hydraulic+engineering+work

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Paper and printing

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It was intended that Bryan Donkin should follow his father's profession of surveyor and land agent, so he spent a year or so in that occupation before he was apprenticed to John Hall, millwright of Dartford, Kent. Donkin remained with the firm after completing his apprenticeship, and when the Fourdrinier brothers in 1802 introduced from France an invention for making paper in continuous lengths they turned to John Hall for help in developing the machine: Donkin was chosen to undertake the work. In 1803 the Fourdriniers established their own works in Bermondsey, with Bryan Donkin in charge. By 1808 Donkin had acquired the works, but he continued to manufacture paper-making machines, paying a royalty to the patentees. He also undertook other engineering work including water-wheels for driving paper and other mills. He was also involved in the development of printing machinery and the preservation of food in airtight containers. Some of these improvements were patented, and he also obtained patents relating to gearing, steel pens, paper-making and railway wheels. Other inventions of Bryan Donkin that were not patented concerned revolution counters and improvements in accurate screw threads for use in graduating mathematical scales. Donkin was elected a member of the Society of Arts in 1803 and was later Chairman of the Society's Committee of Mechanics and a Vice-President of the society. He was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1818 a group of eight young men founded the Institution of Civil Engineers; two of them were apprentices of Bryan Donkin and he encouraged their enterprise. After a change in the rules permitted the election of members over the age of 35, he himself became a member in 1821. He served on the Council and became a Vice- President, but he resigned from the Institution in 1848.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Guericke was born into a patrician family in Magdeburg. He was educated at the University of Leipzig in 1617–20 and at the University of Helmstedt in 1620. He then spent two years studying law at Jena, and in 1622 went to Leiden to study law, mathematics, engineering and especially fortification. He spent most of his life in politics, for he was elected an alderman of Magdeburg in 1626. After the destruction of Magdeburg in 1631, he worked in Brunswick and Erfurt as an engineer for the Swedish government, and then in 1635 for the Electorate of Saxony. He was Mayor of Magdeburg for thirty years, between 1646 and 1676. He was ennobled in 1666 and retired from public office in 168land went to Hamburg. It was through his attendances at international congresses and at princely courts that he took part in the exchange of scientific ideas.

From his student days he was concerned with the definition of space and posed three questions: can empty space exist or is space always filled? How can heavenly bodies affect each other across space and how are they moved? Is space, and so also the heavenly bodies, bounded or unbounded? In c. 1647 Guericke made a suction pump for air and tried to exhaust a beer barrel, but he could not stop the leaks. He then tried a copper sphere, which imploded. He developed a series of spectacular demonstrations with his air pump. In 1654 at Rattisbon he used a vertical cylinder with a well-fitting piston connected over pulleys by a rope to fifty men, who could not stop the piston descending when the cylinder was exhausted. More famous were his copper hemispheres which, when exhausted, could not be drawn apart by two teams of eight horses. They were first demonstrated at Magdeburg in 1657 and at the court in Berlin in 1663. Through these experiments he discovered the elasticity of air and began to investigate its density at different heights. He heard of the work of Torricelli in 1653 and by 1660 had succeeded in making barometric forecasts. He published his famous work New Experiments Concerning Empty Space in 1672. Between 1660 and 1663 Guericke constructed a large ball of sulphur that could be rotated on a spindle. He found that, when he pressed his hand on it and it was rotated, it became strongly electrified; he thus unintentionally became the inventor of the first machine to generate static electricity. He attempted to reach a complete physical explanation of the world and the heavens with magnetism as a primary force and evolved an explanation for the rotation of the heavenly bodies.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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William Sellers was educated at a private school that had been established by his father and other relatives for their children, and at the age of 14 he was apprenticed for seven years to the machinist's trade with his uncle. At the end of his apprenticeship in 1845 he took charge of the machine shop of Fairbanks, Bancroft \& Co. in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1848 he established his own factory manufacturing machine tools and mill gearing in Philadelphia, where he was soon joined by Edward Bancroft, the firm becoming Bancroft \& Sellers. After Bancroft's death the name was changed in 1856 to William Sellers \& Co. and Sellers served as President until the end of his life. His machine tools were characterized by their robust construction and absence of decorative embellishments. In 1868 he formed the Edgemoor Iron Company, of which he was President. This company supplied the structural ironwork for the Centennial Exhibition buildings and much of the material for the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1873 he reorganized the William Butcher Steel Works, renaming it the Midvale Steel Company, and under his presidency it became a leader in the production of heavy ordnance. It was at the Midvale Steel Company that Frederick W. Taylor began, with the encouragement of Sellers, his experiments on cutting tools.

