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he was educated in England

  • 1 educate

    'edjukeit
    (to train and teach: He was educated at a private school.) educar, formar
    - educational
    - educationalist
    - educationist
    educate vb educar
    tr['edjʊkeɪt]
    1 educar, formar
    educate ['ɛʤə.keɪt] vt, - cated ; - cating
    1) teach: educar, enseñar
    2) instruct: formar, educar, instruir
    3) inform: informar, concientizar
    v.
    • desbastar v.
    • educar v.
    • enseñar v.
    • formar v.
    • instruir v.
    'edʒəkeɪt, 'edjʊkeɪt
    a) (teach, school) educar*
    b) ( make aware) concientizar* or (Esp) concienciar
    ['edjʊkeɪt]
    VT (=teach) enseñar; (=train) educar, formar; (=provide instruction in) instruir

    where were you educated? — ¿dónde cursó sus estudios?

    * * *
    ['edʒəkeɪt, 'edjʊkeɪt]
    a) (teach, school) educar*
    b) ( make aware) concientizar* or (Esp) concienciar

    English-spanish dictionary > educate

  • 2 Paul, Robert William

    [br]
    b. 3 October 1869 Highbury, London, England
    d. 28 March 1943 London, England
    [br]
    English scientific instrument maker, inventor of the Unipivot electrical measuring instrument, and pioneer of cinematography.
    [br]
    Paul was educated at the City of London School and Finsbury Technical College. He worked first for a short time in the Bell Telephone Works in Antwerp, Belgium, and then in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers in the Strand until 1891, when he opened an instrument-making business at 44 Hatton Garden, London. He specialized in the design and manufacture of electrical instruments, including the Ayrton Mather galvanometer. In 1902, with a purpose-built factory, he began large batch production of his instruments. He also opened a factory in New York, where uncalibrated instruments from England were calibrated for American customers. In 1903 Paul introduced the Unipivot galvanometer, in which the coil was supported at the centre of gravity of the moving system on a single pivot. The pivotal friction was less than in a conventional instrument and could be used without accurate levelling, the sensitivity being far beyond that of any pivoted galvanometer then in existence.
    In 1894 Paul was asked by two entrepreneurs to make copies of Edison's kinetoscope, the pioneering peep-show moving-picture viewer, which had just arrived in London. Discovering that Edison had omitted to patent the machine in England, and observing that there was considerable demand for the machine from show-people, he began production, making six before the end of the year. Altogether, he made about sixty-six units, some of which were exported. Although Edison's machine was not patented, his films were certainly copyrighted, so Paul now needed a cinematographic camera to make new subjects for his customers. Early in 1895 he came into contact with Birt Acres, who was also working on the design of a movie camera. Acres's design was somewhat impractical, but Paul constructed a working model with which Acres filmed the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March, and the Derby at Epsom on 29 May. Paul was unhappy with the inefficient design, and developed a new intermittent mechanism based on the principle of the Maltese cross. Despite having signed a ten-year agreement with Paul, Acres split with him on 12 July 1895, after having unilaterally patented their original camera design on 27 May. By the early weeks of 1896, Paul had developed a projector mechanism that also used the Maltese cross and which he demonstrated at the Finsbury Technical College on 20 February 1896. His Theatrograph was intended for sale, and was shown in a number of venues in London during March, notably at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. There the renamed Animatographe was used to show, among other subjects, the Derby of 1896, which was won by the Prince of Wales's horse "Persimmon" and the film of which was shown the next day to enthusiastic crowds. The production of films turned out to be quite profitable: in the first year of the business, from March 1896, Paul made a net profit of £12,838 on a capital outlay of about £1,000. By the end of the year there were at least five shows running in London that were using Paul's projectors and screening films made by him or his staff.
    Paul played a major part in establishing the film business in England through his readiness to sell apparatus at a time when most of his rivals reserved their equipment for sole exploitation. He went on to become a leading producer of films, specializing in trick effects, many of which he pioneered. He was affectionately known in the trade as "Daddy Paul", truly considered to be the "father" of the British film industry. He continued to appreciate fully the possibilities of cinematography for scientific work, and in collaboration with Professor Silvanus P.Thompson films were made to illustrate various phenomena to students.
    Paul ended his involvement with film making in 1910 to concentrate on his instrument business; on his retirement in 1920, this was amalgamated with the Cambridge Instrument Company. In his will he left shares valued at over £100,000 to form the R.W.Paul Instrument Fund, to be administered by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, of which he had been a member since 1887. The fund was to provide instruments of an unusual nature to assist physical research.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Fellow of the Physical Society 1920. Institution of Electrical Engineers Duddell Medal 1938.
    Bibliography
    17 March 1903, British patent no. 6,113 (the Unipivot instrument).
    1931, "Some electrical instruments at the Faraday Centenary Exhibition 1931", Journal of Scientific Instruments 8:337–48.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1943, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 90(1):540–1. P.Dunsheath, 1962, A History of Electrical Engineering, London: Faber \& Faber, pp.
    308–9 (for a brief account of the Unipivot instrument).
    John Barnes, 1976, The Beginnings of Cinema in Britain, London. Brian Coe, 1981, The History of Movie Photography, London.
    BC / GW

