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development problems

  • 41 social

    adjective
    1) sozial; gesellschaftlich

    social welfare — Fürsorge, die

    2) (of social life) gesellschaftlich; gesellig [Abend, Beisammensein]

    social behaviourBenehmen in Gesellschaft

    * * *
    ['səuʃəl] 1. adjective
    1) (concerning or belonging to the way of life and welfare of people in a community: social problems.) sozial
    2) (concerning the system by which such a community is organized: social class.) Gesellschafts-...
    3) (living in communities: Ants are social insects.) gesellig
    4) (concerning the gathering together of people for the purposes of recreation or amusement: a social club; His reasons for calling were purely social.) Gesellschafts-...
    - academic.ru/68569/socialism">socialism
    - socialist 2. adjective
    (of or concerning socialism: socialist policies/governments.) sozialistisch
    - socialize
    - socialise
    - socially
    - social work
    * * *
    so·cial1
    [ˈsəʊʃəl, AM ˈsoʊ-]
    I. adj
    1. (of human contact) Gesellschaft-, gesellschaftlich
    I'm a \social drinker ich trinke nur, wenn ich in Gesellschaft bin
    \social activities gesellschaftliche Aktivitäten
    \social calendar Veranstaltungskalender m (für die gesellschaftliche Saison)
    \social connections Beziehungen pl
    \social elite gesellschaftliche Elite
    \social event [or function] Veranstaltung f, [gesellschaftliches] Ereignis
    \social gatherings gesellschaftliche Zusammenkünfte
    to climb the \social ladder die soziale Leiter hinaufklettern, gesellschaftlich aufsteigen
    \social obligation gesellschaftliche Verpflichtung
    2. SOCIOL (concerning society) gesellschaftlich, Gesellschafts-
    \social anthropology/psychology Sozialanthropologie f/-psychologie f
    \social class Gesellschaftsklasse f
    \social differences/problems soziale Unterschiede/Probleme
    \social equality/justice/movement soziale Gleichheit/Gerechtigkeit/Bewegung
    \social group gesellschaftliche Gruppe
    \social reform Sozialreform f
    \social reformer Sozialreformer(in) m(f)
    \social revolution soziale Revolution
    \social studies AM SCH Gemeinschaftskunde f, Sozialkunde f; UNIV Gesellschaftswissenschaften pl
    3. SOCIOL (of human behaviour) sozial, Sozial-
    \social critic Gesellschaftskritiker(in) m(f)
    \social disease ( old fam) Geschlechtskrankheit f
    \social disorder [or unrest] soziale Unruhen
    \social problem gesellschaftliches Problem
    \social skills soziale Fähigkeiten
    4. (concerning the public) Sozial-, sozial
    \social institution soziale Einrichtung
    \social insurance/legislation Sozialversicherung f/-gesetzgebung f
    \social policy Sozialpolitik f
    5. ZOOL, BIOL (living together) Herden-
    \social animal Herdentier nt
    II. n BRIT Treffen nt, Zusammenkunft f
    church \social Gemeindefest nt
    so·cial2
    [AM ˈsoʊʃəl]
    n AM ( fam) abbrev of Social Security Number Sozialversicherungsnummer f
    * * *
    ['səUSəl]
    1. adj
    1) (= relating to community, = Admin, Pol) sozial; structure, development, conditions, evil gesellschaftlich, sozial

    social order/system — Gesellschafts- or Sozialordnung f/-system nt

    social reform/legislation/policy — Sozialreform f/-gesetzgebung f/-politik f

    to be a social outcast/misfit — ein sozialer Außenseiter/eine soziale Außenseiterin sein

    2) engagements, pleasures, ambitions, life, equal, superior, event, activities gesellschaftlich; visit privat; relationship sozial; behaviour in Gesellschaft; distinctions, advancement, rank, status sozial, gesellschaftlich

    to be sb's social inferior/superior — gesellschaftlich unter/über jdm stehen

    a room for social functionsein Gesellschaftsraum m; (larger) ein Saal m für Gesellschaften

    how's your social life these days? (inf)und was treibst du so privat? (inf)

    a job which leaves no time for one's/a social life — ein Beruf, bei dem man keine Freizeit or kein Privatleben hat

    to be a social drinker/smoker — nur in Gesellschaft trinken/rauchen

    a social acquaintance — ein Bekannter, eine Bekannte

    this isn't a social call or visitdies ist kein privater Besuch

    3) (= gregarious) evening, person gesellig; (= living in groups) animals, bees, ants etc gesellig lebend, sozial
    2. n
    geselliger Abend
    * * *
    social [ˈsəʊʃl]
    A adj (adv socially)
    1. ZOOL etc gesellig:
    man is a social being der Mensch ist ein geselliges Wesen;
    social bees soziale oder Staaten bildende Bienen
    2. gesellig, gemeinschaftlich (Unternehmungen etc):
    social drinker jemand, der nur in Gesellschaft trinkt
    3. sociable A 1
    4. sozial, gesellschaftlich:
    social exclusion soziale Ausgrenzung;
    social intercourse gesellschaftlicher Verkehr;
    social position ( oder rank) gesellschaftlicher Rang, soziale Stellung;
    social scale Gesellschaftsstufe f; acceptable 1, rehabilitation 2
    5. sozial, Gesellschafts…:
    social anthropology Sozialanthropologie f, Bevölkerungs-, Sozialbiologie f;
    a) jemand, der versucht, gesellschaftlich emporzukommen,
    b) Emporkömmling m;
    social conscience soziales Gewissen;
    social contract Gesellschaftsvertrag m;
    social control soziale Kontrolle, (zwingende) Einflussnahme der Gesellschaft;
    social convention gesellschaftliche Konvention;
    social criticism Sozialkritik f;
    socially critical sozialkritisch;
    social cuts soziale Einschnitte;
    social engineering Social Engineering n, Sozialtechnologie f (die Anwendung sozialwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse für die Lösung konkreter Gesellschaftsprobleme);
    social evil Prostitution f;
    social fabric gesellschaftliches Gefüge;
    social injustice soziale Ungerechtigkeit;
    social insurance Sozialversicherung f;
    social-insurance benefits Sozialversicherungsleistungen;
    social-insurance contributions Sozialversicherungsbeiträge;
    social legislation soziale Gesetzgebung;
    social market economy soziale Marktwirtschaft;
    social network soziales Netz, social order Gesellschaftsordnung f;
    social policy Sozialpolitik f;
    social psychology Sozialpsychologie f (Teilgebiet der Psychologie, das sich mit dem menschlichen Verhalten befasst);
    social reform Sozialreform f;
    social reformer Sozialreformer(in);
    social science Sozialwissenschaft f;
    social secretary Privatsekretär(in);
    a) soziale Sicherheit,
    b) Sozialversicherung f,
    c) Sozialhilfe f;
    be on social security Sozialhilfe beziehen, von Sozialhilfe leben;
    social services staatliche Sozialleistungen;
    social structure Gesellschaftsstruktur f;
    social studies pl (als sg konstruiert) SCHULE Gemeinschaftskunde f;
    social system Gesellschaftssystem n;
    social work Sozialarbeit f;
    social worker Sozialarbeiter(in); aware 1, awareness 1, medical A 1
    6. POL Sozial…:
    Social Democrat Sozialdemokrat(in)
    7. MED Volks…, Sozial…:
    social diseases euph Geschlechtskrankheiten
    8. formell
    B s geselliges Beisammensein
    * * *
    adjective
    1) sozial; gesellschaftlich

    social welfare — Fürsorge, die

    2) (of social life) gesellschaftlich; gesellig [Abend, Beisammensein]
    * * *
    adj.
    gesellig adj.
    gesellschaftlich adj.
    sozial adj.

