attended+system

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Born in upstate New York, where his father was a small manufacturer, Edward Clark attended college at Williams and graduated in 1831. He became a lawyer in New York City and from then on lived either in the city or on his rural estate near Cooperstown in upstate New York. After a series of share manipulations, Clark acquired a one-third interest in Isaac M. Singer's company. They soon bought out one of Singer's earlier partners, G.B.Zeiber, and in 1851, under the name of I.M.Singer \& Co., they set up a permanent sewing machine business with headquarters in New York.

The success of their firm initially rested on marketing. Clark introduced door-to-door sales-people and hire-purchase for their sewing machines in 1856 ($50 cash down, or $100 with a cash payment of $5 and $3 a month thereafter). He also trained women to demonstrate to potential customers the capabilities of the Singer sewing machine. At first their sewing machines continued to be made in the traditional way, with the parts fitted together by skilled workers through hand filing and shaping so that the parts would fit only onto one machine. This resembled European practice rather than the American system of manufacture that had been pioneered in the armouries in that country. In 1856 Singer brought out their first machine intended exclusively for home use, and at the same time manufacturing capacity was improved. Through increased sales, a new factory was built in 1858–9 on Mott Street, New York, but it soon became inadequate to meet demand.

In 1863 the Singer company was incorporated as the Singer Manufacturing Co. and began to modernize its production methods with special jigs and fixtures to help ensure uniformity. More and more specialized machinery was built for making the parts. By 1880 the factory, then at Elizabethport, New Jersey, was jammed with automatic and semi-automatic machine tools. In 1882 the factory was producing sewing machines with fully interchangeable parts that did not require hand fitting in assembly. Production rose from 810 machines in 1853 to half a million in 1880. A new family model was introduced in 1881. Clark had succeeded Singer, who died in 1875, as President of the company, but he retired in 1882 after he had seen through the change to mass production.

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All the machines in a group are served by a work transportation system.

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The telephone service is manned around the clock by trained operators.

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Control boards for the two kilns are attended by one operator.

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The power house is serviced by a 20-ton crane.

1 family.

reunión familiar family gathering

2 friendly (en el trato) (agradable).

3 informal, colloquial (lenguaje, estilo).

4 familiar (conocido).

su cara me es o me resulta familiar her face looks familiar

5 family-sized (tamaño).

un envase familiar a family pack

6 family-owned.

7 familial.

relative, relation.

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► adjetivo

1 (de la familia) family, of the family

2 (conocido) familiar, well-known

3 (tamaño) family

4 LINGÚÍSTICA colloquial

► nombre masulino o femenino

1 relation, relative

* * *

1) familiar

2) informal

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1. ADJ

1) (=de la familia) family antes de s

2) (=conocido) familiar

3) [lenguaje, término] colloquial

SMF (=pariente) relative, relation

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1)

a) <vida/vínculo> family (before n); <envase/coche> family (before n)

b) <trato/tono> familiar, informal; <lenguaje/expresión> colloquial

2) ( conocido) familiar

masculino y femenino relative, relation

* * *

1)

a) <vida/vínculo> family (before n); <envase/coche> family (before n)

b) <trato/tono> familiar, informal; <lenguaje/expresión> colloquial

2) ( conocido) familiar

masculino y femenino relative, relation

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familiar¹

familiar²

² = familiar, conversational, familial, old friend, family-oriented, colloquial, homey [homier -comp., homiest -sup.].

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1 ‹vida/vínculo› family ( before n); ‹coche› family ( before n); ‹envase› family ( before n), economy-size

una botella (de) tamaño familiar an economy-size bottle

un restaurante de ambiente familiar a family restaurant

2 ‹trato/tono› familiar, informal; ‹lenguaje/expresión› colloquial

B (conocido) familiar

su cara me resulta familiar her face is familiar, she looks familiar

su voz me resulta familiar her voice sounds o is familiar

el idioma aún no me es familiar I'm still not familiar with the language

relative, relation

sus hermanos y demás familiares her brothers and other relatives o relations

se fue a vivir con un familiar he went to live with a relative

( Esp)

station wagon ( AmE), estate car ( BrE)

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a) ‹vida/vínculo› family ( before n);

b) ‹trato/tono› familiar, informal;

c) ( conocido) ‹cara/lugar› familiar;

◊ su voz me resulta familiar her voice is familiar

* * *

♦ adj

1. [de familia] family;

reunión familiar family gathering

2. [en el trato] [agradable] friendly;

