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61 Cartwright, Revd Edmund
[br]b. 24 April 1743 Marnham, Nottingham, Englandd. 30 October 1823 Hastings, Sussex, England[br]English inventor of the power loom, a combing machine and machines for making ropes, bread and bricks as well as agricultural improvements.[br]Edmund Cartwright, the fourth son of William Cartwright, was educated at Wakefield Grammar School, and went to University College, Oxford, at the age of 14. By special act of convocation in 1764, he was elected Fellow of Magdalen College. He married Alice Whitaker in 1772 and soon after was given the ecclesiastical living of Brampton in Derbyshire. In 1779 he was presented with the living of Goadby, Marwood, Leicestershire, where he wrote poems, reviewed new works, and began agricultural experiments. A visit to Matlock in the summer of 1784 introduced him to the inventions of Richard Arkwright and he asked why weaving could not be mechanized in a similar manner to spinning. This began a remarkable career of inventions.Cartwright returned home and built a loom which required two strong men to operate it. This was the first attempt in England to develop a power loom. It had a vertical warp, the reed fell with the weight of at least half a hundredweight and, to quote Gartwright's own words, "the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to throw a Congreive [sic] rocket" (Strickland 19.71:8—for background to the "rocket" comparison, see Congreve, Sir William). Nevertheless, it had the same three basics of weaving that still remain today in modern power looms: shedding or dividing the warp; picking or projecting the shuttle with the weft; and beating that pick of weft into place with a reed. This loom he proudly patented in 1785, and then he went to look at hand looms and was surprised to see how simply they operated. Further improvements to his own loom, covered by two more patents in 1786 and 1787, produced a machine with the more conventional horizontal layout that showed promise; however, the Manchester merchants whom he visited were not interested. He patented more improvements in 1788 as a result of the experience gained in 1786 through establishing a factory at Doncaster with power looms worked by a bull that were the ancestors of modern ones. Twenty-four looms driven by steam-power were installed in Manchester in 1791, but the mill was burned down and no one repeated the experiment. The Doncaster mill was sold in 1793, Cartwright having lost £30,000, However, in 1809 Parliament voted him £10,000 because his looms were then coming into general use.In 1789 he began working on a wool-combing machine which he patented in 1790, with further improvements in 1792. This seems to have been the earliest instance of mechanized combing. It used a circular revolving comb from which the long fibres or "top" were. carried off into a can, and a smaller cylinder-comb for teasing out short fibres or "noils", which were taken off by hand. Its output equalled that of twenty hand combers, but it was only relatively successful. It was employed in various Leicestershire and Yorkshire mills, but infringements were frequent and costly to resist. The patent was prolonged for fourteen years after 1801, but even then Cartwright did not make any profit. His 1792 patent also included a machine to make ropes with the outstanding and basic invention of the "cordelier" which he communicated to his friends, including Robert Fulton, but again it brought little financial benefit. As a result of these problems and the lack of remuneration for his inventions, Cartwright moved to London in 1796 and for a time lived in a house built with geometrical bricks of his own design.Other inventions followed fast, including a tread-wheel for cranes, metallic packing for pistons in steam-engines, and bread-making and brick-making machines, to mention but a few. He had already returned to agricultural improvements and he put forward suggestions in 1793 for a reaping machine. In 1801 he received a prize from the Board of Agriculture for an essay on husbandry, which was followed in 1803 by a silver medal for the invention of a three-furrow plough and in 1805 by a gold medal for his essay on manures. From 1801 to 1807 he ran an experimental farm on the Duke of Bedford's estates at Woburn.From 1786 until his death he was a prebendary of Lincoln. In about 1810 he bought a small farm at Hollanden near Sevenoaks, Kent, where he continued his inventions, both agricultural and general. Inventing to the last, he died at Hastings and was buried in Battle church.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsBoard of Agriculture Prize 1801 (for an essay on agriculture). Society of Arts, Silver Medal 1803 (for his three-furrow plough); Gold Medal 1805 (for an essay on agricultural improvements).Bibliography1785. British patent no. 1,270 (power loom).1786. British patent no. 1,565 (improved power loom). 1787. British patent no. 1,616 (improved power loom).1788. British patent no. 1,676 (improved power loom). 1790, British patent no. 1,747 (wool-combing machine).1790, British patent no. 1,787 (wool-combing machine).1792, British patent no. 1,876 (improved wool-combing machine and rope-making machine with cordelier).Further ReadingM.Strickland, 1843, A Memoir of the Life, Writings and Mechanical Inventions of Edmund Cartwright, D.D., F.R.S., London (remains the fullest biography of Cartwright).Dictionary of National Biography (a good summary of Cartwright's life). For discussions of Cartwright's weaving inventions, see: A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London; R.L. Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester. F.Nasmith, 1925–6, "Fathers of machine cotton manufacture", Transactions of theNewcomen Society 6.H.W.Dickinson, 1942–3, "A condensed history of rope-making", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 23.W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (covers both his power loom and his wool -combing machine).RLHBiographical history of technology > Cartwright, Revd Edmund
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62 Chevenard, Pierre Antoine Jean Sylvestre
