he's failed one subject

suspense, expectation.

* * *

► adjetivo

1 (colgado) hanging, suspended

2 figurado (alumno) failed

3 figurado (asombrado) bewildered, amazed

► nombre masculino suspenso

1 EDUCACIÓN fail

\

en suspenso pending

tener un suspenso EDUCACIÓN to fail, be failed

► nombre masculino

1 EDUCACIÓN fail

* * *

* * *

1. ADJ

1) (=colgado) hanging, suspended, hung (de from)

2) (Escol) [candidato] failed

3)

2. SM

1) (Escol) (=asignatura) fail, failure

2)

3) LAm (=misterio) suspense

* * *

1)

a) (AmL) (Cin, Lit) suspense

b)

2) (Esp) (Educ) fail, failure

* * *

= flunked-out, fail grade, fail.

Ex. The purpose of this study was to analyze the significant variables influencing the readmission of flunked-out students.

Ex. Students absent from exams will automatically get a fail grade.

Ex. Weekly quizzes are graded on a pass/ fail basis, and they are worth 20% of your grade.

----

* dejar en suspenso = put into + abeyance.

* en suspenso = on the back burner, back burner.

* mantener suspenso en el aire = suspend.

* número de suspensos = failure rate.

* porcentaje de suspensos = failure rate.

* quedar en suspenso = go into + abeyance.

* tasa de suspensos = flunk-out rate.

* * *

1)

a) (AmL) (Cin, Lit) suspense

b)

2) (Esp) (Educ) fail, failure

* * *

* * *

( Esp): los alumnos suspensos the pupils who have failed the exam

1 ( AmL) ( Cin, Lit) suspense

película/novela de suspenso thriller

en suspenso ‹sentencia› suspended

sigue contando, nos tienes en suspenso go on, the suspense is killing us

se quedó un momento en suspenso he paused for a moment

B ( Esp) ( Educ) fail, failure

este curso no he tenido ningún suspenso I haven't failed anything this year

* * *

◊ película/novela de suspenso thriller

◊ no he tenido ningún suspenso I haven't failed anything

* * *

♦ adj

1. [colgado]

2. Esp [no aprobado]

3. [embelesado] mesmerized

♦ nm

1. Esp [nota] fail;

sacar un suspenso to fail

2. Am [suspense] suspense

3.

la aprobación de la ley ha quedado en suspenso the bill is pending;

el tribunal ha dejado en suspenso la ejecución de la condena the court suspended the sentence

* * *

I adj

alumnos suspensos students who have failed

2 ( aplazado)

en suspenso suspended

dejar en suspenso keep in suspense

II m

1 fail

2 L.Am. ( suspense) suspense

* * *

suspenso nm

: suspense

* * *

suspenso n fail

1 subject (education).

asignatura optativa optional subject

asignatura pendiente subject which a pupil has to resit; unresolved matter (figurative)

asignaturas troncales core curriculum

2 subject of study, course, subject.

* * *

► nombre femenino

1 subject

\

asignatura pendiente (en el colegio) subject which has to be retaken 2 (en la política etc) unresolved issue, issue which still has to be tackled, unfinished business

* * *

* * *

SF subject, course

* * *

femenino subject

- asignatura pendiente

* * *

= subject, module.

Ex. Some early codes included recommendations for filing practices and subject headings, but these are usually now the subject of a separate list or set of rules.

Ex. Students explained how a dedicated technophobe could, albeit with meticulous planning, make a whole series of module choices throughout their three years at the university which systematically would avoid all attempts by staff to encourage their use of software packages.

----

* asignatura de estudios = curriculum subject.

* asignatura obligatoria = required course.

* asignatura optativa = optional subject, subsidiary subject, elective course.

* asignatura pendiente = unfinished business, unresolved matter.

* asignaturas optativas = elective course work.

* asignatura troncal = core course.

* libro de texto de una asignatura = set course book.

* no cursar una asignatura = skip + grades.

* programa de la asignatura = learning program(me).

* sistema de asignaturas optativas = course elective system.

* * *

femenino subject

- asignatura pendiente

* * *

* * *

subject

aprobar una asignatura to pass a subject

( Educ) subject which one has to retake o ( AmE) make up o ( BrE) resit; (asunto sin resolver) unresolved matter

tengo una asignatura pendiente con ella I have some unfinished business with her

* * *

◊ asignatura pendiente (Educ) subject which one has to retake;

* * *

asignatura nf

subject;

me queda una asignatura del año pasado I have to retake o Br resit one subject that I failed last year

asignatura pendiente = subject in which a pupil or student has to retake an exam;

* * *

f EDU subject

* * *

asignatura nf

materia: subject, course

* * *

asignatura n subject

1 wild (animal, terreno).

el salvaje oeste the wild West

2 savage (pueblo, tribu).

3 brutal, savage (cruel, brutal).

1 savage (primitivo).

2 brute (bruto).

unos salvajes prendieron fuego a un inmigrante some inhuman brutes set fire to an immigrant

* * *

► adjetivo

1 (planta) wild; (terreno) uncultivated

2 (animal) wild

3 (pueblo, tribu) savage, uncivilized

4 familiar figurado (violento) savage, wild

5 (bruto) uncouth, boorish

6 figurado (incontrolado) haphazard, uncontrolled

■ edificación salvaje uncontrolled building development

■ huelga salvaje wildcat strike

► nombre masulino o femenino

1 (no civilizado) savage

2 figurado (violento) savage

3 (bruto) brute, boor

* * *

1) savage

2) wild

* * *

1. ADJ

1) [planta, animal, tierra] wild

2) (=no autorizado) [huelga] unofficial, wildcat; [construcción] unauthorized

3) [pueblo, tribu] savage

4) (=brutal) savage, brutal

5) LAm * (=estupendo) terrific *, smashing *

SMF (lit, fig) savage

* * *

1)

a) < animal> wild

b) ( primitivo) < tribu> savage

c) <vegetación/terreno> wild

2) ( cruel) <persona/tortura> brutal; <ataque/matanza> savage

masculino y femenino ( primitivo) savage; ( bruto) (pey) animal, savage

* * *

= uncivilised [uncivilized, -USA], savage, wild [wilder -comp., wildest -sup.], swingeing, savage, barbarian, barbarian, in the wild, feral, brutish.

