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61 Fairbairn, William
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 19 February 1789 Kelso, Roxburghshire, Scotlandd. 18 August 1874 Farnham, Surrey, England[br]Scottish engineer and shipbuilder, pioneer in the use of iron in structures.[br]Born in modest circumstances, Fairbairn nevertheless enjoyed a broad and liberal education until around the age of 14. Thereafter he served an apprenticeship as a millwright in a Northumberland colliery. This seven-year period marked him out as a man of determination and intellectual ability; he planned his life around the practical work of pit-machinery maintenance and devoted his limited free time to the study of mathematics, science and history as well as "Church, Milton and Recreation". Like many before and countless thousands after, he worked in London for some difficult and profitless years, and then moved to Manchester, the city he was to regard as home for the rest of his life. In 1816 he was married. Along with a workmate, James Lillie, he set up a general engineering business, which steadily enlarged and ultimately involved both shipbuilding and boiler-making. The partnership was dissolved in 1832 and Fairbairn continued on his own. Consultancy work commissioned by the Forth and Clyde Canal led to the construction of iron steamships by Fairbairn for the canal; one of these, the PS Manchester was lost in the Irish Sea (through the little-understood phenomenon of compass deviation) on her delivery voyage from Manchester to the Clyde. This brought Fairbairn to the forefront of research in this field and confirmed him as a shipbuilder in the novel construction of iron vessels. In 1835 he operated the Millwall Shipyard on the Isle of Dogs on the Thames; this is regarded as one of the first two shipyards dedicated to iron production from the outset (the other being Tod and MacGregor of Glasgow). Losses at the London yard forced Fairbairn to sell off, and the yard passed into the hands of John Scott Russell, who built the I.K. Brunel -designed Great Eastern on the site. However, his business in Manchester went from strength to strength: he produced an improved Cornish boiler with two firetubes, known as the Lancashire boiler; he invented a riveting machine; and designed the beautiful swan-necked box-structured crane that is known as the Fairbairn crane to this day.Throughout his life he advocated the widest use of iron; he served on the Admiralty Committee of 1861 investigating the use of this material in the Royal Navy. In his later years he travelled widely in Europe as an engineering consultant and published many papers on engineering. His contribution to worldwide engineering was recognized during his lifetime by the conferment of a baronetcy by Queen Victoria.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCreated Baronet 1869. FRS 1850. Elected to the Academy of Science of France 1852. President, Institution of Mechnical Engineers 1854. Royal Society Gold Medal 1860. President, British Association 1861.BibliographyFairbairn wrote many papers on a wide range of engineering subjects from water-wheels to iron metallurgy and from railway brakes to the strength of iron ships. In 1856 he contributed the article on iron to the 8th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.Further ReadingW.Pole (ed.), 1877, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn Bart, London: Longmans Green; reprinted 1970, David and Charles Reprints (written in part by Fairbairn, but completed and edited by Pole).FMW -
62 Goldstine, Herman H.
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 13 September 1913 USA[br]American mathematician largely responsible for the development of ENIAC, an early electronic computer.[br]Goldstine studied mathematics at the University of Chicago, Illinois, gaining his PhD in 1936. After teaching mathematics there, he moved to a similar position at the University of Michigan in 1939, becoming an assistant professor. After the USA entered the Second World War, in 1942 he joined the army as a lieutenant in the Ballistic Missile Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. He was then assigned to the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was involved with Arthur Burks in building the valve-based Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) to compute ballistic tables. The machine was completed in 1946, but prior to this Goldstine had met John von Neumann of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Princeton, New Jersey, and active collaboration between them had already begun. After the war he joined von Neumann as Assistant Director of the Computer Project at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton, becoming its Director in 1954. There he developed the idea of computer-flow diagrams and, with von Neumann, built the first computer to use a magnetic drum for data storage. In 1958 he joined IBM as Director of the Mathematical Sciences Department, becoming Director of Development at the IBM Data Processing Headquarters in 1965. Two years later he became a Research Consultant, and in 1969 he became an IBM Research Fellow.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsGoldstine's many awards include three honorary degrees for his contributions to the development of computers.Bibliography1946, with A.Goldstine, "The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)", Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation 2:97 (describes the work on ENIAC).1946, with A.W.Burks and J.von Neumann, "Preliminary discussions of the logical design of an electronic computing instrument", Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies.1972, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Princeton University Press.1977, "A brief history of the computer", Proceedings of the American Physical Society 121:339.Further ReadingM.Campbell-Kelly \& M.R.Williams (eds), 1985, The Moore School Lectures (1946), Charles Babbage Institute Report Series for the History of Computing, Vol 9. M.R.Williams, 1985, History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.KF -