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 31 December 1888 Thizy, Rhône, Franced. 15 August 1960 Fontenoy-aux-Roses, France[br]French metallurgist, inventor of the alloys Elinvar and Platinite and of the method of strengthening nickel-chromium alloys by a precipitate ofNi3Al which provided the basis of all later super-alloy development.[br]Soon after graduating from the Ecole des Mines at St-Etienne in 1910, Chevenard joined the Société de Commentry Fourchambault et Decazeville at their steelworks at Imphy, where he remained for the whole of his career. Imphy had for some years specialized in the production of nickel steels. From this venture emerged the first austenitic nickel-chromium steel, containing 6 per cent chromium and 22–4 per cent nickel and produced commercially in 1895. Most of the alloys required by Guillaume in his search for the low-expansion alloy Invar were made at Imphy. At the Imphy Research Laboratory, established in 1911, Chevenard conducted research into the development of specialized nickel-based alloys. His first success followed from an observation that some of the ferro-nickels were free from the low-temperature brittleness exhibited by conventional steels. To satisfy the technical requirements of Georges Claude, the French cryogenic pioneer, Chevenard was then able in 1912 to develop an alloy containing 55–60 per cent nickel, 1–3 per cent manganese and 0.2–0.4 per cent carbon. This was ductile down to −190°C, at which temperature carbon steel was very brittle.By 1916 Elinvar, a nickel-iron-chromium alloy with an elastic modulus that did not vary appreciably with changes in ambient temperature, had been identified. This found extensive use in horology and instrument manufacture, and even for the production of high-quality tuning forks. Another very popular alloy was Platinite, which had the same coefficient of thermal expansion as platinum and soda glass. It was used in considerable quantities by incandescent-lamp manufacturers for lead-in wires. Other materials developed by Chevenard at this stage to satisfy the requirements of the electrical industry included resistance alloys, base-metal thermocouple combinations, magnetically soft high-permeability alloys, and nickel-aluminium permanent magnet steels of very high coercivity which greatly improved the power and reliability of car magnetos. Thermostatic bimetals of all varieties soon became an important branch of manufacture at Imphy.During the remainder of his career at Imphy, Chevenard brilliantly elaborated the work on nickel-chromium-tungsten alloys to make stronger pressure vessels for the Haber and other chemical processes. Another famous alloy that he developed, ATV, contained 35 per cent nickel and 11 per cent chromium and was free from the problem of stress-induced cracking in steam that had hitherto inhibited the development of high-power steam turbines. Between 1912 and 1917, Chevenard recognized the harmful effects of traces of carbon on this type of alloy, and in the immediate postwar years he found efficient methods of scavenging the residual carbon by controlled additions of reactive metals. This led to the development of a range of stabilized austenitic stainless steels which were free from the problems of intercrystalline corrosion and weld decay that then caused so much difficulty to the manufacturers of chemical plant.Chevenard soon concluded that only the nickel-chromium system could provide a satisfactory basis for the subsequent development of high-temperature alloys. The first published reference to the strengthening of such materials by additions of aluminium and/or titanium occurs in his UK patent of 1929. This strengthening approach was adopted in the later wartime development in Britain of the Nimonic series of alloys, all of which depended for their high-temperature strength upon the precipitated compound Ni3Al.In 1936 he was studying the effect of what is now known as "thermal fatigue", which contributes to the eventual failure of both gas and steam turbines. He then published details of equipment for assessing the susceptibility of nickel-chromium alloys to this type of breakdown by a process of repeated quenching. Around this time he began to make systematic use of the thermo-gravimetrie balance for high-temperature oxidation studies.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, Société de Physique. Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur.Bibliography1929, Analyse dilatométrique des matériaux, with a preface be C.E.Guillaume, Paris: Dunod (still regarded as the definitive work on this subject).The Dictionary of Scientific Biography lists around thirty of his more important publications between 1914 and 1943.Further Reading"Chevenard, a great French metallurgist", 1960, Acier Fins (Spec.) 36:92–100.L.Valluz, 1961, "Notice sur les travaux de Pierre Chevenard, 1888–1960", Paris: Institut de France, Académie des Sciences.ASDBiographical history of technology > Chevenard, Pierre Antoine Jean Sylvestre
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63 Deville, Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 11 March 1818 St Thomas, Virgin Islandsd. 1 July 1881 Boulogne-sur-Seine, France[br]French chemist and metallurgist, pioneer in the large-scale production of aluminium and other light metals.[br]Deville was the son of a prosperous shipowner with diplomatic duties in the Virgin Islands. With his elder brother Charles, who later became a distinguished physicist, he was sent to Paris to be educated. He took his degree in medicine in 1843, but before that he had shown an interest in chemistry, due particularly to the lectures of Thenard. Two years later, with Thenard's influence, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Besançon. In 1851 he was able to return to Paris as Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. He remained there for the rest of his working life, greatly improving the standard of teaching, and his laboratory became one of the great research centres of Europe. His first chemical work had been in organic chemistry, but he then turned to inorganic chemistry, specifically to improve methods of producing the new and little-known metal aluminium. Essentially, the process consisted of forming sodium aluminium trichloride and reducing it with sodium to metallic aluminium. He obtained sodium in sufficient quantity by reducing sodium carbonate with carbon. In 1855 he exhibited specimens of the metal at the Paris Exhibition, and the same year Napoleon III asked to see them, with a view to using it for breastplates for the Army and for spoons and forks for State banquets. With the resulting government support, he set up a pilot plant at Jarvel to develop the process, and then set up a small company, the Société d'Aluminium at Nan terre. This raised the output of this attractive and useful metal, so it could be used more widely than for the jewellery to which it had hitherto been restricted. Large-scale applications, however, had to await the electrolytic process that began to supersede Deville's in the 1890s. Deville extended his sodium reduction method to produce silicon, boron and the light metals magnesium and titanium. His investigations into the metallurgy of platinum revolutionized the industry and led in 1872 to his being asked to make the platinum-iridium (90–10) alloy for the standard kilogram and metre. Deville later carried out important work in high-temperature chemistry. He grieved much at the death of his brother Charles in 1876, and his retirement was forced by declining health in 1880; he did not survive for long.