Ex. It was on the tip of his tongue to say: 'Must you speak to me in this uncivilized fashion?' But he discreetly forbore.

Ex. The most vulnerable nations are Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, which have all experienced savage war and civil unrest in recent years.

Ex. The letter sent Tomas Hernandez into a frenzy of conflicting reactions: ecstatic jubilation and ego-tripping, wild speculation and outrageous fantasy, compounded by confusion and indirection.

Ex. Faced with the prospect of a swingeing cut of 15% in the periodical budget, the library had to determine which titles could be cancelled with least damage to the integrity of the research collections.

Ex. The father is ultimately a figure of fun and the archetype of an irrational savage.

Ex. The article is entitled 'Waiting for the barbarians? Multicultural public library services in Australia 1985-1992'.

Ex. The writer examines the hierarchy and organization of barbarian churches that developed in the western Roman Empire in late antiquity.

Ex. I spoke of capturing e-scholarship disseminated outside the library, or, as one librarian put it, ' in the wild'.

Ex. The film offers a repulsive creature whose croaks and drools recall the demonic child in The Exorcist, instead of the feral but relatively articulate person that Morrison created.

Ex. In his most famous work, the Leviathan, Hobbes famously argued that life in the state of nature is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.

----

* crecer salvaje = grow + rampant.

* flor salvaje = wildflower [wild flower].

* gato salvaje = feral cat.

* monte salvaje = backcountry.

* regiones salvajes de Africa, las = wilds of Africa, the.

* vida salvaje = wildlife.

* zonas salvajes del interior = back country.

* * *

1)

a) < animal> wild

b) ( primitivo) < tribu> savage

c) <vegetación/terreno> wild

2) ( cruel) <persona/tortura> brutal; <ataque/matanza> savage

masculino y femenino ( primitivo) savage; ( bruto) (pey) animal, savage

* * *

* * *

1 ‹animal› wild

2 (primitivo) ‹tribu› savage

3 ‹vegetación/terreno› wild

B (cruel) ‹persona/tortura› brutal; ‹ataque/matanza› savage

hay que ser salvaje para decirle eso a una pobre anciana ( fam); you have to be pretty cruel o brutal o nasty to say a thing like that to an old lady ( colloq)

se vuelve muy salvaje cuando está borracho he gets very vicious o brutal when he's drunk

C ‹construcción› uncontrolled, illegal; ‹camping› unauthorized

para controlar la colocación salvaje de carteles to control illegal o unauthorized bill posting

1 (primitivo) savage

2 ( pey) (bruto) animal, savage

te comportaste como un salvaje you behaved like a savage o an animal

* * *

a) ‹ animal› wild

b) ( primitivo) ‹ tribu› savage

c) ‹vegetación/terreno› wild

* * *

♦ adj

1. [animal] wild

2. [planta, terreno] wild

3. [pueblo, tribu] savage

4. [cruel, brutal] brutal, savage;

se escuchó una explosión salvaje there was a massive explosion;

el capitalismo salvaje ruthless capitalism

5. [incontrolado]

una huelga salvaje an unofficial strike, a wildcat strike;

vertidos salvajes illegal dumping

♦ nmf

1. [primitivo] savage

2. [bruto] brute;

unos salvajes prendieron fuego a un inmigrante some inhuman brutes set fire to an immigrant;

la salvaje de tu hermana ha suspendido todas las asignaturas your thick sister has failed every subject;

es un salvaje, se comió un pollo él sólo he's an animal, he ate a whole chicken by himself;

eres un salvaje, ¿cómo tratas así a tu madre? you're a monster, how can you treat your mother like that?

* * *

I adj

1 animal wild

2 ( bruto) brutal

II m/f savage

* * *

salvaje adj

1) : wild

animales salvajes: wild animals

2) : savage, cruel

3) : primitive, uncivilized

salvaje nmf

: savage

* * *

salvaje adj

1. (animal) wild

2. (tribu) savage

SUBJECT AREA: Horology, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

Son of Revd John Hooke, minister of the parish, he was a sickly child who was subject to headaches which prevented protracted study. He devoted his time while alone to making mechanical models including a wooden clock. On the death of his father in October 1648 he was left £100 and went to London, where he became a pupil of Sir Peter Lely and then went to Westminster School under Dr Busby. There he learned the classical languages, some Hebrew and oriental languages while mastering six books of Euclid in one week. In 1653 he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, where he graduated MA in 1663, after studying chemistry and astronomy. In 1662 he was appointed Curator of Experiments to the Royal Society and was elected a Fellow in 1663. In 1665 his appointment was made permanent and he was given apartments in Gresham College, where he lived until his death in 1703. He was an indefatigable experimenter, perhaps best known for the invention of the universal joint named after him. The properties of the atmosphere greatly engaged him and he devised many forms of the barometer. He was the first to apply the spiral spring to the regulation of the balance wheel of the watch in an attempt to measure longitude at sea, but he did not publish his results until after Huygens's reinvention of the device in 1675. Several of his "new watches" were made by Thomas Tompion, one of which was presented to King Charles II. He is said to have invented, among other devices, thirty different ways of flying, the first practical system of telegraphy, an odometer, a hearing aid, an arithmetical machine and a marine barometer. Hooke was a small man, somewhat deformed, with long, lank hair, who went about stooped and moved very quickly. He was of a melancholy and mistrustful disposition, ill-tempered and sharp-tongued. He slept little, often working all night and taking a nap during the day. John Aubrey, his near-contemporary, wrote of Hooke, "He is certainly the greatest Mechanick this day in the World." He is said to have been the first to establish the true principle of the arch. His eyesight failed and he was blind for the last year of his life. He is best known for his Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies, first published in 1665. After the Great Fire of London, he exhibited a model for the rebuilding of the City. This was not accepted, but it did result in Hooke's appointment as one of two City Surveyors. This proved a lucrative post and through it Hooke amassed a fortune of some thousands of pounds, which was found intact after his death some thirty years later. It had never been opened in the interim period. Among the buildings he designed were the new Bethlehem (Bedlam) Hospital, the College of Physicians and Montague House.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