63 Hartley, Ralph V.L.
[br]b. 1889 USAd. 1 May 1970 Summit, New Jersey, USA[br]American engineer who made contributions to radio communications.[br]Hartley obtained his BA in 1909 from the University of Utah, then gained a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, England. After obtaining a further BA and a BSc in 1912 and 1913, respectively, he returned to the USA and took a job with the Western Electric Laboratories of the Bell Telephone Company, where he was in charge of radio-receiver development. In 1915 he invented the Hartley oscillator, analogous to that invented by Colpitts. Subsequently he worked on carrier telephony at Western Electric and then at Bell Laboratories. There he concen-trated on information theory, building on the pioneering work of Nyquist, in 1926 publishing his law that related information capacity, frequency bandwidth and time. Forced to give up work in 1929 due to ill health, he returned to Bell in 1939 as a consultant on transmission problems. During the Second World War he worked on various projects, including the use of servo-mechanisms for radar and fire control, and finally retired in 1950.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsInstitution of Electrical and Electronics Enginners Medal of Honour 1946.Bibliography29 May 1918, US patent no. 1,592,934 (plate modulator).29 September 1919, US patent no. 1,419,562 (balanced modulator or detector). 1922, with T.C.Fry, "Binaural location of complex sounds", Bell Systems TechnicalJournal (November).1923, "Relation of carrier and sidebands in radio transmission", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 11:34.1924, "The transmission unit", Electrical Communications 3:34.1926, "Transmission limits of telephone lines", Bell Laboratories Record 1:225. 1928, "Transmission of information", Bell Systems Technical Journal (July).1928, "“TU” becomes Decibel", Bell Laboratories Record 7:137.1936, "Oscillations in systems with non-linear reactance", Bell System Technology Journal 15: 424.Further ReadingM.D.Fagen (ed.), 1975, A History of Engineering \& Science in the Bell System, Vol. 1: Bell Laboratories.KF -
64 Henry, James J.
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 22 June 1913 Ancon, Panama Canal Zoned. 1986 USA[br]American naval architect, innovator in specialist cargo-ship design.[br]After graduating in 1935 from the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, New York, Henry served in different government agencies until 1938 when he joined the fast expanding US Maritime Commission. He assisted in the design and construction of troop-carrying vessels, Cl cargo ships, and he supervised the construction of two wartime attack transports. At the end of hostilities, he set up as a consultant naval architect and by 1951 had incorporated the business as J.J.Henry \& Company Inc. The opportunities that consultancy gave him were grasped eagerly; he became involved in the conversion of war-built tonnage to peaceful purposes (such as T2 tankers to ore carriers), the development of the new technologies of the carriage of liquefied gases at cryogenic temperatures and low pressures and, possibly the greatest step forward of all, the development of containerization. Containerization and the closely related field of barge transportation were to provide considerable business during the 1960s and the 1970s. The company designed the wonderful 33-knot container ships for Sea-Land and the auspicious Sea-bee barge carriers for the Lykes Brothers of New Orleans. James Henry's professional achievements were recognized internationally when he was elected President of the (United States) Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in 1969. By then he had served on many boards and committees and was especially honoured to be Chairman of the Board of Trustees of his graduating college, the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture of New York.FMW -
65 Hunter, Matthew Albert
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 9 November 1878 Auckland Province, New Zealandd. 24 March 1961 Troy, New York, USA[br]New Zealand/American technologist and academic who was a pioneer in the production of metallic titanium.[br]Hunter arrived in England in 1902, the seventh in the succession of New Zealand students nominated for the 1851 Exhibition science research scholarships (the third, in 1894, having been Ernest Rutherford). He intended to study the metallurgy of tellurides at the Royal School of Mines, but owing to the death of the professor concerned, he went instead to University College London, where his research over two years involved the molecular aggregation of liquified gases. In 1904–5 he spent a third year in Göttingen, Paris and Karlsruhe. Hunter then moved to the USA, beginning work in 1906 with the General Electric Company in Schenectady. His experience with titanium came as part of a programme to try to discover satisfactory lamp-filament materials. He and his colleagues achieved more success in producing moderately pure titanium than previous workers had done, but found the metal's melting temperature inadequate. However, his research formed the basis for the "Hunter sodium process", a modern method for producing commercial quantities of titanium. In 1908 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Electrochemistry and Physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he was to remain until his retirement in 1949 as Dean Emeritus. In the 1930s he founded and headed the Institute's Department of Metallurgical Engineering. As a consultant, he was associated with the development of Invar, Managanin and Constantan alloys.[br]Principal Honours and Distinctions1851 Great Exhibition science research scholar 1902–5. DSc London University 1904. American Die Casting Institute Doehler Award 1959. American Society for Metals Gold Medal 1959.Bibliography1910, "Metallic titanium", Journal of the American Chemistry Society 32:330–6 (describes his work relating to titanium production).Further Reading1961, "Man of metals", Rensselaer Alumni News (December), 5–7:32.JKA -
66 Keller, Arthur
