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61 Gossage, William
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 1799 Burgh-in-the-Marsh, Lincolnshire, Englandd. 9 April 1877 Bowdon, Cheshire, England[br]English industrial chemist, inventor of the absorption tower.[br]At the age of 12 he was working for his father, who was a chemist and druggist. When he was old enough, he started in the same trade on his own account at Leamington, but soon turned to the making of salt and alkali at a works in Stoke Prior, Worcestershire. In 1850 he moved to Widnes, Lancashire, and established a plant for the manufacture of alkali and soap. Gossage's soap became famous, and some 200,000 tons of it were sold during the period 1862 to 1887. Gossage made important improvements to the Leblanc process. Hitherto, the large quantities of hydrogen chloride discharged into the atmosphere had been a considerable nuisance and a cause of much litigation from aggrieved parties. Gossage introduced the absorption tower, in which the ascending hydrogen chloride was absorbed by a descending stream of water. An outcome of this improvement was the Alkali Act of 1863, which required manufacturers to absorb up to 95 per cent of the offending gas. Gossage later took out many other industrial chemical patents, and for a time he was engaged in copper smelting with works in both Widnes and Neath, South Wales.[br]Further ReadingJ.Fenwick Allen, 1907, Some Founders of the Chemical Industry, London. D.W.F.Hardie, 1950, A History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes, London.LRD -
62 Grove, Sir William Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 11 July 1811 Swansea, Walesd. 1 August 1896 London, England[br]Welsh chemist and physicist, inventor of the Grove electrochemical primary cell.[br]After education at Brasenose College, Oxford, Grove was called to the Bar in 1835. Instead of immediately practising, he became involved in electrical research, devising in 1839 the cell that bears his name. He became Professor of Experimental Philosophy at the London Institution from 1840 to 1845; it was during this period that he built up his high reputation among physicists. In 1846 he published On the Correlation of Physical Forces, which was based on a course of his lectures. He returned to the practice of law, becoming a judge in 1871, but retained his interest in scientific research during his sixteen-year occupancy of the Bench. He served as a member of the Council of the Royal Society in 1846 and 1847 and played a leading part in its reform. Contributing to the science of electrochemistry, he invented the Grove cell, which together with its modification by Bunsen became an important source of electrical energy during the middle of the nineteenth century, before mechanically driven generators became available. The Grove cell had a platinum electrode immersed in strong nitric acid, separated by a porous diaphragm from a zinc electrode in weak sulphuric acid. The hydrogen formed at the platinum electrode was immediately oxidized by the acid, turning it into water. This avoided the polarization which occurred in the early copper-zinc cells. It was a very powerful primary cell with a high voltage and a low internal resistance, but it produced objectionable fumes. Grove also invented his "gas battery", the earliest fuel cell, in which a current resulted from the chemical energy released from combining oxygen and hydrogen. This was developed by Rawcliffe and others, and found applications as a power source in manned spacecraft.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1872. FRS 1840. Fellow of the Chemistry Society 1841. Royal Society Royal Medal 1847.Bibliography1846, On the Correlation of Physical Forces, London; 1874, 6th edn, with reprints of many of Grove's papers (his only book, an early view on the conservation of energy).1839, "On a small voltaic battery of great energy", Philosophical Magazine 15:287–93 (his account of his cell).Further ReadingObituary, 1896, Electrician 37:483–4.K.R.Webb, 1961, "Sir William Robert Grove (1811–1896) and the origin of the fuel cell", Journal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry 85: 291–3 (for the present-day significance of Grove's experiments).C.C.Gillispie (ed.), 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V, New York, pp. 559–61.GWBiographical history of technology > Grove, Sir William Robert
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63 Hoover, William Henry