[br]BibliographyDeville published influential books on aluminium and platinum; these and all his publications are listed in the bibliography in the standard biography by J.Gray, 1889, Henri Sainte-Claire Deville: sa vie et ses travaux, Paris.Further ReadingM.Daumas, 1949, "Henri Sainte-Claire Deville et les débuts de l'industrie de l'aluminium", Rev.Hist.Sci 2:352–7.J.C.Chaston, 1981, "Henri Sainte-Claire Deville: his outstanding contributions to the chemistry of the platinum metals", Platinum Metals Review 25:121–8.LRDBiographical history of technology > Deville, Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire
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64 Fox, Samuel
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 1815 Bradfield, near Sheffield, Englandd. February 1887 Sheffield, England[br]English inventor of the curved steel umbrella frame.[br]Samuel Fox was the son of a weaver's shuttle maker in the hamlet of Bradwell (probably Bradfield, near Sheffield) in the remote hills. He went to Sheffield and served an apprenticeship in the steel trade. Afterwards, he worked with great energy and industry until he acquired sufficient capital to start in business on his own account at Stocksbridge, near Sheffield. It was there that he invented what became known as "Fox's Paragon Frame" for umbrellas. Whalebone or solid steel had previously been used for umbrella ribs, but whalebone was unreliable and steel was heavy. Fox realized that if he grooved the ribs he could make them both lighter and more elastic. In his first patent, taken out in 1852, he described making the ribs and stretchers of parasols and umbrellas from a narrow strip of steel plate partially bent into a trough-like form. He took out five more patents. The first, in 1853, was for strengthening the joints. His next two, in 1856 and 1857, were more concerned with preparing the steel for making the ribs. Another patent in 1857 was basically for improving the formation of the bit at the end of the rib where it was fixed to the stretcher and where the end of the rib has to be formed into a boss: this was so it could have a pin fixed through it to act as a pivot when the umbrella has to be opened or folded and yet support the rib and stretcher. The final patent, in 1865, reverted once more to improving the manufacture of the ribs. He made a fortune before other manufacturers knew what he was doing. Fox established a works at Lille when he found that the French import duties and other fiscal arrangements hindered exporting umbrellas and successful trading there, and was thereby able to develop a large and lucrative business.[br]Bibliography1852. British patent no. 14,055 (curved steel ribs and stretchers for umbrellas). 1853. British patent no. 739 (strengthened umbrella joints).1856. British patent no. 2,741 (ribs and stretchers for umbrellas). 1857. British patent no. 1,450 (steel wire for umbrellas).1857, British patent no. 1,857 (forming the bit attached to the ribs). 1865, British patent no. 2,348 (improvements in making the ribs).Further ReadingObituary, 1887, Engineer 63.Obituary, 1887, Iron 29.RLH -
65 Gutenberg, Johann Gensfleisch zum
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. c. 1394–9 Mainz, Germanyd. 3 February 1468 Mainz, Germany[br]German inventor of printing with movable type.[br]Few biographical details are known of Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg, yet it has been said that he was responsible for Germany's most notable contribution to civilization. He was a goldsmith by trade, of a patrician family of the city of Mainz. He seems to have begun experiments on printing while a political exile in Strasbourg c. 1440. He returned to Mainz between 1444 and 1448 and continued his experiments, until by 1450 he had perfected his invention sufficiently to justify raising capital for its commercial exploitation.Circumstances were propitious for the invention of printing at that time. Rises in literacy and prosperity had led to the formation of a social class with the time and resources to develop a taste for reading, and the demand for reading matter had outstripped the ability of the scribes to satisfy it. The various technologies required were well established, and finally the flourishing textile industry was producing enough waste material, rag, to make paper, the only satisfactory and cheap medium for printing. There were others working along similar lines, but it was Gutenberg who achieved the successful adaptation and combination of technologies to arrive at a process by which many identical copies of a text could be produced in a wide variety of forms, of which the book was the most important. Gutenberg did make several technical innovations, however. The two-piece adjustable mould for casting types of varying width, from T to "M", was ingenious. Then he had to devise an oil-based ink suitable for inking metal type, derived from the painting materials developed by contemporary Flemish artists. Finally, probably after many experiments, he arrived at a metal alloy of distinctive composition suitable for casting type.In 1450 Gutenberg borrowed 800 guldens from Johannes Fust, a lawyer of Mainz, and two years later Fust advanced a further 800 guldens, securing for himself a partnership in Gutenberg's business. But in 1455 Fust foreclosed and the bulk of Gutenberg's equipment passed to Peter Schöffer, who was in the service of Fust and later married his daughter. Like most early printers, Gutenberg seems not to have appreciated, or at any rate to have been able to provide for, the great dilemma of the publishing trade, namely the outlay of considerable capital in advance of each publication and the slowness of the return. Gutenberg probably retained only the type for the 42- and 36-line bibles and possibly the Catholicon of 1460, an encyclopedic work compiled in the thirteenth century and whose production pointed the way to printing's role as a means of spreading knowledge. The work concluded with a short descriptive piece, or colophon, which is probably by Gutenberg himself and is the only output of his mind that we have; it manages to omit the names of both author and printer.Gutenberg seems to have abandoned printing after 1460, perhaps due to failing eyesight as well as for financial reasons, and he suffered further loss in the sack of Mainz in 1462. He received a kind of pension from the Archbishop in 1465, and on his death was buried in the Franciscan church in Mainz. The only major work to have issued for certain from Gutenberg's workshop is the great 42-line bible, begun in 1452 and completed by August 1456. The quality of this Graaf piece of printing is a tribute to Gutenberg's ability as a printer, and the soundness of his invention is borne out by the survival of the process as he left it to the world, unchanged for over three hundred years save in minor details.