    Biographical history of technology > Paul, Robert William

  • 3 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

    [br]
    b. 9 April 1806 Portsea, Hampshire, England
    d. 15 September 1859 18 Duke Street, St James's, London, England
    [br]
    English civil and mechanical engineer.
    [br]
    The son of Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Kingdom, he was educated at a private boarding-school in Hove. At the age of 14 he went to the College of Caen and then to the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris, after which he was apprenticed to Louis Breguet. In 1822 he returned from France and started working in his father's office, while spending much of his time at the works of Maudslay, Sons \& Field.
    From 1825 to 1828 he worked under his father on the construction of the latter's Thames Tunnel, occupying the position of Engineer-in-Charge, exhibiting great courage and presence of mind in the emergencies which occurred not infrequently. These culminated in January 1828 in the flooding of the tunnel and work was suspended for seven years. For the next five years the young engineer made abortive attempts to find a suitable outlet for his talents, but to little avail. Eventually, in 1831, his design for a suspension bridge over the River Avon at Clifton Gorge was accepted and he was appointed Engineer. (The bridge was eventually finished five years after Brunel's death, as a memorial to him, the delay being due to inadequate financing.) He next planned and supervised improvements to the Bristol docks. In March 1833 he was appointed Engineer of the Bristol Railway, later called the Great Western Railway. He immediately started to survey the route between London and Bristol that was completed by late August that year. On 5 July 1836 he married Mary Horsley and settled into 18 Duke Street, Westminster, London, where he also had his office. Work on the Bristol Railway started in 1836. The foundation stone of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was laid the same year. Whereas George Stephenson had based his standard railway gauge as 4 ft 8½ in (1.44 m), that or a similar gauge being usual for colliery wagonways in the Newcastle area, Brunel adopted the broader gauge of 7 ft (2.13 m). The first stretch of the line, from Paddington to Maidenhead, was opened to traffic on 4 June 1838, and the whole line from London to Bristol was opened in June 1841. The continuation of the line through to Exeter was completed and opened on 1 May 1844. The normal time for the 194-mile (312 km) run from Paddington to Exeter was 5 hours, at an average speed of 38.8 mph (62.4 km/h) including stops. The Great Western line included the Box Tunnel, the longest tunnel to that date at nearly two miles (3.2 km).
    Brunel was the engineer of most of the railways in the West Country, in South Wales and much of Southern Ireland. As railway networks developed, the frequent break of gauge became more of a problem and on 9 July 1845 a Royal Commission was appointed to look into it. In spite of comparative tests, run between Paddington-Didcot and Darlington-York, which showed in favour of Brunel's arrangement, the enquiry ruled in favour of the narrow gauge, 274 miles (441 km) of the former having been built against 1,901 miles (3,059 km) of the latter to that date. The Gauge Act of 1846 forbade the building of any further railways in Britain to any gauge other than 4 ft 8 1/2 in (1.44 m).
    The existence of long and severe gradients on the South Devon Railway led to Brunel's adoption of the atmospheric railway developed by Samuel Clegg and later by the Samuda brothers. In this a pipe of 9 in. (23 cm) or more in diameter was laid between the rails, along the top of which ran a continuous hinged flap of leather backed with iron. At intervals of about 3 miles (4.8 km) were pumping stations to exhaust the pipe. Much trouble was experienced with the flap valve and its lubrication—freezing of the leather in winter, the lubricant being sucked into the pipe or eaten by rats at other times—and the experiment was abandoned at considerable cost.
    Brunel is to be remembered for his two great West Country tubular bridges, the Chepstow and the Tamar Bridge at Saltash, with the latter opened in May 1859, having two main spans of 465 ft (142 m) and a central pier extending 80 ft (24 m) below high water mark and allowing 100 ft (30 m) of headroom above the same. His timber viaducts throughout Devon and Cornwall became a feature of the landscape. The line was extended ultimately to Penzance.
    As early as 1835 Brunel had the idea of extending the line westwards across the Atlantic from Bristol to New York by means of a steamship. In 1836 building commenced and the hull left Bristol in July 1837 for fitting out at Wapping. On 31 March 1838 the ship left again for Bristol but the boiler lagging caught fire and Brunel was injured in the subsequent confusion. On 8 April the ship set sail for New York (under steam), its rival, the 703-ton Sirius, having left four days earlier. The 1,340-ton Great Western arrived only a few hours after the Sirius. The hull was of wood, and was copper-sheathed. In 1838 Brunel planned a larger ship, some 3,000 tons, the Great Britain, which was to have an iron hull.
    The Great Britain was screwdriven and was launched on 19 July 1843,289 ft (88 m) long by 51 ft (15.5 m) at its widest. The ship's first voyage, from Liverpool to New York, began on 26 August 1845. In 1846 it ran aground in Dundrum Bay, County Down, and was later sold for use on the Australian run, on which it sailed no fewer than thirty-two times in twenty-three years, also serving as a troop-ship in the Crimean War. During this war, Brunel designed a 1,000-bed hospital which was shipped out to Renkioi ready for assembly and complete with shower-baths and vapour-baths with printed instructions on how to use them, beds and bedding and water closets with a supply of toilet paper! Brunel's last, largest and most extravagantly conceived ship was the Great Leviathan, eventually named The Great Eastern, which had a double-skinned iron hull, together with both paddles and screw propeller. Brunel designed the ship to carry sufficient coal for the round trip to Australia without refuelling, thus saving the need for and the cost of bunkering, as there were then few bunkering ports throughout the world. The ship's construction was started by John Scott Russell in his yard at Millwall on the Thames, but the building was completed by Brunel due to Russell's bankruptcy in 1856. The hull of the huge vessel was laid down so as to be launched sideways into the river and then to be floated on the tide. Brunel's plan for hydraulic launching gear had been turned down by the directors on the grounds of cost, an economy that proved false in the event. The sideways launch with over 4,000 tons of hydraulic power together with steam winches and floating tugs on the river took over two months, from 3 November 1857 until 13 January 1858. The ship was 680 ft (207 m) long, 83 ft (25 m) beam and 58 ft (18 m) deep; the screw was 24 ft (7.3 m) in diameter and paddles 60 ft (18.3 m) in diameter. Its displacement was 32,000 tons (32,500 tonnes).
    The strain of overwork and the huge responsibilities that lay on Brunel began to tell. He was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease, or nephritis, and spent the winter travelling in the Mediterranean and Egypt, returning to England in May 1859. On 5 September he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed, and he died ten days later at his Duke Street home.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    L.T.C.Rolt, 1957, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, London: Longmans Green. J.Dugan, 1953, The Great Iron Ship, Hamish Hamilton.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

  • 4 Voelcker, John Augustus

    [br]
    b. 24 June 1854 Cirencester, England
    d. 1937 England
    [br]
    English agricultural chemist.
    [br]
    John Augustus Voelcker, as the son of Dr John Christopher Voelcker, grew up in an atmosphere of scientific agriculture and would have had contact with the leading agriculturists of the day. He was educated at University College School and then University College, London, where he obtained both a BA and a BSc Following in his father's footsteps, he studied for his PhD at Giessen University in Germany. At college he enjoyed athletics, an interest he was to pursue for the rest of his life. He decided to take up agricultural chemistry and was to succeed to all the public offices once held by his father, from whom he also took over the directorship of Woburn Farm. The experimental farm had been started in 1876 and was used to study the residual effects of chemicals in the soil. The results of these studies were used as the basis for compensation awards to tenant farmers giving up their farms. Voelcker broadened the range of studies to include trace elements in the soil, but by 1921 the Royal Agricultural Society of England had decided to give up the farm. This was a blow to Voelcker and occurred just before experiments elsewhere highlighted the importance of these elements to healthy plant growth. He continued the research at his own expense until the Rothampsted Experimental Station took over the farm in 1926. Aside from his achievements in Britain, Voelcker undertook a study tour of India in 1890, the report on which led to the appointment of an Agricultural Chemist, and the establishment of a scientific service for the Indian subcontinent.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President, Royal Society of Public Analysts. Member of Council, Chemical Society, and Institute of Chemistry. Chairman, Farmers' Club.
    Bibliography
    Most of his publications were in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, for which he wrote an annual report, and in another series of reports relating to Woburn Farm. The Improvements of Indian Agriculture was the result of his tour in 1890.
    Further Reading
    Sir E.John Russell, A History of Agricultural Science in Great Britain.
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Voelcker, John Augustus