In 1860 Sellers obtained the American rights of the patent for the Giffard injector for feeding steam boilers. He later invented his own improvements to the injector, which numbered among his many other patents, most of which related to machine tools. Probably Sellers's most important contribution to the engineering industry was his proposal for a system of screw threads made in 1864 and later adopted as the American national standard.

Sellers was a founder member in 1880 of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and was also a member of many other learned societies in America and other countries, including, in Britain, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Iron and Steel Institute.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities

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While he was attending the Military School at Mannheim, Reichenbach drew attention to himself due to the mathematical instruments that he had designed. On the recommendation of Count Rumford in Munich, the Bavarian government financed a two-year stay in Britain so that Reichenbach could become acquainted with modern mechanical engineering. He returned to Mannheim in 1793, and during the Napoleonic Wars he was involved in the manufacture of arms. In Munich, where he was in the service of the Bavarian state from 1796, he started producing precision instruments in his own time. His basic invention was the design of a dividing machine for circles, produced at the end of the eighteenth century. The astronomic and geodetic instruments he produced excelled all the others for their precision. His telescopes in particular, being perfect in use and of solid construction, soon brought him an international reputation. They were manufactured at the MathematicMechanical Institute, which he had jointly founded with Joseph Utzschneider and Joseph Liebherr in 1804 and which became a renowned training establishment. The glasses and lenses were produced by Joseph Fraunhofer who joined the company in 1807.

In the same year he was put in charge of the technical reorganization of the salt-works at Reichenhall. After he had finished the brine-transport line from Reichenhall to Traunstein in 1810, he started on the one from Berchtesgaden to Reichenhall which was an extremely difficult task because of the mountainous area that had to be crossed. As water was the only source of energy available he decided to use water-column engines for pumping the brine in the pipes of both lines. Such devices had been in use for pumping purposes in different mining areas since the middle of the eighteenth century. Reichenbach knew about the one constructed by Joseph Karl Hell in Slovakia, which in principle had just been a simple piston-pump driven by water which did not work satisfactorily. Instead he constructed a really effective double-action water-column engine; this was a short time after Richard Trevithick had constructed a similar machine in England. For the second line he improved the system and built a single-action pump. All the parts of it were made of metal, which made them easy to produce, and the pumps proved to be extremely reliable, working for over 100 years.

At the official opening of the line in 1817 the Bavarian king rewarded him generously. He remained in the state's service, becoming head of the department for roads and waterways in 1820, and he contributed to the development of Bavarian industry as well as the public infrastructure in many ways as a result of his mechanical skill and his innovative engineering mind.

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1) General subject: hydraulic engineering works

2) Mining: hydraulic work

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Bryan Donkin was the eldest son of John Donkin (1802–54) and grandson of Bryan Donkin I (1768–1855). He was educated at University College, London, and at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Métiers in Paris, and then served an apprenticeship in the firm established by his grandfather. He assisted his uncle, Bryan Donkin II (1809–93), in setting up paper mills at St Petersburg. He became a partner in the Donkin firm in 1868 and Chairman in 1889, and retained this position after the amalgamation with Clench \& Co. of Chesterfield in 1900. Bryan Donkin was one of the first engineers to carry out scientific tests on steam engines and boilers, the results of his experiments being reported in many papers to the engineering institutions. In the 1890s his interests extended to the internal-combustion engine and he translated Rudolf Diesel's book Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor. He was a frequent contributor to the weekly journal The Engineer. He was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, as well as of many other societies, including the Royal Institution, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Société Industrielle de Mulhouse and the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. In his experimental work he often collaborated with others, notably Professor A.B.W.Kennedy (1847–1928), with whom he was also associated in the consulting engineering firm of Kennedy \& Donkin.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Henry Maudslay was the third son of an ex-soldier and storekeeper at Woolwich Arsenal. At the age of 12 he was employed at the Arsenal filling cartridges; two years later he was transferred to the woodworking department, adjacent to the smithy, to which he moved when 15 years old. He was a rapid learner, and three years later Joseph Bramah took him on for the construction of special tools required for the mass-production of his locks. Maudslay was thus employed for the next eight years. He became Bramah's foreman, married his housekeeper, Sarah Tindale, and, unable to better himself, decided to leave and set up on his own. He soon outgrew his first premises in Wells Street and moved to Margaret Street, off Oxford Street, where some examples of his workmanship were displayed in the window. These caught the attention of a visiting Frenchman, de Bacquancourt; he was a friend of Marc Isambard Brunel, who was then in the early stages of designing the block-making machinery later installed at Portsmouth dockyard.