[br]Further ReadingA.Ruppel, 1967, Johannes Gutenberg: sein Leben und sein Werk, 3rd edn, Nieuwkoop: B.de Graaf (the standard biography), A.M.L.de Lamartine, 1960, Gutenberg, inventeur de l'imprimerie, Tallone.Scholderer, 1963, Gutenberg, Inventor of Printing, London: British Museum.S.H.Steinberg, 1974, Five Hundred Years of Printing 3rd edn, London: Penguin (provides briefer details).LRDBiographical history of technology > Gutenberg, Johann Gensfleisch zum
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66 Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de
SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology, Electricity, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 9 May 1845 Orsa, Swedend. 2 February 1913 Stockholm, Sweden[br]Swedish inventor of an advanced cream separator and a steam turbine.[br]Gustaf de Laval was educated at the Stockholm Technical Institute and Uppsala University. He proved to have an unfailing vigour and variety in his inventive talent, for his interests ranged from electric lighting and electrometallurgy to aerodynamics. In the 1890s he employed over one hundred engineers to develop his inventions, but he was best known for two: the cream separator and a steam turbine. In 1877 he invented the high-speed centrifugal cream separator, which was probably the greatest advance in butter-making up to that time. By 1880 the separators were being successfully marketed all over the world, for they were quickly adopted in larger dairies where they effected enormous savings in labour and space. He followed this with various devices for the dairy industry, including a vacuum milking machine perfected in 1913. In c. 1882, de Laval invented a turbine on the principle of Hero's engine, but he quickly turned his attention to the impulse type, which was like Branca's, with a jet of steam impinging on a set of blades around the periphery of a wheel. He applied for a British patent in 1889. The steam was expanded in a single stage from the initial to the final pressure: to secure economy with the steam issuing at high velocity, the blades also had to rotate at high velocity. An early 5 hp (3.7 kW) turbine rotated at 30,000 rpm, so reduction gearing had to be introduced. Production started in Sweden in 1893 and in other countries at about the same time. In 1892 de Laval proposed employing one of his turbines of 15 hp (11 kW) in an experimental launch, but there is no evidence that it was ever actually installed in a vessel. However, his turbines were popular for powering electric generating sets for lighting textile mills and ships, and by 1900 were available in sizes up to 300 bhp (224 kW).[br]Bibliography1889, British patent no. 7,143 (steam turbine).Further ReadingT.Althin, 1943, Life of de Laval, Stockholm (a full biography).T.I.Williams (ed.), 1969, A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, London: A. \& C. Black (contains a brief biography).R.M.Neilson, 1902, The Steam Turbine, London: Longmans, Green \& Co. (fully covers the development of de Laval's steam turbine).H.W.Dickinson, 1938, A Short History of the Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (contains a short account of the development of the steam turbine).R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (contains a short account).RLHBiographical history of technology > Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de
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67 Need, Samuel
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 1718d. 14 April 1781 Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England[br]English manufacturer of hosiery who helped to finance Arkwright's spinning machine and early cotton mills.[br]Samuel Need was apprenticed as a framework knitter and entered the hosiery trade c. 1742. He was a Dissenter and later became an Independent Congregationalist. He married Elizabeth Gibson of Hacking, Middlesex, who survived him and died in 1781. He had a warehouse in Nottingham, where he was made a burgess in 1739–40. In 1747 he bought a mill there and had a house adjoining it, but in 1777 he bought an estate at Arnold, outside the city. From about 1759 he supported Jedediah Strutt and William Woollat in their development of Strutt's invention of the rib attachment to the knitting machine. Need became a partner with Strutt in 1762 over the patent and then they shared a joint hosiery business. When Arkwright sought financial assistance from Ichabod and John Wright, the Nottingham bankers, to develop his spinning mill in that town, the Wrights turned him over to Samuel Need. Need, having profited so much from the successful patent with Strutt, was ready to exploit another; on 19 January 1770 Need and Strutt, on payment of £500, became co-partners with Arkwright, Smalley and Thornley for the remainder of Arkwright's patent. In Need, Arkwright had secured the patronage of the leading hosier in Nottingham. Need was leader of the Hosiers' Federation in 1779 when the framework knitters petitioned Parliament to better their conditions. He gave evidence against the workers' demands and, when their bill failed, the Nottingham workers attacked first his Nottingham house and then the one at Arnold.Need was to remain a partner with Arkwright until his death in 1781. He was involved in die mill at Cromford and also with some later ones, such as the Birkacre mill near Chorley, Lancashire, in 1777. He made a fortune and died at his home in London.[br]Further ReadingM.L.Walker, 1963, A History of the Family of Need of Arnold, Nottinghamshire, London (a good biography).R.S.Fitton, 1989, The Arkwrights, Spinners of Fortune, Manchester (covers Need's relationship with Arkwright).R.S.Fitton and A.P.Wadsworth, 1958, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758–1830, Manchester.S.D.Chapman, 1967, The Early Factory Masters, Newton Abbot (describes his wider contacts with the Midlands hosiery industry).RLH -