  • 5 Armstrong, Sir William George, Baron Armstrong of Cragside

    [br]
    b. 26 November 1810 Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
    d. 27 December 1900 Cragside, Northumbria, England
    [br]
    English inventor, engineer and entrepreneur in hydraulic engineering, shipbuilding and the production of artillery.
    [br]
    The only son of a corn merchant, Alderman William Armstrong, he was educated at private schools in Newcastle and at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. He then became an articled clerk in the office of Armorer Donkin, a solicitor and a friend of his father. During a fishing trip he saw a water-wheel driven by an open stream to work a marble-cutting machine. He felt that its efficiency would be improved by introducing the water to the wheel in a pipe. He developed an interest in hydraulics and in electricity, and became a popular lecturer on these subjects. From 1838 he became friendly with Henry Watson of the High Bridge Works, Newcastle, and for six years he visited the Works almost daily, studying turret clocks, telescopes, papermaking machinery, surveying instruments and other equipment being produced. There he had built his first hydraulic machine, which generated 5 hp when run off the Newcastle town water-mains. He then designed and made a working model of a hydraulic crane, but it created little interest. In 1845, after he had served this rather unconventional apprenticeship at High Bridge Works, he was appointed Secretary of the newly formed Whittle Dene Water Company. The same year he proposed to the town council of Newcastle the conversion of one of the quayside cranes to his hydraulic operation which, if successful, should also be applied to a further four cranes. This was done by the Newcastle Cranage Company at High Bridge Works. In 1847 he gave up law and formed W.G.Armstrong \& Co. to manufacture hydraulic machinery in a works at Elswick. Orders for cranes, hoists, dock gates and bridges were obtained from mines; docks and railways.
    Early in the Crimean War, the War Office asked him to design and make submarine mines to blow up ships that were sunk by the Russians to block the entrance to Sevastopol harbour. The mines were never used, but this set him thinking about military affairs and brought him many useful contacts at the War Office. Learning that two eighteen-pounder British guns had silenced a whole Russian battery but were too heavy to move over rough ground, he carried out a thorough investigation and proposed light field guns with rifled barrels to fire elongated lead projectiles rather than cast-iron balls. He delivered his first gun in 1855; it was built of a steel core and wound-iron wire jacket. The barrel was multi-grooved and the gun weighed a quarter of a ton and could fire a 3 lb (1.4 kg) projectile. This was considered too light and was sent back to the factory to be rebored to take a 5 lb (2.3 kg) shot. The gun was a complete success and Armstrong was then asked to design and produce an equally successful eighteen-pounder. In 1859 he was appointed Engineer of Rifled Ordnance and was knighted. However, there was considerable opposition from the notably conservative officers of the Army who resented the intrusion of this civilian engineer in their affairs. In 1862, contracts with the Elswick Ordnance Company were terminated, and the Government rejected breech-loading and went back to muzzle-loading. Armstrong resigned and concentrated on foreign sales, which were successful worldwide.
    The search for a suitable proving ground for a 12-ton gun led to an interest in shipbuilding at Elswick from 1868. This necessitated the replacement of an earlier stone bridge with the hydraulically operated Tyne Swing Bridge, which weighed some 1450 tons and allowed a clear passage for shipping. Hydraulic equipment on warships became more complex and increasing quantities of it were made at the Elswick works, which also flourished with the reintroduction of the breech-loader in 1878. In 1884 an open-hearth acid steelworks was added to the Elswick facilities. In 1897 the firm merged with Sir Joseph Whitworth \& Co. to become Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth \& Co. After Armstrong's death a further merger with Vickers Ltd formed Vickers Armstrong Ltd.
    In 1879 Armstrong took a great interest in Joseph Swan's invention of the incandescent electric light-bulb. He was one of those who formed the Swan Electric Light Company, opening a factory at South Benwell to make the bulbs. At Cragside, his mansion at Roth bury, he installed a water turbine and generator, making it one of the first houses in England to be lit by electricity.
    Armstrong was a noted philanthropist, building houses for his workforce, and endowing schools, hospitals and parks. His last act of charity was to purchase Bamburgh Castle, Northumbria, in 1894, intending to turn it into a hospital or a convalescent home, but he did not live long enough to complete the work.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1859. FRS 1846. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers; Institution of Civil Engineers; British Association for the Advancement of Science 1863. Baron Armstrong of Cragside 1887.
    Further Reading
    E.R.Jones, 1886, Heroes of Industry', London: Low.
    D.J.Scott, 1962, A History of Vickers, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Armstrong, Sir William George, Baron Armstrong of Cragside

  • 6 Bateman, John Frederick La Trobe

    [br]
    b. 30 May 1810 Lower Wyke, near Halifax, Yorkshire, England
    d. 10 June 1889 Moor Park, Farnham, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English civil engineer whose principal works were concerned with reservoirs, water-supply schemes and pipelines.
    [br]
    Bateman's maternal grandfather was a Moravian missionary, and from the age of 7 he was educated at the Moravian schools at Fairfield and Ockbrook. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to a "civil engineer, land surveyor and agent" in Oldham. After this apprenticeship, Bateman commenced his own practice in 1833. One of his early schemes and reports was in regard to the flooding of the river Medlock in the Manchester area. He came to the attention of William Fairbairn, the engine builder and millwright of Canal Street, Ancoats, Manchester. Fairbairn used Bateman as his site surveyor and as such he prepared much of the groundwork for the Bann reservoirs in Northern Ireland. Whilst the reports on the proposals were in the name of Fairbairn, Bateman was, in fact, appointed by the company as their engineer for the execution of the works. One scheme of Bateman's which was carried forward was the Kendal Reservoirs. The Act for these was signed in 1845 and was implemented not for the purpose of water supply but for the conservation of water to supply power to the many mills which stood on the river Kent between Kentmere and Morecambe Bay. The Kentmere Head dam is the only one of the five proposed for the scheme to survive, although not all the others were built as they would have retained only small volumes of water.
    Perhaps the greatest monument to the work of J.F.La Trobe Bateman is Manchester's water supply; he was consulted about this in 1844, and construction began four years later. He first built reservoirs in the Longdendale valley, which has a very complicated geological stratification. Bateman favoured earth embankment dams and gravity feed rather than pumping; the five reservoirs in the valley that impound the river Etherow were complex, cored earth dams. However, when completed they were greatly at risk from landslips and ground movement. Later dams were inserted by Bateman to prevent water loss should the older dams fail. The scheme was not completed until 1877, by which time Manchester's population had exceeded the capacity of the original scheme; Thirlmere in Cumbria was chosen by Manchester Corporation as the site of the first of the Lake District water-supply schemes. Bateman, as Consulting Engineer, designed the great stone-faced dam at the west end of the lake, the "gothic" straining well in the middle of the east shore of the lake, and the 100-mile (160 km) pipeline to Manchester. The Act for the Thirlmere reservoir was signed in 1879 and, whilst Bateman continued as Consulting Engineer, the work was supervised by G.H. Hill and was completed in 1894.
    Bateman was also consulted by the authorities in Glasgow, with the result that he constructed an impressive water-supply scheme derived from Loch Katrine during the years 1856–60. It was claimed that the scheme bore comparison with "the most extensive aqueducts in the world, not excluding those of ancient Rome". Bateman went on to superintend the waterworks of many cities, mainly in the north of England but also in Dublin and Belfast. In 1865 he published a pamphlet, On the Supply of Water to London from the Sources of the River Severn, based on a survey funded from his own pocket; a Royal Commission examined various schemes but favoured Bateman's.
    Bateman was also responsible for harbour and dock works, notably on the rivers Clyde and Shannon, and also for a number of important water-supply works on the Continent of Europe and beyond. Dams and the associated reservoirs were the principal work of J.F.La Trobe Bateman; he completed forty-three such schemes during his professional career. He also prepared many studies of water-supply schemes, and appeared as professional witness before the appropriate Parliamentary Committees.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1860. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1878, 1879.
    Bibliography
    Among his publications History and Description of the Manchester Waterworks, (1884, London), and The Present State of Our Knowledge on the Supply of Water to Towns, (1855, London: British Association for the Advancement of Science) are notable.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1889, Proceedings of the Royal Society 46:xlii-xlviii. G.M.Binnie, 1981, Early Victorian Water Engineers, London.
    P.N.Wilson, 1973, "Kendal reservoirs", Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 73.
    KM / LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Bateman, John Frederick La Trobe