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 1849 New Berlin (now North Canton), Ohio, USAd. 25 February 1932 North Canton, Ohio, USA[br]American founder of the Electric Suction Company, which manufactured and successfully marketed the first practical and portable suction vacuum cleaner.[br]Hoover was descended from a Swiss farming family called Hofer who emigrated from Basle and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the early eighteenth century. By 1832 the family had become tanners and lived near North Berlin in Ohio. In 1870 William Henry Hoover, who had studied at Mount Union College, bought the tannery with his brothers and soon expanded the business to make horse collars and saddlery. The firm expanded to become W.H.Hoover \& Co. In the early years of the first decade of the twentieth century, horses were beginning to be replaced by the internal combustion engine, so Hoover needed a new direction for his firm. This he found in the suction vacuum cleaner devised in 1907 by J.Murray Spangler, a cousin of Hoover's wife. The first successful cleaner of this type had been operating in England since 1901 (see Booth), but was not a portable model. Attracted by the development of the small electric motor, Spangler produced a vertical cleaner with such a motor that sucked the dust through the machine and blew it into a bag attached to the handle. Spangler applied for a patent for his invention on 14 September in the same year; it was granted for a carpet sweeper and cleaner on 2 June 1908, but Spangler was unable to market it himself and sold the rights to Hoover. The Model O machine, which ran on small wheels, was immediately manufactured and marketed. Hoover's model was the first electric, one-person-operated, domestic vacuum cleaner and was instantly successful, although the main expansion of the business was delayed for some time until the greater proportion of houses were wired for electricity. The Hoover slogan, "it beats as it sweeps as it cleans", came to be true in 1926 with the introduction of the Model 700, which was the first cleaner to offer triple-action cleaning, a process which beat, swept and sucked at the carpet. Further advances in the 1930s included the use of magnesium and the early plastics.[br]Further ReadingG.Adamson, 1969, Machines at Home, Lutterworth Press.How it Works: The Universal Encyclopaedia of Machines, Paladin. D.Yarwood, 1981, The British Kitchen, Batsford, Ch. 6.DY -
64 Hosking, William
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 1800d. 1861[br]Australian architect and engineer.[br]William Hosking was appointed Professor of'the arts and construction' at King's College, London, in 1840. He was an architect and engineer who moved to England in 1819 after working as a builder in Sydney. He thus represents an unusually early example of the reverse migration of professional talent between Britain and its colonies. He exhibited drawings in London, becoming a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1830 and Fellow of the Royal Institution of British Architects in 1835. He was then caught up, like so many of his contemporaries with engineering ability, in railway building, working on the West London Railway. From 1840 to his death in 1861 he occupied the Chair at King's College, making a pioneering contribution to the development of engineering education in Britain. He published his Theory, Practice and Architecture of Bridges in 1843, and contributed to the design for the British Museum reading room.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFellow of the Society of Antiquaries 1830. FRIBA 1835.Bibliography1843, Theory, Practice and Architecture of Bridges.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, London.AB -
65 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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66 McNaught, William
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 27 May 1813 Sneddon, Paisley, Scotlandd. 8 January 1881 Manchester, England[br]Scottish patentee of a very successful form of compounding beam engine with a high-pressure cylinder between the fulcrum of the beam and the connecting rod.[br]Although born in Paisley, McNaught was educated in Glasgow where his parents had moved in 1820. He followed in his father's footsteps and became an engineer through an apprenticeship with Robert Napier at the Vulcan Works, Washington Street, Glasgow. He also attended science classes at the Andersonian University in the evenings and showed such competence that at the age of 19 he was offered the position of being in charge of the Fort-Gloster Mills on the Hoogly river in India. He remained there for four years until 1836, when he returned to Scotland because the climate was affecting his health.His father had added the revolving cylinder to the steam engine indicator, and this greatly simplified and extended its use. In 1838 William joined him in the business of manufacturing these indicators at Robertson Street, Glasgow. While advising textile manufacturers on the use of the indicator, he realized the need for more powerful, smoother-running and economical steam engines. He provided the answer by placing a high-pressure cylinder midway between the fulcrum of the beam and the connecting rod on an ordinary beam engine. The original cylinder was retained to act as the low-pressure cylinder of what became a compound engine. This layout not only reduced the pressures on the bearing surfaces and gave a smoother-running engine, which was one of McNaught's aims, but he probably did not anticipate just how much more economical his engines would be; they often gave a saving of fuel up to 40 per cent. This was because the steam pipe connecting the two cylinders acted as a receiver, something lacking in the Woolf compound, which enabled the steam to be expanded properly in both cylinders. McNaught took out his patent in 1845, and in 1849 he had to move to Manchester because his orders in Lancashire were so numerous and the scope was much greater there than in Glasgow. He took out further patents for equalizing the stress on the working parts, but none was as important as his original one, which was claimed to have been one of the greatest improvements since the steam engine left the hands of James Watt. He was one of the original promoters of the Boiler Insurance and Steam Power Company and was elected Chairman in 1865, a position he retained until a short time before his death.[br]Bibliography1845, British patent no. 11,001 (compounding beam engine).Further ReadingObituary, Engineer 51.Obituary, Engineering 31.R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (the fullest account of McNaught's proposals for compounding).RLH -