68 Northrop, James H.
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]fl. 1890s Keighley, Yorkshire, England[br]English-born American inventor of the first successful loom to change the shuttles automatically when the weft ran out.[br]Although attempts had been continuing since about 1840 to develop a loom on which the shuttles were changed automatically when the weft was exhausted, it was not until J.H.Northrop invented his cop-changer and patented it in the United States in 1894 that the automatic loom really became a serious competitor to the ordinary power loom. Northrop was born at Keighley in Yorkshire but emigrated to America, where he developed his loom. In about 1891 he appears to have been undecided whether to work on the shuttle-changing system or the copchanging system, for in that year he took out three patents, one of which was for a shuttle changer and the other two for cop-changers.A communication from W.F.Draper, Northrop's employer, was used in 1894 as a patent in Britain for a cop-or bobbin-changing automatic loom, which was in fact the Northrop loom. A further five patents for stop motions were taken out in 1895, and yet another in 1896. In one shuttle-box, a feeler was pushed through a hole in the side of the shuttle each time the shuttle entered the box. When the cop of weft was full, the loom carried on working normally. If lack of weft enabled the feeler to enter beyond a certain point, a device was activated which pushed a full cop down into the place of the old one. The full cops were contained in a rotary magazine, ready for insertion.The full Northrop loom comprised several basic inventions in addition to the cop-changer, namely a self-threading shuttle, a weft-fork mechanism to stop the loom, a warp let-off mechanism and a warp-stop motion. The Northrop loom revolutionized cotton weaving in America and the Northrop system became the basis for most later automatic looms. While Northrop looms were made in America and on the European continent, they never achieved much popularity in Britain, where finer cloth was usually woven.[br]Further ReadingW.A.Hanton, 1929, Automatic Weaving, London (describes the Northrop loom and has good illustrations of the mechanism).W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (explains the Northrop system). C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. V, Oxford: Clarendon Press.RLH -
69 Pasteur, Louis
[br]b. 27 December 1822 Dole, Franced. 28 September 1895 Paris, France[br]French chemist, founder of stereochemistry, developer of microbiology and immunology, and exponent of the germ theory of disease.[br]Sustained by the family tanning business in Dole, near the Swiss border, Pasteur's school career was undistinguished, sufficing to gain him entry into the teacher-training college in Paris, the Ecole Normale, There the chemical lectures by the great organic chemist J.B.A.Dumas (1800–84) fired Pasteur's enthusiasm for chemistry which never left him. Pasteur's first research, carried out at the Ecole, was into tartaric acid and resulted in the discovery of its two optically active forms resulting from dissymmetrical forms of their molecules. This led to the development of stereochemistry. Next, an interest in alcoholic fermentation, first as Professor of Chemistry at Lille University in 1854 and then back at the Ecole from 1857, led him to deny the possibility of spontaneous generation of animal life. Doubt had previously been cast on this, but it was Pasteur's classic research that finally established that the putrefaction of broth or the fermentation of sugar could not occur spontaneously in sterile conditions, and could only be caused by airborne micro-organisms. As a result, he introduced pasteurization or brief, moderate heating to kill pathogens in milk, wine and other foods. The suppuration of wounds was regarded as a similar process, leading Lister to apply Pasteur's principles to revolutionize surgery. In 1860, Pasteur himself decided to turn to medical research. His first study again had important industrial implications, for the silk industry was badly affected by diseases of the silkworm. After prolonged and careful investigation, Pasteur found ways of dealing with the two main infections. In 1868, however, he had a stroke, which prevented him from active carrying out experimentation and restricted him to directing research, which actually was more congenial to him. Success with disease in larger animals came slowly. In 1879 he observed that a chicken treated with a weakened culture of chicken-cholera bacillus would not develop symptoms of the disease when treated with an active culture. He compared this result with Jenner's vaccination against smallpox and decided to search for a vaccine against the cattle disease anthrax. In May 1881 he staged a demonstration which clearly showed the success of his new vaccine. Pasteur's next success, finding a vaccine which could protect against and treat rabies, made him world famous, especially after a person was cured in 1885. In recognition of his work, the Pasteur Institute was set up in Paris by public subscription and opened in 1888. Pasteur's genius transcended the boundaries between science, medicine and technology, and his achievements have had significant consequences for all three fields.[br]BibliographyPasteur published over 500 books, monographs and scientific papers, reproduced in the magnificent Oeuvres de Pasteur, 1922–39, ed. Pasteur Vallery-Radot, 7 vols, Paris.Further ReadingP.Vallery-Radot, 1900, La vie de Louis Pasteur, Paris: Hachette; 1958, Louis Pasteur. A Great Life in Brief, English trans., New York (the standard biography).E.Duclaux, 1896, Pasteur: Histoire d ' un esprit, Paris; 1920, English trans., Philadelphia (perceptive on the development of Pasteur's thought in relation to contemporary science).R.Dobos, 1950, Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science, Boston, Mass.; 1955, French trans.LRD -