[br]

[br]

[br]

Léon Levavasseur was an artist who became an electrical engineer and in 1902 Technical Director of a firm called Société Antoinette, headed by Jules Gastambide (Antoinette being the name of Gastambide's daughter). Levavasseur's first aeroplane, built in 1903, was a bird-like machine which did not fly. The engine showed promise, however, and Levavasseur developed it for use in motor boats from 1904. In 1906 he produced two Antoinette aero-engines, one of 24 hp (18 kW) and the other 50 hp (37 kW), which were used by Alberto Santos-Dumont and several other early designers. In February 1908 Levavasseur produced a tractor (propeller at the front) monoplane, the Gastambide- Mengin I, for two of his colleagues. Flown by a mechanic, this managed several short hops before it crash-landed. It was rebuilt and improved to become the Antoinette II and later in the year became the first monoplane to complete a circular flight. Levavasseur then went on to produce a series of Antoinette monoplanes which, with the monoplanes of Louis Blériot, challenged the pusher biplanes of Voisin and Farman. The rivalry between the Antoinettes and Blériots made headlines in 1909 when they were being prepared to win the Daily Mail prize for the first flight across the English Channel. Hubert Latham took off in his Antoinette on 19 July 1909, but his engine failed and he had to be rescued from the sea. On 25 July Louis Blériot took off in his Blériot No. XI and won both the prize and worldwide acclaim. In 1911 Latham flew his Antoinette across the Golden Gate at San Francisco. The same year Levavasseur built a revolutionary streamlined three-seater monoplane with cantilever wings (no wire bracing), but this Monobloc Antoinette failed; with it the line of Antoinettes came to an end.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

[br]

[br]

[br]

Lister was descended from one of the old Yorkshire families, the Cunliffe Listers of Manningham, and was the fourth son of his father Ellis. After attending a school on Clapham Common, Lister would not go to university; his family hoped he would enter the Church, but instead he started work with the Liverpool merchants Sands, Turner \& Co., who frequently sent him to America. In 1837 his father built for him and his brother a worsted mill at Manningham, where Samuel invented a swivel shuttle and a machine for making fringes on shawls. It was here that he first became aware of the unhealthy occupation of combing wool by hand. Four years later, after seeing the machine that G.E. Donisthorpe was trying to work out, he turned his attention to mechanizing wool-combing. Lister took Donisthorpe into partnership after paying him £12,000 for his patent, and developed the Lister-Cartwright "square nip" comber. Until this time, combing machines were little different from Cartwright's original, but Lister was able to improve on this with continuous operation and by 1843 was combing the first fine botany wool that had ever been combed by machinery. In the following year he received an order for fifty machines to comb all qualities of wool. Further combing patents were taken out with Donisthorpe in 1849, 1850, 1851 and 1852, the last two being in Lister's name only. One of the important features of these patents was the provision of a gripping device or "nip" which held the wool fibres at one end while the rest of the tuft was being combed. Lister was soon running nine combing mills. In the 1850s Lister had become involved in disputes with others who held combing patents, such as his associate Isaac Holden and the Frenchman Josué Heilmann. Lister bought up the Heilmann machine patents and afterwards other types until he obtained a complete monopoly of combing machines before the patents expired. His invention stimulated demand for wool by cheapening the product and gave a vital boost to the Australian wool trade. By 1856 he was at the head of a wool-combing business such as had never been seen before, with mills at Manningham, Bradford, Halifax, Keighley and other places in the West Riding, as well as abroad.

His inventive genius also extended to other fields. In 1848 he patented automatic compressed air brakes for railways, and in 1853 alone he took out twelve patents for various textile machines. He then tried to spin waste silk and made a second commercial career, turning what was called "chassum" and hitherto regarded as refuse into beautiful velvets, silks, plush and other fine materials. Waste silk consisted of cocoon remnants from the reeling process, damaged cocoons and fibres rejected from other processes. There was also wild silk obtained from uncultivated worms. This is what Lister saw in a London warehouse as a mass of knotty, dirty, impure stuff, full of bits of stick and dead mulberry leaves, which he bought for a halfpenny a pound. He spent ten years trying to solve the problems, but after a loss of £250,000 and desertion by his partner his machine caught on in 1865 and brought Lister another fortune. Having failed to comb this waste silk, Lister turned his attention to the idea of "dressing" it and separating the qualities automatically. He patented a machine in 1877 that gave a graduated combing. To weave his new silk, he imported from Spain to Bradford, together with its inventor Jose Reixach, a velvet loom that was still giving trouble. It wove two fabrics face to face, but the problem lay in separating the layers so that the pile remained regular in length. Eventually Lister was inspired by watching a scissors grinder in the street to use small emery wheels to sharpen the cutters that divided the layers of fabric. Lister took out several patents for this loom in his own name in 1868 and 1869, while in 1871 he took out one jointly with Reixach. It is said that he spent £29,000 over an eleven-year period on this loom, but this was more than recouped from the sale of reasonably priced high-quality velvets and plushes once success was achieved. Manningham mills were greatly enlarged to accommodate this new manufacture.