    English-german dictionary > social

  • 42 Bevan, Edward John

    [br]
    b. 11 December 1856 Birkenhead, England
    d. 17 October 1921 London, England
    [br]
    English co-inventor of the " viscose rayon " process for making artificial silk.
    [br]
    Bevan began his working life as a chemist in a soap works at Runcorn, but later studied chemistry at Owens College, Manchester. It was there that he met and formed a friendship with C.F. Cross, with whom he started to work on cellulose. Bevan moved to a paper mill in Scotland but then went south to London, where he and Cross set up a partnership in 1885 as consulting and analytical chemists. Their work was mainly concerned with the industrial utilization of cellulose, and with the problems of the paper and jute industries. Their joint publication, A Text-book of Paper-making, which first appeared in 1888 and went into several editions, became the standard reference and textbook on the subject. The book has a long introductory chapter on cellulose.
    In 1892 Cross, Bevan and Clayton Beadle discovered viscose, or sodium cellulose xanthate, and took out the patent which was to be the foundation of the "viscose rayon" industry. They had their own laboratory at Station Avenue, Kew Gardens, where they carried out much work that eventually resulted in viscose: cellulose, usually in the form of wood pulp, was treated first with caustic soda and then with carbon disulphide to form the xanthate, which was then dissolved in a solution of dilute caustic soda to produce a viscous liquid. After being aged, the viscose was extruded through fine holes in a spinneret and coagulated in a dilute acid to regenerate the cellulose as spinnable fibres. At first there was no suggestion of spinning it into fibre, but the hope was to use it for filaments in incandescent electric light bulbs. The sheen on the fibres suggested their possible use in textiles and the term "artificial silk" was later introduced. Cross and Bevan also discovered the acetate "Celanese", which was cellulose triacetate dissolved in acetone and spun in air, but both inventions needed much development before they could be produced commercially.
    In 1892 Bevan turned from cellulose to food and drugs and left the partnership to become Public Analyst to Middlesex County Council, a post he held until his death, although in 1895 he and Cross published their important work Cellulose. He was prominent in the affairs of the Society of Public Analysts and became one of its officials.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1888, with C.F.Cross, A Text-book of Papermaking.
    1892, with C.F.Cross and C.Beadle, British patent no. 8,700 (viscose). 1895, with C.F.Cross, Cellulose.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1921, Journal of the Chemical Society.
    Obituary, 1921, Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry.
    Edwin J.Beer, 1962–3, "The birth of viscose rayon", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 35 (an account of the problems of developing viscose rayon; Beer worked under Cross in the Kew laboratories).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Bevan, Edward John

  • 43 Computers

       The brain has been compared to a digital computer because the neuron, like a switch or valve, either does or does not complete a circuit. But at that point the similarity ends. The switch in the digital computer is constant in its effect, and its effect is large in proportion to the total output of the machine. The effect produced by the neuron varies with its recovery from [the] refractory phase and with its metabolic state. The number of neurons involved in any action runs into millions so that the influence of any one is negligible.... Any cell in the system can be dispensed with.... The brain is an analogical machine, not digital. Analysis of the integrative activities will probably have to be in statistical terms. (Lashley, quoted in Beach, Hebb, Morgan & Nissen, 1960, p. 539)
       It is essential to realize that a computer is not a mere "number cruncher," or supercalculating arithmetic machine, although this is how computers are commonly regarded by people having no familiarity with artificial intelligence. Computers do not crunch numbers; they manipulate symbols.... Digital computers originally developed with mathematical problems in mind, are in fact general purpose symbol manipulating machines....
       The terms "computer" and "computation" are themselves unfortunate, in view of their misleading arithmetical connotations. The definition of artificial intelligence previously cited-"the study of intelligence as computation"-does not imply that intelligence is really counting. Intelligence may be defined as the ability creatively to manipulate symbols, or process information, given the requirements of the task in hand. (Boden, 1981, pp. 15, 16-17)
       The task is to get computers to explain things to themselves, to ask questions about their experiences so as to cause those explanations to be forthcoming, and to be creative in coming up with explanations that have not been previously available. (Schank, 1986, p. 19)
       In What Computers Can't Do, written in 1969 (2nd edition, 1972), the main objection to AI was the impossibility of using rules to select only those facts about the real world that were relevant in a given situation. The "Introduction" to the paperback edition of the book, published by Harper & Row in 1979, pointed out further that no one had the slightest idea how to represent the common sense understanding possessed even by a four-year-old. (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986, p. 102)
       A popular myth says that the invention of the computer diminishes our sense of ourselves, because it shows that rational thought is not special to human beings, but can be carried on by a mere machine. It is a short stop from there to the conclusion that intelligence is mechanical, which many people find to be an affront to all that is most precious and singular about their humanness.
       In fact, the computer, early in its career, was not an instrument of the philistines, but a humanizing influence. It helped to revive an idea that had fallen into disrepute: the idea that the mind is real, that it has an inner structure and a complex organization, and can be understood in scientific terms. For some three decades, until the 1940s, American psychology had lain in the grip of the ice age of behaviorism, which was antimental through and through. During these years, extreme behaviorists banished the study of thought from their agenda. Mind and consciousness, thinking, imagining, planning, solving problems, were dismissed as worthless for anything except speculation. Only the external aspects of behavior, the surface manifestations, were grist for the scientist's mill, because only they could be observed and measured....
       It is one of the surprising gifts of the computer in the history of ideas that it played a part in giving back to psychology what it had lost, which was nothing less than the mind itself. In particular, there was a revival of interest in how the mind represents the world internally to itself, by means of knowledge structures such as ideas, symbols, images, and inner narratives, all of which had been consigned to the realm of mysticism. (Campbell, 1989, p. 10)
       [Our artifacts] only have meaning because we give it to them; their intentionality, like that of smoke signals and writing, is essentially borrowed, hence derivative. To put it bluntly: computers themselves don't mean anything by their tokens (any more than books do)-they only mean what we say they do. Genuine understanding, on the other hand, is intentional "in its own right" and not derivatively from something else. (Haugeland, 1981a, pp. 32-33)
       he debate over the possibility of computer thought will never be won or lost; it will simply cease to be of interest, like the previous debate over man as a clockwork mechanism. (Bolter, 1984, p. 190)
       t takes us a long time to emotionally digest a new idea. The computer is too big a step, and too recently made, for us to quickly recover our balance and gauge its potential. It's an enormous accelerator, perhaps the greatest one since the plow, twelve thousand years ago. As an intelligence amplifier, it speeds up everything-including itself-and it continually improves because its heart is information or, more plainly, ideas. We can no more calculate its consequences than Babbage could have foreseen antibiotics, the Pill, or space stations.
       Further, the effects of those ideas are rapidly compounding, because a computer design is itself just a set of ideas. As we get better at manipulating ideas by building ever better computers, we get better at building even better computers-it's an ever-escalating upward spiral. The early nineteenth century, when the computer's story began, is already so far back that it may as well be the Stone Age. (Rawlins, 1997, p. 19)
       According to weak AI, the principle value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool. For example, it enables us to formulate and test hypotheses in a more rigorous and precise fashion than before. But according to strong AI the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states. And according to strong AI, because the programmed computer has cognitive states, the programs are not mere tools that enable us to test psychological explanations; rather, the programs are themselves the explanations. (Searle, 1981b, p. 353)
       What makes people smarter than machines? They certainly are not quicker or more precise. Yet people are far better at perceiving objects in natural scenes and noting their relations, at understanding language and retrieving contextually appropriate information from memory, at making plans and carrying out contextually appropriate actions, and at a wide range of other natural cognitive tasks. People are also far better at learning to do these things more accurately and fluently through processing experience.
       What is the basis for these differences? One answer, perhaps the classic one we might expect from artificial intelligence, is "software." If we only had the right computer program, the argument goes, we might be able to capture the fluidity and adaptability of human information processing. Certainly this answer is partially correct. There have been great breakthroughs in our understanding of cognition as a result of the development of expressive high-level computer languages and powerful algorithms. However, we do not think that software is the whole story.
       In our view, people are smarter than today's computers because the brain employs a basic computational architecture that is more suited to deal with a central aspect of the natural information processing tasks that people are so good at.... hese tasks generally require the simultaneous consideration of many pieces of information or constraints. Each constraint may be imperfectly specified and ambiguous, yet each can play a potentially decisive role in determining the outcome of processing. (McClelland, Rumelhart & Hinton, 1986, pp. 3-4)

    Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Computers

  • 44 Psychology

       We come therefore now to that knowledge whereunto the ancient oracle directeth us, which is the knowledge of ourselves; which deserveth the more accurate handling, by how much it toucheth us more nearly. This knowledge, as it is the end and term of natural philosophy in the intention of man, so notwithstanding it is but a portion of natural philosophy in the continent of nature.... [W]e proceed to human philosophy or Humanity, which hath two parts: the one considereth man segregate, or distributively; the other congregate, or in society. So as Human philosophy is either Simple and Particular, or Conjugate and Civil. Humanity Particular consisteth of the same parts whereof man consisteth; that is, of knowledges which respect the Body, and of knowledges that respect the Mind... how the one discloseth the other and how the one worketh upon the other... [:] the one is honored with the inquiry of Aristotle, and the other of Hippocrates. (Bacon, 1878, pp. 236-237)
       The claims of Psychology to rank as a distinct science are... not smaller but greater than those of any other science. If its phenomena are contemplated objectively, merely as nervo-muscular adjustments by which the higher organisms from moment to moment adapt their actions to environing co-existences and sequences, its degree of specialty, even then, entitles it to a separate place. The moment the element of feeling, or consciousness, is used to interpret nervo-muscular adjustments as thus exhibited in the living beings around, objective Psychology acquires an additional, and quite exceptional, distinction. (Spencer, 1896, p. 141)
       Kant once declared that psychology was incapable of ever raising itself to the rank of an exact natural science. The reasons that he gives... have often been repeated in later times. In the first place, Kant says, psychology cannot become an exact science because mathematics is inapplicable to the phenomena of the internal sense; the pure internal perception, in which mental phenomena must be constructed,-time,-has but one dimension. In the second place, however, it cannot even become an experimental science, because in it the manifold of internal observation cannot be arbitrarily varied,-still less, another thinking subject be submitted to one's experiments, comformably to the end in view; moreover, the very fact of observation means alteration of the observed object. (Wundt, 1904, p. 6)
       It is [Gustav] Fechner's service to have found and followed the true way; to have shown us how a "mathematical psychology" may, within certain limits, be realized in practice.... He was the first to show how Herbart's idea of an "exact psychology" might be turned to practical account. (Wundt, 1904, pp. 6-7)
       "Mind," "intellect," "reason," "understanding," etc. are concepts... that existed before the advent of any scientific psychology. The fact that the naive consciousness always and everywhere points to internal experience as a special source of knowledge, may, therefore, be accepted for the moment as sufficient testimony to the rights of psychology as science.... "Mind," will accordingly be the subject, to which we attribute all the separate facts of internal observation as predicates. The subject itself is determined p. 17) wholly and exclusively by its predicates. (Wundt, 1904,
       The study of animal psychology may be approached from two different points of view. We may set out from the notion of a kind of comparative physiology of mind, a universal history of the development of mental life in the organic world. Or we may make human psychology the principal object of investigation. Then, the expressions of mental life in animals will be taken into account only so far as they throw light upon the evolution of consciousness in man.... Human psychology... may confine itself altogether to man, and generally has done so to far too great an extent. There are plenty of psychological text-books from which you would hardly gather that there was any other conscious life than the human. (Wundt, 1907, pp. 340-341)
       The Behaviorist began his own formulation of the problem of psychology by sweeping aside all medieval conceptions. He dropped from his scientific vocabulary all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image, desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined. (Watson, 1930, pp. 5-6)
       According to the medieval classification of the sciences, psychology is merely a chapter of special physics, although the most important chapter; for man is a microcosm; he is the central figure of the universe. (deWulf, 1956, p. 125)
       At the beginning of this century the prevailing thesis in psychology was Associationism.... Behavior proceeded by the stream of associations: each association produced its successors, and acquired new attachments with the sensations arriving from the environment.
       In the first decade of the century a reaction developed to this doctrine through the work of the Wurzburg school. Rejecting the notion of a completely self-determining stream of associations, it introduced the task ( Aufgabe) as a necessary factor in describing the process of thinking. The task gave direction to thought. A noteworthy innovation of the Wurzburg school was the use of systematic introspection to shed light on the thinking process and the contents of consciousness. The result was a blend of mechanics and phenomenalism, which gave rise in turn to two divergent antitheses, Behaviorism and the Gestalt movement. The behavioristic reaction insisted that introspection was a highly unstable, subjective procedure.... Behaviorism reformulated the task of psychology as one of explaining the response of organisms as a function of the stimuli impinging upon them and measuring both objectively. However, Behaviorism accepted, and indeed reinforced, the mechanistic assumption that the connections between stimulus and response were formed and maintained as simple, determinate functions of the environment.
       The Gestalt reaction took an opposite turn. It rejected the mechanistic nature of the associationist doctrine but maintained the value of phenomenal observation. In many ways it continued the Wurzburg school's insistence that thinking was more than association-thinking has direction given to it by the task or by the set of the subject. Gestalt psychology elaborated this doctrine in genuinely new ways in terms of holistic principles of organization.
       Today psychology lives in a state of relatively stable tension between the poles of Behaviorism and Gestalt psychology.... (Newell & Simon, 1963, pp. 279-280)
       As I examine the fate of our oppositions, looking at those already in existence as guide to how they fare and shape the course of science, it seems to me that clarity is never achieved. Matters simply become muddier and muddier as we go down through time. Thus, far from providing the rungs of a ladder by which psychology gradually climbs to clarity, this form of conceptual structure leads rather to an ever increasing pile of issues, which we weary of or become diverted from, but never really settle. (Newell, 1973b, pp. 288-289)
       The subject matter of psychology is as old as reflection. Its broad practical aims are as dated as human societies. Human beings, in any period, have not been indifferent to the validity of their knowledge, unconcerned with the causes of their behavior or that of their prey and predators. Our distant ancestors, no less than we, wrestled with the problems of social organization, child rearing, competition, authority, individual differences, personal safety. Solving these problems required insights-no matter how untutored-into the psychological dimensions of life. Thus, if we are to follow the convention of treating psychology as a young discipline, we must have in mind something other than its subject matter. We must mean that it is young in the sense that physics was young at the time of Archimedes or in the sense that geometry was "founded" by Euclid and "fathered" by Thales. Sailing vessels were launched long before Archimedes discovered the laws of bouyancy [ sic], and pillars of identical circumference were constructed before anyone knew that C IID. We do not consider the ship builders and stone cutters of antiquity physicists and geometers. Nor were the ancient cave dwellers psychologists merely because they rewarded the good conduct of their children. The archives of folk wisdom contain a remarkable collection of achievements, but craft-no matter how perfected-is not science, nor is a litany of successful accidents a discipline. If psychology is young, it is young as a scientific discipline but it is far from clear that psychology has attained this status. (Robinson, 1986, p. 12)

    Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Psychology

  • 45 emotional

    [ɪ'məʊʃənl]
    aggettivo [development, problem, reaction, response] emotivo; [distress, content, power] emozionale; [ tie] affettivo; [ film] emozionante; [speech, scene] commovente; [atmosphere, farewell] carico di emozione, commosso

    to get emotional (cry) commuoversi; (get irrational) innervosirsi

    * * *
    1) (of the emotions: Emotional problems are affecting her work.) emozionale
    2) ((negative unemotional) causing or showing emotion: an emotional farewell.) commovente
    3) ((negative unemotional) (of a person) easily affected by joy, anger, grief etc: She is a very emotional person; She is very emotional.) emotivo
    * * *
    [ɪ'məʊʃənl]
    aggettivo [development, problem, reaction, response] emotivo; [distress, content, power] emozionale; [ tie] affettivo; [ film] emozionante; [speech, scene] commovente; [atmosphere, farewell] carico di emozione, commosso