70 Polhem, Christopher
SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology[br]b. 18 December 1661 Tingstade, Gotland, Sweden d. 1751[br]Swedish engineer and inventor.[br]He was the eldest son of Wolf Christopher Polhamma, a merchant. The father died in 1669 and the son was sent by his stepfather to an uncle in Stockholm who found him a place in the Deutsche Rechenschule. After the death of his uncle, he was forced to find employment, which he did with the Biorenklou family near Uppsala where he eventually became a kind of estate bailiff. It was during this period that he started to work with a lathe, a forge and at carpentry, displaying great technical ability. He realized that without further education he had little chance of making anything of his life, and accordingly, in 1687, he registered at the University of Uppsala where he studied astronomy and mathematics, remaining there for three years. He also repaired two astronomical pendulum clocks as well as the decrepit medieval clock in the cathedral. After a year's work he had this clock running properly: this was his breakthrough. He was summoned to Stockholm where the King awarded him a salary of 500 dalers a year as an encouragement to further efforts. Around this time, one of increasing mechanization and when mining was Sweden's principal industry, Pohlem made a model of a hoist frame for mines and the Mines Authority encouraged him to develop his ideas. In 1693 Polhem completed the Blankstot hoist at the Stora Kopparberg mine, which attracted great interest on the European continent.From 1694 to 1696 Polhem toured factories, mills and mines abroad in Germany, Holland, England and France, studying machinery of all kinds and meeting many foreign engineers. In 1698 he was appointed Director of Mining Engineering in Sweden, and in 1700 he became Master of Construction in the Falu Mine. He installed the Karl XII hoist there, powered by moving beams from a distant water-wheel. His plan of 1697 for all the machinery at the Falu mine to be driven by three large and remote water-wheels was never completed.In 1707 he was invited by the Elector of Hanover to visit the mines in the Harz district, where he successfully explained many of his ideas which were adopted by the local engineers. In 1700, in conjunction with Gabriel Stierncrona, he founded the Stiersunds Bruk at Husby in Southern Dalarna, a factory for the mass production of metal goods in iron, steel and bronze. Simple articles such as pans, trays, bowls, knives, scissors and mirrors were made there, together with the more sophisticated Polhem lock and the Stiersunds clock. Production was based on water power. Gear cutting for the clocks, shaping hammers for plates, file cutting and many other operations were all water powered, as was a roller mill for the sheet metal used in the factory. He also designed textile machinery such as stocking looms and spinning frames and machines for the manufacture of ribbons and other things.In many of his ideas Polhem was in advance of his time and Swedish country society was unable to absorb them. This was largely the reason for the Stiersund project being only a partial success. Polhem, too, was of a disputatious nature, self-opinionated almost to the point of conceit. He was a prolific writer, leaving over 20,000 pages of manuscript notes, drafts, essays on a wide range of subjects, which included building, brick-making, barrels, wheel-making, bell-casting, organ-building, methods of stopping a horse from bolting and a curious tap "to prevent serving maids from sneaking wine from the cask", the construction of ploughs and threshing machines. His major work, Kort Berattelse om de Fornamsta Mechaniska Inventioner (A Brief Account of the Most Famous Inventions), was printed in 1729 and is the main source of knowledge about his technological work. He is also known for his "mechanical alphabet", a collection of some eighty wooden models of mechanisms for educational purposes. It is in the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm.[br]Bibliography1729, Kort Berattelse om de Fornamsta Mechaniska Inventioner (A Brief Account of the Most Famous Inventions).Further Reading1985, Christopher Polhem, 1661–1751, TheSwedish Daedalus' (catalogue of a travelling exhibition from the Swedish Institute in association with the National Museum of Science and Technology), Stockholm.IMcN -
71 Riley, James
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 1840 Halifax, Englandd. 15 July 1910 Harrogate, England[br]English steelmaker who promoted the manufacture of low-carbon bulk steel by the open-hearth process for tin plate and shipbuilding; pioneer of nickel steels.[br]After working as a millwright in Halifax, Riley found employment at the Ormesby Ironworks in Middlesbrough until, in 1869, he became manager of the Askam Ironworks in Cumberland. Three years later, in 1872, he was appointed Blast-furnace Manager at the pioneering Siemens Steel Company's works at Landore, near Swansea in South Wales. Using Spanish ore, he produced the manganese-rich iron (spiegeleisen) required as an additive to make satisfactory steel. Riley was promoted in 1874 to be General Manager at Landore, and he worked with William Siemens to develop the use of the latter's regenerative furnace for the production of open-hearth steel. He persuaded Welsh makers of tin plate to use sheets rolled from lowcarbon (mild) steel instead of from charcoal iron and, partly by publishing some test results, he was instrumental in influencing the Admiralty to build two naval vessels of mild steel, the Mercury and the Iris.In 1878 Riley moved north on his appointment as General Manager of the Steel Company of Scotland, a firm closely associated with Charles Tennant that was formed in 1872 to make steel by the Siemens process. Already by 1878, fourteen Siemens melting furnaces had been erected, and in that year 42,000 long tons of ingots were produced