Brunel wanted first a set of working models, as he did not think that the Lords of the Admiralty would be capable of understanding engineering drawings; Maudslay made these for him within the next two years. Sir Samuel Bentham, Inspector-General of Naval Works, agreed that Brunel's system was superior to the one that he had gone some way in developing; the Admiralty approved, and an order was placed for the complete plant. The manufacture of the machinery occupied Maudslay for the next six years; he was assisted by a draughtsman whom he took on from Portsmouth dockyard, Joshua Field (1786–1863), who became his partner in Maudslay, Son and Field. There were as many as eighty employees at Margaret Street until, in 1810, larger premises became necessary and a new works was built at Lambeth Marsh where, eventually, there were up to two hundred workers. The new factory was flanked by two houses, one of which was occupied by Maudslay, the other by Field. The firm became noted for its production of marine steam-engines, notably Maudslay's table engine which was first introduced in 1807.

Maudslay was a consummate craftsman who was never happier than when working at his bench or at a machine tool; he was also one of the first engineers to appreciate the virtues of standardization. Evidence of this appreciation is to be found in his work in the development of the Bramah lock and then on the machine tools for the manufacture of ship's blocks to Marc Brunel's designs; possibly his most important contribution was the invention in 1797 of the metal lathe. He made a number of surface plates of the finest quality. The most celebrated of his numerous measuring devices was a micrometer-based machine which he termed his "Lord Chancellor" because, in the machine shop, it represented the "final court of appeal", measuring to one-thousandth of an inch.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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James Nasmyth was the youngest son of Alexander Nasmyth (1758–1840), the portrait and landscape painter. According to his autobiography he was named James Hall after his father's friend, the geologist Sir James Hall (1761–1832), but he seems never to have used his second name in official documents. He received an elementary education at Edinburgh High School, but left at the age of 12. He attended evening classes at the Edinburgh School of Arts for the instruction of Mechanics between 1821 and 1825, and gained experience as a mechanic at an early age in his father's workshop. He shared these early experiences with his brother George, who was only a year or so older, and in the 1820s the brothers built several model steam engines and a steam-carriage capable of carrying eight passengers on the public roads. In 1829 Nasmyth obtained a position in London as personal assistant to Henry Maudslay, and after Maudslay's death in February 1831 he remained with Maudslay's partner, Joshua Field, for a short time. He then returned to Edinburgh, where he and his brother George started in a small way as general engineers. In 1834 they moved to a small workshop in Manchester, and in 1836, with the aid of financial backing from some Manchester businessmen, they established on a site at Patricroft, a few miles from the city, the works which became known as the Bridgewater Foundry. They were soon joined by a third partner, Holbrook Gaskell (1813–1909), who looked after the administration of the business, the firm then being known as Nasmyths Gaskell \& Co. They specialized in making machine tools, and Nasmyth invented many improvements so that they soon became one of the leading manufacturers in this field. They also made steam locomotives for the rapidly developing railways. James Nasmyth's best-known invention was the steam-hammer, which dates from 1839 but was not patented until 1842. The self-acting control gear was probably the work of Robert Wilson and ensured the commercial success of the invention. George Nasmyth resigned from the partnership in 1843 and in 1850 Gaskell also resigned, after which the firm continued as James Nasmyth \& Co. James Nasmyth himself retired at the end of 1856 and went to live at Penshurst, Kent, in a house which he named "Hammerfield" where he devoted his time mainly to his hobby of astronomy. Robert Wilson returned to become Managing Partner of the firm, which later became Nasmyth, Wilson \& Co. and retained that style until its closure in 1940. Nasmyth's claim to be the sole inventor of the steam-hammer has been disputed, but his patent of 1842 was not challenged and the fourteen-year monopoly ensured the prosperity of the business so that he was able to retire at the age of 48. At his death in 1890 he left an estate valued at £243,805.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Photography, film and optics

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William Taylor served an apprenticeship from 1880 to 1885 in London with Paterson and Cooper, electrical engineers and instrument makers. He studied at the Finsbury Technical College under Professors W.E.Ayrton (1847–1908) and John Perry (1850–1920). He remained with Paterson and Cooper until 1887, when he joined his elder brother, who had set up in Leicester as a manufacturer of optical instruments. The firm was then styled T.S. \& W.Taylor and a few months later, when H.W.Hobson joined them as a partner, it became Taylor, Taylor and Hobson, as it was known for many years.