In later years Lister had an annual profit from his mills of £250,000, much of which was presented to Bradford city in gifts such as Lister Park, the original home of the Listers. He was connected with the Bradford Chamber of Commerce for many years and held the position of President of the Fair Trade League for some time. In 1887 he became High Sheriff of Yorkshire, and in 1891 he was made 1st Baron Masham. He was also Deputy Lieutenant in North and West Riding.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

[br]

[br]

[br]

Of New England ancestry, his family returned there soon after his birth and later moved to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1884, Dow entered the Case School of Applied Science, graduating in science four years later. His thesis dealt partly with the brines of Ohio, and he was persuaded to present a paper on brine to the meeting of the American Association for he Advancement of Science being held in Cleveland the same year. That entailed visits to collect samples of brines from various localities, and led to the observation that their composition varied, one having a higher lithium content while another was richer in bromine. This study of brines proved to be the basis for his career in industrial chemistry. In 1888 Dow was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Homeopathic Hospital College in Cleveland, but he continued to work on brine, obtaining a patent in the same year for extracting bromine by blowing air through slightly electrolysed brine. He set up a small company to exploit the process, but it failed; the process was taken up and successfully worked by the Midland Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan. The electrolysis required a direct-current generator which, when it was installed in 1892, was probably the first of its kind in America. Dow next set up a company to produce chlorine by the electrolysis of brine. It moved to Midland in 1896, and the Dow Central Company purchased the Midland Chemical Company in 1900. Its main concern was the manufacture of bleaching powder, but the company continued to grow, based on Dow's steady development of chemical compounds that could be derived from brines. His search for further applications of chlorine led to the making of insecticides and an interest in horticulture. Meanwhile, his experience at the Homeopathic Hospital doubtless fired an interest in pharmaceuticals. One of the substances found in brine was magnesium chloride, and by 1918 magnesium metal was being produced on a small scale by electrolysis. An intensive study of its alloys followed, leading to the large-scale production of these important light-metal alloys, under the name of Dowmetals. Two other "firsts" achieved by the company were the synthetic indigo process and the production of the element iodine in the USA. The Dow company became one of the leading chemical manufacturers in the USA, and at the same time Dow played an active part in public life, serving on many public and education boards.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

[br]

[br]

[br]

He was the son of an Irish immigrant farmer, William Ford, and the oldest son to survive of Mary Litogot; his mother died in 1876 with the birth of her sixth child. He went to the village school, and at the age of 16 he was apprenticed to Flower brothers' machine shop and then at the Drydock \& Engineering Works in Detroit. In 1882 he left to return to the family farm and spent some time working with a 1 1/2 hp steam engine doing odd jobs for the farming community at $3 per day. He was then employed as a demonstrator for Westinghouse steam engines. He met Clara Jane Bryant at New Year 1885 and they were married on 11 April 1888. Their only child, Edsel Bryant Ford, was born on 6 November 1893.

At that time Henry worked on steam engine repairs for the Edison Illuminating Company, where he became Chief Engineer. He became one of a group working to develop a "horseless carriage" in 1896 and in June completed his first vehicle, a "quadri cycle" with a two-cylinder engine. It was built in a brick shed, which had to be partially demolished to get the carriage out.

Ford became involved in motor racing, at which he was more successful than he was in starting a car-manufacturing company. Several early ventures failed, until the Ford Motor Company of 1903. By October 1908 they had started with production of the Model T. The first, of which over 15 million were built up to the end of its production in May 1927, came out with bought-out steel stampings and a planetary gearbox, and had a one-piece four-cylinder block with a bolt-on head. This was one of the most successful models built by Ford or any other motor manufacturer in the life of the motor car.

Interchangeability of components was an important element in Ford's philosophy. Ford was a pioneer in the use of vanadium steel for engine components. He adopted the principles of Frederick Taylor, the pioneer of time-and-motion study, and installed the world's first moving assembly line for the production of magnetos, started in 1913. He installed blast furnaces at the factory to make his own steel, and he also promoted research and the cultivation of the soya bean, from which a plastic was derived.

In October 1913 he introduced the "Five Dollar Day", almost doubling the normal rate of pay. This was a profit-sharing scheme for his employees and contained an element of a reward for good behaviour. About this time he initiated work on an agricultural tractor, the "Fordson" made by a separate company, the directors of which were Henry and his son Edsel.

In 1915 he chartered the Oscar II, a "peace ship", and with fifty-five delegates sailed for Europe a week before Christmas, docking at Oslo. Their objective was to appeal to all European Heads of State to stop the war. He had hoped to persuade manufacturers to replace armaments with tractors in their production programmes. In the event, Ford took to his bed in the hotel with a chill, stayed there for five days and then sailed for New York and home. He did, however, continue to finance the peace activists who remained in Europe. Back in America, he stood for election to the US Senate but was defeated. He was probably the father of John Dahlinger, illegitimate son of Evangeline Dahlinger, a stenographer employed by the firm and on whom he lavished gifts of cars, clothes and properties. He became the owner of a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which became the medium for the expression of many of his more unorthodox ideas. He was involved in a lawsuit with the Chicago Tribune in 1919, during which he was cross-examined on his knowledge of American history: he is reputed to have said "History is bunk". What he actually said was, "History is bunk as it is taught in schools", a very different comment. The lawyers who thus made a fool of him would have been surprised if they could have foreseen the force and energy that their actions were to release. For years Ford employed a team of specialists to scour America and Europe for furniture, artefacts and relics of all kinds, illustrating various aspects of history. Starting with the Wayside Inn from South Sudbury, Massachusetts, buildings were bought, dismantled and moved, to be reconstructed in Greenfield Village, near Dearborn. The courthouse where Abraham Lincoln had practised law and the Ohio bicycle shop where the Wright brothers built their first primitive aeroplane were added to the farmhouse where the proprietor, Henry Ford, had been born. Replicas were made of Independence Hall, Congress Hall and the old City Hall in Philadelphia, and even a reconstruction of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory was installed. The Henry Ford museum was officially opened on 21 October 1929, on the fiftieth anniversary of Edison's invention of the incandescent bulb, but it continued to be a primary preoccupation of the great American car maker until his death.

