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81 Burroughs, Michael
SUBJECT AREA: Land transport[br]b. mid-twentieth century[br]English inventor who developed a new design of racing bicycle.[br]His father was a pattern-maker who worked for a time at the de Havilland aircraft factory at Hatfield, Hertfordshire; later he worked in an aeroplane-model shop before turning his attentions to boats and cars. Mike Burroughs left school at the age of 15 to become a self-taught engineer and inventor, regarding himself as an eccentric. Among other things, he invented a machine for packaging coins.In the 1970s he began to take an interest in bicycles, and he subjected the design and materials of existing machines of conventional design to searching reappraisal. As a result, Burroughs "reinvented" the bicycle, producing an entirely new concept. His father carved the shape of the single-piece frame in wood, from which a carbon-fibre cast was made. The machine proved to be very fast, but neither the sporting nor the industrial world showed much interest in it. Then in 1991 Rudi Terman, of the motor manufacturers Lotus, saw it and was impressed by its potential; he agreed to develop the machine further, but kept the details secret.The invention was released to an unsuspecting public at the Barcelona Olympic Games of 1992, ridden by Chris Boardman, who won the pursuit gold medal for Great Britain, a triumph for both rider and inventor. In subsequent months, Boardman went on to break several world records on the Lotus bicycle, including on 23 July 1993 the one-hour record with a distance of 52.27 km (32.48 miles).[br]Further ReadingC.Boardman and P.Liggett, 1994, The Fastest Man on Two Wheels: In Pursuit of Chris Boardman, London: Boxtree (looks at the revolutionary Lotus racing cycle designed by Burroughs).IMcN -
82 Camm, Sir Sydney
[br]b. 5 August 1893 Windsor, Berkshire, Englandd. 12 March 1966 Richmond, Surrey, England[br]English military aircraft designer.[br]He was the eldest of twelve children and his father was a journeyman carpenter, in whose footsteps Camm followed as an apprentice woodworker. He developed an early interest in aircraft, becoming a keen model maker in his early teens and taking a major role in founding a local society to this end, and in 1912 he designed and built a glider able to carry people. During the First World War he worked as a draughtsman for the aircraft firm Martinsyde, but became increasingly involved in design matters as the war progressed. In 1923 Camm was recruited by Sopwith to join his Hawker Engineering Company as Senior Draughtsman, but within two years had risen to be Chief Designer. His first important contribution was to develop a method of producing metal aircraft, using welded steel tubes, and in 1926 he designed his first significant aircraft, the Hawker Horsley torpedo-bomber, which briefly held the world long-distance record before it was snatched by Charles Lindbergh in his epic New York-Paris flight in 1927. His Hawker Hart light bomber followed in 1928, after which came his Hawker Fury fighter.By the mid-1930s Camm's reputation as a designer was such that he was able to wield significant influence on the Air Ministry when Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft specifications were being drawn up. His outstanding contribution came, however, with the unveiling of his Hawker Hurricane in 1935. This single-seater fighter was to prove one of the backbones of the RAF during 1939–45, but during the war he also designed two other excellent fighters: the Tempest and the Typhoon. After the Second World War Camm turned to jet aircraft, producing in 1951 the Hawker Hunter fighter/ground-attack aircraft, which saw lengthy service in the RAF and many other air forces. His most revolutionary contribution was the design of the Harrier jump-jet, beginning with the P.1127 prototype in 1961, followed by the Kestrel three years later. These were private ventures, but eventually the Government saw the enormous merit in the vertical take-off and landing concept, and the Harrier came to fruition in 1967. Sadly Camm, who was on the Board of Sopwith Hawker Siddeley Group, died before the aircraft came into service. He is permanently commemorated in the Camm Memorial Hall at the RAF Museum, Hendon, London.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCBE 1941. Knighted 1953. Associate Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society 1918, Fellow 1932, President 1954–5, Gold Medal 1958. Daniel Guggenheim Medal (USA) 1965.Further ReadingAlan Bramson, 1990, Pure Luck: The Authorized Biography of Sir Thomas Sopwith, 1888–1989, Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens (provides information about Camm and his association with Sopwith).Dictionary of National Biography, 1961–70.CM -
83 Crossley, Sir Francis
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 26 October 1817 Halifax, Englandd. 5 January 1872 Belle Vue, Halifax, England[br]English developer of a power loom for weaving carpets.[br]Francis Crossley was the youngest of three brothers employed in their father's carpet-weaving business in Halifax and who took over the running of the company on their father's death in 1837. Francis seems to have been the one with technical ability, for it was he who saw the possibilities of weaving by power. Growth of the company was rapid through his policy of acquiring patents and then improving them, and it was soon at the forefront of the carpet-manufacturing trade. He had taken out rights on the patents of John Hill of Manchester, but his experiments with Hill's looms for weaving carpets were not successful.In the spring of 1850 Francis asked a textile inventor, George Collier of Barnsley, to develop a power loom for carpet manufacture. Collier produced a model that was a distinct advance on earlier looms, and Francis engaged him to perfect a power loom for weaving tapestry and Brussels carpets. After a great deal of money had been expended, a patent was taken out in 1850 in the name of his brother, Joseph Crossley, for a loom that could weave velvet as well as carpets and included some of the ideas of the American E.B. Bigelow. This new loom proved to