    to get emotional (cry) commuoversi; (get irrational) innervosirsi

    English-Italian dictionary > emotional

  • 46 Adamson, Daniel

    [br]
    b. 1818 Shildon, Co. Durham, England
    d. January 1890 Didsbury, Manchester, England
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer, pioneer in the use of steel for boilers, which enabled higher pressures to be introduced; pioneer in the use of triple-and quadruple-expansion mill engines.
    [br]
    Adamson was apprenticed between 1835 and 1841 to Timothy Hackworth, then Locomotive Superintendent on the Stockton \& Darlington Railway. After this he was appointed Draughtsman, then Superintendent Engineer, at that railway's locomotive works until in 1847 he became Manager of Shildon Works. In 1850 he resigned and moved to act as General Manager of Heaton Foundry, Stockport. In the following year he commenced business on his own at Newton Moor Iron Works near Manchester, where he built up his business as an iron-founder and boilermaker. By 1872 this works had become too small and he moved to a 4 acre (1.6 hectare) site at Hyde Junction, Dukinfield. There he employed 600 men making steel boilers, heavy machinery including mill engines fitted with the American Wheelock valve gear, hydraulic plant and general millwrighting. His success was based on his early recognition of the importance of using high-pressure steam and steel instead of wrought iron. In 1852 he patented his type of flanged seam for the firetubes of Lancashire boilers, which prevented these tubes cracking through expansion. In 1862 he patented the fabrication of boilers by drilling rivet holes instead of punching them and also by drilling the holes through two plates held together in their assembly positions. He had started to use steel for some boilers he made for railway locomotives in 1857, and in 1860, only four years after Bessemer's patent, he built six mill engine boilers from steel for Platt Bros, Oldham. He solved the problems of using this new material, and by his death had made c.2,800 steel boilers with pressures up to 250 psi (17.6 kg/cm2).
    He was a pioneer in the general introduction of steel and in 1863–4 was a partner in establishing the Yorkshire Iron and Steel Works at Penistone. This was the first works to depend entirely upon Bessemer steel for engineering purposes and was later sold at a large profit to Charles Cammell \& Co., Sheffield. When he started this works, he also patented improvements both to the Bessemer converters and to the engines which provided their blast. In 1870 he helped to turn Lincolnshire into an important ironmaking area by erecting the North Lincolnshire Ironworks. He was also a shareholder in ironworks in South Wales and Cumberland.
    He contributed to the development of the stationary steam engine, for as early as 1855 he built one to run with a pressure of 150 psi (10.5 kg/cm) that worked quite satisfactorily. He reheated the steam between the cylinders of compound engines and then in 1861–2 patented a triple-expansion engine, followed in 1873 by a quadruple-expansion one to further economize steam. In 1858 he developed improved machinery for testing tensile strength and compressive resistance of materials, and in the same year patents for hydraulic lifting jacks and riveting machines were obtained.
    He was a founding member of the Iron and Steel Institute and became its President in 1888 when it visited Manchester. The previous year he had been President of the Institution of Civil Engineers when he was presented with the Bessemer Gold Medal. He was a constant contributor at the meetings of these associations as well as those of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He did not live to see the opening of one of his final achievements, the Manchester Ship Canal. He was the one man who, by his indomitable energy and skill at public speaking, roused the enthusiasm of the people in Manchester for this project and he made it a really practical proposition in the face of strong opposition.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1887.
    President, Iron and Steel Institute 1888. Institution of Civil Engineers Bessemer Gold Medal 1887.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, Engineer 69:56.
    Obituary, Engineering 49:66–8.
    H.W.Dickinson, 1938, A Short History of the Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (provides an illustration of Adamson's flanged seam for boilers).
    R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (covers the development of the triple-expansion engine).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Adamson, Daniel

  • 47 Albert, Wilhelm August Julius

    [br]
    b. 24 January 1787 Hannover, Germany
    d. 4 July 1846 Clausthal, Harz, Germany
    [br]
    German mining official, successful applier of wire cable.
    [br]
    After studying law at the University of Göttingen, Albert turned to the mining industry and in 1806 started his career in mining administration in the Harz district, where he became Chief Inspector of mines thirty years later. His influence on the organization of the mining industry was considerable and he contributed valuable ideas for the development of mining technology. For example, he initiated experiments with Reichenbach's water-column pump in Harz when it had been working successfully in the transportation of brine in Bavaria, and he encouraged Dörell to work on his miner's elevator.
    The increasing depths of shafts in the Harz district brought problems with hoisting as the ropes became too heavy and tended to break. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, iron link chains replaced the hempen ropes which were expensive and wore out too quickly, especially in the wet conditions in the shafts. After he had experimented for six years using counterbalancing iron link chains, which broke too easily, in 1834 he conceived the idea of producing stranded cables from iron wires. Their breaking strength and flexibility depended greatly on the softness of the iron and the way of laying the strands. Albert produced the cable by attaching the wires to strings which he turned evenly; this method became known as "Albert lay". He was not the first to conceive the idea of metal cables: there exists evidence for such cables as far back as Pompeii; Leonardo da Vinci made sketches of cables made from brass wires; and in 1780 the French engineer Reignier applied iron cables for lightning conductors. The idea also developed in various other mining areas, but Albert cables were the first to gain rapidly direct common usage worldwide.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1835, "Die Anfertigung von Treibseilen aus geflochtenem Eisendraht", Karstens Archiv 8: 418–28.
    Further Reading
    K.Karmarsch, "W.A.J.Albert", Allgemeine deutsche Biographie 1:212–3.
    W.Bornhardt, 1934, W.A.J.Albert und die Erfindung der Eisendrahtseile, Berlin (a detailed description of his inventions, based on source material).
    C.Bartels, 1992, Vom frühneuzeitlichen Montangewerbe zur Bergbauindustrie, Bochum: Deut sches Bergbau-Museum (evaluates his achievements within the framework of technological development in the Harz mining industry).
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Albert, Wilhelm August Julius

  • 48 Brown, Charles Eugene Lancelot

    [br]
    b. 17 June 1863 Winterthur, Switzerland
    d. 2 May 1924 Montagnola, Italy
    [br]
    English engineer who developed polyphase electrical generation and transmission plant.
    [br]
    After attending the Technical College in Winterthur, Brown served with Emile Burgin in Basle before entering the Oerlikon engineering works near Zurich. Two years later he became Director of the electrical department of Oerlikon and from that time was involved in the development of electrical equipment for the generation and distribution of power. The Lauffen-Frankfurt 110-mile (177 km) transmission line of 1891 demonstrated the commercial feasibility of transmitting electrical power over great distances with three-phase alternating current. For this he designed a generator and early examples of oil-cooled transformers, and the scheme gave an impetus to the development of electric-power transmission throughout Europe. In 1891, in association with Walter Boveri, Brown founded the works of Brown Boveri \& Co. at Baden, Switzerland, and until his retirement in 1911 he devoted his energies to the design of polyphase alternating-current machinery. Important installations included the Frankfurt electricity works (1894), the Paderno-Milan transmission line, and the Lugano tramway of 1894, the first system in Europe to use three-phase traction motors. This tramway was followed by many other polyphase and mountain railways. The acquisition by Brown Boveri \& Co. in 1900 of the manufacturing rights of the Parsons steam turbine directed Brown's attention to problems associated with high-speed machines. Recognizing the high centrifugal stress involved, he began to employ solid cylindrical generator rotors with slots for the excitation winding, a method that has come to be universally adopted in large alternators.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    3 December 1901, British patent no. 24,632 (slotted rotor for alternators).
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1924, The Engineer 137:543.
    Ake T.Vrenthem, 1980, Jonas Wenstrom and the Three Phase System, Stockholm, pp. 26–8 (obituary).
    75 Years of Brown Boveri, 1966, Baden, Switzerland (for a company history).
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Brown, Charles Eugene Lancelot