Henry Ford was also responsible for a number of aeronautical developments at the Ford Airport at Dearborn. He introduced the first use of radio to guide a commercial aircraft, the first regular airmail service in the United States. He also manufactured the country's first all-metal multi-engined plane, the Ford Tri-Motor.

Edsel became President of the Ford Motor Company on his father's resignation from that position on 30 December 1918. Following the end of production in May 1927 of the Model T, the replacement Model A was not in production for another six months. During this period Henry Ford, though officially retired from the presidency of the company, repeatedly interfered and countermanded the orders of his son, ostensibly the man in charge. Edsel, who died of stomach cancer at his home at Grosse Point, Detroit, on 26 May 1943, was the father of Henry Ford II. Henry Ford died at his home, "Fair Lane", four years after his son's death.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Photography, film and optics

[br]

[br]

[br]

At the age of 14 Swan was apprenticed to a Sunderland firm of druggists, later joining John Mawson who had opened a pharmacy in Newcastle. While in Sunderland Swan attended lectures at the Athenaeum, at one of which W.E. Staite exhibited electric-arc and incandescent lighting. The impression made on Swan prompted him to conduct experiments that led to his demonstration of a practical working lamp in 1879. As early as 1848 he was experimenting with carbon as a lamp filament, and by 1869 he had mounted a strip of carbon in a vessel exhausted of air as completely as was then possible; however, because of residual air, the filament quickly failed.

Discouraged by the cost of current from primary batteries and the difficulty of achieving a good vacuum, Swan began to devote much of his attention to photography. With Mawson's support the pharmacy was expanded to include a photographic business. Swan's interest in making permanent photographic records led him to patent the carbon process in 1864 and he discovered how to make a sensitive dry plate in place of the inconvenient wet collodian process hitherto in use. He followed this success with the invention of bromide paper, the subject of a British patent in 1879.

Swan resumed his interest in electric lighting. Sprengel's invention of the mercury pump in 1865 provided Swan with the means of obtaining the high vacuum he needed to produce a satisfactory lamp. Swan adopted a technique which was to become an essential feature in vacuum physics: continuing to heat the filament during the exhaustion process allowed the removal of absorbed gases. The inventions of Gramme, Siemens and Brush provided the source of electrical power at reasonable cost needed to make the incandescent lamp of practical service. Swan exhibited his lamp at a meeting in December 1878 of the Newcastle Chemical Society and again the following year before an audience of 700 at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Swan's failure to patent his invention immediately was a tactical error as in November 1879 Edison was granted a British patent for his original lamp, which, however, did not go into production. Parchmentized thread was used in Swan's first commercial lamps, a material soon superseded by the regenerated cellulose filament that he developed. The cellulose filament was made by extruding a solution of nitro-cellulose in acetic acid through a die under pressure into a coagulating fluid, and was used until the ultimate obsolescence of the carbon-filament lamp. Regenerated cellulose became the first synthetic fibre, the further development and exploitation of which he left to others, the patent rights for the process being sold to Courtaulds.

Swan also devised a modification of Planté's secondary battery in which the active material was compressed into a cellular lead plate. This has remained the central principle of all improvements in secondary cells, greatly increasing the storage capacity for a given weight.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

[br]

[br]

[br]

Brearley was born in poor circumstances. He received little formal education and was nurtured rather in and around the works of Thomas Firth \& Sons, where his father worked in the crucible steel-melting shop. One of his first jobs was to help in their chemical laboratory where the chief chemist, James Taylor, encouraged him and helped him fit himself for a career as a steelworks chemist.

In 1901 Brearley left Firth's to set up a laboratory at Kayser Ellison \& Co., but he returned to Firth's in 1904, when he was appointed Chief Chemist at their Riga works, and Works Manager the following year. In 1907 he returned to Sheffield to design and equip a research laboratory to serve both Firth's and John Brown \& Co. It was during his time as head of this laboratory that he made his celebrated discovery. In 1913, while seeking improved steels for rifle barrels, he used one containing 12.68 per cent chromium and 0.24 per cent carbon, in the hope that it would resist fouling and erosion. He tried to etch a specimen for microscopic examination but failed, from which he concluded that it would resist corrosion by, for example, the acids encountered in foods and cooking. The first knives made of this new steel were unsatisfactory and the 1914–18 war interrupted further research. But eventually the problems were overcome and Brearley's discovery led to a range of stainless steels with various compositions for domestic, medical and industrial uses, including the well-known "18–8" steel, with 18 per cent chromium and 8 per cent nickel.

In 1915 Brearley left the laboratory to become Works Manager, then Technical Director, at Brown Bayley's steelworks until his retirement in 1925.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

[br]

[br]

[br]

A loom on which more than one ribbon could be woven at once may have been invented by Anton Möller at Danzig in 1586. It arrived in England from the Low Countries and was being used in London by 1616 and in Lancashire by 1680. Means were being devised in Switzerland c.1730 for driving these looms by power, but this was prohibited because it was feared that these looms would deprive other weavers of work. In England, a patent was taken out by John Kay of Bury and John Stell of Keighley in 1745 for improvements to these looms and it is probably that Gartside received permission to use this invention. In Manchester, Gartside set up a mill with swivel looms driven by a water-wheel; this was probably prior to 1758, because a man was brought up at the Lancaster Assizes in March of that year for threatening to burn down "the Engine House of Mr. Gartside in Manchester, Merchant". He set up his factory near Garrett Hall on the south side of Manchester and it may still have been running in 1764. However, the enterprise failed because it was necessary for each loom to be attended by one person in order to prevent any mishap occurring, and therefore it was more economic to use hand-frames, which the operatives could control more easily.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors, Metallurgy

[br]

[br]

[br]

Gillette's formal education in Chicago was brought to an end when a disastrous fire destroyed all his father's possessions. Forced to fend for himself, he worked first in the hardware trade in Chicago and New York, then as a travelling salesman. Gillette inherited the family talent for invention, but found that his successful inventions barely paid for those that failed. He was advised by a previous employer, William Painter (inventor of the Crown Cork), to look around for something that could be used widely and then thrown away. In 1895 he succeeded in following that advice of inventing something which people could use and then throw away, so that they would keep coming back for more. An idea came to him while he was honing an old-fashioned razor one morning; he was struck by the fact that only a short piece of the whole length of a cutthroat razor is actually used for shaving, as well as by the potentially dangerous nature of the implement. He "rushed out to purchase some pieces of brass, some steel ribbon used for clock springs, a small hand vise and some files". He thought of using a thin steel blade sharpened on each side, placed between two plates and held firmly together by a handle. Though coming from a family of inventors, Gillette had no formal technical education and was entirely ignorant of metallurgy. For six years he sought a way of making a cheap blade from sheet steel that could be hardened, tempered and sharpened to a keen edge.