67 Morrison, William Murray
[br]b. 7 October 1873 Birchwood, Inverness-shire, Scotlandd. 21 May 1948 London, England[br]Scottish pioneer in the development of the British aluminium industry and Highlands hydroelectric energy.[br]After studying at the West of Scotland Technical College in Glasgow, in January 1895 Morrison was appointed Engineer to the newly formed British Aluminium Company Limited (BAC); it was with this organization that he spent his entire career. The company secured the patent rights to the Héroult and Bayer processes. It constructed a 200 tonne per year electrolytic plant at Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness, together with an adjacent 5000 kW hydroelectric scheme, and it built an alumina factory at Larne Harbour in north-eastern Ireland. Morrison was soon Manager at Foyers, and he became the company's Joint Technical Adviser. In 1910 he was made General Manager, and later he was appointed Managing Director. Morrison successfully brought about improvements in all parts of the production process; between 1915 and 1930 he increased the size of individual electrolytic cells by a factor of five, from 8,000 to 40,000 amperes. Soon after 1901, BAC built a second works for electrolytic reduction, at Kinlochleven in Argyllshire, where the primary design originated from Morrison. In the 1920s a third plant was erected at Fort William, in the lee of Ben Nevis, with hydroelectric generators providing some 75 MW. Alumina factories were constructed at Burntisland on the Firth of Forth and, in the 1930s, at Newport in Monmouthshire. Rolling mills were developed at Milton in Staffordshire, Warrington, and Falkirk in Stirlingshire, this last coming into use in the 1940s, by which time the company had a primary-metal output of more than 30,000 tonnes a year. Morrison was closely involved in all of these developments. He retired in 1946 as Deputy Chairman of BAC.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCommander of the Order of St Olav of Norway 1933 (BAC had manufacturing interests in Norway). Knighted 1943. Vice-Chairman, British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, Faraday Society, Institute of Metals. Institute of Metals Platinum Medal 1942.Bibliography1939, "Aluminium and highland water power", Journal of the Institute of Metals 65:17– 36 (seventeenth autumn lecture),See also: Hall, Charles MartinJKABiographical history of technology > Morrison, William Murray
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68 Pennington, William
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]ft. 1750 England[br]English patentee of a machine for making holes in the leather backing used for card clothing.[br]Prior to the spinning process, the raw cotton or wool must be prepared. One stage of the preparation is carding, in which the mass of fibres is drawn out and disentangled before being rolled up into a sliver or rollrag. At first natural teazels were mounted on boards. The wool was caught round their hooks and pulled out as the hand cards were drawn across each other. It is not known when iron wire hooks inserted through a leather backing were substituted for teazels, but in 1750 William Pennington took out a patent, for a machine to make the holes in the leather backing so that the bent wires could be inserted more easily and more regularly. Soon after this a machine for making the complete card clothing was made by Robert Kay.[br]Bibliography1750, British patent no. 657.Further ReadingR.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (includes a brief account of the development of card-clothing machines).RLH -
69 Perkin, Sir William Henry
[br]b. 12 March 1838 London, Englandd. 14 July 1907 Sudbury, England[br]English chemist, discoverer of aniline dyes, the first synthetic dyestuffs.