  • 49 Cross, Charles Frederick

    [br]
    b. 11 December 1855 Brentwood, Middlesex, England
    d. 15 April 1935 Hove, England
    [br]
    English chemist who contributed to the development of viscose rayon from cellulose.
    [br]
    Cross was educated at the universities of London, Zurich and Manchester. It was at Owens College, Manchester, that Cross first met E.J. Bevan and where these two first worked together on the nature of cellulose. After gaining some industrial experience, Cross joined Bevan to set up a partnership in London as analytical and consulting chemists, specializing in the chemistry and technology of cellulose and lignin. They were at the Jodrell laboratory, Kew Gardens, for a time and then set up their own laboratory at Station Avenue, Kew Gardens. In 1888, the first edition of their joint publication A Textbook of Paper-making, appeared. It went into several editions and became the standard reference and textbook on the subject. The long introductory chapter is a discourse on cellulose.
    In 1892, Cross, Bevan and Clayton Beadle took out their historic patent on the solution and regeneration of cellulose. The modern artificial-fibre industry stems from this patent. They made their discovery at New Court, Carey Street, London: wood-pulp (or another cheap form of cellulose) was dissolved in a mixture of carbon disulphide and aqueous alkali to produce sodium xanthate. After maturing, it was squirted through fine holes into dilute acid, which set the liquid to give spinnable fibres of "viscose". However, it was many years before the process became a commercial operation, partly because the use of a natural raw material such as wood involved variations in chemical content and each batch might react differently. At first it was thought that viscose might be suitable for incandescent lamp filaments, and C.H.Stearn, a collaborator with Cross, continued to investigate this possibility, but the sheen on the fibres suggested that viscose might be made into artificial silk. The original Viscose Spinning Syndicate was formed in 1894 and a place was rented at Erith in Kent. However, it was not until some skeins of artificial silk (a term to which Cross himself objected) were displayed in Paris that textile manufacturers began to take an interest in it. It was then that Courtaulds decided to investigate this new fibre, although it was not until 1904 that they bought the English patents and developed the first artificial silk that was later called "rayon". Cross was also concerned with the development of viscose films and of cellulose acetate, which became a rival to rayon in the form of "Celanese". He retained his interest in the paper industry and in publishing, in 1895 again collaborating with Bevan and publishing a book on Cellulose and other technical articles. He was a cultured man and a good musician. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1917.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1917.
    Bibliography
    1888, with E.J.Bevan, A Text-book of Papermaking. 1892, British patent no. 8,700 (cellulose).
    Further Reading
    Obituary Notices of the Royal Society, 1935, London. Obituary, 1935, Journal of the Chemical Society 1,337. Chambers Concise Dictionary of Scientists, 1989, Cambridge.
    Edwin J.Beer, 1962–3, "The birth of viscose rayon", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 35 (an account of the problems of developing viscose rayon; Beer worked under Cross in the Kew laboratories).
    C.Singer (ed.), 1978, A History of Technology, Vol. VI, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Cross, Charles Frederick

  • 50 Deas, James

    [br]
    b. 30 October 1827 Edinburgh, Scotland
    d. c.1900 Glasgow, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish civil engineer responsible for the River Clyde in the period of expansion around the end of the nineteenth century.
    [br]
    On completing his schooling, Deas spent some years in a locomotive manufacturing shop in Edinburgh and then in a civil engineer's office. He selected the railway for his career, and moved upwards through the professional ranks, working for different companies until 1864 when he became Engineer-in-Chief of the Edinburgh \& Glasgow Railway. This later became the North British Railway and after some years, in 1869, Deas moved to the Clyde Navigation Trust as their Engineer. For thirty years he controlled the development of this great river, and with imaginative vision and determined hard work he saw a trebling in revenue, length of quayage and water area under the Trust's jurisdiction. His office worked on a wide range of problems, including civil engineering, maintenance of harbour craft and the drafting of reports for the many Parliamentary Acts required for the extension of Glasgow Harbour. To understand the immensity of the task, one must appreciate that the River Clyde then had sixty-five shipyards and could handle the largest ships afloat. This had come through the canalization of the old meandering and shallow stream and the difficult removal of the river bed's rock barriers.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1876, The River Clyde, Glasgow.
    Further Reading
    John F.Riddell, 1979, Clyde Navigation, A History of the Development and Deepening of the River Clyde, Edinburgh: John Donald.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Deas, James

  • 51 Demenÿ, Georges

    [br]
    b. 1850 Douai, France d. 1917
    [br]
    French chronophotographer.
    [br]
    As a young man Georges Demenÿ was a pioneer of physical education in France, and this led him to contact the physiologist Professor Marey in 1880. Marey had made a special study of animal movement, and Demenÿ hoped to work with him on research into physiological problems related to gymnastics. He joined Marey the following year, and when in 1882 the Physiological Station was set up near Paris to develop sequence photography for the study of movement. Demenÿ was made Head of the laboratory. He worked with the multiple-image fixed-plate cameras, and was chiefly responsible for the analysis of the records, having considerable mathematical and graphical ability. He also appeared as the subject in a number of the sequences. When in 1888 Marey began the development of a film camera, Demenÿ was involved in its design and operation. He became interested in the possibility of using animated sequence photographs as an aid to teaching of the deaf. He made close-up records of himself speaking short phrases, "Je vous aime" and "Vive la France" for example, which were published in such journals as Paris Photographe and La Nature in 1891 and 1892. To present these in motion, he devised the Phonoscope, which he patented on 3 March 1892. The series of photographs were mounted around the circumference of a disc and viewed through a counter-rotating slotted disc. The moving images could be viewed directly, or projected onto a screen. La Nature reported tests he had made in which deaf lip readers could interpret accurately what was being said. On 20 December 1892 Demenÿ formed a company, Société Générale du Phonoscope, to exploit his invention, hoping that "speaking portraits" might replace family-album pictures. This commercial activity led to a rift between Marey and Demenÿ in July 1893. Deprived of access to the film cameras, Demenÿ developed designs of his own, patenting new camera models in France on 10 October 1893 and 27 July 1894. The design covered by the latter had been included in English and German patents filed in December 1893, and was to be of some significance in the early development of cinematography. It was for an intermittent movement of the film, which used an eccentrically mounted blade or roller that, as it rotated, bore on the film, pulling down the length of one frame. As the blade moved away, the film loop so formed was taken up by the rotation of the take-up reel. This "beater" movement was employed extensively in the early years of cinematography, being effective yet inexpensive. It was first employed in the Chronophotographe apparatus marketed by Gaumont, to whom Demenÿ had licensed the patent rights, from the autumn of 1896. Demenÿ's work provided a link between the scientific purposes of sequence photography— chronophotography—and the introduction of commercial cinematography.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    J.Deslandes, 1966, Histoire comparée du cinéma, Vol. I, Paris. B.Coe, 1992, Muybridge and the Chronophotographers, London.
    BC

    Biographical history of technology > Demenÿ, Georges

  • 52 Ferranti, Sebastian Ziani de

    [br]
    b. 9 April 1864 Liverpool, England
    d. 13 January 1930 Zurich, Switzerland
    [br]
    English manufacturing engineer and inventor, a pioneer and early advocate of high-voltage alternating-current electric-power systems.
    [br]
    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.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1927. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1910 and 1911. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1924.
    Bibliography
    18 July 1882, British patent no. 3,419 (Ferranti's first alternator).
    13 December 1892, British patent no. 22,923 (shaped conductors of multi-core cables). 1929, "Electricity in the service of man", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 67: 125–30.
    Further Reading
    G.Z.de Ferranti and R. Ince, 1934, The Life and Letters of Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, London.
    A.Ridding, 1964, S.Z.de Ferranti. Pioneer of Electric Power, London: Science Museum and HMSO (a concise biography).
    R.H.Parsons, 1939, Early Days of the Power Station Industry, Cambridge, pp. 21–41.
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Ferranti, Sebastian Ziani de