be a great advance on all the earlier ones, and thus brought the Crossleys a great fortune from both sales of patent rights and the production of carpets from their mills, which were soon enlarged.According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Francis Crossley was Mayor of Halifax in 1849 and 1850, but Hogg gives this position to his elder brother John. In 1852 Francis was returned to Parliament as the Liberal member for Halifax, and in 1859 he became the member for the West Riding. Among his benefactions, in 1855 he gave to the town of Halifax a twelve-acre park that cost £41,300; a statue of him was erected there. In the same year he endowed twenty-one almshouses. In 1863 a baronetcy was conferred upon him in recognition of his commercial and public services, which he continued to perform until his death. In 1870 he gave the London Missionary Society £20,000, their largest single donation up to that time, and another £10,000 to the Congregational Pastor's Retiring Fund. He became ill when on a journey to the Holy Land in 1869, but although he made a partial recovery he grew worse again towards the end of 1871 and died early in the following year. He left £800,000 in his will.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsBaronet 1863.Further ReadingObituary, 1872, The Times 6 January.Dictionary of National Biography.J.Hogg (ed.), n.d., Fortunes Made in Business, London (provides an account of Crossley's career).RLH -
84 Delvigne, Captain Henri-Gustave
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 1799 Hamburg, Germanyd. 18 October 1876 Toulon, France[br]French soldier and firearms designer.[br]He joined the French army after the restoration of the monarchy in 1815 and rose to the rank of Captain in the Royal Guard. His main interest was in developing a more effective rifle, and in 1826 he produced a model in which the chamber was narrower than the bore. By tapping the musket ball with the ramrod, the ball could be made to fit into the grooves of the rifling, thus ensuring greater accuracy and increased effective range over previous models. The French army adopted Delvigne's rifle and used it with some success in Algeria in the 1830s. In the meantime Delvigne tried to go a stage further by designing a cylindro-conical bullet with a hollow base, which would enable it to expand into the grooves when fired, but his concept did not come to total fruition and was left to Minié to develop some twenty years later. Even so, in 1842 Delvigne completed the design of a chambered breech rifle, which was also adopted by the French army.CMBiographical history of technology > Delvigne, Captain Henri-Gustave
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85 Lanchester, Frederick William
[br]b. 28 October 1868 Lewisham, London, Englandd. 8 March 1946 Birmingham, England[br]English designer and builder of the first all-British motor car.[br]The fourth of eight children of an architect, he spent his childhood in Hove and attended a private preparatory school, from where, aged 14, he went to the Hartley Institution (the forerunner of Southampton University). He was then granted a scholarship to the Royal College of Science, South Kensington, and also studied practical engineering at Finsbury Technical College, London. He worked first for a draughtsman and pseudo-patent agent, and was then appointed Assistant Works Manager of the Forward Gas Engine Company of Birmingham, with sixty men and a salary of £1 per week. He was then aged 21. His younger brother, George, was apprenticed to the same company. In 1889 and 1890 he invented a pendulum governor and an engine starter which earned him royalties. He built a flat-bottomed river craft with a stern paddle-wheel and a vertical single-cylinder engine with a wick carburettor of his own design. From 1892 he performed a number of garden experiments on model gliders relating to problems of lift and drag, which led him to postulate vortices from the wingtips trailing behind, much of his work lying behind the theory of modern aerodynamics. The need to develop a light engine for aircraft led him to car design.In February 1896 his first experimental car took the road. It had a torsionally rigid chassis, a perfectly balanced and almost noiseless engine, dynamically stable steering, epicyclic gear for low speed and reverse with direct drive for high speed. It turned out to be underpowered and was therefore redesigned. Two years later an 8 hp, two-cylinder flat twin appeared which retained the principle of balancing by reverse rotation, had new Lanchester valve-gear and a new method of ignition based on a magneto generator. For the first time a worm and wheel replaced chain-drive or bevel-gear transmission. Lanchester also designed the machinery to make it. The car was capable of about 18 mph (29 km/h): future cars of his travelled at twice that speed. From 1899 to 1904 cars were produced for sale by the Lanchester Engine Company, which was formed in 1898. The company had to make every component except the tyres. Lanchester gave up the managership but remained as Chief Designer, and he remained in this post until 1914.In 1907–8 his two-volume treatise Aerial Flight was published; it included consideration of skin friction, boundary-layer theory and the theory of stability. In 1909 he was appointed to the Government's Committee for Aeronautics and also became a consultant to the Daimler Company. At the age of 51 he married Dorothea Cooper. He remained a consultant to Daimler and worked also for Wolseley and Beardmore until 1929 when he started Lanchester Laboratories, working on sound reproduction. He also wrote books on relativity and on the theory of dimensions.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS.Bibliographybht=1907–8, Aerial Flight, 2 vols.Further ReadingP.W.Kingsford, 1966, F.W.Lanchester, Automobile Engineer.E.G.Semler (ed.), 1966, The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Lanchester, Frederick William
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86 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 -
87 alakít
to shape, to model, to develop, to turn, to tool
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