[br]He early showed an aptitude for chemistry and in 1853 entered the Royal College of Chemistry as a student under A.W.von Hofmann, the first Professor at the College. By the end of his first year, he had carried out his first piece of chemical research, on the action of cyanogen chloride on phenylamine, which he published in the Journal of the Chemical Society (1857). He became honorary assistant to von Hofmann in 1857; three years previously he had set up his own chemical laboratory at home, where he had discovered the first of the azo dyes, aminoazonapththalene. In 1856 Perkin began work on the synthesis of quinine by oxidizing a salt of allyl toluidine with potassium dichromate. Substituting aniline, he obtained a dark-coloured precipitate which proved to possess dyeing properties: Perkin had discovered the first aniline dye. Upon receiving favourable reports on the new material from manufacturers of dyestuffs, especially Pullars of Perth, Perkin resigned from the College and turned to the commercial exploitation of his discovery. This proved highly successful. From 1858, the dye was manufactured at his Greenford Green works as "Aniline Purple" or "Tyrian Purple". It was later to be referred to by the French as mauve. Perkin's discovery led to the development of the modern dyestuffs industry, supplanting dyes from the traditional vegetable sources. In 1869, he introduced two new methods for making the red dye alizarin, in place of the process that involved the use of the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum). In spite of German competition, he dominated the British market until the end of 1873. After eighteen years in chemical industry, Perkin retired and devoted himself entirely to the pure chemical research which he had been pursuing since the 1850s. He eventually contributed ninety papers to the Chemical Society and further papers to other bodies, including the Royal Society. For example, in 1867 he published his synthesis of unsaturated organic acids, known as "Perkin's synthesis". Other papers followed, on the structure of "Aniline Purple". In 1881 Perkin drew attention to the magnetic-rotatory power of some of the substances he had been dealing with. From then on, he devoted particular attention to the application of this phenomenon to the determination of chemical structure.Perkin won wide recognition for his discoveries and other contributions to chemistry.The half-centenary of his great discovery was celebrated in July 1906 and later that year he received a knighthood.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1906. FRS 1866. President, Chemical Society 1883–5. President, Society of Chemical Industry 1884–5. Royal Society Royal Medal 1879; Davy Medal 1889.Bibliography26 August 1856, British patent no. 1984 (Aniline Purple).1867, "The action of acetic anhydride upon the hydrides of salicyl, etc.", Journal of the Chemical Society 20:586 (the first description of Perkin's synthesis).Further ReadingS.M.Edelstein, 1961, biography in Great Chemists, ed. E.Farber, New York: Interscience, pp. 757–72 (a reliable, short account).R.Meldola, 1908, Journal of the Chemical Society 93:2,214–57 (the most detailed account).LRDBiographical history of technology > Perkin, Sir William Henry
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70 Petty, Sir William
SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology[br]b. 26 May 1623 Romsey, Hampshire, Englandd. 16 December 1687 London, England[br]English scientist, medical practitioner, researcher and founder member of the Royal Society of London.[br]Despite coming from modest circumstances, Petty had an illustrious career, which started with college in France at the age of 13, followed by service on a small coastal ship and then studies at the medical schools of Ley den and Paris. In 1651 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at Oxford, and by this time was attending meetings of fellow scientists and philosophers which culminated in the founding of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. In 1652 Petty was sent to Ireland as PhysicianGeneral for the Army; he was soon involved in many matters of an intellectual and experimental nature. He took responsibility for the first proper survey of the country and produced maps and an Irish atlas, Hiberniae Delineatio, published in 1685. His investigations into political economics had a profound effect on seventeenth-century thinking. Of equal importance were his radical proposals for ship design; he presented many papers on naval architecture to the Royal Society and at one time suggested floating harbours similar to the Mulberry harbours of nearly three centuries later. In 1662 he built the pioneer catamaran Invention II (described at the time as a double-bottomed ship!), which was capable of lifting 5 tons of cargo.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1661.Further ReadingP.G.Dale, 1987, Sir W.P. of Romsey, Romsey: LTVAS Group.FMW -
71 Praed, William
SUBJECT AREA: Canals[br]b. 24 June 1747 Trevethoe, Leland, St Ives, Cornwall, Englandd. 9 October 1833 Trevethoe, Leland, St Ives, Cornwall, England[br]English banker and Member of Parliament.