[br]b. 18 August 1901 New York City, New York, USA d. 1983[br]American engineer and developer of telephone switching equipment who was instrumental in the development of electromechanical recording and stereo techniques.[br]He obtained a BSc in electrical engineering at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, in 1923 and an MSc from Yale University, and he did postgraduate work at Columbia University. Most of the time he was also on the staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The Bell Laboratories and its predecessors had a long tradition in research in speech and hearing, and in a team of researchers under H.C. Harrison, Keller developed a number of definite improvements in electrical pick-ups, gold-sputtering for matrix work and electrical disc recording equipment. From 1931 onwards the team at Bell Labs developed disc recording for moving pictures and entered into collaboration with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra concerning transmission and recording of high-fidelity sound over wires, and stereo techniques. Keller developed a stereo recording system for disc records independently of A.D. Blumlein that was used experimentally in the Bell Labs during the 1930s. During the Second World War Keller was in a team developing sonar (sound navigation and ranging) for the US Navy. After the war he concentrated on switching equipment for telephone exchanges and developed a miniature relay. In 1966 he retired from the Bell Laboratories, where he had been Director of several departments, ending as Director of the Switching Apparatus Laboratory. After retirement he was a consultant internationally, concerning electromechanical devices in particular. When, in 1980, the Bell Laboratories decided to issue LP re-recordings of a number of the experimental records made during the 1930s, Keller was brought in from retirement to supervise the project and decide on the selections.[br]BibliographyKeller was inventor or co-inventor of forty patents, including: US patent no. 2,114,471 (the principles of stereo disc recording); US patent no. 2,612,586 (tape guides with air lubrication); US patent no. 3,366,901 (a miniature crossbar switch).Apart from a large number of highly technical papers, Keller also wrote the article "Phonograph" in the 1950 and 1957 editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica.1986, Reflections of a Stereo Pioneer, San Francisco: San Francisco Press (an honest, personal account).GB-N -
67 Kilby, Jack St Clair
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 8 November 1923 Jefferson City, Missouri, USA[br]American engineer who filed the first patents for micro-electronic (integrated) circuits.[br]Kilby spent most of his childhood in Great Bend, Kansas, where he often accompanied his father, an electrical power engineer, on his maintenance rounds. Working in the blizzard of 1937, his father borrowed a "ham" radio, and this fired Jack to study for his amateur licence (W9GTY) and to construct his own equipment while still a student at Great Bend High School. In 1941 he entered the University of Illinois, but four months later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was enlisted in the US Army and found himself working in a radio repair workshop in India. When the war ended he returned to his studies, obtaining his BSEE from Illinois in 1947 and his MSEE from the University of Wisconsin. He then joined Centralab, a small electronics firm in Milwaukee owned by Globe-Union. There he filed twelve patents, including some for reduced titanate capacitors and for Steatite-packing of transistors, and developed a transistorized hearing-aid. During this period he also attended a course on transistors at Bell Laboratories. In May 1958, concerned to gain experience in the field of number processing, he joined Texas Instruments in Dallas. Shortly afterwards, while working alone during the factory vacation, he conceived the idea of making monolithic, or integrated, circuits by diffusing impurities into a silicon substrate to create P-N junctions. Within less than a month he had produced a complete oscillator on a chip to prove that the technology was feasible, and the following year at the 1ERE Show he demonstrated a germanium integrated-circuit flip-flop. Initially he was granted a patent for the idea, but eventually, after protracted litigation, priority was awarded to Robert Noyce of Fairchild. In 1965 he was commissioned by Patrick Haggerty, the Chief Executive of Texas Instruments, to make a pocket calculator based on integrated circuits, and on 14 April 1971 the world's first such device, the Pocketronic, was launched onto the market. Costing $150 (and weighing some 2½ lb or 1.1 kg), it was an instant success and in 1972 some 5 million calculators were sold worldwide. He left Texas Instruments in November 1970 to become an independent consultant and inventor, working on, amongst other things, methods of deriving electricity from sunlight.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFranklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Medal 1966. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers David Sarnoff Award 1966; Cledo Brunetti Award (jointly with Noyce) 1978; Medal of Honour 1986. National Academy of Engineering 1967. National Science Medal 1969. National Inventors Hall of Fame 1982. Honorary DEng Miami 1982, Rochester 1986. Honorary DSc Wisconsin 1988. Distinguished Professor, Texas A \& M University.Bibliography6 February 1959, US patent no. 3,138,743 (the first integrated circuit (IC); initially granted June 1964).US patent no. 3,819,921 (the Pocketronic calculator).Further ReadingT.R.Reid, 1984, Microchip. The Story of a Revolution and the Men Who Made It, London: Pan Books (for the background to the development of the integrated circuit). H.Queisser, 1988, Conquest of the Microchip, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.KF -
68 King, James Foster
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 9 May 1862 Erskine, Scotlandd. 11 August 1947 Glasgow, Scotland[br]Scottish naval architect and classification society manager who made a significant contribution to the safety of shipping.[br]King was educated at the High School of Glasgow, and then served an apprenticeship with the Port Glasgow shipyard of Russell \& Co. This was followed by experience in drawing offices in Port Glasgow, Hull and finally in Belfast, where he was responsible for the separate White Star Line drawing office of Harland \& Wolff Ltd, which was then producing the plans for the Atlantic passenger liners Majestic and Teutonic. Following certain unpopular government shipping enactments in 1890, a protest from shipbuilders and shipowners in Ireland, Liverpool and the West of Scotland led to the founding of a new classification society to compete against Lloyd's Register of Shipping. It became known as the British Corporation Register and had headquarters in Glasgow. King was recruited to the staff and by 1903 had become Chief Surveyor, a position he held until his retirement thirty-seven years later. By then the Register was a world leader, with hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping on its books; it acted as consultant to many governments and international agencies. Throughout his working life, King did everything in his power to quantify the risks and problems of ship operation: his contribution to the Load Lines Convention of 1929 was typical, and few major enactments in shipping were designed without his approval. During the inter-war period the performance of the British Corporation outshone that of all rivals, for which King deserved full credit. His especial understanding was for steel structures, and in this respect he ensured that the British Corporation enabled owners to build ships of strengths equal to any others despite using up to 10 per cent less steel within the structure. In 1949 Lloyd's Register of Shipping and the British Corporation merged to form the largest and most influential ship classification society in the world.