  • 7 Bramah, Joseph

    [br]
    b. 2 April 1749 Stainborough, Yorkshire, England
    d. 9 December 1814 Pimlico, London, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the second patented water-closet, the beer-engine, the Bramah lock and, most important, the hydraulic press.
    [br]
    Bramah was the son of a tenant farmer and was educated at the village school before being apprenticed to a local carpenter, Thomas Allot. He walked to London c.1773 and found work with a Mr Allen that included the repair of some of the comparatively rare water-closets of the period. He invented and patented one of his own, which was followed by a water cock in 1783. His next invention, a greatly improved lock, involved the devising of a number of special machine tools, for it was one of the first devices involving interchangeable components in its manufacture. In this he had the help of Henry Maudslay, then a young and unknown engineer, who became Bramah's foreman before setting up business on his own. In 1784 he moved his premises from Denmark Street, St Giles, to 124 Piccadilly, which was later used as a showroom when he set up a factory in Pimlico. He invented an engine for putting out fires in 1785 and 1793, in effect a reciprocating rotary-vane pump. He undertook the refurbishment and modernization of Norwich waterworks c.1793, but fell out with Robert Mylne, who was acting as Consultant to the Norwich Corporation and had produced a remarkably vague specification. This was Bramah's only venture into the field of civil engineering.
    In 1797 he acted as an expert witness for Hornblower \& Maberley in the patent infringement case brought against them by Boulton and Watt. Having been cut short by the judge, he published his proposed evidence in "Letter to the Rt Hon. Sir James Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas…etc". In 1795 he was granted his most important patent, based on Pascal's Hydrostatic Paradox, for the hydraulic press which also incorporated the concept of hydraulics for the transmission of both power and motion and was the foundation of the whole subsequent hydraulic industry. There is no truth in the oft-repeated assertion originating from Samuel Smiles's Industrial Biography (1863) that the hydraulic press could not be made to work until Henry Maudslay invented the self-sealing neck leather. Bramah used a single-acting upstroking ram, sealed only at its base with a U-leather. There was no need for a neck leather.
    He also used the concept of the weight-loaded, in this case as a public-house beer-engine. He devised machinery for carbonating soda water. The first banknote-numbering machine was of his design and was bought by the Bank of England. His development of a machine to cut twelve nibs from one goose quill started a patent specification which ended with the invention of the fountain pen, patented in 1809. His coach brakes were an innovation that was followed bv a form of hydropneumatic carriage suspension that was somewhat in advance of its time, as was his patent of 1812. This foresaw the introduction of hydraulic power mains in major cities and included the telescopic ram and the air-loaded accumulator.
    In all Joseph Bramah was granted eighteen patents. On 22 March 1813 he demonstrated a hydraulic machine for pulling up trees by the roots in Hyde Park before a large crowd headed by the Duke of York. Using the same machine in Alice Holt Forest in Hampshire to fell timber for ships for the Navy, he caught a chill and died soon after at his home in Pimlico.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1778, British patent no. 1177 (water-closet). 1784, British patent no. 1430 (Bramah Lock). 1795, British patent no. 2045 (hydraulic press). 1809, British patent no. 3260 (fountain pen). 1812, British patent no. 3611.
    Further Reading
    I.McNeil, 1968, Joseph Bramah, a Century of Invention.
    S.Smiles, 1863, Industrial Biography.
    H.W.Dickinson, 1942, "Joseph Bramah and his inventions", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 22:169–86.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Bramah, Joseph

  • 8 Stephenson, Robert

    [br]
    b. 16 October 1803 Willington Quay, Northumberland, England
    d. 12 October 1859 London, England
    [br]
    English engineer who built the locomotive Rocket and constructed many important early trunk railways.
    [br]
    Robert Stephenson's father was George Stephenson, who ensured that his son was educated to obtain the theoretical knowledge he lacked himself. In 1821 Robert Stephenson assisted his father in his survey of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway and in 1822 he assisted William James in the first survey of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He then went to Edinburgh University for six months, and the following year Robert Stephenson \& Co. was named after him as Managing Partner when it was formed by himself, his father and others. The firm was to build stationary engines, locomotives and railway rolling stock; in its early years it also built paper-making machinery and did general engineering.
    In 1824, however, Robert Stephenson accepted, perhaps in reaction to an excess of parental control, an invitation by a group of London speculators called the Colombian Mining Association to lead an expedition to South America to use steam power to reopen gold and silver mines. He subsequently visited North America before returning to England in 1827 to rejoin his father as an equal and again take charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co. There he set about altering the design of steam locomotives to improve both their riding and their steam-generating capacity. Lancashire Witch, completed in July 1828, was the first locomotive mounted on steel springs and had twin furnace tubes through the boiler to produce a large heating surface. Later that year Robert Stephenson \& Co. supplied the Stockton \& Darlington Railway with a wagon, mounted for the first time on springs and with outside bearings. It was to be the prototype of the standard British railway wagon. Between April and September 1829 Robert Stephenson built, not without difficulty, a multi-tubular boiler, as suggested by Henry Booth to George Stephenson, and incorporated it into the locomotive Rocket which the three men entered in the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Rainhill Trials in October. Rocket, was outstandingly successful and demonstrated that the long-distance steam railway was practicable.
    Robert Stephenson continued to develop the locomotive. Northumbrian, built in 1830, had for the first time, a smokebox at the front of the boiler and also the firebox built integrally with the rear of the boiler. Then in Planet, built later the same year, he adopted a layout for the working parts used earlier by steam road-coach pioneer Goldsworthy Gurney, placing the cylinders, for the first time, in a nearly horizontal position beneath the smokebox, with the connecting rods driving a cranked axle. He had evolved the definitive form for the steam locomotive.
    Also in 1830, Robert Stephenson surveyed the London \& Birmingham Railway, which was authorized by Act of Parliament in 1833. Stephenson became Engineer for construction of the 112-mile (180 km) railway, probably at that date the greatest task ever undertaken in of civil engineering. In this he was greatly assisted by G.P.Bidder, who as a child prodigy had been known as "The Calculating Boy", and the two men were to be associated in many subsequent projects. On the London \& Birmingham Railway there were long and deep cuttings to be excavated and difficult tunnels to be bored, notoriously at Kilsby. The line was opened in 1838.
    In 1837 Stephenson provided facilities for W.F. Cooke to make an experimental electrictelegraph installation at London Euston. The directors of the London \& Birmingham Railway company, however, did not accept his recommendation that they should adopt the electric telegraph and it was left to I.K. Brunel to instigate the first permanent installation, alongside the Great Western Railway. After Cooke formed the Electric Telegraph Company, Stephenson became a shareholder and was Chairman during 1857–8.
    Earlier, in the 1830s, Robert Stephenson assisted his father in advising on railways in Belgium and came to be increasingly in demand as a consultant. In 1840, however, he was almost ruined financially as a result of the collapse of the Stanhope \& Tyne Rail Road; in return for acting as Engineer-in-Chief he had unwisely accepted shares, with unlimited liability, instead of a fee.
    During the late 1840s Stephenson's greatest achievements were the design and construction of four great bridges, as part of railways for which he was responsible. The High Level Bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle and the Royal Border Bridge over the Tweed at Berwick were the links needed to complete the East Coast Route from London to Scotland. For the Chester \& Holyhead Railway to cross the Menai Strait, a bridge with spans as long-as 460 ft (140 m) was needed: Stephenson designed them as wrought-iron tubes of rectangular cross-section, through which the trains would pass, and eventually joined the spans together into a tube 1,511 ft (460 m) long from shore to shore. Extensive testing was done beforehand by shipbuilder William Fairbairn to prove the method, and as a preliminary it was first used for a 400 ft (122 m) span bridge at Conway.
    In 1847 Robert Stephenson was elected MP for Whitby, a position he held until his death, and he was one of the exhibition commissioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the early 1850s he was Engineer-in-Chief for the Norwegian Trunk Railway, the first railway in Norway, and he also built the Alexandria \& Cairo Railway, the first railway in Africa. This included two tubular bridges with the railway running on top of the tubes. The railway was extended to Suez in 1858 and for several years provided a link in the route from Britain to India, until superseded by the Suez Canal, which Stephenson had opposed in Parliament. The greatest of all his tubular bridges was the Victoria Bridge across the River St Lawrence at Montreal: after inspecting the site in 1852 he was appointed Engineer-in-Chief for the bridge, which was 1 1/2 miles (2 km) long and was designed in his London offices. Sadly he, like Brunel, died young from self-imposed overwork, before the bridge was completed in 1859.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1849. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1849. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1856. Order of St Olaf (Norway). Order of Leopold (Belgium). Like his father, Robert Stephenson refused a knighthood.
    Further Reading
    L.T.C.Rolt, 1960, George and Robert Stephenson, London: Longman (a good modern biography).
    J.C.Jeaffreson, 1864, The Life of Robert Stephenson, London: Longman (the standard nine-teenth-century biography).
    M.R.Bailey, 1979, "Robert Stephenson \& Co. 1823–1829", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 50 (provides details of the early products of that company).
    J.Kieve, 1973, The Electric Telegraph, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Stephenson, Robert