[br]Born into a wealthy Cornish family, he was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He was elected Member of Parliament for St Ives in 1774, but it was alleged that his father, who was a banker, had acted as agent for both his son and Drummond, the other candidate for the same party, in the course of which he advanced money to voters "on their notes payable with interest to the bank of Truro (Praed's bank)" but with the understanding that repayment would not be demanded from those who had voted for Praed and Drummond. Praed's election was therefore declared void on 8 May 1775. He was re-elected in 1780, by which time St Ives was virtually a Praed family monopoly. He served in successive Parliaments until 1806 and then represented Banbury until 1808. Meanwhile, in 1779 he had become a partner in his father's Truro bank, c. 1801 founded the London bank of Praed \& Co. at 189 Fleet Street.While in Parliament, he was instrumental in obtaining and carrying into effect the Bill for the Grand Junction Canal from Braunston to London. He was elected Chairman of the company formed for constructing the canal and proved an excellent choice, serving the company faithfully for nearly thirty years until his resignation in 1821. Upon his marriage to Elizabeth Tyringham in 1778 he made his home at Tyringham Hall in Buckinghamshire and so was very much in the Grand Junction Canal Company's area. London's Praed Street, in which Paddington Station stands, is named in his honour and the canal basin is at the rear of this street. His monument in Tyringham Church bears a relief illustrating a pair of lock gates and a canal boat.[br]Further ReadingAlan H.Faulkner, 1972, The Grand Junction Canal, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles. L.S.Presnell, 1956, Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 295–6.G.C.Boase and W.P.Courtney, 1874, Biblio-theca Cornubiensis, Vol. II, London: Longmans, p. 524.JHB -
72 Symington, William
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 1764 Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Scotlandd. 22 March 1831 Wapping, London, England[br]Scottish pioneer of steam navigation.[br]Symington was the son of the Superintendent of the Mines Company in Lanarkshire, and attended the local school. When he was 22 years old he was sent by Gilbert Meason, Manager of the Wanlockhead mines, to Edinburgh University. In 1779 he was working on the assembly of a Watt engine as an apprentice to his brother, George, and in 1786 he started experiments to modify a Watt engine in order to avoid infringing the separate condenser patent. He sought a patent for his alternative, which was paid for by Meason. He constructed a model steam road carriage which was completed in 1786; it was shown in Edinburgh by Meason, attracting interest but inadequate financial support. It had a horizontal cylinder and was non-condensing. No full-sized engine was ever built but the model secured the interest of Patrick Miller, an Edinburgh banker, who ordered an engine from Symington to drive an experimental boat, 25 ft (7.6 m) long with a dual hull, which performed satisfactorily on Dalswinton Loch in 1788. In the following year Miller ordered a larger engine for a bigger boat which was tried on the Forth \& Clyde Canal in December 1789, the component parts having been made by the Carron Company. The engine worked perfectly but had the effect of breaking the paddle wheels. These were repaired and further trials were successful but Miller lost interest and his experiments lapsed. Symington devoted himself thereafter to building stationary engines. He built other engines for mine pumping at Sanquhar and Leadhills before going further afield. In all, he built over thirty engines, about half of them being rotary. In 1800–1 he designed the engine for a boat for Lord Dundas, the Charlotte Dundas; this was apparently the first boat of that name and sailed on both the Forth and Clyde rivers. A second Charlotte Dundas with a horizontal cylinder was to follow and first sailed in January 1803 for the Forth \& Clyde Canal Company. The speed of the boat was only 2 mph (3 km/h) and much was made by its detractors of the damage said to be caused to the canal banks by its wash. Lord Dundas declined to authorize payment of outstanding accounts; Symington received little reward for his efforts. He died in the house of his son-in-law, Dr Robert Bowie, in Wapping, amidst heated controversy about the true inventor of steam navigation.[br]Further ReadingW.S.Harvey and G.Downs-Rose, 1980, William Symington, Inventor and Engine- Builder, London: Mechanical Engineering Publications.IMcN -
73 Wollaston, William Hyde
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 6 August 1766 East Dereham, Norfolk, Englandd. 22 December 1828 London, England[br]English chemist and metallurgist who discovered palladium and rhodium, pioneer in the fabrication of platinum.[br]Wollaston qualified in medicine at Cambridge University but gave up his practice in 1800 to devote himself to chemistry and metallurgy, funded from the profits from making malleable platinum. In partnership with Smithson Tennant, a friend from his Cambridge days, he worked on the extraction of platinum by dissolving it in aqua regia. In 1802 he found that in addition to platinum the solution contained a new metal, which he named palladium. Two years later he identified another new metal, rhodium.Wollaston developed a method of forming platinum by means of powder metallurgy and was the first to produce malleable and ductile platinum on a commercial scale. He produced platinum vessels for sulphuric acid manufacture and scientific apparatus such as crucibles. He devised an elegant method for forming fine platinum wire. He also applied his inventive talents to improving scientific apparatus, including the sextant and microscope and a reflecting goniometer for measuring crystal angles. In 1807 he was appointed Joint Secretary of the Royal Society with Sir Humphry Davy, which entailed a heavy workload and required them to referee all the papers submitted to the Society for publication.Wollaston's output of platinum began to decline after 1822. Due to ill health he ceased business operations in 1828 and at last made public the details of his secret platinum fabrication process. It was fully described in the Bakerian Lecture he delivered to the Royal Society on 28 November 1828, shortly before his death.