  • 53 Forrester, Jay Wright

    [br]
    b. 14 July 1918 Anselmo, Nebraska, USA
    [br]
    American electrical engineer and management expert who invented the magnetic-core random access memory used in most early digital computers.
    [br]
    Born on a cattle ranch, Forrester obtained a BSc in electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska in 1939 and his MSc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained to teach and carry out research. Becoming interested in computing, he established the Digital Computer Laboratory at MIT in 1945 and became involved in the construction of Whirlwind I, an early general-purpose computer completed in March 1951 and used for flight-simulation by the US Army Air Force. Finding the linear memories then available for storing data a major limiting factor in the speed at which computers were able to operate, he developed a three-dimensional store based on the binary switching of the state of small magnetic cores that could be addressed and switched by a matrix of wires carrying pulses of current. The machine used parallel synchronous fixed-point computing, with fifteen binary digits and a plus sign, i.e. 16 bits in all, and contained 5,000 vacuum tubes, eleven semiconductors and a 2 MHz clock for the arithmetic logic unit. It occupied a two-storey building and consumed 150kW of electricity. From his experience with the development and use of computers, he came to realize their great potential for the simulation and modelling of real situations and hence for the solution of a variety of management problems, using data communications and the technique now known as interactive graphics. His later career was therefore in this field, first at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts (1951) and subsequently (from 1956) as Professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    National Academy of Engineering 1967. George Washington University Inventor of the Year 1968. Danish Academy of Science Valdemar Poulsen Gold Medal 1969. Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society Award for Outstanding Accomplishments 1972. Computer Society Pioneer Award 1972. Institution of Electrical Engineers Medal of Honour 1972. National Inventors Hall of Fame 1979. Magnetics Society Information Storage Award 1988. Honorary DEng Nebraska 1954, Newark College of Engineering 1971, Notre Dame University 1974. Honorary DSc Boston 1969, Union College 1973. Honorary DPolSci Mannheim University, Germany. Honorary DHumLett, State University of New York 1988.
    Bibliography
    1951, "Data storage in three dimensions using magnetic cores", Journal of Applied Physics 20: 44 (his first description of the core store).
    Publications on management include: 1961, Industrial Dynamics, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; 1968, Principles of Systems, 1971, Urban Dynamics, 1980, with A.A.Legasto \& J.M.Lyneis, System Dynamics, North Holland. 1975, Collected Papers, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.
    Further Reading
    K.C.Redmond \& T.M.Smith, Project Whirlwind, the History of a Pioneer Computer (provides details of the Whirlwind computer).
    H.H.Goldstine, 1993, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Princeton University Press (for more general background to the development of computers).
    Serrell et al., 1962, "Evolution of computing machines", Proceedings of the Institute of
    Radio Engineers 1,047.
    M.R.Williams, 1975, History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Forrester, Jay Wright

  • 54 Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon

    [br]
    b. 13 June 1854 London, England
    d. 11 February 1931 on board Duchess of Richmond, Kingston, Jamaica
    [br]
    English eingineer, inventor of the steam turbine and developer of the high-speed electric generator.
    [br]
    The youngest son of the Earl of Rosse, he came from a family well known in scientific circles, the six boys growing up in an intellectual atmosphere at Birr Castle, the ancestral home in Ireland, where a forge and large workshop were available to them. Charles, like his brothers, did not go to school but was educated by private tutors of the character of Sir Robert Ball, this type of education being interspersed with overseas holiday trips to France, Holland, Belgium and Spain in the family yacht. In 1871, at the age of 17, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, and after two years he went on to St John's College, Cambridge. This was before the Engineering School had opened, and Parsons studied mechanics and mathematics.
    In 1877 he was apprenticed to W.G.Armstrong \& Co. of Elswick, where he stayed for four years, developing an epicycloidal engine that he had designed while at Cambridge. He then moved to Kitson \& Co. of Leeds, where he went half shares in a small experimental shop working on rocket propulsion for torpedoes.
    In 1887 he married Katherine Bethell, who contracted rheumatic fever from early-morning outdoor vigils with her husband to watch his torpedo experiments while on their honeymoon! He then moved to a partnership in Clarke, Chapman \& Co. at Gateshead. There he joined the electrical department, initially working on the development of a small, steam-driven marine lighting set. This involved the development of either a low-speed dynamo, for direct coupling to a reciprocating engine, or a high-speed engine, and it was this requirement that started Parsons on the track of the steam turbine. This entailed many problems such as the running of shafts at speeds of up to 40,000 rpm and the design of a DC generator for 18,000 rpm. He took out patents for both the turbine and the generator on 23 April 1884. In 1888 he dissolved his partnership with Clarke, Chapman \& Co. to set up his own firm in Newcastle, leaving his patents with the company's owners. This denied him the use of the axial-flow turbine, so Parsons then designed a radial-flow layout; he later bought back his patents from Clarke, Chapman \& Co. His original patent had included the use of the steam turbine as a means of marine propulsion, and Parsons now set about realizing this possibility. He experimented with 2 ft (61 cm) and 6 ft (183 cm) long models, towed with a fishing line or, later, driven by a twisted rubber cord, through a single-reduction set of spiral gearing.
    The first trials of the Turbinia took place in 1894 but were disappointing due to cavitation, a little-understood phenomenon at the time. He used an axial-flow turbine of 2,000 shp running at 2,000 rpm. His work resulted in a far greater understanding of the phenomenon of cavitation than had hitherto existed. Land turbines of up to 350 kW (470 hp) had meanwhile been built. Experiments with the Turbinia culminated in a demonstration which took place at the great Naval Review of 1897 at Spithead, held to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Here, the little Turbinia darted in and out of the lines of heavy warships and destroyers, attaining the unheard of speed of 34.5 knots. The following year the Admiralty placed their first order for a turbine-driven ship, and passenger vessels started operation soon after, the first in 1901. By 1906 the Admiralty had moved over to use turbines exclusively. These early turbines had almost all been direct-coupled to the ship's propeller shaft. For optimum performance of both turbine and propeller, Parsons realized that some form of reduction gearing was necessary, which would have to be extremely accurate because of the speeds involved. Parsons's Creep Mechanism of 1912 ensured that any errors in the master wheel would be distributed evenly around the wheel being cut.
    Parsons was also involved in optical work and had a controlling interest in the firm of Ross Ltd of London and, later, in Sir Howard Grubb \& Sons. He he was an enlightened employer, originating share schemes and other benefits for his employees.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted. Order of Merit 1927.
    Further Reading
    A.T.Bowden, 1966, "Charles Parsons: Purveyor of power", in E.G.Semler (ed.), The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon

  • 55 Pötsch, Friedrich Hermann

    [br]
    b. 12 December 1842 Biendorf, near Köthen, Germany
    d. 9 June 1902 Dresden, Germany
    [br]
    German mine surveyor, inventor of the freezing process for sinking shafts.
    [br]
    Pötsch was the son of a forest officer and could not easily attend school, with the consequences that it took him a long time to obtain the scholarly education needed to enable him to begin work on a higher level with the mining administration in the duchy of Anhalt in 1868. Seven years later, he was licensed as a Prussian mining surveyor and in this capacity he worked with the mining inspectorate of Aschersleben. During that time he frequently came across shafts for brown-coal mines which had been sunk down to watery strata but then had to be abandoned. His solution to the problem was to freeze the quicksand with a solution of chloride; this was better than the previous attempts in England to instal cooling coils at the bottom of the shaft. Pötsch's conception implied the construction of ice walls with the means of boreholes and refrigerators. By his method a set of boreholes was driven through the watery strata, the smaller pipes contained within the main bore pipes, providing a channel through which calcium chloride was pumped, returning through the longer pipe until the ground was frozen solid. He obtained a patent in 1883 and many leading international journals reported on the method the same year.
    In 1884 he established the Internationale Gesselschaft für Schacht-, Brucken-und Tunnelbau in Magdeburg and he also became Director of the Poetsch-Sooy-Smith Freezing Company in New Jersey, which constructed the first freezing shaft in America in 1888.
    However, Pötsch was successful only for a short period of time and, being a clumsy entrepreneur, he had to dissolve his company in 1894. Unfortunately, his decision to carry out the complete shaft-sinking business did not allow him to concentrate on solving upcoming technical problems of his new process. It was Louis Gebhardt (1861–1924), his former engineer, who took care of development, especially in co-operation with French mining engineers, and thus provided the basis for the freezing process becoming widely used for shaft-sinking in complicated strata ever since.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1886, Das Gefrierverfahren. Methode für schnelles, sicheres und lotrechtes Abteufen von Schächten im Schwimmsande und uberhaupt im wasserreichen Gebirge; für Herstellung tiefgehender Bruckenpfeiler und für TunnelBauten in rolligem und schwimmendem Gebirge, Freiberg.
    1889, Geschichtliches über die Entstehung und Herausbildung des Gefrierverfahrens, Magdeburg.
    1895, Das Gefrierverfahren und das kombinierte Schachtabbohr-und Gefrierverfahren (Patent Pötsch), Freiberg.
    Further Reading
    D.Hoffmann, 1962, AchtJahrzehnte Gefrierverfahren nach Putsch, Essen: Glückauf (the most substantial biography; also covers technological aspects).
    G.Gach, 1986, In Schacht und Strecke, Essen: Glückauf, pp. 31–53 (provides information on the development of specialized mining companies in Germany originating in the freezing process).
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Pötsch, Friedrich Hermann