Gillette eventually found financial supporters: Henry Sachs, a Boston lamp manufacturer; his brother-in-law Jacob Heilbron; and William Nickerson, who had a considerable talent for invention. By skilled trial and error rather than expert metallurgical knowledge, Nickerson devised ways of forming and sharpening the blades, and it was these that brought commercial success. In 1901, the American Safety Razor Company, later to be renamed the Gillette Safety Razor Company, was set up. When it started production in 1903 the company was badly in debt, and managed to sell only fifty-one razors and 168 blades; but by the end of the following year, 90,000 razors and 12.4 million blades had been sold. A sound invention coupled with shrewd promotion ensured further success, and eight plants manufacturing safety razors were established in various parts of the world. Gillette's business experiences led him into the realms of social theory about the way society should be organized. He formulated his views in a series of books published over the years 1894 to 1910. He believed that competition led to a waste of up to 90 per cent of human effort and that want and crime would be eliminated by substituting a giant trust to plan production centrally. Unfortunately, the public in America, or anywhere else for that matter, were not ready for this form of Utopia; no omniscient planners were available, and human wants and needs were too various to be supplied by a single agency. Even so, some of his ideas have found favour: air conditioning and government provision of work for the unemployed. Gillette made a fortune from his invention and retired from active participation in the business in 1913, although he remained President until 1931 and Director until his death.

[br]

LRD / IMcN

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

[br]

[br]

[br]

As a boy, Paul MacCready was an enthusiastic builder of flying model aeroplanes; he became US National Junior Champion in 1941. He learned to fly and became a pilot with the US Navy in 1943. he developed an interest in gliding in 1945 and became National Soaring Champion in 1948 and 1949. After graduating from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) as a meteorologist, he set up Meteorological Research Inc. In 1953 MacCready became the first American to win the World Gliding Championship. When hang-gliders became popular in the early 1970s MacCready studied their performance and compared them with soaring birds: he came to the conclusion that man-powered flight was a possibility. In an effort to generate an interest in man-powered flight, a cash prize had been offered in Britain by Henry Kremer, a wealthy industrialist and fitness enthusiast. A man-powered aircraft had to complete a one-mile (1.6km) figure-of-eight course in order to win. However, the figure-of-eight proved to be a major obstacle and the prize money was increased over the years to £50,000. In 1976 MacCready and his friend Dr Peter Lissaman set to work on their computer and came up with their optimum design for a man-powered aircraft. The Gossamer Condor had a wing span of 96 ft (27.4 m), about the same as a Douglas DC-9 airliner, yet it weighed just 70 lb (32 kg). It was a tail-first design with a pedaldriven pusher propeller just behind the pilot. Bryan Allen, a biologist, pilot and racing cyclist, joined the team to provide the muscle-power. After over two hundred flights they were ready to make an attempt on the prize, and on 23 August 1977 they succeeded where many had failed, in 7 minutes. Kremer then offered £100,000 for the first manpowered flight across the English Channel. Many thought this would be impossible, but MacCready and his team set about the task of designing a new machine based on their Condor, which they called the Gossamer Albatross. Bryan Allen also had a major task: getting fit for a flight which might take three hours of pedalling. The weather was more of a problem than in California, and after a long delay the Gossamer Albatross took off, on 12 June 1979. After pedalling for 2 hours 49 minutes, Bryan Allen landed in France: it was seventy years since Blériot's flight, although Blériot was much quicker.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

[br]

[br]

[br]

William was the second son and one of eleven children of Samuel Priestman, who had moved to Hull after retiring as a corn miller in Kirkstall, Leeds, and who in retirement had become a director of the North Eastern Railway Company. The family were strict Quakers, so William was sent to the Quaker School in Bootham, York. He left school at the age of 17 to start an engineering apprenticeship at the Humber Iron Works, but this company failed so the apprenticeship was continued with the North Eastern Railway, Gateshead. In 1869 he joined the hydraulics department of Sir William Armstrong \& Company, Newcastle upon Tyne, but after a year there his father financed him in business at a small, run down works, the Holderness Foundry, Hull. He was soon joined by his brother, Samuel, their main business being the manufacture of dredging equipment (grabs), cranes and winches. In the late 1870s William became interested in internal combustion engines. He took a sublicence to manufacture petrol engines to the patents of Eugène Etève of Paris from the British licensees, Moll and Dando. These engines operated in a similar manner to the non-compression gas engines of Lenoir. Failure to make the two-stroke version of this engine work satisfactorily forced him to pay royalties to Crossley Bros, the British licensees of the Otto four-stroke patents.

Fear of the dangers of petrol as a fuel, reflected by the associated very high insurance premiums, led William to experiment with the use of lamp oil as an engine fuel. His first of many patents was for a vaporizer. This was in 1885, well before Ackroyd Stuart. What distinguished the Priestman engine was the provision of an air pump which pressurized the fuel tank, outlets at the top and bottom of which led to a fuel atomizer injecting continuously into a vaporizing chamber heated by the exhaust gases. A spring-loaded inlet valve connected the chamber to the atmosphere, with the inlet valve proper between the chamber and the working cylinder being camoperated. A plug valve in the fuel line and a butterfly valve at the inlet to the chamber were operated, via a linkage, by the speed governor; this is believed to be the first use of this method of control. It was found that vaporization was only partly achieved, the higher fractions of the fuel condensing on the cylinder walls. A virtue was made of this as it provided vital lubrication. A starting system had to be provided, this comprising a lamp for preheating the vaporizing chamber and a hand pump for pressurizing the fuel tank.