3. [lenguaje, estilo] informal, colloquial;

una expresión familiar an informal o colloquial expression

4. [conocido] familiar;

su cara me es o [m5] me resulta familiar her face looks familiar;

su voz me es familiar I recognize her voice, her voice sounds familiar

5. [tamaño] family-sized;

un envase familiar a family pack;

un vehículo familiar a family car

♦ nmf

relative, relation

* * *

I adj

1 family atr ;

envase familiar family-size pack

2 ( conocido) familiar;

su cara me es o

resulta familiar his face is familiar

3 LING colloquial

II m/f relation, relative

* * *

familiar adj

1) conocido: familiar

2) : familial, family

3) informal: informal

familiar nmf

pariente: relation, relative

* * *

familiar¹ adj

1. (de la familia) family

2. (conocido) familiar

3. (informal) informal

4. (lenguaje) colloquial

familiar² n relative / relation

SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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Clymer was born on his father's farm, of a family that emigrated from Switzerland in the early eighteenth century. He attended local schools, helping out on the farm in his spare time, and he showed a particular talent for maintaining farm machinery. At the age of 16 he learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, which he followed in the same district for over twenty-five years. During that time, he showed his talent for mechanical invention in many ways, including the invention of a plough specially adapted to the local soils. Around 1800, he moved to Philadelphia, where his interest was aroused by the erection of the first bridge over the Schuylkill River. He devised a pump to remove water from the cofferdams at a rate of 500 gallons per day, superior to any other pumps then in use. He obtained a US patent for this in 1801, and a British one soon after.

Clymer then turned his attention to the improvement of the printing press. For three and a half centuries after its invention, the old wooden-framed press had remained virtually unchanged except in detail. The first real change came in 1800 with the introduction of the iron press by Earl Stanhope. Modified versions were developed by other inventors, notably George Clymer, who after more than ten years' effort achieved his Columbian press. With its new system of levers, it enabled perfect impressions to be obtained with far less effort by the pressman. The Columbian was also notable for its distinctive cast-iron ornamentation, including a Hermes on each pillar and alligators and other reptiles on the levers. Most spectacular, it was surmounted by an American spread eagle, usually covered in gilt, which also served as a counterweight to raise the platen. The earliest known Columbian, surviving only in an illustration, bears the inscription Columbian Press/No.25/invented by George Clymer/Anno Domini 1813/Made in Philadelphia 1816. Few American printers could afford the US$400 selling price, so in 1817 Clymer went to England, where it was taken up enthusiastically. He obtained a British patent for it the same year, and by the following March it was being manufactured by the engineering firm R.W.Cope, although Clymer was probably making it on his own account soon afterwards. The Columbian was widely used for many years and continued to be made even into the twentieth century. The King of the Netherlands awarded Clymer a gold medal for his invention and the Tsar of Russia gave him a present for installing the press in Russia. Doubtless for business reasons, Clymer spent most of his remaining years in England and Europe.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Public utilities

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Ferranti, who had taken an interest in electrical and mechanical devices from an early age, was educated at St Augustine's College in Ramsgate and for a short time attended evening classes at University College, London. Rather than pursue an academic career, Ferranti, who had intense practical interests, found employment in 1881 with the Siemens Company (see Werner von Siemens) in their experimental department. There he had the opportunity to superintend the installation of electric-lighting plants in various parts of the country. Becoming acquainted with Alfred Thomson, an engineer, Ferranti entered into a short-lived partnership with him to manufacture the Ferranti alternator. This generator, with a unique zig-zag armature, had an efficiency exceeding that of all its rivals. Finding that Sir William Thomson had invented a similar machine, Ferranti formed a company with him to combine the inventions and produce the Ferranti- Thomson machine. For this the Hammond Electric Light and Power Company obtained the sole selling rights.

In 1885 the Grosvenor Gallery Electricity Supply Corporation was having serious problems with its Gaulard and Gibbs series distribution system. Ferranti, when consulted, reviewed the design and recommended transformers connected across constant-potential mains. In the following year, at the age of 22, he was appointed Engineer to the company and introduced the pattern of electricity supply that was eventually adopted universally. Ambitious plans by Ferranti for London envisaged the location of a generating station of unprecedented size at Deptford, about eight miles (13 km) from the city, a departure from the previous practice of placing stations within the area to be supplied. For this venture the London Electricity Supply Corporation was formed. Ferranti's bold decision to bring the supply from Deptford at the hitherto unheard-of pressure of 10,000 volts required him to design suitable cables, transformers and generators. Ferranti planned generators with 10,000 hp (7,460 kW)engines, but these were abandoned at an advanced stage of construction. Financial difficulties were caused in part when a Board of Trade enquiry in 1889 reduced the area that the company was able to supply. In spite of this adverse situation the enterprise continued on a reduced scale. Leaving the London Electricity Supply Corporation in 1892, Ferranti again started his own business, manufacturing electrical plant. He conceived the use of wax-impregnated paper-insulated cables for high voltages, which formed a landmark in the history of cable development. This method of flexible-cable manufacture was used almost exclusively until synthetic materials became available. In 1892 Ferranti obtained a patent which set out the advantages to be gained by adopting sector-shaped conductors in multi-core cables. This was to be fundamental to the future design and development of such cables.