  • 9 Cartwright, Revd Edmund

    [br]
    b. 24 April 1743 Marnham, Nottingham, England
    d. 30 October 1823 Hastings, Sussex, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the power loom, a combing machine and machines for making ropes, bread and bricks as well as agricultural improvements.
    [br]
    Edmund Cartwright, the fourth son of William Cartwright, was educated at Wakefield Grammar School, and went to University College, Oxford, at the age of 14. By special act of convocation in 1764, he was elected Fellow of Magdalen College. He married Alice Whitaker in 1772 and soon after was given the ecclesiastical living of Brampton in Derbyshire. In 1779 he was presented with the living of Goadby, Marwood, Leicestershire, where he wrote poems, reviewed new works, and began agricultural experiments. A visit to Matlock in the summer of 1784 introduced him to the inventions of Richard Arkwright and he asked why weaving could not be mechanized in a similar manner to spinning. This began a remarkable career of inventions.
    Cartwright returned home and built a loom which required two strong men to operate it. This was the first attempt in England to develop a power loom. It had a vertical warp, the reed fell with the weight of at least half a hundredweight and, to quote Gartwright's own words, "the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to throw a Congreive [sic] rocket" (Strickland 19.71:8—for background to the "rocket" comparison, see Congreve, Sir William). Nevertheless, it had the same three basics of weaving that still remain today in modern power looms: shedding or dividing the warp; picking or projecting the shuttle with the weft; and beating that pick of weft into place with a reed. This loom he proudly patented in 1785, and then he went to look at hand looms and was surprised to see how simply they operated. Further improvements to his own loom, covered by two more patents in 1786 and 1787, produced a machine with the more conventional horizontal layout that showed promise; however, the Manchester merchants whom he visited were not interested. He patented more improvements in 1788 as a result of the experience gained in 1786 through establishing a factory at Doncaster with power looms worked by a bull that were the ancestors of modern ones. Twenty-four looms driven by steam-power were installed in Manchester in 1791, but the mill was burned down and no one repeated the experiment. The Doncaster mill was sold in 1793, Cartwright having lost £30,000, However, in 1809 Parliament voted him £10,000 because his looms were then coming into general use.
    In 1789 he began working on a wool-combing machine which he patented in 1790, with further improvements in 1792. This seems to have been the earliest instance of mechanized combing. It used a circular revolving comb from which the long fibres or "top" were. carried off into a can, and a smaller cylinder-comb for teasing out short fibres or "noils", which were taken off by hand. Its output equalled that of twenty hand combers, but it was only relatively successful. It was employed in various Leicestershire and Yorkshire mills, but infringements were frequent and costly to resist. The patent was prolonged for fourteen years after 1801, but even then Cartwright did not make any profit. His 1792 patent also included a machine to make ropes with the outstanding and basic invention of the "cordelier" which he communicated to his friends, including Robert Fulton, but again it brought little financial benefit. As a result of these problems and the lack of remuneration for his inventions, Cartwright moved to London in 1796 and for a time lived in a house built with geometrical bricks of his own design.
    Other inventions followed fast, including a tread-wheel for cranes, metallic packing for pistons in steam-engines, and bread-making and brick-making machines, to mention but a few. He had already returned to agricultural improvements and he put forward suggestions in 1793 for a reaping machine. In 1801 he received a prize from the Board of Agriculture for an essay on husbandry, which was followed in 1803 by a silver medal for the invention of a three-furrow plough and in 1805 by a gold medal for his essay on manures. From 1801 to 1807 he ran an experimental farm on the Duke of Bedford's estates at Woburn.
    From 1786 until his death he was a prebendary of Lincoln. In about 1810 he bought a small farm at Hollanden near Sevenoaks, Kent, where he continued his inventions, both agricultural and general. Inventing to the last, he died at Hastings and was buried in Battle church.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Board of Agriculture Prize 1801 (for an essay on agriculture). Society of Arts, Silver Medal 1803 (for his three-furrow plough); Gold Medal 1805 (for an essay on agricultural improvements).
    Bibliography
    1785. British patent no. 1,270 (power loom).
    1786. British patent no. 1,565 (improved power loom). 1787. British patent no. 1,616 (improved power loom).
    1788. British patent no. 1,676 (improved power loom). 1790, British patent no. 1,747 (wool-combing machine).
    1790, British patent no. 1,787 (wool-combing machine).
    1792, British patent no. 1,876 (improved wool-combing machine and rope-making machine with cordelier).
    Further Reading
    M.Strickland, 1843, A Memoir of the Life, Writings and Mechanical Inventions of Edmund Cartwright, D.D., F.R.S., London (remains the fullest biography of Cartwright).
    Dictionary of National Biography (a good summary of Cartwright's life). For discussions of Cartwright's weaving inventions, see: A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London; R.L. Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester. F.Nasmith, 1925–6, "Fathers of machine cotton manufacture", Transactions of the
    Newcomen Society 6.
    H.W.Dickinson, 1942–3, "A condensed history of rope-making", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 23.
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (covers both his power loom and his wool -combing machine).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Cartwright, Revd Edmund

  • 10 Austin, Herbert, Baron Austin

    [br]
    b. 8 November 1866 Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England
    d. 23 May 1941 Lickey Grange, near Bromsgrove, Herefordshire, England
    [br]
    English manufacturer of cars.
    [br]
    The son of Stephen (or Steven) Austin, a farmer of Wentworth, Yorkshire, he was educated at Rotherham Grammar School and then went to Australia with an uncle in 1884. There he became apprenticed as an engineer at the Langlands Foundry in Melbourne. He moved to the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company, and soon after became its Manager; in 1893 he returned to England, where he became Production Manager to the English branch of the same company in Birmingham. The difficulties of travel in Australia gave him an idea of the advantages of motor-driven vehicles, and in 1895 he produced the first Wolseley car. In 1901 he was appointed to the Wolseley board, and from 1911 he was Chairman.
    His first car was a three-wheeler. An improved model was soon available, and in 1901 the Wolseley company took over the machine tool and motor side of Vickers Sons and Maxim and traded under the name of the Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company. Herbert Austin was the General Manager. In 1905 he decided to start his own company and formed the Austin Motor Company Ltd, with works at Longbridge, near Birmingham. With a workforce of 270, the firm produced 120 cars in 1906; by 1914 a staff of 2,000 were producing 1,000 cars a year. The First World War saw production facilities turned over to the production of aeroplanes, guns and ammunition.
    Peacetime brought a return to car manufacture, and 1922 saw the introduction of the 7 hp "Baby Austin", a car for the masses. Many other models followed. By 1937 the original Longbridge factory had grown to 220 acres, and the staff had increased to over 16,000, while the number of cars produced had grown to 78,000 per year.
    Herbert Austin was a philanthropist who endowed many hospitals and not a few universities; he was created a Baron in 1936.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Baron 1936.
    Further Reading
    1941, Austin Magazine (June).
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Austin, Herbert, Baron Austin

  • 11 Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo

    [br]
    b. 25 April 1874 Bologna, Italy
    d. 20 July 1937 Rome, Italy
    [br]
    Italian radio pioneer whose inventiveness and business skills made radio communication a practical proposition.
    [br]
    Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.
    The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.
    His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.
    With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Nobel Prize for Physics (jointly with K.F. Braun) 1909. Russian Order of S t Anne. Commander of St Maurice and St Lazarus. Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown (i.e. Knight) of Italy 1902. Freedom of Rome 1903. Honorary DSc Oxford. Honorary LLD Glasgow. Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy 1905. Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal. Honorary knighthood (GCVO) 1914. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1920. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1924. Created Marquis (Marchese) 1929. Nominated to the Italian Senate 1929. President, Italian Academy 1930. Rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1934.
    Bibliography
    1896, "Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and in apparatus thereof", British patent no. 12,039.
    1 June 1898, British patent no. 12,326 (transformer or "jigger" resonant circuit).
    1901, British patent no. 7,777 (selective tuning).
    1904, British patent no. 763,772 ("four circuit" tuning arrangement).
    Further Reading
    D.Marconi, 1962, My Father, Marconi.
    W.J.Baker, 1970, A History of the Marconi Company, London: Methuen.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo