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCBE 1920. Honorary Member, Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland 1941; North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders (Newcastle) 1943; British Corporation 1940. Honorary Vice-President, Institution of Naval Architects.Further ReadingG.Blake, 1960, Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1760–1960, London: Lloyd's Register. F.M.Walker, 1984, Song of the Clyde. A History of Clyde Shipbuiding, Cambridge: PSL. 1947, The British Corporation Register of Shipping and Aircraft 1890–1947, AnIllustrated Record, 1947, Glasgow.1946, The British Corporation Register. The War Years in Retrospect, 1956, Glasgow.FMW -
69 Maiman, Theodore Harold
[br]b. 11 July 1927 Los Angeles, California, USA[br]American physicist who developed the laser.[br]The son of an electrical engineer, Theodore H. Maiman graduated with the degree of BS in engineering physics from the University of Colorado in 1949. He then went on to do postgraduate work at Stanford University, where he gained an MS in electrical engineering in 1951 and a PhD in physics in 1955 for work on spectroscopy using microwave-optical techniques. He then joined the Hughes Research Laboratories, where he worked on the stimulated emission of microwave energy. In this field Charles H. Townes had developed the maser (an acronym of microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) and in a paper in 1958 with Arthur L. Schawlow he had suggested the possibility of a further development into optical frequencies, or, of an optical maser, later known as a laser (an acronym of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Maiman was the first to achieve this when in May 1960 he operated a ruby laser and coherent light was produced for the first time. In 1962 he founded his own company, Korad Corporation, for research, development and manufacture of high-power lasers. He founded Maiman Associates in 1968, acting as consultant on lasers and optics. He was a co-founder of the Laser Video Corporation in 1972, and in 1976 he became Vice-President for advanced technology at TRW Electronics.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFranklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Medal 1962. American Electrical Society/American Astronautical Society Award 1965. American Physical Society Oliver E.Buckley Solid State Physics Prize 1966. Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Award for Applied Physical Science 1966. American Optical Society R.W.Wood Prize 1976.Bibliography1980, entry in McGraw-Hill Modern Scientists and Engineers, Part 2, New York, pp. 271–2 (autobiographical).RTSBiographical history of technology > Maiman, Theodore Harold
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70 McCoy, Elijah
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 1843 Colchester, Ontario, Canadad. 1929 Detroit, Michigan (?), USA[br]African-American inventor of steam-engine lubricators.[br]McCoy was born into a community of escaped African-American slaves. As a youth he went to Scotland and served an apprenticeship in Edinburgh in mechanical engineering. He returned to North America and ended up in Ypsilanti, Michigan, seeking employment at the headquarters of the Michigan Central Railroad Company. In spite of his training, the only job McCoy could obtain was that of locomotive fireman. Still, that enabled him to study at close quarters the problem of lubricating adequately the moving parts of a steam locomotive. Inefficient lubrication led to overheating, delays and even damage. In 1872 McCoy patented the first of his lubricating devices, applicable particularly to stationary engines. He assigned his patent rights to W. and S.C.Hamlin of Ypsilanti, from which he derived enough financial resources to develop his invention. A year later he patented an improved hydrostatic lubricator, which could be used for both stationary and locomotive engines, and went on to make further improvements. McCoy's lubricators were widely taken up by other railroads and his employers promoted him from the footplate to the task of giving instruction in the use of his lubricating equipment. Many others had been attempting to achieve the same result and many rival products were on the market, but none was superior to McCoy's, which came to be known as "the Real McCoy", a term that has since acquired a wider application than to engine lubricators. McCoy moved to Detroit, Michigan, as a patent consultant in the railroad business. Altogether, he took out over fifty patents for various inventions, so that he became one of the most prolific of nineteenth-century black inventors, whose activities had been so greatly stimulated by the freedoms they acquired after the American Civil War. His more valuable patents were assigned to investors, who formed the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company. McCoy himself, however, was not a major shareholder, so he seems not to have derived the benefit that was due to him.[br]Further ReadingP.P.James, 1989, The Real McCoy: African-American Invention and Innovation 1619– 1930, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 73–5.LRD -
71 Oberth, Hermann Julius
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 25 June 1894 Nagyszeben, Transylvania (now Sibiu, Romania)d. 29 December 1989 Nuremberg, Germany[br]Austro-Hungarian lecturer who is usually regarded, with Robert Goddard, as one of the "fathers" of modern astronautics.