A total of 176 patents were taken out by S.Z. de Ferranti. His varied and numerous inventions included a successful mercury-motor energy meter and improvements to textile-yarn produc-tion. A transmission-line phenomenon where the open-circuit voltage at the receiving end of a long line is greater than the sending voltage was named the Ferranti Effect after him.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Weapons and armour

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Frederick W.Howe attended local schools until the age of 16 and then entered the machine shop of Gay \& Silver at North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, as an apprentice and remained with that firm for nine years. He then joined Robbins, Kendall \& Lawrence of Windsor, Vermont, as Assistant to Richard S. Lawrence in designing machine tools. A year later (1848) he was made Plant Superintendent. During his time with this firm, Howe designed a profiling machine which was used in all gun shops in the United States: a barrel-drilling and rifling machine, and the first commercially successful milling machine. Robbins \& Lawrence took to the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, England, a set of rifles built on the interchangeable system. The interest this created resulted in a visit of some members of the British Royal Small Arms Commission to America and subsequently in an order for 150 machine tools, jigs and fixtures from Robbins \& Lawrence, to be installed at the small-arms factory at Enfield. From 1853 to 1856 Howe was in charge of the design and building of these machines. In 1856 he established his own armoury at Newark, New Jersey, but transferred after two years to Middletown, Connecticut, where he continued the manufacture of small arms until the outbreak of the Civil War. He then became Superintendent of the armoury of the Providence Tool Company at Providence, Rhode Island, and served in that capacity until the end of the war. In 1865 he went to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to assist Elias Howe with the manufacture of his sewing machine. After the death of Elias Howe, Frederick Howe returned to Providence to join the Brown \& Sharpe Manufacturing Company. As Superintendent of that establishment he worked with Joseph R. Brown in the development of many of the firm's products, including machinery for the Wilcox \& Gibbs sewing machine then being made by Brown \& Sharpe. From 1876 Howe was in business on his own account as a consulting mechanical engineer and in his later years he was engaged in the development of shoe machinery and in designing a one-finger typewriter, which, however, was never completed. He was granted several patents, mainly in the fields of machine tools and firearms. As a designer, Howe was said to have been a perfectionist, making frequent improvements; when completed, his designs were always sound.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Carl Edvard Johansson was first apprenticed to a shoemaker, but he soon abandoned that career. In 1882 he went to America to join his brother Arvid working at a sawmill in the summer; in winter the brothers obtained further general education at the Gustavus Adolphus College at St Peter, Minnesota. They returned to Sweden in November 1884 and in the following year Carl obtained employment with a small engineering firm which rented a workshop in the government small-arms factory at Eskilstuna. In his spare time he attended the Eskilstuna Technical College and in 1888 he was accepted as an apprentice armourer inspector. After completion of his apprenticeship he was appointed an armourer inspector, and it was in his work of inspection that he realized that the large number of gauges then required could be reduced if several accurate gauges could be used in combination. This was in 1896, and the first set of gauges was made for use in the rifle factory. With these, any dimension between 1 mm and 201 mm could be made up to the nearest 0.01 mm, the gauges having flat polished surfaces that would adhere together by "wringing". Johansson obtained patents for the system from 1901, but it was not until c.1907 that the sets of gauges were marketed generally. Gauges were made in inch units for Britain and America—slightly different as the standards were not then identical. Johansson formed his own company to manufacture the gauges in 1910, but he did not give up his post in the rifle factory until 1914. By the 1920s Johansson gauges were established as the engineering dimensional standards for the whole world; the company also made other precision measuring instruments such as micrometers and extensometers. A new company, C.E.Johansson Inc., was set up in America for manufacture and sales, and the gauges were extensively used in the American automobile industry. Henry Ford took a special interest and Johansson spent several years in a post with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan, until he returned to Sweden in 1936.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Railways and locomotives

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Page graduated from Harvard in 1832 and subsequently attended Boston Medical School. He began to practise in Salem and also engaged in experimental research in electricity, discovering the improvement effected by substituting bundles of iron wire for solid bars in induction coils. He also created a device which he termed a Dynamic Multiplier, the prototype of the auto-transformer. Following a period in medical practice in Virginia, in 1841 he became one of the first two principal examiners in the United States Patent Office. He also held the Chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Columbian College, later George Washington University, between 1844 and 1849.