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1793.BibliographyHis scientific papers were published in various journals, nearly all listed in the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers.Further ReadingThere is no good general biography, the best general account being the entry inDictionary of Scientific Biography.D.McDonald, 1960, A History of Platinum from the Earliest Times to the Eighteen- Eighties, London (provides a good discussion of his work on platinum).M.E.Weeks, 1939, "The discovery of the elements", Journal of Chemical Education: 184–5.ASDBiographical history of technology > Wollaston, William Hyde
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74 Craufurd, Henry William
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]fl. 1830s[br]English patentee of the process of coating iron with zinc (galvanized iron).[br]Although described as Commander of the Royal Navy, other personal details of Craufurd appear to be little known. His process for coating sheet iron with a protective layer of zinc, conveyed as a communication from abroad, was granted a patent in 1837. The details closely resembled, indeed are believed to have been based upon, those developed and patented in France in 1836 by Sorel, who had worked in collaboration with Ledru. There had been French interest in substituting zinc for tin as a coating for iron from 1742 with work by Malouin. Zinc-coated iron saucepans were produced in Rouen in the 1780s, but the work was later abandoned. Craufurd's patent directed that iron objects should be dipped into molten zinc, protected from volatilization by a layer of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride, NH4Cl which also served as a flux. The quite misleading term "galvanizing" had already been introduced by Sorel for his process. Later its pro-tective properties were discovered to depend for effectiveness on the formation of a thin layer of zinc-iron alloy between the iron sheet and its zinc coating. Craufurd's patent was infringed in England soon after being granted, and was followed by several improvements, particularly those of Edmund Morewood, collaborating with George Rogers in five patents, of which four referred to methods of corrugation. The resulting production of zinc-coated iron implements, together with corrugated iron sheeting quickly adopted for building purposes, developed into an important industry of the West Midlands, Bristol, London and other parts of Britain.[br]Bibliography1837, British patent no. 7,355 (coating sheet iron with zinc).Further ReadingH.W.Dickinson, 1943–4, "A study of galvanised and corrugated sheet metal", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 24:27–36 (the best and most concise account).JDBiographical history of technology > Craufurd, Henry William
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75 Crawford, John William Croom
[br]b. 13 January 1891d. 5 May 1987[br]English chemist who pioneered the manufacture of Perspex.[br]In 1934, by a brilliant piece of research at Imperial Chemical Industries at Ardeer, Crawford devised the synthetic method of making the monomer from which Perspex is derived, based on acetone, methanol, cyanamide and sulphuric acid. This was the basis of the commercial production of Perspex and is still in use. Crawford left ICI to work for a time at University College, Dublin, and returned to England in 1964.[br]Further ReadingC.E.D.Miles, 1955, A History of Research in the Nobel Division of ICI, ICI, p. 132.LRDBiographical history of technology > Crawford, John William Croom
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76 Dunne, John William
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 2 December 1875 Co. Kildare, Irelandd. 24 August 1949 Oxfordshire, England[br]Irish inventor who pioneered tailless aircraft designed to be inherently stable.[br]After serving in the British Army during the Boer War. Dunne returned home convinced that aeroplanes would be more suitable than balloons for reconnaissance work. He built models to test his ideas for a tailless design based on the winged seed of a Javanese climbing plant. In 1906 Dunne joined the staff of the Balloon Factory at Farnborough, where the Superintendent, Colonel J.E.Capper, was also interested in manned kites and aeroplanes. Since 1904 the colourful American "Colonel" S.F. Cody had been experimenting at Farnborough with manned kites, and in 1908 his "British Army Dirigible No. 1" made the first powered flight in Britain. Dunne's first swept-wing tailless glider was ready to fly in the spring of 1907, but it was deemed to be a military secret and flying it at Farnborough would be too public. Dunne, Colonel Capper and a team of army engineers took the glider to a remote site at Blair Atholl in Scotland for its test flights. It was not a great success, although