Engines of 2–10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW) were exhibited to the press in 1886; of these, a vertical engine was installed in a tram car and one of the horizontals in a motor dray. In 1888, engines were shown publicly at the Royal Agricultural Show, while in 1890 two-cylinder vertical marine engines were introduced in sizes from 2 to 10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW), and later double-acting ones up to some 60 hp (45 kW). First, clutch and gearbox reversing was used, but reversing propellers were fitted later (Priestman patent of 1892). In the same year a factory was established in Philadelphia, USA, where engines in the range 5–20 hp (3.7–15 kW) were made. Construction was radically different from that of the previous ones, the bosses of the twin flywheels acting as crank discs with the main bearings on the outside.

On independent test in 1892, a Priestman engine achieved a full-load brake thermal efficiency of some 14 per cent, a very creditable figure for a compression ratio limited to under 3:1 by detonation problems. However, efficiency at low loads fell off seriously owing to the throttle governing, and the engines were heavy, complex and expensive compared with the competition.

Decline in sales of dredging equipment and bad debts forced the firm into insolvency in 1895 and receivers took over. A new company was formed, the brothers being excluded. However, they were able to attend board meetings, but to exert no influence. Engine activities ceased in about 1904 after over 1,000 engines had been made. It is probable that the Quaker ethics of the brothers were out of place in a business that was becoming increasingly cut-throat. William spent the rest of his long life serving others.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Horology, Telecommunications

[br]

[br]

[br]

Alexander Bain was born into a crofting family in a remote part of Scotland. He was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Wick and during that time he was strongly influenced by a lecture on "Heat, sound and electricity" that he heard in nearby Thurso. This lecture induced him to take up a position in Clerkenwell in London, working as a journeyman clockmaker, where he was able to further his knowledge of electricity by attending lectures at the Adelaide Gallery and the Polytechnic Institution. His thoughts naturally turned to the application of electricity to clockmaking, and despite a bitter dispute with Charles Wheatstone over priority he was granted the first British patent for an electric clock. This patent, taken out on 11 January 1841, described a mechanism for an electric clock, in which an oscillating component of the clock operated a mechanical switch that initiated an electromagnetic pulse to maintain the regular, periodic motion. This principle was used in his master clock, produced in 1845. On 12 December of the same year, he patented a means of using electricity to control the operation of steam railway engines via a steam-valve. His earliest patent was particularly far-sighted and anticipated most of the developments in electrical horology that occurred during the nineteenth century. He proposed the use of electricity not only to drive clocks but also to distribute time over a distance by correcting the hands of mechanical clocks, synchronizing pendulums and using slave dials (here he was anticipated by Steinheil). However, he was less successful in putting these ideas into practice, and his electric clocks proved to be unreliable. Early electric clocks had two weaknesses: the battery; and the switching mechanism that fed the current to the electromagnets. Bain's earth battery, patented in 1843, overcame the first defect by providing a reasonably constant current to drive his clocks, but unlike Hipp he failed to produce a reliable switch.

The application of Bain's numerous patents for electric telegraphy was more successful, and he derived most of his income from these. They included a patent of 12 December 1843 for a form of fax machine, a chemical telegraph that could be used for the transmission of text and of images (facsimile). At the receiver, signals were passed through a moving band of paper impregnated with a solution of ammonium nitrate and potassium ferrocyanide. For text, Morse code signals were used, and because the system could respond to signals faster than those generated by hand, perforated paper tape was used to transmit the messages; in a trial between Paris and Lille, 282 words were transmitted in less than one minute. In 1865 the Abbé Caselli, a French engineer, introduced a commercial fax service between Paris and Lyons, based on Bain's device. Bain also used the idea of perforated tape to operate musical wind instruments automatically. Bain squandered a great deal of money on litigation, initially with Wheatstone and then with Morse in the USA. Although his inventions were acknowledged, Bain appears to have received no honours, but when towards the end of his life he fell upon hard times, influential persons in 1873 secured for him a Civil List Pension of £80 per annum and the Royal Society gave him £150.

[br]

See also: Bakewell, Frederick C.

DV / KF

SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

[br]

[br]

[br]

Details of Biro's early life are obscure, but by 1939 he had been active as a painter, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and an inventor, patenting over thirty minor inventions. During the 1930s he edited a cultural magazine and noticed in the printing shop the advantages of quick-drying ink. He began experimenting with crude ballpoint pens. The idea was not new, for an American, John Loud, had patented a cumbersome form of pen for marking rough surfaces in 1888; it had failed commercially. Biro and his brother Georg patented a ballpoint pen in 1938, although they had not yet perfected a suitable ink or a reservoir to hold it.

In 1940 Biro fled the Nazi occupation of Hungary and settled in Argentina. Two years later, he had developed his pen to the point where he could seek backers for a company to exploit it commercially. His principal backer appears to have been an English accountant, Henry George Martin. In 1944 Martin offered the invention to the US Army Air Force and the British Royal Air Force to overcome the problems aircrews were experiencing at high altitudes with leaking fountain pens. Some 10,000 ballpoints were made for the RAF. Licences were granted in the USA for the manufacture of the "biro", and in 1944 the Miles-Martin Pen Company was formed in Britain and began making them on a large scale at a factory near Reading, Berkshire; by 1951 its workforce had grown to over 1,000. Other companies followed suit; by varying details of the pen, they avoided infringing the original patents. One such entrepreneur, Miles Reynolds, was the first to put the pen on sale to the public in New York; it is reputed that 10,000 were sold on the first day.