A prolific inventor, Page completed several large electric motors in which reciprocating action was converted to rotary motion, and invested an extravagant sum of public money in a foredoomed effort to develop a 10-ton electric locomotive powered by primary batteries. This was unsuccessfully demonstrated in April 1851 on the Washington-Baltimore railway and seriously damaged his reputation. Page approached Thomas Davenport with an offer of partnership, but Davenport refused.

After leaving the Patent Office in 1852 he became a patentee himself and advocated the reform of the patent procedures. Page returned to the Patent Office in 1861, and later persuaded Congress to pass a special Act permitting him to patent the induction coil. This was the cause, after his death, of protracted and widely publicized litigation.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Metallurgy, Public utilities, Telecommunications

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Born Carl Wilhelm, he attended craft schools in Lübeck and Magdeburg, followed by an intensive course in natural science at Göttingen as a pupil of Weber. At the age of 19 Siemens travelled to England and sold an electroplating process developed by his brother Werner Siemens to Richard Elkington, who was already established in the plating business. From 1843 to 1844 he obtained practical experience in the Magdeburg works of Count Stolburg. He settled in England in 1844 and later assumed British nationality, but maintained close contact with his brother Werner, who in 1847 had co-founded the firm Siemens \& Halske in Berlin to manufacture telegraphic equipment. William began to develop his regenerative principle of waste-heat recovery and in 1856 his brother Frederick (1826–1904) took out a British patent for heat regeneration, by which hot waste gases were passed through a honeycomb of fire-bricks. When they became hot, the gases were switched to a second mass of fire-bricks and incoming air and fuel gas were led through the hot bricks. By alternating the two gas flows, high temperatures could be reached and considerable fuel economies achieved. By 1861 the two brothers had incorporated producer gas fuel, made by gasifying low-grade coal.

Heat regeneration was first applied in ironmaking by Cowper in 1857 for heating the air blast in blast furnaces. The first regenerative furnace was set up in Birmingham in 1860 for glassmaking. The first such furnace for making steel was developed in France by Pierre Martin and his father, Emile, in 1863. Siemens found British steelmakers reluctant to adopt the principle so in 1866 he rented a small works in Birmingham to develop his open-hearth steelmaking furnace, which he patented the following year. The process gradually made headway; as well as achieving high temperatures and saving fuel, it was slower than Bessemer's process, permitting greater control over the content of the steel. By 1900 the tonnage of open-hearth steel exceeded that produced by the Bessemer process.

In 1872 Siemens played a major part in founding the Society of Telegraph Engineers (from which the Institution of Electrical Engineers evolved), serving as its first President. He became President for the second time in 1878. He built a cable works at Charlton, London, where the cable could be loaded directly into the holds of ships moored on the Thames. In 1873, together with William Froude, a British shipbuilder, he designed the Faraday, the first specialized vessel for Atlantic cable laying. The successful laying of a cable from Europe to the United States was completed in 1875, and a further five transatlantic cables were laid by the Faraday over the following decade.

The Siemens factory in Charlton also supplied equipment for some of the earliest electric-lighting installations in London, including the British Museum in 1879 and the Savoy Theatre in 1882, the first theatre in Britain to be fully illuminated by electricity. The pioneer electric-tramway system of 1883 at Portrush, Northern Ireland, was an opportunity for the Siemens company to demonstrate its equipment.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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The son of a wealthy jeweller, he attended medical school in Vienna and qualified in 1836. Until 1844 he was engaged in research into the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. In 1844, while on a visit to Paris, he came to the attention of Baron Türckheim, Director of the General Hospital in Vienna. The consequence was the establishment of a special division of the hospital for nervous diseases, with Türck in charge.

In 1857 he was appointed Chief Physician to the largest hospital in Vienna and at the same time he became aware of the invention in 1855 by Manuel García, a music teacher of Paris, of a practical laryngoscope. Türck adapted the apparatus to clinical purposes and proceeded to establish the diagnostic and therapeutic techniques required for its efficient use. Some conflict over priority ensued following a publication by Johann Nepomuk Czermak in 1858, but eventually a professional declaration asserted Türck's priority.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Vignoles, who was of Huguenot descent, was orphaned in infancy and brought up in the family of his grandfather, Dr Charles Hutton FRS, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. After service in the Army he travelled to America, arriving in South Carolina in 1817. He was appointed Assistant to the state's Civil Engineer and surveyed much of South Carolina and subsequently Florida. After his return to England in 1823 he established himself as a civil engineer in London, and obtained work from the brothers George and John Rennie.