at the company's Hallside (Newton) Works, situated 8 km (5 miles) south-east of Glasgow. Under Riley's leadership, steelmaking in open-hearth furnaces was initiated at a second plant situated at Blochairn. Plates and sections for all aspects of shipbuilding, including boilers, formed the main products; the company also supplied the greater part of the steel for the Forth (Railway) Bridge. Riley was associated with technical modifications which improved the performance of steelmaking furnaces using Siemens's principles. He built a gasfired cupola for melting pig-iron, and constructed the first British "universal" plate mill using three-high rolls (Lauth mill).At the request of French interests, Riley investigated the properties of steels containing various proportions of nickel; the report that he read before the Iron and Steel Institute in 1889 successfully brought to the notice of potential users the greatly enhanced strength that nickel could impart and its ability to yield alloys possessing substantially lower corrodibility.The Steel Company of Scotland paid dividends in the years to 1890, but then came a lean period. In 1895, at the age of 54, Riley moved once more to another employer, becoming General Manager of the Glasgow Iron and Steel Company, which had just laid out a new steelmaking plant at Wishaw, 25 km (15 miles) south-east of Glasgow, where it already had blast furnaces. Still the technical innovator, in 1900 Riley presented an account of his experiences in introducing molten blast-furnace metal as feed for the open-hearth steel furnaces. In the early 1890s it was largely through Riley's efforts that a West of Scotland Board of Conciliation and Arbitration for the Manufactured Steel Trade came into being; he was its first Chairman and then its President.In 1899 James Riley resigned from his Scottish employment to move back to his native Yorkshire, where he became his own master by acquiring the small Richmond Ironworks situated at Stockton-on-Tees. Although Riley's 1900 account to the Iron and Steel Institute was the last of the many of which he was author, he continued to contribute to the discussion of papers written by others.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, West of Scotland Iron and Steel Institute 1893–5. Vice-President, Iron and Steel Institute, 1893–1910. Iron and Steel Institute (London) Bessemer Gold Medal 1887.Bibliography1876, "On steel for shipbuilding as supplied to the Royal Navy", Transactions of the Institute of Naval Architects 17:135–55.1884, "On recent improvements in the method of manufacture of open-hearth steel", Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute 2:43–52 plus plates 27–31.1887, "Some investigations as to the effects of different methods of treatment of mild steel in the manufacture of plates", Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute 1:121–30 (plus sheets II and III and plates XI and XII).27 February 1888, "Improvements in basichearth steel making furnaces", British patent no. 2,896.27 February 1888, "Improvements in regenerative furnaces for steel-making and analogous operations", British patent no. 2,899.1889, "Alloys of nickel and steel", Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute 1:45–55.Further ReadingA.Slaven, 1986, "James Riley", in Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography 1860–1960, Volume 1: The Staple Industries (ed. A.Slaven and S. Checkland), Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 136–8."Men you know", The Bailie (Glasgow) 23 January 1884, series no. 588 (a brief biography, with portrait).J.C.Carr and W.Taplin, 1962, History of the British Steel Industry, Harvard University Press (contains an excellent summary of salient events).JKA -
72 Tesla, Nikola
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 9 July 1856 Smiljan, Croatiad. 7 January 1943 New York, USA[br]Serbian (naturalized American) engineer and inventor of polyphase electrical power systems.[br]While at the technical institute in Graz, Austria, Tesla's attention was drawn to the desirability of constructing a motor without a commutator. He considered the sparking between the commutator and brushes of the Gramme machine when run as a motor a serious defect. In 1881 he went to Budapest to work on the telegraph system and while there conceived the principle of the rotating magnetic field, upon which all polyphase induction motors are based. In 1882 Tesla moved to Paris and joined the Continental Edison Company. After building a prototype of his motor he emigrated to the United States in 1884, becoming an American citizen in 1889. He left Edison and founded an independent concern, the Tesla Electric Company, to develop his inventions.The importance of Tesla's first patents, granted in 1888 for alternating-current machines, cannot be over-emphasized. They covered a complete polyphase system including an alternator and induction motor. Other patents included the polyphase transformer, synchronous motor and the star connection of three-phase machines. These were to become the basis of the whole of the modern electric power industry. The Westinghouse company purchased the patents and marketed Tesla motors, obtaining in 1893 the contract for the Niagara Falls two-phase alternators driven by 5,000 hp (3,700 kW) water turbines.After a short period with Westinghouse, Tesla resigned to continue his research into high-frequency and high-voltage phenomena using the Tesla coil, an air-cored transformer. He lectured in America and Europe on his high-frequency devices, enjoying a considerable international reputation. The name "tesla" has been given to the SI unit of magnetic-flux density. The induction motor became one of the greatest advances in the industrial application of electricity. A claim for priority of invention of the induction motor was made by protagonists of Galileo Ferraris (1847–1897), whose discovery of rotating magnetic fields produced by alternating currents was made independently of Tesla's. Ferraris demonstrated the phenomenon but neglected its exploitation to produce a practical motor. Tesla himself failed to reap more than a small return on his work and later became more interested in scientific achievement than commercial success, with his patents being infringed on a wide scale.