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1 Stevens, Robert Livingston
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 18 October 1787 Hoboken, New Jersey, USAd. 20 April 1856 Hoboken, New Jersey, USA[br]American engineer, pioneer of steamboats and railways.[br]R.L.Stevens was the son of John Stevens and was given the technical education his father lacked. He assisted his father with the Little Juliana and the Phoenix, managed the commercial operation of the Phoenix on the Delaware River, and subsequently built many other steamboats.In 1830 he and his brother Edwin A.Stevens obtained a charter from the New Jersey Legislature for the Camden \& Amboy Railroad \& Transportation Company, and he visited Britain to obtain rails and a locomotive. Railway track in the USA then normally comprised longitudinal timber rails with running surfaces of iron straps, but Stevens designed rails of flat-bottom section, which were to become standard, and had the first batch rolled in Wales. He also designed hookheaded spikes for them, and "iron tongues", which became fishplates. From Robert Stephenson \& Co. (see Robert Stephenson) he obtained the locomotive John Bull, which was similar to the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Samson. The Camden \& Amboy Railroad was opened in 1831, but John Bull, a 0–4–0, proved over sensitive to imperfections in the track; Stevens and his mechanic, Isaac Dripps, added a two-wheeled non-swivelling "pilot" at the front to guide it round curves. The locomotive survives at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.[br]Further ReadingH.P.Spratt, 1958, The Birth of the Steamboat, Charles Griffin.J.H.White Jr, 1979, A History of the American Locomotive—Its Development: 1830– 1880, New York: Dover Publications Inc.J.F.Stover, 1961, American Railroads, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.PJGRBiographical history of technology > Stevens, Robert Livingston
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2 Vignoles, Charles Blacker
[br]b. 31 May 1793 Woodbrook, Co. Wexford, Irelandd. 17 November 1875 Hythe, Hampshire, England[br]English surveyor and civil engineer, pioneer of railways.[br]Vignoles, who was of Huguenot descent, was orphaned in infancy and brought up in the family of his grandfather, Dr Charles Hutton FRS, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. After service in the Army he travelled to America, arriving in South Carolina in 1817. He was appointed Assistant to the state's Civil Engineer and surveyed much of South Carolina and subsequently Florida. After his return to England in 1823 he established himself as a civil engineer in London, and obtained work from the brothers George and John Rennie.In 1825 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) lost their application for an Act of Parliament, discharged their engineer George Stephenson and appointed the Rennie brothers in his place. They in turn employed Vignoles to resurvey the railway, taking a route that would minimize objections. With Vignoles's route, the company obtained its Act in 1826 and appointed Vignoles to supervise the start of construction. After Stephenson was reappointed Chief Engineer, however, he and Vignoles proved incompatible, with the result that Vignoles left the L \& MR early in 1827.Nevertheless, Vignoles did not sever all connection with the L \& MR. He supported John Braithwaite and John Ericsson in the construction of the locomotive Novelty and was present when it competed in the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He attended the opening of the L \& MR in 1830 and was appointed Engineer to two railways which connected with it, the St Helens \& Runcorn Gap and the Wigan Branch (later extended to Preston as the North Union); he supervised the construction of these.After the death of the Engineer to the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway, Vignoles supervised construction: the railway, the first in Ireland, was opened in 1834. He was subsequently employed in surveying and constructing many railways in the British Isles and on the European continent; these included the Eastern Counties, the Midland Counties, the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyme \& Manchester (which proved for him a financial disaster from which he took many years to recover), and the Waterford \& Limerick. He probably discussed rail of flat-bottom section with R.L. Stevens during the winter of 1830–1 and brought it into use in the UK for the first time in 1836 on the London \& Croydon Railway: subsequently rail of this section became known as "Vignoles rail". He considered that a broader gauge than 4 ft 8½ in. (1.44 m) was desirable for railways, although most of those he built were to this gauge so that they might connect with others. He supported the atmospheric system of propulsion during the 1840s and was instrumental in its early installation on the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway's Dalkey extension. Between 1847 and 1853 he designed and built the noted multi-span suspension bridge at Kiev, Russia, over the River Dnieper, which is more than half a mile (800 m) wide at that point.Between 1857 and 1863 he surveyed and then supervised the construction of the 155- mile (250 km) Tudela \& Bilbao Railway, which crosses the Cantabrian Pyrenees at an altitude of 2,163 ft (659 m) above sea level. Vignoles outlived his most famous contemporaries to become the grand old man of his profession.