[br]The son of a physician, Oberth originally studied medicine in Munich, but his education was interrupted by the First World War and service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Wounded, he passed the time by studying astronautics. He apparently simulated weightlessness and worked out the design for a long-range liquid-propelled rocket, but his ideas were rejected by the War Office; after the war he submitted them as a dissertation for a PhD at Heidelberg University, but this was also rejected. Consequently, in 1923, whilst still an unknown mathematics teacher, he published his ideas at his own expense in the book The Rocket into Interplanetary Space. These included a description of how rockets could achieve a sufficient velocity to escape the gravitational field of the earth. As a result he gained international prestige almost overnight and learned of the work of Robert Goddard and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. After correspondence with the Goddard and Tsiolkovsky, Oberth published a further work in 1929, The Road to Space Travel, in which he acknowledged the priority of Goddard's and Tsiolkovski's calculations relating to space travel; he went on to anticipate by more than thirty years the development of electric and ionic propulsion and to propose the use of giant mirrors to control the weather. For this he was awarded the annual Hirsch Prize of 10,000 francs. From 1925 to 1938 he taught at a college in Mediasch, Transylvania, where he carried out experiments with petroleum and liquid-air rockets. He then obtained a lecturing post at Vienna Technical University, moving two years later to Dresden University and becoming a German citizen. In 1941 he became assistant to the German rocket engineer Werner von Braun at the rocket development centre at Peenemünde, and in 1943 he began work on solid propellants. After the Second World War he spent a year in Switzerland as a consultant, then in 1950 he moved to Italy to develop solid-propellant anti-aircraft rockets for the Italian Navy. Five years later he moved to the USA to carry out advanced rocket research for the US Army at Huntsville, Alabama, and in 1958 he retired to Feucht, near Nuremberg, Germany, where he wrote his autobiography.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFrench Astronautical Society REP-Hirsch Prize 1929. German Society for Space Research Medal 1950. Diesel German Inventors Medal 1954. American Astronautical Society Award 1955. German Federal Republic Award 1961. Institute of Aviation and Astronautics Medal 1969.Bibliography1923, Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen; repub. 1934 as The Rocket into Interplanetary Space (autobiography).1929, Wege zur Raumschiffahrt [Road to Space Travel].1959, Stoff und Leben [Material and Life].Further ReadingR.Spangenburg and D.Moser, 1990, Space People from A to Z, New York: Facts on File. H.Wulforst, 1991, The Rocketmakers: The Dreamers who made Spaceflight a Reality, New York: Crown Publishers.KF / IMcN -
72 Preece, Sir William Henry
[br]b. 15 February 1834 Bryn Helen, Gwynedd, Walesd. 6 November 1913 Penrhos, Gwynedd, Wales[br]Welsh electrical engineer who greatly furthered the development and use of wireless telegraphy and the telephone in Britain, dominating British Post Office engineering during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.[br]After education at King's College, London, in 1852 Preece entered the office of Edwin Clark with the intention of becoming a civil engineer, but graduate studies at the Royal Institution under Faraday fired his enthusiasm for things electrical. His earliest work, as connected with telegraphy and in particular its application for securing the safe working of railways; in 1853 he obtained an appointment with the Electric and National Telegraph Company. In 1856 he became Superintendent of that company's southern district, but four years later he moved to telegraph work with the London and South West Railway. From 1858 to 1862 he was also Engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company. When the various telegraph companies in Britain were transferred to the State in 1870, Preece became a Divisional Engineer in the General Post Office (GPO). Promotion followed in 1877, when he was appointed Chief Electrician to the Post Office. One of the first specimens of Bell's telephone was brought to England by Preece and exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1877. From 1892 to 1899 he served as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. During this time he made a number of important contributions to telegraphy, including the use of water as part of telegraph circuits across the Solent (1882) and the Bristol Channel (1888). He also discovered the existence of inductive effects between parallel wires, and with Fleming showed that a current (thermionic) flowed between the hot filament and a cold conductor in an incandescent lamp.Preece was distinguished by his administrative ability, some scientific insight, considerable engineering intuition and immense energy. He held erroneous views about telephone transmission and, not accepting the work of Oliver Heaviside, made many errors when planning trunk circuits. Prior to the successful use of Hertzian waves for wireless communication Preece carried out experiments, often on a large scale, in attempts at wireless communication by inductive methods. These became of historic interest only when the work of Maxwell and Hertz was developed by Guglielmo Marconi. It is to Preece that credit should be given for encouraging Marconi in 1896 and collaborating with him in his early experimental work on radio telegraphy.While still employed by the Post Office, Preece contributed to the development of numerous early public electricity schemes, acting as Consultant and often supervising their construction. At Worcester he was responsible for Britain's largest nineteenth-century public hydro-electric station. He received a knighthood on his retirement in 1899, after which he continued his consulting practice in association with his two sons and Major Philip Cardew. Preece contributed some 136 papers and printed lectures to scientific journals, ninety-nine during the period 1877 to 1894.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCB 1894. Knighted (KCB) 1899. FRS 1881. President, Society of Telegraph Engineers, 1880. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1880, 1893. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1898–9. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1901–2.BibliographyPreece produced numerous papers on telegraphy and telephony that were presented as Royal Institution Lectures (see Royal Institution Library of Science, 1974) or as British Association reports.1862–3, "Railway telegraphs and the application of electricity to the signaling and working of trains", Proceedings of the ICE 22:167–93.Eleven editions of Telegraphy (with J.Sivewright), London, 1870, were published by 1895.1883, "Molecular radiation in incandescent lamps", Proceedings of the Physical Society 5: 283.1885. "Molecular shadows in incandescent lamps". Proceedings of the Physical Society 7: 178.1886. "Electric induction between wires and wires", British Association Report. 1889, with J.Maier, The Telephone.1894, "Electric signalling without wires", RSA Journal.1898, "Aetheric telegraphy", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.Further ReadingJ.J.Fahie, 1899, History of Wireless Telegraphy 1838–1899, Edinburgh: Blackwood. E.Hawkes, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen.E.C.Baker, 1976, Sir William Preece, F.R.S. Victorian Engineer Extraordinary, London (a detailed biography with an appended list of his patents, principal lectures and publications).D.G.Tucker, 1981–2, "Sir William Preece (1834–1913)", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 53:119–36 (a critical review with a summary of his consultancies).GW / KFBiographical history of technology > Preece, Sir William Henry