  • 12 Merz, Charles Hesterman

    [br]
    b. 5 October 1874 Gateshead, England
    d. 14 October 1940 London, England
    [br]
    English engineer who pioneered large-scale integration of electricity-supply networks, which led to the inauguration of the British grid system.
    [br]
    Merz was educated at Bootham School in York and Armstrong College in Newcastle. He served an apprenticeship with the Newcastle Electric Supply Company at their first power station, Pandon Dene, and part of his training was at Robey and Company of Lincoln, steam engine builders, and the British Thomson-Houston Company, electrical equipment manufacturers. After working at Bankside in London and at Croydon, he became Manager of the Croydon supply undertaking. In 1898 he went to Cork on behalf of BTH to build and manage a tramway and electricity company. It was there that he met William McLellan, who later joined him in establishing a firm of consulting engineers. Merz, with his vision of large-scale electricity supply, pioneered an integrated traction and electricity scheme in north-eastern England. He was involved in the reorganization of electricity schemes in many countries and established a reputation as a leading parliamentary witness. Merz was appointed Director of Experiments and Research at the Admiralty, where his main contribution was the creation of an organization of outstanding engineers and scientists during the First World War. In 1925 he was largely responsible for a report of the Weir Committee which led to the Electricity (Supply) Act of 1926, the formation of the Central Electricity Board and the construction of the National Grid. The choice of 132 kV as the original grid voltage was that of Merz and his associates, as was the origin of the term "grid". Merz and his firm produced many technical innovations, including the first power-system control room and Merz-Price and Merz-Hunter forms of cable and transformer protection.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1931.
    Bibliography
    1903–4, with W.McLennan, "Power station design", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 33:696–742 (a classic on its subject).
    1929, "The national scheme of electricity supply in Great Britain", Proceedings of the British Association, Johannesburg.
    Further Reading
    J.Rowland, 1960, Progress in Power. The Contribution of Charles Merz and His Associates to Sixty Years of Electrical Development 1899–1959, London (the most detailed account).
    L.Hannah, 1979, Electricity Before Nationalisation, London.
    ——, 1985, Dictionary of Business Biography, ed. J.Jeremy, London, pp. 221–7 (a short account).
    GW

    Biographical history of technology > Merz, Charles Hesterman

  • 13 Hutchinson, Sir Jonathan

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 23 July 1828 Selby, Yorkshire, England
    d. 26 June 1913 Haslemere, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English physician and surgeon, ophthalmologist, syphilologist, neuropathologist and inventor of the spirometer for the measurement of lung volumes.
    [br]
    Born of Quaker stock, he was educated at home and apprenticed in 1845 to Caleb Williams, apothecary and surgeon of York. It was during this period that he developed and described his spirometer, which he had used in testing 121 sailors, 24 pugilists and wrestlers and 4 giants and dwarfs.
    In 1850 he left York to complete his medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital. By 1859 he was on the staff of the London Hospital as well as the many other specialist hospitals, including the Royal London Ophthalmic, the Blackfriars Hospital for Skin Diseases and the Royal Lock, the multiplicity of which reflected the very wide variety of his interests and expertise.
    By 1863, having obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, he had been appointed full Surgeon to London Hospital and was also responsible for medical ophthalmology. In 1883 he was appointed Emeritus Professor, and for many years after was deeply involved in a wide variety of medical interests. A vivid and memorable teacher, his name has been given to a large number of conditions, particularly in the fields of syphilis and ophthalmology. His special gift was an acuity of observation coupled with the accumulation and collation of clinical facts.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1908. FRS 1882. Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons 1879–83; Hunterian Orator 1891.
    Bibliography
    1846, "On the capacity of the lungs", Med-Chi. Transactions, London (describes his spirometer).
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1913, Lancet (June).
    Obituary, 1913, British Medical Journal (June).
    Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons, London: Royal College of Surgeons of England.
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Hutchinson, Sir Jonathan

  • 14 Kennedy, Sir Alexander Blackie William

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 17 March 1847 Stepney, London, England d. 1928
    [br]
    English marine engineer and educator.
    [br]
    Sir Alexander Kennedy was trained as a marine engineer. The son of a Congregational minister, he was educated at the City of London School and the School of Mines, Jermyn Street. He was then apprenticed to J. \& W.Dudgeon of Millwall, marine engineers, and went on to become a draughtsman to Sir Charles Marsh Palmer of Jarrow (with whom he took part in the development of the compound steam-engine for marine use) and T.M.Tennant \& Co. of Leith. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Engineering at University College, London. He built up an influential School of Engineering, being the first in England to integrate laboratory work as a regular feature of instruction. The engineering laboratory that he established in 1878 has been described as "the first of its kind in England" (Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers). He and his students conducted important experiments on the strength and elasticity of materials, boiler testing and related subjects. He followed the teaching of Franz Reuleaux, whose Kinematics of Machinery he translated from the German.
    While thus breaking new educational ground at University College, Kennedy concurrently established a very thriving private practice as a consulting engineer in partnership with Bernard Maxwell Jenkin (the son of Fleeming Jenkin), to pursue which he relinquished his academic posts in 1889. He planned and installed the whole electricity system for the Westminster Electric Supply Corporation, and other electricity companies. He was also heavily involved in the development of electrically powered transport systems. During the First World War he served on a panel of the Munitions Invention Department, and after the war he undertook to record photographically the scenes of desolation in his book From Ypres to Verdun (1921). Towards the end of his life, he pursued his interest in archaeology with the exploration of Petra, recorded in a monograph: Petra. Its History and Monuments (1925). He also joined the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1879, becoming the President of that body in 1894, and he joined the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1890. Kennedy was thus something of an engineering polymath, as well as being an outstanding engineering educationalist.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1887. Knighted 1905. Member, Institution of Civil Engineers 1879; President, 1906. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1894.
    Bibliography
    1921, From Ypresto Verdum.
    1925, Petra. Its History and Monuments.
    Further Reading
    DNB supplement.
    AB

    Biographical history of technology > Kennedy, Sir Alexander Blackie William

  • 15 Ackermann, Rudolph

    [br]
    b. 20 April 1764 Stolberg, Saxony
    d. 30 March 1834 Finchley, London, England
    [br]
    German-born fine-art publisher and bookseller, noted for his arrangement of the steering of the front wheels of horse-drawn carriages, which is still used in automobiles today.
    [br]
    Ackermann's father was a coachbuilder and harness-maker who in 1775 moved to Schneeberg. Rudolph was educated there and later entered his father's workshop for a short time. He visited Dresden, among other towns in Germany, and was resident in Paris for a short time, but eventually settled in London. For the first ten years of his life there he was employed in making designs for many of the leading coach builders. His steering-gear consisted of an arrangement of the track arms on the stub axles and their connection by the track rod in such a way that the inner wheel moved through a greater angle than the outer one, so giving approximately true rolling of the wheels in cornering. A necessary condition for this is that, in the plan view, the point of intersection of the axes of all the wheels must be at a point which always lies on the projection of the rear axle. In addition, the front wheels are inclined to bring the line of contact of the front wheels under the line of the pivots, about which they turn when cornering. This mechanism was not entirely new, having been proposed for windmill carriages in 1714 by Du Quet, but it was brought into prominence by Ackermann and so has come to bear his name.
    In 1801 he patented a method of rendering paper, cloth and other materials waterproof and set up a factory in Chelsea for that purpose. He was one of the first private persons to light his business premises with gas. He also devoted some time to a patent for movable carriage axles between 1818 and 1820. In 1805 he was put in charge of the preparation of the funeral car for Lord Nelson.
    Most of his life and endeavours were devoted to fine-art printing and publishing. He was responsible for the introduction into England of lithography as a fine art: it had first been introduced as a mechanical process in 1801, but was mainly used for copying until Ackermann took it up in 1817, setting up a press and engaging the services of a number of prominent artists, including W.H.Pyne, W.Combe, Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson. In 1819 he published an English translation of J.A.Senefelder's A Complete Course of Lithography, illustrated with lithographic plates from his press. He was much involved in charitable works for widows, children and wounded soldiers after the war of 1814. In 1830 he suffered "an attack of paralysis" which left him unable to continue in business. He died four years later and was buried at St Clement Danes.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    His fine-art publications are numerous and well known, and include the following:
    The Microcosm of London University of Oxford University of Cambridge The Thames
    Further Reading
    Aubrey F.Burstall, "A history of mechanical engineering", Dictionary of National Biography.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Ackermann, Rudolph

