in the 1840s factories were set up in different mining areas on the European continent, in America and in Australia. Bickford himself founded a firm at Tuckingmill in the year that he came up with his invention which was later controlled by his descendants until it finally merged with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) after the First World War.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    F.Heise, 1904, Sprengstoffe und Zündung der Sprengschüsse, Berlin (provides a detailed description of the development).
    W.J.Reader, 1970, Imperial Chemical Industries. A History, Vol. I, London: Oxford University Press (throws light on the tight international connections of Bickford's firm with Nobel industries).
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Bickford, William

  • 118 Duddell, William du Bois

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 1872 Kensington, London, England
    d. 4 November 1917 London, England
    [br]
    English engineer, inventor of the first practical oscillograph.
    [br]
    After an education at the College of Stanislas, Cannes, Duddell served an apprenticeship with Davy Paxman of Colchester. Studying under Ayrton and Mather at the Central Technical College in South Kensington, he found the facilities for experimental work of exceptional value to him and remained there for some years. In 1897 Duddell produced a galvanometer which was sufficiently responsive to display an alternating-current wave-form. This instrument, with a coil carrying a mirror in the air gap of a powerful electromagnet, had a small periodic time. An oscillating mirror driven by a synchronous motor spread out the deflection on a time-scale. This development became the first commercial oscillograph and brought Duddell into prominence as a first-rate designer of special instruments. The Duddell oscillograph remained in use until after the Second World War, examples being used for recording short-circuit tests on high-power switchgear and other rapidly varying or transient phenomena. His next important work was to collaborate with Professor Marchant at Liverpool University to investigate the characteristics of the electric arc. This led to the suggestion that, coupled to a resonant circuit, the electric arc could form a generator of high-frequency currents. This arrangement was later developed by Poulson for wireless telegraphy. Duddell spent the last years of his life on government research as a member of the Admiralty Board of Inventions and Research and also of the Inventions Board of the Ministry of Munitions.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    CBE 1916. FRS 1907. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1912. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1912 and 1913.
    Bibliography
    1897, Electrician, 39:636–8 (describes his oscillograph). 5 March 1898, British patent no. 5,449 (the oscillograph).
    1899, with E.W.Marchant, "Experiments on alternate current arcs by aid of oscillograph", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 28: 1–107.
    Further Reading
    V.J.Phillips, 1987, Waveforms, Bristol (a comprehensive account).
    1945, "50 years of scientific instrument manufacture", Engineering, 159:461.
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Duddell, William du Bois

  • 119 Gossage, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology
    [br]
    b. 1799 Burgh-in-the-Marsh, Lincolnshire, England
    d. 9 April 1877 Bowdon, Cheshire, England
    [br]
    English industrial chemist, inventor of the absorption tower.
    [br]
    At the age of 12 he was working for his father, who was a chemist and druggist. When he was old enough, he started in the same trade on his own account at Leamington, but soon turned to the making of salt and alkali at a works in Stoke Prior, Worcestershire. In 1850 he moved to Widnes, Lancashire, and established a plant for the manufacture of alkali and soap. Gossage's soap became famous, and some 200,000 tons of it were sold during the period 1862 to 1887. Gossage made important improvements to the Leblanc process. Hitherto, the large quantities of hydrogen chloride discharged into the atmosphere had been a considerable nuisance and a cause of much litigation from aggrieved parties. Gossage introduced the absorption tower, in which the ascending hydrogen chloride was absorbed by a descending stream of water. An outcome of this improvement was the Alkali Act of 1863, which required manufacturers to absorb up to 95 per cent of the offending gas. Gossage later took out many other industrial chemical patents, and for a time he was engaged in copper smelting with works in both Widnes and Neath, South Wales.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    J.Fenwick Allen, 1907, Some Founders of the Chemical Industry, London. D.W.F.Hardie, 1950, A History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes, London.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Gossage, William

  • 120 Petty, Sir William

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 26 May 1623 Romsey, Hampshire, England
    d. 16 December 1687 London, England
    [br]
    English scientist, medical practitioner, researcher and founder member of the Royal Society of London.
    [br]
    Despite coming from modest circumstances, Petty had an illustrious career, which started with college in France at the age of 13, followed by service on a small coastal ship and then studies at the medical schools of Ley den and Paris. In 1651 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at Oxford, and by this time was attending meetings of fellow scientists and philosophers which culminated in the founding of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. In 1652 Petty was sent to Ireland as PhysicianGeneral for the Army; he was soon involved in many matters of an intellectual and experimental nature. He took responsibility for the first proper survey of the country and produced maps and an Irish atlas, Hiberniae Delineatio, published in 1685. His investigations into political economics had a profound effect on seventeenth-century thinking. Of equal importance were his radical proposals for ship design; he presented many papers on naval architecture to the Royal Society and at one time suggested floating harbours similar to the Mulberry harbours of nearly three centuries later. In 1662 he built the pioneer catamaran Invention II (described at the time as a double-bottomed ship!), which was capable of lifting 5 tons of cargo.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1661.
    Further Reading
    P.G.Dale, 1987, Sir W.P. of Romsey, Romsey: LTVAS Group.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Petty, Sir William

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