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsAmerican Institute of Electrical Engineers Edison Medal 1917. Tesla received doctorates from fourteen universities.Bibliography1 May 1888, American patent no. 381,968 (initial patent for the three-phase induction motor).1956, Nikola Tesla, 1856–1943, Lectures, Patents, Articles, ed. L.I.Anderson, Belgrade (selected works, in English).1977, My Inventions, repub. Zagreb (autobiography).Further ReadingM.Cheney, 1981, Tesla: Man Out of Time, New Jersey (a full biography). C.Mackechnie Jarvis, 1969, in IEE Electronics and Power 15:436–40 (a brief treatment).T.C.Martin, 1894, The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, New York (covers his early work on polyphase systems).GW -
73 Whitehead, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 3 January 1823 Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, Englandd. 19 November 1903 Shrivenham, Wiltshire, England[br]English inventor of the torpedo.[br]At the age of 14 Whitehead was apprenticed by his father, who ran a cotton-bleaching business, to an engineering firm in Manchester. He moved in 1847 to join his uncle, who was the Manager of another engineering firm, and three years later Whitehead set up on his own in Milan, where he made mechanical improvements to the silk-weaving industry and designed drainage machines for the Lombardy marshes.In 1848 he was forced to move from Italy because of the revolution and settled in Fiume, which was then part of Austria. There he concen-. trated on designing and building engines for warships, and in 1864 the Austrians invited him to participate in a project to develop a "floating torpedo". In those days the torpedo was synonymous with the underwater mine, and Whitehead believed that he could do better than this proposal and produce an explosive weapon that could propel itself through the water. He set to work with his son John and a mechanic, producing the first version of his torpedo in 1866. It had a range of only 700 yd (640 m) and a speed of just 7 knots (13 km/h), as well as depth-keeping problems, but even so, especially after he had reduced the last problem by the use of a "balance chamber", the Austrian authorities were sufficiently impressed to buy construction rights and to decorate him. Other navies quickly followed suit and within twenty years almost every navy in the world was equipped with the Whitehead torpedo, its main attraction being that no warship, however large, was safe from it. During this time Whitehead continued to improve on his design, introducing a servo-motor and gyroscope, thereby radically improving range, speed and accuracy.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOrder of Max Joseph (Austria) 1868. Légion d'honneur 1884. Whitehead also received decorations from Prussia, Denmark, Portugal, Italy and Greece.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1912, Vol. 3, Suppl. 2, London: Smith, Elder.CM -
74 Xu Guangqi (Hsu Kuang-Chhi)
SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology[br]b. 1562 Chinad. 1633 China[br]Chinese writer and reporter on agricultural practice.[br]Living during the troubled Ming Dynasty, Xu Guangqi combined his energy and interest in scientific improvement to develop and strengthen the State: his interest in military technology was used in the formation of the defence of the State, whilst his interest in irrigation and crop husbandry was put to use in programmes of famine relief. He was a friend and protector of the Jesuit community in China, and between 1607 and 1610, when he was forced to absent himself from the political scene, he devoted his time to the study of the irrigation systems practised by the Jesuits, and also the cultivation of new crops.Stimulated by these studies he continued to collect information on agricultural technology even after he returned to political life. In addition he prepared a number of draft texts of an agricultural treatise, which he intended to provide a practical guide to agricultural practice, but which would also give an indication of the solutions to China's economic problems at the time. Despite the fact that he had amassed a huge amount of material, it was left to the Chinese scholar Chen Ziling (Chhen Tzu-Ling) to edit the draft, which was finally published six years after the death of Xu Guangqi in 1633.The treatise, called the Nong Zbeng Quan Shu (Wade-Giles transliteration: Nung Cheng Chhuan Shu), is a massive work quoting from some 299 sources, sometimes verbatim. In addition to parts dealing with husbandry, there are also large sections devoted to rural administration and to the development of rural light industry, as well as to the introduction of cash crops such as cotton. The Ming dynasty fell in 1644, and the policies set out by Xu Guangqi within this treatise were never implemented.[br]Further ReadingF.Bray, Vol. VI. 2 in J.Needham (ed.), Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge (devotes an early chapter to her sources in a comprehensive account of Chinese agriculture).APBiographical history of technology > Xu Guangqi (Hsu Kuang-Chhi)
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75 Euratom
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Euratom
A precursor to the European Community, the European Atomic Energy Community was founded in 1958 by the European Common Market to conduct research, develop nuclear energy, create a common market for nuclear fuels and supervise the nuclear industry so as to prevent abuse and protect health. (Source: ERD)
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