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73 Railton, Reid Anthony
[br]b. 24 June 1895 Alderley Edge, Cheshire, Englandd. 1 September 1977 Berkeley, California, USA.[br]English designer of record-breaking automobiles and motor boats.[br]Railton was educated at Rugby School and Manchester University. From 1915 to 1917 he served an apprenticeship with Leyland Motors, after which he served in the Motor Boat Section of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). Having obtained his Royal Aeronautical Club (RAeC) pilot's certificate in 1918, he went to the United States to study factory layout. He was Assistant to the Chief Engineer of Leyland Motors from 1921 to 1923, when he became Managing Director of Arab Motors Limited of Letchworth, Hertfordshire.Railton was engineering consultant to Sir Malcolm Campbell, and was responsible for Campbell's Bluebird II boat which set a water speed record of 228.1 km/h (141.7 mph) in 1939. He was the designer of John R.Cobb's Napier Railton car which broke the speed record for automobiles on 16 September 1947 with an average speed of 634.3 km/h (394.2 mph); this record stood until 1964, when it was broken by Sir Malcolm Campbell's son Donald. Railton was also responsible for Cobb's boat, Crusader, which was the first to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h).Railton presented many papers to the Institution of Automobile Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers in the United States. In his later years, he lived in Berkeley, California.[br]Further Reading1971–80, Who Was Who, London: A. \& C.Black.IMcN -
74 Reason, Richard Edmund
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 21 December 1903 Exeter, Devon, Englandd. 20 March 1987 Great Bowden, Leicestershire, England[br]English metrologist who developed instruments for measuring machined-surface roughness.[br]Richard Edmund Reason was educated at Tonbridge School and the Royal College of Science (Imperial College), where he studied under Professor A.F.C.Pollard, Professor of Technical Optics. After graduating in 1925 he joined Taylor, Taylor and Hobson Ltd, Leicester, manufacturers of optical, electrical and scientific instruments, and remained with that firm throughout his career. One of his first contributions was in the development, with E.F.Fincham, of the Fincham Coincidence Optometer. At this time the firm, under William Taylor, was mainly concerned with optical instruments and lens manufacture, but in the 1930s Reason was also engaged in developing means for measuring the roughness of machined surfaces. The need for establishing standards and methods of measurement of surface finish was called for when the subcontracting of aero-engine components became necessary during the Second World War. This led to the development by Reason of an instrument in which a stylus was moved across the surface and the profile recorded electronically. This was called the Talysurf and was first produced in 1941. Further development followed, and from 1947 Reason tackled the problem of measuring roundness, producing the first Talyrond machine in 1949. The technology developed for these instruments was used in the production of others such as the Talymin Comparator and the Talyvel electronic level. Reason was also associated with the development of optical projection systems to measure the profile of parts such as gear teeth, screw threads and turbine blades. He retired in 1968 but continued as a consultant to the company. He served for many years on committees of the British Standards Institution on surface metrology and was a representative of Britain at the International Standards Organization.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOBE 1967. FRS 1971. Honorary DSc University of Birmingham 1969. Honorary DSc Leicester University 1971.Further ReadingD.J.Whitehouse, 1990, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 36, London, pp. 437–62 (an illustrated obituary notice listing Reason's eighty-nine British patents, published between 1930 and 1972, and his twenty-one publications, dating from 1937 to 1966).K.J.Hume, 1980, A History of Engineering Metrology, London, 113–21 (contains a shorter account of Reason's work).RTS -
75 Ridley, Nicholas Harold Lloyd
SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology[br]b. 10 July 1906 Leicester, England[br]English ophthalmic surgeon, pioneer of intra-ocular lens implants.[br]Following a medical education at Cambridge and St Thomas's Hospital, London, he was appointed at an early age to the post of Surgeon to Moorfields Eye Hospital (Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital). During the Second World War he served abroad in Africa as an ophthalmic specialist and became an authority on onchocerciasis (river blindness) and filiariasis.His experience of the inertness of plastic material retained inside the eye in injured aircraft personnel led him to investigate the possibility of replacing cataractous lenses with intra-ocular plastic lenses. After his appointment as Consultant Ophthalmologist to St Thomas's in 1946, the first lens implant procedure was successfully carried out in 1949. The implantation of glass lenses in the treatment of myopia had been attempted in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, but the weight of the material had militated against a successful outcome.It was some time before the new procedure, which owed much to his surgical dexterity, became widely accepted, but the work of Strampelli, Binkhorst and others led to its wider application; intra-ocular implants are now a standard element of the surgical treatment of cataract.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1986. Royal Society Galen Medal 1986; Crook Gold Medal 1988.Bibliography1951, "Intraocular acrylic lenses", Trans. Ophth. Soc. UK.1964, "Intraocular lenses—past, present and future", Trans. Ophth. Soc. UK.Further ReadingS.Duke-Elder, 1969, System of Ophthalmology, Vol. 9, London.MGBiographical history of technology > Ridley, Nicholas Harold Lloyd
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76 Roebuck, John