it attracted snoopers, with the result that it was camouflaged. Powered versions made short hops in 1908, but then the War Office withdrew its support. Dunne and his associates set up a syndicate to continue the development of a new tailless aeroplane, the D 5; this was built by Short Brothers (see Short, Hugh Oswald) and flew successfully in 1910. It had combined elevators and ailerons on the wing tips (or elevons as they are now called when fitted to modern delta-winged aircraft). In 1913 an improved version of the D 5 was demonstrated in France, where the pilot left his cockpit and walked along the wing in flight. Dunne had proved his point and designed a stable aircraft, but his health was suffering and he retired. During the First World War, however, it was soon learned that military aircraft needed to be manoeuvrable rather than stable.[br]Bibliography1913, "The theory of the Dunne aeroplane", Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (April).After he left aviation, Dunne became well known for his writings on the nature of the universe and the interpretation of dreams. His best known-work was An ExperimentWith Time (1927; and reprints).Further ReadingP.B.Walker, 1971, Early Aviation at Farnborough, Vol. I, London; 1974, Vol. II (provides a detailed account of Dunne's early work; Vol. II is the more relevant).P.Lewis, 1962, British Air craft 1809–1914, London (for details of Dunne's aircraft).JDS -
77 Lascelles, William
[br]fl. c.1895 England[br]English pioneer in methods of construction utilizing concrete panels.[br]In 1895 Lascelles patented a system of pre-cast concrete panels that were affixed to wooden framing. This type of construction was intended for low-cost housing, and a number of examples were constructed in the Croydon area of Surrey, where Lascelles lived. The panels, in the fashion of the day, were decoratively moulded with classical borders and floral or geometric patterning. They were large, being about 1 1/2 in. (38 mm) thick and measuring about 3 ft×2 ft 6 in. (91 cm×76 cm), and were manufactured from Portland Cement mixed with powdered coke. The system was adopted by several architects.[br]Further ReadingChristopher C.Stanley, 1979, Highlights in the History of Concrete, Cement and Concrete Association.DY -
78 Merritt, William Hamilton
[br]b. 3 July 1793 Bedford, Winchester County, New York, USAd. 5 July 1862 aboard a vessel on the Cornwall Canal, Canada[br]American-born Canadian merchant, entrepreneur and promoter of the First and Second Welland Canals bypassing the Niagara Falls and linking Lakes Ontario and Erie.[br]Although he was born in the USA, his family moved to Canada in 1796. Educated in St Catharines and Niagara, he received a good training in mathematics, navigation and surveying. He served with distinction in the 1812–14 war, although he was captured by the Americans in 1814. After the war he established himself in business operating a sawmill, a flour mill, a small distillery, a potashery, a cooperage and a smithy, as well as running a general store. By 1818 he was one of the leading figures in the area and realized that for real economic progress it was essential to improve communications in the Niagara peninsula; in that year he surveyed a route for a waterway that would carry boats.In c. 1820 he began discussions with neighbouring landowners and businessmen, who, on 19 January 1824 together obtained a charter for building the first Welland Canal to link Lakes Ontario and Erie. They were greatly influenced by the realization that the completion of the Erie Canal would attract trade through the United States instead of through Canada. Construction began on 30 November 1824, largely with redundant labour from the Erie Canal. Merritt foresaw the need for financial support and for publicity to sustain interest in the project. Accordingly he started a newspaper, the Farmer's Journal and Welland Canal Intelligencer, which was published until 1835. He also visited York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and obtained some support, but the Government was reluctant to assist financially. He was more successful in raising money in New York. Then in 1828 he visited England to see Telford and persuaded both Telford and the Duke of Wellington, among others, to purchase shares. The Canal opened on 30 November 1829. In 1832 Merritt became a member of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, and after the Union of the Canadas in 1841 he was elected to the new Assembly, later serving as Minister of Public Works and then as President of the Assembly. He advocated improvements to the St Lawrence River and also promoted railways. He pioneered a bridge across the Niagara River that was opened in 1849 and later carried a railway. He was not a canal engineer, but he did pioneer communications in developing territory.[br]Further ReadingR.M.Styran and R.R.Taylor, 1988, The Welland Canals. The Growth of Mr Merritt'sDitch, Erin, Ont.: Boston Mills Press.JHBBiographical history of technology > Merritt, William Hamilton
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79 Pasley, General Sir Charles William