  • 56 Rammler, Erich

    [br]
    b. 9 July 1901 Tirpersdorf, near Oelsnitz, Germany
    d. 6 November 1986 Freiberg, Saxony, Germany
    [br]
    German mining engineer, developer of metallurgic coke from lignite.
    [br]
    A scholar of the Mining Academy in Freiberg, who in his dissertation dealt with the fineness of coal dust, Rammler started experiments in 1925 relating to firing this material. In the USA this process, based on coal, had turned out to be very effective in large boiler furnaces. Rammler endeavoured to apply the process to lignite and pursued general research work on various thermochemical problems as well as methods of grinding and classifying. As producing power from lignite was of specific interest for the young Soviet Union, with its large demand from its new power stations and its as-yet unexploited lignite deposits, he soon came into contact with the Soviet authorities. In his laboratory in Dresden, which he had bought from the freelance metallurgist Paul Otto Rosin after his emigration and under whom he had been working since he left the Academy, he continued his studies in refining coal and soon gained an international reputation. He opened up means of producing coke from lignite for use in metallurgical processes.
    His later work was of utmost importance after the Second World War when several countries in Eastern Europe, especially East Germany with its large lignite deposits, established their own iron and steel industries. Accordingly, the Soviet administration supported his experiments vigorously after he joined Karl Kegel's Institute for Briquetting in Freiberg in 1945. Through his numerous books and articles, he became the internationally leading expert on refining lignite and Kegel's successor as head of the Institute and Professor at the Bergakademie. Six years later, he produced for the first time high-temperature coke from lignite low in ash and sulphur for smelting in low-shaft furnaces. Rammler was widely honoured and contributed decisively to the industrial development of his country; he demonstrated new technological processes when, under austere conditions, economical and ecological considerations were neglected.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Rammler, whose list of publications comprises more than 600 titles on various matters of his main scientific concern, also was the co-author (with E.Wächtler) of two articles on the development of briquetting brown coal in Germany, both published in 1985, Freiberger Forschungshefte, D 163 and D 169, Leipzig.
    Further Reading
    E.Wächtler, W.Mühlfriedel and W.Michel, 1976, Erich Rammler, Leipzig, (substantial biography, although packed with communist propaganda).
    M.Rasch, 1989, "Paul Rosin—Ingenieur, Hochschullehrer und Rationalisierungsfachmann". Technikgeschichte 56:101–32 (describes the framework within which Rammler's primary research developed).
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Rammler, Erich

  • 57 Whittle, Sir Frank

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 1 June 1907 Coventry, England
    [br]
    English engineer who developed the first British jet engine.
    [br]
    Frank Whittle enlisted in the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an apprentice, and after qualifying as a pilot he developed an interest in the technical aspects of aircraft propulsion. He was convinced that the gas-turbine engine could be adapted for use in aircraft, but he could not convince the Air Ministry, who turned down the proposal. Nevertheless, Whittle applied for a patent for his turbojet engine the following year, 1930. While still in the RAF, he was allowed time to study for a degree at Cambridge University and carry out postgraduate research (1934–7). By 1936 the official attitude had changed, and a company called Power Jets Ltd was set up to develop Whittle's jet engine. On 12 April 1937 the experimental engine was bench-tested. After further development, an official order was placed in March 1938. Whittle's engine had a centrifugal compressor, ten combustion chambers and a turbine to drive the compressor; all the power output came from the jet of hot gases.
    In 1939 an experimental aircraft was ordered from the Gloster Aircraft Company, the E 28/39, to house the Whittle W1 engine, and this made its first flight on 15 May 1941. A development of the W1 by Rolls-Royce, the Welland, was used to power the twin-engined Gloster Meteor fighter, which saw service with the RAF in 1944. Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 and became a consultant. From 1977 he lived in the United States. Comparisons between the work of Whittle and Hans von Ohain show that each of the two engineers developed his engine without knowledge of the other's work. Whittle was the first to take out a patent, Ohain achieved the first flight; the Whittle engine and its derivatives, however, played a much greater role in the history of the jet engine.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1948. Commander of the Order of the Bath 1947. Order of Merit 1986. FRS 1947. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
    Bibliography
    1953, Jet, London (an account not only of his technical problems, but also of the difficulties with civil servants, politicians and commercial organizations).
    Further Reading
    J.Golley, 1987, Whittle: The True Story, Shrewsbury (this author based his work on Jet, but carried out research, aided by Whittle, to give a fuller account with the benefit of hindsight).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Whittle, Sir Frank

  • 58 Wilson, Percy

    SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Recording
    [br]
    b. 8 March 1893 Halifax, Yorkshire, England
    d. May 1977
    [br]
    English engineer and technical writer who developed geometries for pick-arms and reproducing horns.
    [br]
    He graduated from The Queen's College with a BA in 1915 and an MA in 1918. He was an instructor and lecturer in the Royal Navy in 1915–19. He became an administrative officer with the Board of Education until 1938, and continued his work in the British Civil Service in the Ministry of Transport until 1949. From 1924 to 1938 he was Technical Adviser, and from 1953 Technical Editor, with Gramophone, a publication catering for the record-and equipment-buying public. He brought a mathematical mind to the problems of gramophone reproduction and solved the geometrical problem of obtaining a reasonable approximation to tangential tracking across the surface of a record even though the soundbox (or pick-up) is carried by a pivoted arm. Later he tackled the problem of horns, determining that a modified exponential horn, even with a bent axis, would give optimal reproduction by a purely acoustic system. This development was used commercially during the 1930s. Wilson was for a time a member of the School Broadcasting Council and developed methods for improving subjective listening tests for evaluation of audio equipment. He was also deeply involved in the long-playing record system used for Talking Books for the Blind. He had a life-long interest in spiritualist matters and was President of the Spiritualist National Union from 1950 to 1953 and Chairman of the Psychic Press from 1951.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1929, with G.W.Webb, Modern Gramophones and Electrical Reproducers, London: Cassell (the first book to draw the consequences of the recent development of electronic filter theory for the interpretation of record wear).
    Further Reading
    G.A.Briggs (ed.), 1961, Audio Biographies, Wharfedale Wireless Works, pp. 326–34.
    GB-N