In 1825 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) lost their application for an Act of Parliament, discharged their engineer George Stephenson and appointed the Rennie brothers in his place. They in turn employed Vignoles to resurvey the railway, taking a route that would minimize objections. With Vignoles's route, the company obtained its Act in 1826 and appointed Vignoles to supervise the start of construction. After Stephenson was reappointed Chief Engineer, however, he and Vignoles proved incompatible, with the result that Vignoles left the L \& MR early in 1827.

Nevertheless, Vignoles did not sever all connection with the L \& MR. He supported John Braithwaite and John Ericsson in the construction of the locomotive Novelty and was present when it competed in the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He attended the opening of the L \& MR in 1830 and was appointed Engineer to two railways which connected with it, the St Helens \& Runcorn Gap and the Wigan Branch (later extended to Preston as the North Union); he supervised the construction of these.

After the death of the Engineer to the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway, Vignoles supervised construction: the railway, the first in Ireland, was opened in 1834. He was subsequently employed in surveying and constructing many railways in the British Isles and on the European continent; these included the Eastern Counties, the Midland Counties, the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyme \& Manchester (which proved for him a financial disaster from which he took many years to recover), and the Waterford \& Limerick. He probably discussed rail of flat-bottom section with R.L. Stevens during the winter of 1830–1 and brought it into use in the UK for the first time in 1836 on the London \& Croydon Railway: subsequently rail of this section became known as "Vignoles rail". He considered that a broader gauge than 4 ft 8½ in. (1.44 m) was desirable for railways, although most of those he built were to this gauge so that they might connect with others. He supported the atmospheric system of propulsion during the 1840s and was instrumental in its early installation on the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway's Dalkey extension. Between 1847 and 1853 he designed and built the noted multi-span suspension bridge at Kiev, Russia, over the River Dnieper, which is more than half a mile (800 m) wide at that point.

Between 1857 and 1863 he surveyed and then supervised the construction of the 155- mile (250 km) Tudela \& Bilbao Railway, which crosses the Cantabrian Pyrenees at an altitude of 2,163 ft (659 m) above sea level. Vignoles outlived his most famous contemporaries to become the grand old man of his profession.

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See also: Samuda, Joseph d'Aguilar

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Metallurgy, Weapons and armour

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Joseph Whitworth received his early education in a school kept by his father, but from the age of 12 he attended a school near Leeds. At 14 he joined his uncle's mill near Ambergate, Derbyshire, to learn the business of cotton spinning. In the four years he spent there he realized that he was more interested in the machinery than in managing a cotton mill. In 1821 he obtained employment as a mechanic with Crighton \& Co., Manchester. In 1825 he moved to London and worked for Henry Maudslay and later for the Holtzapffels and Joseph Clement. After these years spent gaining experience, he returned to Manchester in 1833 and set up in a small workshop under a sign "Joseph Whitworth, Tool Maker, from London".

The business expanded steadily and the firm made machine tools of all types and other engineering products including steam engines. From 1834 Whitworth obtained many patents in the fields of machine tools, textile and knitting machinery and road-sweeping machines. By 1851 the company was generally regarded as the leading manufacturer of machine tools in the country. Whitworth was a pioneer of precise measurement and demonstrated the fundamental mode of producing a true plane by making surface plates in sets of three. He advocated the use of the decimal system and made use of limit gauges, and he established a standard screw thread which was adopted as the national standard. In 1853 Whitworth visited America as a member of a Royal Commission and reported on American industry. At the time of the Crimean War in 1854 he was asked to provide machinery for manufacturing rifles and this led him to design an improved rifle of his own. Although tests in 1857 showed this to be much superior to all others, it was not adopted by the War Office. Whitworth's experiments with small arms led on to the construction of big guns and projectiles. To improve the quality of the steel used for these guns, he subjected the molten metal to pressure during its solidification, this fluid-compressed steel being then known as "Whitworth steel".

In 1868 Whitworth established thirty annual scholarships for engineering students. After his death his executors permanently endowed the Whitworth Scholarships and distributed his estate of nearly half a million pounds to various educational and charitable institutions. Whitworth was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1841 and a Member in 1848 and served on its Council for many years. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1847, the year of its foundation.

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