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 1718 Sheffield, Englandd. 17 July 1794[br]English chemist and manufacturer, inventor of the lead-chamber process for sulphuric acid.[br]The son of a prosperous Sheffield manufacturer, Roebuck forsook the family business to pursue studies in medicine at Edinburgh University. There he met Dr Joseph Black (1727–99), celebrated Professor of Chemistry, who aroused in Roebuck a lasting interest in chemistry. Roebuck continued his studies at Leyden, where he took his medical degree in 1742. He set up in practice in Birmingham, but in his spare time he continued chemical experiments that might help local industries.Among his early achievements was his new method of refining gold and silver. Success led to the setting up of a large laboratory and a reputation as a chemical consultant. It was at this time that Roebuck devised an improved way of making sulphuric acid. This vital substance was then made by burning sulphur and nitre (potassium nitrate) over water in a glass globe. The scale of the process was limited by the fragility of the glass. Roebuck substituted "lead chambers", or vessels consisting of sheets of lead, a metal both cheap and resistant to acids, set in wooden frames. After the first plant was set up in 1746, productivity rose and the price of sulphuric acid fell sharply. Success encouraged Roebuck to establish a second, larger plant at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh. He preferred to rely on secrecy rather than patents to preserve his monopoly, but a departing employee took the secret with him and the process spread rapidly in England and on the European continent. It remained the standard process until it was superseded by the contact process towards the end of the nineteenth century. Roebuck next turned his attention to ironmaking and finally selected a site on the Carron river, near Falkirk in Scotland, where the raw materials and water power and transport lay close at hand. The Carron ironworks began producing iron in 1760 and became one of the great names in the history of ironmaking. Roebuck was an early proponent of the smelting of iron with coke, pioneered by Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale. To supply the stronger blast required, Roebuck consulted John Smeaton, who c. 1760 installed the first blowing cylinders of any size.All had so far gone well for Roebuck, but he now leased coal-mines and salt-works from the Duke of Hamilton's lands at Borrowstonness in Linlithgow. The coal workings were plagued with flooding which the existing Newcomen engines were unable to overcome. Through his friendship with Joseph Black, patron of James Watt, Roebuck persuaded Watt to join him to apply his improved steam-engine to the flooded mine. He took over Black's loan to Watt of £1,200, helped him to obtain the first steam-engine patent of 1769 and took a two-thirds interest in the project. However, the new engine was not yet equal to the task and the debts mounted. To satisfy his creditors, Roebuck had to dispose of his capital in his various ventures. One creditor was Matthew Boulton, who accepted Roebuck's two-thirds share in Watt's steam-engine, rather than claim payment from his depleted estate, thus initiating a famous partnership. Roebuck was retained to manage Borrowstonness and allowed an annuity for his continued support until his death in 1794.[br]Further ReadingMemoir of John Roebuck in J.Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. 4 (1798), pp. 65–87.S.Gregory, 1987, "John Roebuck, 18th century entrepreneur", Chem. Engr. 443:28–31.LRD -
77 Russell, John Scott
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 9 May 1808 Parkhead, near Glasgow, Scotlandd. 8 June 1882 Isle of Wight, England[br]Scottish engineer, naval architect and academic.[br]A son of the manse, Russell was originally destined for the Church and commenced studies at the University of St Andrews, but shortly afterwards he transferred to Glasgow, graduating MA in 1825 when only 17 years old. He began work as a teacher in Edinburgh, working up from a school to the Mechanics Institute and then in 1832 to the University, where he took over the classes in natural philosophy following the death of the professor. During this period he designed and advised on the application of steam power to road transport and to the Forth and Clyde Canal, thereby awakening his interest in ships and naval architecture.Russell presented papers to the British Association over several years, and one of them, The Wave Line Theory of Ship Form (although now superseded), had great influence on ship designers of the time and helped to establish the formal study of hydromechanics. With a name that was becoming well known, Russell looked around for better opportunities, and on narrowly missing appointment to the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh University he joined the upand-coming Clyde shipyard of Caird \& Co., Greenock, as Manager in 1838.Around 1844 Russell and his family moved to London; following some business problems he was in straitened circumstances. However, appointment as Secretary to the Committee setting up the Great Exhibition of 1851 eased his path into London's intellectual society and allowed him to take on tasks such as, in 1847, the purchase of Fairbairn's shipyard on the Isle of Dogs and the subsequent building there of I.K. Brunel's Great Eastern steamship. This unhappy undertaking was a millstone around the necks of Brunel and Russell and broke the health of the former. With the yard failing to secure the order for HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy's first ironclad, Russell pulled out of shipbuilding and for the remainder of his life was a designer, consultant and at times controversial, but at all times polished and urbane, member of many important committees and societies. He is remembered as one of the founders of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1860. His last task was to design a Swiss Lake steamer for Messrs Escher Wyss, a company that coincidentally had previously retained Sir William Fairbairn.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1847.BibliographyJohn Scott Russell published many papers under the imprint of the British Association, the Royal Society of Arts and the Institution of Naval Architects. His most impressive work was the mammoth three-volume work on shipbuilding published in London in 1865 entitled The Modern System of Naval Architecture. Full details and plans of the Great Eastern are included.Further ReadingG.S.Emmerson, 1977, John Scott Russell, a Great Victorian Engineer and Naval Architect, London: MurrayFMW -
78 Sarnoff, David