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFellow of the Royal Astronomical Society 1829. FRS 1855. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1869–70.Bibliography1830, jointly with John Ericsson, British patent no. 5,995 (a device to increase the capability of steam locomotives on grades, in which rollers gripped a third rail).1823, Observations upon the Floridas, New York: Bliss \& White.1870, Address on His Election as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.Further ReadingK.H.Vignoles, 1982, Charles Blacker Vignoles: Romantic Engineer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (good modern biography by his great-grandson).See also: Samuda, Joseph d'AguilarPJGRBiographical history of technology > Vignoles, Charles Blacker
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3 Curr, John
[br]b. 1756 Kyo, near Lanchester, or in Greenside, near Ryton-on-Tyne, Durham, Englandd. 27 January 1823 Sheffield, England[br]English coal-mine manager and engineer, inventor of flanged, cast-iron plate rails.[br]The son of a "coal viewer", Curr was brought up in the West Durham colliery district. In 1777 he went to the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at Sheffield, where in 1880 he was appointed Superintendent. There coal was conveyed underground in baskets on sledges: Curr replaced the wicker sledges with wheeled corves, i.e. small four-wheeled wooden wagons, running on "rail-roads" with cast-iron rails and hauled from the coal-face to the shaft bottom by horses. The rails employed hitherto had usually consisted of plates of iron, the flange being on the wheels of the wagon. Curr's new design involved flanges on the rails which guided the vehicles, the wheels of which were unflanged and could run on any hard surface. He appears to have left no precise record of the date that he did this, and surviving records have been interpreted as implying various dates between 1776 and 1787. In 1787 John Buddle paid tribute to the efficiency of the rails of Curr's type, which were first used for surface transport by Joseph Butler in 1788 at his iron furnace at Wingerworth near Chesterfield: their use was then promoted widely by Benjamin Outram, and they were adopted in many other English mines. They proved serviceable until the advent of locomotives demanded different rails.In 1788 Curr also developed a system for drawing a full corve up a mine shaft while lowering an empty one, with guides to separate them. At the surface the corves were automatically emptied by tipplers. Four years later he was awarded a patent for using double ropes for lifting heavier loads. As the weight of the rope itself became a considerable problem with the increasing depth of the shafts, Curr invented the flat hemp rope, patented in 1798, which consisted of several small round ropes stitched together and lapped upon itself in winding. It acted as a counterbalance and led to a reduction in the time and cost of hoisting: at the beginning of a run the loaded rope began to coil upon a small diameter, gradually increasing, while the unloaded rope began to coil off a large diameter, gradually decreasing.Curr's book The Coal Viewer (1797) is the earliest-known engineering work on railway track and it also contains the most elaborate description of a Newcomen pumping engine, at the highest state of its development. He became an acknowledged expert on construction of Newcomen-type atmospheric engines, and in 1792 he established a foundry to make parts for railways and engines.Because of the poor financial results of the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at the end of the century, Curr was dismissed in 1801 despite numerous inventions and improvements which he had introduced. After his dismissal, six more of his patents were concerned with rope-making: the one he gained in 1813 referred to the application of flat ropes to horse-gins and perpendicular drum-shafts of steam engines. Curr also introduced the use of inclined planes, where a descending train of full corves pulled up an empty one, and he was one of the pioneers employing fixed steam engines for hauling. He may have resided in France for some time before his death.[br]Bibliography1788. British patent no. 1,660 (guides in mine shafts).1789. An Account of tin Improved Method of Drawing Coals and Extracting Ores, etc., from Mines, Newcastle upon Tyne.1797. The Coal Viewer and Engine Builder's Practical Companion; reprinted with five plates and an introduction by Charles E.Lee, 1970, London: Frank Cass, and New York: Augustus M.Kelley.1798. British patent no. 2,270 (flat hemp ropes).Further ReadingF.Bland, 1930–1, "John Curr, originator of iron tram roads", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 11:121–30.R.A.Mott, 1969, Tramroads of the eighteenth century and their originator: John Curr', Transactions of the Newcomen Society 42:1–23 (includes corrections to Fred Bland's earlier paper).Charles E.Lee, 1970, introduction to John Curr, The Coal Viewer and Engine Builder's Practical Companion, London: Frank Cass, pp. 1–4; orig. pub. 1797, Sheffield (contains the most comprehensive biographical information).R.Galloway, 1898, Annals of Coalmining, Vol. I, London; reprinted 1971, London (provides a detailed account of Curr's technological alterations).WK / PJGR
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