Biro had little taste for commercial exploitation, and by 1947 he had withdrawn from the Argentine company, mainly to resume his painting, in the surrealist style. Examples of his work are exhibited in the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest. He created an instrument that had a greater impact on written communication than any other single invention.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

[br]

[br]

[br]

During the thirty years prior to his death, Brayton devoted considerable effort to the development of internal-combustion engines. He designed the first commercial gas engine of American origin in 1872. An oil-burning engine was produced in 1875. An aptitude for mechanical innovation became apparent whilst he was employed at the Exeter Machine Works, New Hampshire, where he developed a successful steam generator for use in domestic and industrial heating systems. Brayton engines were distinguished by the method of combustion. A pressurized air-fuel mixture from a reservoir was ignited as it entered the working cylinder—a precursor of the constant-pressure cycle. A further feature of these early engines was a rocking beam. There exist accounts of Brayton engines fitted into river craft, and of one in a carriage which operated for a few months in 1872–3. However, the appearance of the four-stroke Otto engine in 1876, together with technical problems associated with backfiring into the fuel reservoir, prevented large-scale acceptance of the Brayton engine. Although Thompson Sterne \& Co. of Glasgow became licensees, the engine failed to gain usage in Britain. A working model of Brayton's gas engine is exhibited in the Museum of History and Technology in Washington, DC.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

[br]

[br]

[br]

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, silk weaving was one of the most prosperous trades in Britain, but it depended upon raw silk worked up on hand twisting or throwing machines. In 1702 Thomas Cotchett set up a mill for twisting silk by water-power at the northern end of an island in the river Derwent at Derby; this would probably have been to produce organzine, the hard twisted thread used for the warp when weaving silk fabrics. Such mills had been established in Italy beginning with the earliest in Bologna in 1272, but it would appear that Cotchett used Dutch silk-throwing machinery that was driven by a water wheel that was 13½ ft (4.1 m) in diameter and built by the local engineer, George Sorocold. The enterprise soon failed, but it was quickly revived and extended by Thomas and John Lombe with machinery based on that being used successfully in Italy.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Mining and extraction technology

[br]

[br]

[br]

Educated at the Latin School at Penzance and from 1792 at Truro Grammar School, Davy was apprenticed to a surgeon in Penzance. In 1797 he began to teach himself chemistry by reading, among other works, Lavoisier's elementary treatise on chemistry. In 1798 Dr Thomas Beddoes of Bristol engaged him as assistant in setting up his Pneumatic Institution to pioneer the medical application of the newly discovered gases, especially oxygen.

In 1799 he discovered the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, discovered not long before by the chemist Joseph Priestley. He also noted its intoxicating qualities, on account of which it was dubbed "laughing-gas". Two years later Count Rumford, founder of the Royal Institution in 1800, appointed Davy Assistant Lecturer, and the following year Professor. His lecturing ability soon began to attract large audiences, making science both popular and fashionable.

Davy was stimulated by Volta's invention of the voltaic pile, or electric battery, to construct one for himself in 1800. That enabled him to embark on the researches into electrochemistry by which is chiefly known. In 1807 he tried decomposing caustic soda and caustic potash, hitherto regarded as elements, by electrolysis and obtained the metals sodium and potassium. He went on to discover the metals barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium by the same means. Next, he turned his attention to chlorine, which was then regarded as an oxide in accordance with Lavoisier's theory that oxygen was the essential component of acids; Davy failed to decompose it, however, even with the aid of electricity and concluded that it was an element, thus disproving Lavoisier's view of the nature of acids. In 1812 Davy published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he presented his chemical ideas without, however, committing himself to the atomic theory, recently advanced by John Dalton.

In 1813 Davy engaged Faraday as Assistant, perhaps his greatest service to science. In April 1815 Davy was asked to assist in the development of a miner's lamp which could be safely used in a firedamp (methane) laden atmosphere. The "Davy lamp", which emerged in January 1816, had its flame completely surrounded by a fine wire mesh; George Stephenson's lamp, based on a similar principle, had been introduced into the Northumberland pits several months earlier, and a bitter controversy as to priority of invention ensued, but it was Davy who was awarded the prize for inventing a successful safety lamp.

In 1824 Davy was the first to suggest the possibility of conferring cathodic protection to the copper bottoms of naval vessels by the use of sacrificial electrodes. Zinc and iron were found to be equally effective in inhibiting corrosion, although the scheme was later abandoned when it was found that ships protected in this way were rapidly fouled by weeds and barnacles.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

[br]

[br]

[br]

At the age of 15 Field left home to seek his fortune in New York, starting work on Broadway as an errand boy for $1 per week. Returning to Massachusetts, in 1838 he became an assistant to his brother Matthew, a paper-maker, leaving to set up his own business two years later. By the age of 21 he was also a partner in a New York firm of paper wholesalers, but this firm collapsed because of large debts. Out of the wreckage he set up Cyrus W.Field \& Co., and by 1852 he had paid off all the debts. With $250,000 in the bank he therefore retired and travelled in South America. Returning to the USA, he then became involved with the construction of a telegraph line in Newfoundland by an English engineer, F.N. Osborne. Although the company collapsed, he had been fired by the dream of a transatlantic cable and in 1854 was one of the founders of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company. He began to promote surveys and hold discussions with British telegraph pioneers and with Isambard Brunel, who was then building the Great Eastern steamship. In 1856 he helped to set up the Atlantic Telegraph Company in Britain and, as a result of his efforts and those of the British physicist and inventor Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), work began in 1857 on the laying of the first transatlantic cable from Newfoundland to Ireland. After many tribulations the cable was completed on 5 August 1857, but it failed after barely a month. Following several unsuccessful attempts to repair and replace it, the cable was finally completed on 27 July 1866. Building upon his success, Field expanded his business interests. In 1877 he bought a controlling interest in and was President of the New York Elevated Railroad Company. He also helped develop the Wabash Railroad and became owner of the New York Mail and Express newspaper; however, he subsequently suffered large financial losses.

[br]