  • 16 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

  • 17 Elder, John

    [br]
    b. 9 March 1824 Glasgow, Scotland
    d. 17 September 1869 London, England
    [br]
    Scottish engineer who introduced the compound steam engine to ships and established an important shipbuilding company in Glasgow.
    [br]
    John was the third son of David Elder. The father came from a family of millwrights and moved to Glasgow where he worked for the well-known shipbuilding firm of Napier's and was involved with improving marine engines. John was educated at Glasgow High School and then for a while at the Department of Civil Engineering at Glasgow University, where he showed great aptitude for mathematics and drawing. He spent five years as an apprentice under Robert Napier followed by two short periods of activity as a pattern-maker first and then a draughtsman in England. He returned to Scotland in 1849 to become Chief Draughtsman to Napier, but in 1852 he left to become a partner with the Glasgow general engineering company of Randolph Elliott \& Co. Shortly after his induction (at the age of 28), the engineering firm was renamed Randolph Elder \& Co.; in 1868, when the partnership expired, it became known as John Elder \& Co. From the outset Elder, with his partner, Charles Randolph, approached mechanical (especially heat) engineering in a rigorous manner. Their knowledge and understanding of entropy ensured that engine design was not a hit-and-miss affair, but one governed by recognition of the importance of the new kinetic theory of heat and with it a proper understanding of thermodynamic principles, and by systematic development. In this Elder was joined by W.J.M. Rankine, Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Glasgow University, who helped him develop the compound marine engine. Elder and Randolph built up a series of patents, which guaranteed their company's commercial success and enabled them for a while to be the sole suppliers of compound steam reciprocating machinery. Their first such engine at sea was fitted in 1854 on the SS Brandon for the Limerick Steamship Company; the ship showed an improved performance by using a third less coal, which he was able to reduce still further on later designs.
    Elder developed steam jacketing and recognized that, with higher pressures, triple-expansion types would be even more economical. In 1862 he patented a design of quadruple-expansion engine with reheat between cylinders and advocated the importance of balancing reciprocating parts. The effect of his improvements was to greatly reduce fuel consumption so that long sea voyages became an economic reality.
    His yard soon reached dimensions then unequalled on the Clyde where he employed over 4,000 workers; Elder also was always interested in the social welfare of his labour force. In 1860 the engine shops were moved to the Govan Old Shipyard, and again in 1864 to the Fairfield Shipyard, about 1 mile (1.6 km) west on the south bank of the Clyde. At Fairfield, shipbuilding was commenced, and with the patents for compounding secure, much business was placed for many years by shipowners serving long-distance trades such as South America; the Pacific Steam Navigation Company took up his ideas for their ships. In later years the yard became known as the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd, but it remains today as one of Britain's most efficient shipyards and is known now as Kvaerner Govan Ltd.
    In 1869, at the age of only 45, John Elder was unanimously elected President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland; however, before taking office and giving his eagerly awaited presidential address, he died in London from liver disease. A large multitude attended his funeral and all the engineering shops were silent as his body, which had been brought back from London to Glasgow, was carried to its resting place. In 1857 Elder had married Isabella Ure, and on his death he left her a considerable fortune, which she used generously for Govan, for Glasgow and especially the University. In 1883 she endowed the world's first Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow, an act which was reciprocated in 1901 when the University awarded her an LLD on the occasion of its 450th anniversary.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President, Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland 1869.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1869, Engineer 28.
    1889, The Dictionary of National Biography, London: Smith Elder \& Co. W.J.Macquorn Rankine, 1871, "Sketch of the life of John Elder" Transactions of the
    Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland.
    Maclehose, 1886, Memoirs and Portraits of a Hundred Glasgow Men.
    The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Works, 1909, London: Offices of Engineering.
    P.M.Walker, 1984, Song of the Clyde, A History of Clyde Shipbuilding, Cambridge: PSL.
    R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (covers Elder's contribution to the development of steam engines).
    RLH / FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Elder, John

  • 18 Murdock (Murdoch), William

    [br]
    b. 21 August 1754 Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland
    d. 15 November 1839 Handsworth, Birmingham, England
    [br]
    Scottish engineer and inventor, pioneer in coal-gas production.
    [br]
    He was the third child and the eldest of three boys born to John Murdoch and Anna Bruce. His father, a millwright and joiner, spelled his name Murdock on moving to England. He was educated for some years at Old Cumnock Parish School and in 1777, with his father, he built a "wooden horse", supposed to have been a form of cycle. In 1777 he set out for the Soho manufactory of Boulton \& Watt, where he quickly found employment, Boulton supposedly being impressed by the lad's hat. This was oval and made of wood, and young William had turned it himself on a lathe of his own manufacture. Murdock quickly became Boulton \& Watt's representative in Cornwall, where there was a flourishing demand for steam-engines. He lived at Redruth during this period.
    It is said that a number of the inventions generally ascribed to James Watt are in fact as much due to Murdock as to Watt. Examples are the piston and slide valve and the sun-and-planet gearing. A number of other inventions are attributed to Murdock alone: typical of these is the oscillating cylinder engine which obviated the need for an overhead beam.
    In about 1784 he planned a steam-driven road carriage of which he made a working model. He also planned a high-pressure non-condensing engine. The model carriage was demonstrated before Murdock's friends and travelled at a speed of 6–8 mph (10–13 km/h). Boulton and Watt were both antagonistic to their employees' developing independent inventions, and when in 1786 Murdock set out with his model for the Patent Office, having received no reply to a letter he had sent to Watt, Boulton intercepted him on the open road near Exeter and dissuaded him from going any further.
    In 1785 he married Mary Painter, daughter of a mine captain. She bore him four children, two of whom died in infancy, those surviving eventually joining their father at the Soho Works. Murdock was a great believer in pneumatic power: he had a pneumatic bell-push at Sycamore House, his home near Soho. The pattern-makers lathe at the Soho Works worked for thirty-five years from an air motor. He also conceived the idea of a vacuum piston engine to exhaust a pipe, later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company's railway and the forerunner of the atmospheric railway.
    Another field in which Murdock was a pioneer was the gas industry. In 1791, in Redruth, he was experimenting with different feedstocks in his home-cum-office in Cross Street: of wood, peat and coal, he preferred the last. He designed and built in the backyard of his house a prototype generator, washer, storage and distribution plant, and publicized the efficiency of coal gas as an illuminant by using it to light his own home. In 1794 or 1795 he informed Boulton and Watt of his experimental work and of its success, suggesting that a patent should be applied for. James Watt Junior was now in the firm and was against patenting the idea since they had had so much trouble with previous patents and had been involved in so much litigation. He refused Murdock's request and for a short time Murdock left the firm to go home to his father's mill. Boulton \& Watt soon recognized the loss of a valuable servant and, in a short time, he was again employed at Soho, now as Engineer and Superintendent at the increased salary of £300 per year plus a 1 per cent commission. From this income, he left £14,000 when he died in 1839.
    In 1798 the workshops of Boulton and Watt were permanently lit by gas, starting with the foundry building. The 180 ft (55 m) façade of the Soho works was illuminated by gas for the Peace of Paris in June 1814. By 1804, Murdock had brought his apparatus to a point where Boulton \& Watt were able to canvas for orders. Murdock continued with the company after the death of James Watt in 1819, but retired in 1830 and continued to live at Sycamore House, Handsworth, near Birmingham.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Society Rumford Gold Medal 1808.
    Further Reading
    S.Smiles, 1861, Lives of the Engineers, Vol. IV: Boulton and Watt, London: John Murray.
    H.W.Dickinson and R.Jenkins, 1927, James Watt and the Steam Engine, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    J.A.McCash, 1966, "William Murdoch. Faithful servant" in E.G.Semler (ed.), The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Murdock (Murdoch), William