[br]b. 27 February 1891 Uzlian, Minsk (now in Belarus)d. 12 December 1971 New York City, New York, USA[br]Russian/American engineer who made a major contribution to the commercial development of radio and television.[br]As a Jewish boy in Russia, Sarnoff spent several years preparing to be a Talmudic Scholar, but in 1900 the family emigrated to the USA and settled in Albany, New York. While at public school and at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, he helped the family finances by running errands, selling newspapers and singing the liturgy in the synagogue. After a short period as a messenger boy with the Commercial Cable Company, in 1906 he became an office boy with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (see G. Marconi). Having bought a telegraph instrument with his first earnings, he taught himself Morse code and was made a junior telegraph operator in 1907. The following year he became a wireless operator at Nantucket Island, then in 1909 he became Manager of the Marconi station at Sea Gate, New York. After two years at sea he returned to a shore job as wireless operator at the world's most powerful station at Wanamaker's store in Manhattan. There, on 14 April 1912, he picked up the distress signals from the sinking iner Titanic, remaining at his post for three days.Rewarded by rapid promotion (Chief Radio Inspector 1913, Contract Manager 1914, Assistant Traffic Manager 1915, Commercial Manager 1917) he proposed the introduction of commercial radio broadcasting, but this received little response. Consequently, in 1919 he took the job of Commercial Manager of the newly formed Radio Corporation of America (RCA), becoming General Manager in 1921, Vice- President in 1922, Executive Vice-President in 1929 and President in 1930. In 1921 he was responsible for the broadcasting of the Dempsey-Carpentier title-fight, as a result of which RCA sold $80 million worth of radio receivers in the following three years. In 1926 he formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Rightly anticipating the development of television, in 1928 he inaugurated an experimental NBC television station and in 1939 demonstrated television at the New York World Fair. Because of his involvement with the provision of radio equipment for the armed services, he was made a lieutenant-colonel in the US Signal Corps Reserves in 1924, a full colonel in 1931 and, while serving as a communications consultant to General Eisenhower during the Second World War, Brigadier General in 1944.With the end of the war, RCA became a major manufacturer of television receivers and then invested greatly in the ultimately successful development of shadowmask tubes and receivers for colour television. Chairman and Chief Executive from 1934, Sarnoff held the former post until his retirement in 1970.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFrench Croix de Chevalier d'honneur 1935, Croix d'Officier 1940, Croix de Commandant 1947. Luxembourg Order of the Oaken Crown 1960. Japanese Order of the Rising Sun 1960. US Legion of Merit 1946. UN Citation 1949. French Union of Inventors Gold Medal 1954.KFSee also: Zworykin, Vladimir Kosma -
79 Shoenberg, Isaac
[br]b. 1 March 1880 Kiev, Ukrained. 25 January 1963 Willesden, London, England[br]Russian engineer and friend of Vladimir Zworykin; Director of Research at EMI, responsible for creating the team that successfully developed the world's first all-electronic television system.[br]After his initial engineering education at Kiev Polytechnic, Shoenberg went to London to undertake further studies at the Royal College of Science. In 1905 he returned to Russia and rose to become Chief Engineer of the Russian Wireless Telegraphy Company. He then returned to England, where he was a consultant in charge of the Patent Department and then joint General Manager of the Marconi Wireless Telegraphy Company (see Marconi). In 1929 he joined the Columbia Graphophone Company, but two years later this amalgamated with the Gramophone Company, by then known as His Master's voice (HMV), to form EMI (Electric and Musical Industries), a company in which the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had a significant shareholding. Appointed Director of the new company's Research Laboratories in 1931, Shoenberg gathered together a team of highly skilled engineers, including Blumlein, Browne, Willans, McGee, Lubszynski, Broadway and White, with the objective of producing an all-electronic television system suitable for public broadcasting. A 150-line system had already been demonstrated using film as the source material; a photoemissive camera tube similar to Zworykin's iconoscope soon followed. With alternate demonstrations of the EMI system and the mechanical system of Baird arranged with the object of selecting a broadcast system for the UK, Shoenberg took the bold decision to aim for a 405-line "high-definition" standard, using interlaced scanning based on an RCA patent and further developed by Blumlein. This was so successful that it was formally adopted as the British standard in 1935 and regular broadcasts, the first in the world, began in 1937. It is a tribute to Shoenberg's vision and the skills of his team that this standard was to remain in use, apart from the war years, until finally superseded in 1985.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1954. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1954.Further ReadingA.D.Blumlein et al., 1938, "The Marconi-EMI television system", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 83:729 (provides a description of the development of the 405-line system).For more background information, see Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Television. From Early Days to the Present, November 1986, Institution of Electrical Engineers Publication No. 271.KF -
80 Simms, Frederick
[br]b. 1863 Hamburg, Germany d. 1944[br]English engineer and entrepreneur who imported the first internal combustion engines into Britain.[br]Simms was born of English parents in Hamburg. He met Gottlieb Daimler at an exhibition in Bremen in 1890, where he had gone to exhibit an aerial cableway that he had designed to provide passenger transport over rivers and valleys; in the previous year, he had invented and patented an automatic railway ticket machine, the principle of which is still in use worldwide. He obtained a licence to develop the Daimler engine throughout the British Empire (excluding Canada). He had great trouble in arranging any demonstration of the Daimler engine as authorities were afraid of the risk of fire and explosion with petroleum spirit, particularly at indoor venues. He succeeded eventually in operating a boat with an internal combustion engine between Charing Cross and Westminster piers on the River Thames in 1891. He then rented space under a railway arch at Putney Bridge station for installing Daimler engines in boats. With Sir David Salomans he was responsible for organizing the first motor show in Britain in 1895; four cars were on show. Simms became a director of the main Daimler company, and was a consultant to the Coventry Daimler Company. He was the founder of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, a forerunner of the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), as well as the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.[br]Further ReadingE.Johnson, 1986, The Dawn of Motoring, London: Mercedes-Benz UK Ltd.IMcN
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