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 8 September 1780 Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, Scotlandd. 19 April 1861 London, England[br]Scottish Colonel-Commandant, Royal Engineers.[br]At first he was educated by Andrew Little of Lan-gholm. At the age of 14 he was sent to school at Selkirk, where he stayed for two years until joining the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in August 1796. He was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and transferred to the Royal Engineers on 1 April 1798. He served at Minorca, Malta, Naples, Sicily, Calabria and in the siege of Copenhagen and in other campaigns. He was promoted First Captain in 1807, and was on the staff of Sir John Moore at the battle of Coruna. He was wounded at the siege of Flushing in 1809 and was invalided for a year, employing his time in learning German.In November 1810 he published his Essay on Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire, which ran through four editions. In 1811 he was in command of a company of Royal Military Artificers at Plymouth and there he devised a method of education by which the NCOs and troops could teach themselves without "mathematical masters". His system was a great success and was adopted at Chatham and throughout the corps. In 1812 he was appointed Director of the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He remained at Chatham until 1841, when he was appointed Inspector-General of Railways. During this period he organized improved systems of sapping, mining, telegraphing, pontooning and exploding gunpowder on land or under water, and prepared pamphlets and courses of instruction in these and other subjects. In May 1836 he started what is probably the most important work for which he is remembered. This, was a book on Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortar, Stuccos and Concretes. The general adoption of Joseph Aspdin's Portland Cement was largely due to Pasley's recommendation of the material.He was married twice: first in 1814 at Chatham to Harriet Cooper; and then on 30 March 1819 at Rochester to Martha Matilda Roberts, with whom he had six children— she died in 1881.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKGB 1846. FRS 1816. Honorary DCL, Oxford University 1844.Bibliography1810, Essay on Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire. Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortar, Stuccos and Concretes.Further ReadingPorter, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers. DNB. Proceedings of the Royal Society.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Pasley, General Sir Charles William
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80 Shockley, William Bradford
[br]b. 13 February 1910 London, Englandd. 12 August 1989, Palo Alto, California, USA.[br]American physicist who developed the junction transistor from the point contact transistor and was joint winner (with John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain) of the 1956 Nobel Prize for physics.[br]The son of a mining engineer, Shockley graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1932 and in 1936 obtained his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In that year, he joined the staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories.Since the early days of radio, crystals of silicon or similar materials had been used to rectify alternating current supply until these were displaced by thermionic valves or tubes. Shockley, with Bardeen and Brattain, found that crystals of germanium containing traces of certain impurities formed far better rectifiers than crystals of the material in its pure form. The resulting device, the transistor, could also be used to amplify the current; its name is derived from its ability to transfer current across a resistor. The transistor, being so much smaller than the thermionic valve which it replaced, led to the miniaturization of electronic appliances. Another advantage was that a transistorized device needed no period of warming up, such as was necessary with a thermionic valve before it would operate. The dispersal of the heat generated by a multiplicity of thermionic valves such as were present in early computers was another problem obviated by the advent of the transistor.Shockley was responsible for much development in the field of semiconductors. He was Deputy Director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the US Department of Defense (1954–5), and in 1963 he was appointed the first Poniatoff Professor of Engineering Science at Stanford University, California. During the late 1960s Shockley became a controversial figure for expressing his unorthodox views on genetics, such as that black people were inherently less intelligent than white people, and that the population explosion spread "bad" genes at the expense of "good" genes; he supported the idea of a sperm bank from Nobel Prize winners, voluntary sterilization and the restriction of interracial marriages.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsNobel Prize for Physics 1956.Further ReadingI.Asimov (ed.), 1982, Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, New York: Doubleday \& Co.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Shockley, William Bradford
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