  • 19 Ricardo, Sir Harry Ralph

    [br]
    b. 26 January 1885 London, England
    d. 18 May 1974 Graffham, Sussex, England
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer; researcher, designer and developer of internal combustion engines.
    [br]
    Harry Ricardo was the eldest child and only son of Halsey Ricardo (architect) and Catherine Rendel (daughter of Alexander Rendel, senior partner in the firm of consulting civil engineers that later became Rendel, Palmer and Tritton). He was educated at Rugby School and at Cambridge. While still at school, he designed and made a steam engine to drive his bicycle, and by the time he went up to Cambridge in 1903 he was a skilled craftsman. At Cambridge, he made a motor cycle powered by a petrol engine of his own design, and with this he won a fuel-consumption competition by covering almost 40 miles (64 km) on a quart (1.14 1) of petrol. This brought him to the attention of Professor Bertram Hopkinson, who invited him to help with research on turbulence and pre-ignition in internal combustion engines. After leaving Cambridge in 1907, he joined his grandfather's firm and became head of the design department for mechanical equipment used in civil engineering. In 1916 he was asked to help with the problem of loading tanks on to railway trucks. He was then given the task of designing and organizing the manufacture of engines for tanks, and the success of this enterprise encouraged him to set up his own establishment at Shoreham, devoted to research on, and design and development of, internal combustion engines.
    Leading on from the work with Hopkinson were his discoveries on the suppression of detonation in spark-ignition engines. He noted that the current paraffinic fuels were more prone to detonation than the aromatics, which were being discarded as they did not comply with the existing specifications because of their high specific gravity. He introduced the concepts of "highest useful compression ratio" (HUCR) and "toluene number" for fuel samples burned in a special variable compression-ratio engine. The toluene number was the proportion of toluene in heptane that gave the same HUCR as the fuel sample. Later, toluene was superseded by iso-octane to give the now familiar octane rating. He went on to improve the combustion in side-valve engines by increasing turbulence, shortening the flame path and minimizing the clearance between piston and head by concentrating the combustion space over the valves. By these means, the compression ratio could be increased to that used by overhead-valve engines before detonation intervened. The very hot poppet valve restricted the advancement of all internal combustion engines, so he turned his attention to eliminating it by use of the single sleeve-valve, this being developed with support from the Air Ministry. By the end of the Second World War some 130,000 such aero-engines had been built by Bristol, Napier and Rolls-Royce before the piston aero-engine was superseded by the gas turbine of Whittle. He even contributed to the success of the latter by developing a fuel control system for it.
    Concurrent with this was work on the diesel engine. He designed and developed the engine that halved the fuel consumption of London buses. He invented and perfected the "Comet" series of combustion chambers for diesel engines, and the Company was consulted by the vast majority of international internal combustion engine manufacturers. He published and lectured widely and fully deserved his many honours; he was elected FRS in 1929, was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1944–5 and was knighted in 1948. This shy and modest, though very determined man was highly regarded by all who came into contact with him. It was said that research into internal combustion engines, his family and boats constituted all that he would wish from life.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1948. FRS 1929. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1944–5.
    Bibliography
    1968, Memo \& Machines. The Pattern of My Life, London: Constable.
    Further Reading
    Sir William Hawthorne, 1976, "Harry Ralph Ricardo", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 22.
    JB

    Biographical history of technology > Ricardo, Sir Harry Ralph

  • 20 Wyatt, John

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Textiles
    [br]
    b. April 1700 Thickbroom, Weeford, near Lichfield, England
    d. 29 November 1766 Birmingham, England
    [br]
    English inventor of machines for making files and rolling lead, and co-constructor of a cotton-spinning machine.
    [br]
    John Wyatt was the eldest son of John and Jane Wyatt, who lived in the small village of Thickbroom in the parish of Weeford, near Lichfield. John the younger was educated at Lichfield school and then worked as a carpenter at Thickbroom till 1730. In 1732 he was in Birmingham, engaged by a man named Heely, a gunbarrel forger, who became bankrupt in 1734. Wyatt had invented a machine for making files and sought the help of Lewis Paul to manufacture this commercially.
    The surviving papers of Paul and Wyatt in Birmingham are mostly undated and show a variety of machines with which they were involved. There was a machine for "making lead hard" which had rollers, and "a Gymcrak of some consequence" probably refers to a machine for boring barrels or the file-making machine. Wyatt is said to have been one of the unsuccessful competitors for the erection of London Bridge in 1736. He invented and perfected the compound-lever weighing machine. He had more success with this: after 1744, machines for weighing up to five tons were set up at Birmingham, Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield and Liverpool. Road construction, bridge building, hydrostatics, canals, water-powered engines and many other schemes received his attention and it is said that he was employed for a time after 1744 by Matthew Boulton.
    It is certain that in April 1735 Paul and Wyatt were working on their spinning machine and Wyatt was making a model of it in London in 1736, giving up his work in Birmingham. The first patent, in 1738, was taken out in the name of Lewis Paul. It is impossible to know which of these two invented what. This first patent covers a wide variety of descriptions of the vital roller drafting to draw out the fibres, and it is unknown which system was actually used. Paul's carding patent of 1748 and his second spinning patent of 1758 show that he moved away from the system and principles upon which Arkwright built his success. Wyatt and Paul's spinning machines were sufficiently promising for a mill to be set up in 1741 at the Upper Priory, Birmingham, that was powered by two asses. Wyatt was the person responsible for constructing the machinery. Edward Cave established another at Northampton powered by water while later Daniel Bourn built yet another at Leominster. Many others were interested too. The Birmingham mill did not work for long and seems to have been given up in 1743. Wyatt was imprisoned for debt in The Fleet in 1742, and when released in 1743 he tried for a time to run the Birmingham mill and possibly the Northampton one. The one at Leominster burned down in 1754, while the Northampton mill was advertised for sale in 1756. This last mill may have been used again in conjunction with the 1758 patent. It was Wyatt whom Daniel Bourn contacted about a grant for spindles for his Leominster mill in 1748, but this seems to have been Wyatt's last association with the spinning venture.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    G.J.French, 1859, The Life and Times of Samuel Crompton, London (French collected many of the Paul and Wyatt papers; these should be read in conjunction with Hills 1970).
    R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (Hills shows that the rollerdrafting system on this spinning machine worked on the wrong principles). A.P.Wadsworth and J.de L.Mann, 1931, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780, Manchester (provides good coverage of the partnership of Paul and Wyatt and of the early mills).
    E.Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, London (this publication must be mentioned, although it is now out of date).
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (a more recent account).
    W.A.Benton, "John Wyatt and the weighing of heavy loads", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 9 (for a description of Wyatt's weighing machine).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Wyatt, John

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