    Biographical history of technology > Wilson, Percy

  • 59 Creativity

       Put in this bald way, these aims sound utopian. How utopian they areor rather, how imminent their realization-depends on how broadly or narrowly we interpret the term "creative." If we are willing to regard all human complex problem solving as creative, then-as we will point out-successful programs for problem solving mechanisms that simulate human problem solvers already exist, and a number of their general characteristics are known. If we reserve the term "creative" for activities like discovery of the special theory of relativity or the composition of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, then no example of a creative mechanism exists at the present time. (Simon, 1979, pp. 144-145)
       Among the questions that can now be given preliminary answers in computational terms are the following: how can ideas from very different sources be spontaneously thought of together? how can two ideas be merged to produce a new structure, which shows the influence of both ancestor ideas without being a mere "cut-and-paste" combination? how can the mind be "primed," so that one will more easily notice serendipitous ideas? why may someone notice-and remember-something fairly uninteresting, if it occurs in an interesting context? how can a brief phrase conjure up an entire melody from memory? and how can we accept two ideas as similar ("love" and "prove" as rhyming, for instance) in respect of a feature not identical in both? The features of connectionist AI models that suggest answers to these questions are their powers of pattern completion, graceful degradation, sensitization, multiple constraint satisfaction, and "best-fit" equilibration.... Here, the important point is that the unconscious, "insightful," associative aspects of creativity can be explained-in outline, at least-by AI methods. (Boden, 1996, p. 273)
       There thus appears to be an underlying similarity in the process involved in creative innovation and social independence, with common traits and postures required for expression of both behaviors. The difference is one of product-literary, musical, artistic, theoretical products on the one hand, opinions on the other-rather than one of process. In both instances the individual must believe that his perceptions are meaningful and valid and be willing to rely upon his own interpretations. He must trust himself sufficiently that even when persons express opinions counter to his own he can proceed on the basis of his own perceptions and convictions. (Coopersmith, 1967, p. 58)
       he average level of ego strength and emotional stability is noticeably higher among creative geniuses than among the general population, though it is possibly lower than among men of comparable intelligence and education who go into administrative and similar positions. High anxiety and excitability appear common (e.g. Priestley, Darwin, Kepler) but full-blown neurosis is quite rare. (Cattell & Butcher, 1970, p. 315)
       he insight that is supposed to be required for such work as discovery turns out to be synonymous with the familiar process of recognition; and other terms commonly used in the discussion of creative work-such terms as "judgment," "creativity," or even "genius"-appear to be wholly dispensable or to be definable, as insight is, in terms of mundane and well-understood concepts. (Simon, 1989, p. 376)
       From the sketch material still in existence, from the condition of the fragments, and from the autographs themselves we can draw definite conclusions about Mozart's creative process. To invent musical ideas he did not need any stimulation; they came to his mind "ready-made" and in polished form. In contrast to Beethoven, who made numerous attempts at shaping his musical ideas until he found the definitive formulation of a theme, Mozart's first inspiration has the stamp of finality. Any Mozart theme has completeness and unity; as a phenomenon it is a Gestalt. (Herzmann, 1964, p. 28)
       Great artists enlarge the limits of one's perception. Looking at the world through the eyes of Rembrandt or Tolstoy makes one able to perceive aspects of truth about the world which one could not have achieved without their aid. Freud believed that science was adaptive because it facilitated mastery of the external world; but was it not the case that many scientific theories, like works of art, also originated in phantasy? Certainly, reading accounts of scientific discovery by men of the calibre of Einstein compelled me to conclude that phantasy was not merely escapist, but a way of reaching new insights concerning the nature of reality. Scientific hypotheses require proof; works of art do not. Both are concerned with creating order, with making sense out of the world and our experience of it. (Storr, 1993, p. xii)
       The importance of self-esteem for creative expression appears to be almost beyond disproof. Without a high regard for himself the individual who is working in the frontiers of his field cannot trust himself to discriminate between the trivial and the significant. Without trust in his own powers the person seeking improved solutions or alternative theories has no basis for distinguishing the significant and profound innovation from the one that is merely different.... An essential component of the creative process, whether it be analysis, synthesis, or the development of a new perspective or more comprehensive theory, is the conviction that one's judgment in interpreting the events is to be trusted. (Coopersmith, 1967, p. 59)
       In the daily stream of thought these four different stages [preparation; incubation; illumination or inspiration; and verification] constantly overlap each other as we explore different problems. An economist reading a Blue Book, a physiologist watching an experiment, or a business man going through his morning's letters, may at the same time be "incubating" on a problem which he proposed to himself a few days ago, be accumulating knowledge in "preparation" for a second problem, and be "verifying" his conclusions to a third problem. Even in exploring the same problem, the mind may be unconsciously incubating on one aspect of it, while it is consciously employed in preparing for or verifying another aspect. (Wallas, 1926, p. 81)
       he basic, bisociative pattern of the creative synthesis [is] the sudden interlocking of two previously unrelated skills, or matrices of thought. (Koestler, 1964, p. 121)
        11) The Earliest Stages in the Creative Process Involve a Commerce with Disorder
       Even to the creator himself, the earliest effort may seem to involve a commerce with disorder. For the creative order, which is an extension of life, is not an elaboration of the established, but a movement beyond the established, or at least a reorganization of it and often of elements not included in it. The first need is therefore to transcend the old order. Before any new order can be defined, the absolute power of the established, the hold upon us of what we know and are, must be broken. New life comes always from outside our world, as we commonly conceive that world. This is the reason why, in order to invent, one must yield to the indeterminate within him, or, more precisely, to certain illdefined impulses which seem to be of the very texture of the ungoverned fullness which John Livingston Lowes calls "the surging chaos of the unexpressed." (Ghiselin, 1985, p. 4)
       New life comes always from outside our world, as we commonly conceive our world. This is the reason why, in order to invent, one must yield to the indeterminate within him, or, more precisely, to certain illdefined impulses which seem to be of the very texture of the ungoverned fullness which John Livingston Lowes calls "the surging chaos of the unexpressed." Chaos and disorder are perhaps the wrong terms for that indeterminate fullness and activity of the inner life. For it is organic, dynamic, full of tension and tendency. What is absent from it, except in the decisive act of creation, is determination, fixity, and commitment to one resolution or another of the whole complex of its tensions. (Ghiselin, 1952, p. 13)
       [P]sychoanalysts have principally been concerned with the content of creative products, and with explaining content in terms of the artist's infantile past. They have paid less attention to examining why the artist chooses his particular activity to express, abreact or sublimate his emotions. In short, they have not made much distinction between art and neurosis; and, since the former is one of the blessings of mankind, whereas the latter is one of the curses, it seems a pity that they should not be better differentiated....
       Psychoanalysis, being fundamentally concerned with drive and motive, might have been expected to throw more light upon what impels the creative person that in fact it has. (Storr, 1993, pp. xvii, 3)
       A number of theoretical approaches were considered. Associative theory, as developed by Mednick (1962), gained some empirical support from the apparent validity of the Remote Associates Test, which was constructed on the basis of the theory.... Koestler's (1964) bisociative theory allows more complexity to mental organization than Mednick's associative theory, and postulates "associative contexts" or "frames of reference." He proposed that normal, non-creative, thought proceeds within particular contexts or frames and that the creative act involves linking together previously unconnected frames.... Simonton (1988) has developed associative notions further and explored the mathematical consequences of chance permutation of ideas....
       Like Koestler, Gruber (1980; Gruber and Davis, 1988) has based his analysis on case studies. He has focused especially on Darwin's development of the theory of evolution. Using piagetian notions, such as assimilation and accommodation, Gruber shows how Darwin's system of ideas changed very slowly over a period of many years. "Moments of insight," in Gruber's analysis, were the culminations of slow long-term processes.... Finally, the information-processing approach, as represented by Simon (1966) and Langley et al. (1987), was considered.... [Simon] points out the importance of good problem representations, both to ensure search is in an appropriate problem space and to aid in developing heuristic evaluations of possible research directions.... The work of Langley et al. (1987) demonstrates how such search processes, realized in computer programs, can indeed discover many basic laws of science from tables of raw data.... Boden (1990a, 1994) has stressed the importance of restructuring the problem space in creative work to develop new genres and paradigms in the arts and sciences. (Gilhooly, 1996, pp. 243-244; emphasis in original)

    Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Creativity

  • 60 economic

    ˌi:kəˈnɔmɪk прил.
    1) экономический;
    народнохозяйственный, хозяйственный, относящийся к сфере экономики economic forces economic miracle
    2) а) рентабельный;
    экономически выгодный, целесообразный б) разг. экономный;
    дешевый
    3) практический, прикладной economic botany Syn: practical, applied экономический;
    хозяйственный, народнохозяйственный - * policy экономическая политика - * forces экономические факторы - * adviser экономический советник /консультант/ - * questions /problems/ проблемы экономики - E. Message to Congress (американизм) послание президента конгрессу по вопросам экономики - * cycle экономический цикл - * development экономическое развитие - * conditions хозяйственная конъюнктура - * intelligence экономическая разведка - * law экономический закон - * system экономический строй - * plan (несовременное) народнохозяйственный план экономически выгодный, целесообразный;
    рентабельный - * freight rates (экономика) рентабельные фрактовые ставки - * grade (дорожностроительное) оптимальный /наивыгоднейший/ уклон( дороги) - * mineral промышленный минерал практический, прикладной - * botany прикладная ботаника;
    сельскохозяйственная ботаника - * maturity хозяйственная /потребительская/ спелость( плодов, древесины и т. п.) (разговорное) экономный (разговорное) дешевый economic практический, прикладной;
    economic botany прикладная ботаника ~ практический, прикладной ~ рентабельный;
    экономически выгодный, целесообразный ~ рентабельный ~ экономически выгодный, целесообразный, прибыльный ~ экономически выгодный ~ экономически целесообразный ~ экономический, хозяйственный ~ экономический;
    хозяйственный;
    economic forces экономические факторы;
    economic miracle "экономическое чудо" ~ экономический ~ экономичный ~ экономный, дешевый economic практический, прикладной;
    economic botany прикладная ботаника ~ экономический;
    хозяйственный;
    economic forces экономические факторы;
    economic miracle "экономическое чудо" ~ экономический;
    хозяйственный;
    economic forces экономические факторы;
    economic miracle "экономическое чудо"

    Большой англо-русский и русско-английский словарь > economic

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