William Taylor was mainly responsible for technical developments in the firm and he designed the special machine tools required for making lenses and their mountings. However, his most notable work was in originating methods of measuring and gauging screw threads. He proposed a standard screw-thread for lens mountings that was adopted by the Royal Photographic Society, and he served on screw thread committees of the British Standards Institution and the British Association. His interest in golf led him to study the flight of the golf ball, and he designed and patented the "Dimple" golf ball and a mechanical driving machine for testing golf balls.

He was an active member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, being elected Associate Member in 1894, Member in 1901 and Honorary Life Member in 1936. He served on the Council from 1918 and was President in 1932. He took a keen interest in engineering education and advocated the scientific study of materials, processes and machine tools, and of management. His death occurred suddenly while he was helping to rescue his son's car from a snowdrift.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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The Banu were the three sons of Musa ibn Shakir. His origins were unpromising, for he was a robber, but the caliph al-Ma'mun, a great patron of science and learning, took the sons into his academy and had them educated. The eldest and most prominent, Muhammed, took up the study of geometry, logic and astronomy, while another, al- Hasan, also studied geometry. The third, Ahmad, turned to mechanics. Together, the Banu established a group for the translation of texts from antiquity, especially Greece, on science and mechanics. They were responsible for compiling the Kitab al-Hiyal (Book of Ingenious Devices), the first of two major works on mechanics that appeared in the medieval Islamic world. The authors drew freely from earlier Greek writers, particularly Hero and Philon. The work is a technical manual for making devices such as lamps, pipes in spring wells and drinking vessels, most depending on differences in air pressure generated by the movement of liquids. These principles were applied to make a self-filling oil lamp. The work also demonstrated the lifting of heavy weights by means of pulleys. In another work, the Qarastun (Book of the Balance), the Banu showed how different weights could be balanced by varying the distance from the fulcrum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Photography, film and optics, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Nothing is known of Hero, or Heron, apart from what can be gleaned from the books he wrote. Their scope and style suggest that he was a teacher at the museum or the university of Alexandria, writing textbooks for his students. The longest book, and the one with the greatest technological interest, is Pneumatics. Some of its material is derived from the works of the earlier writers Ctesibius of Alexandria and Philo of Byzantium, but many of the devices described were invented by Hero himself. The introduction recognizes that the air is a body and demonstrates the effects of air pressure, as when air must be allowed to escape from a closed vessel before water can enter. There follow clear descriptions of a variety of mechanical contrivances depending on the effects of either air pressure or heated gases. Most of the devices seem trivial, but such toys or gadgets were popular at the time and Hero is concerned to show how they work. Inventions with a more serious purpose are a fire pump and a water organ. One celebrated gadget is a sphere that is set spinning by jets of steam—an early illustration of the reaction principle on which modern jet propulsion depends.

M echanics, known only in an Arabic version, is a textbook expounding the theory and practical skills required by the architect. It deals with a variety of questions of mechanics, such as the statics of a horizontal beam resting on vertical posts, the theory of the centre of gravity and equilibrium, largely derived from Archimedes, and the five ways of applying a relatively small force to exert a much larger one: the lever, winch, pulley, wedge and screw. Practical devices described include sledges for transporting heavy loads, cranes and a screw cutter.

Hero's Dioptra describes instruments used in surveying, together with an odometer or device to indicate the distance travelled by a wheeled vehicle. Catoptrics, known only in Latin, deals with the principles of mirrors, plane and curved, enunciating that the angle of incidence is equal to that of reflection. Automata describes two forms of puppet theatre, operated by strings and drums driven by a falling lead weight attached to a rope wound round an axle. Hero's mathematical work lies in the tradition of practical mathematics stretching from the Babylonians through Islam to Renaissance Europe. It is seen most clearly in his Metrica, a treatise on mensuration.

Of all his works, Pneumatics was the best known and most influential. It was one of the works of Greek science and technology assimilated by the Arabs, notably Banu Musa ibn Shakir, and was transmitted to medieval Western Europe.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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John Wallis Titt grew up on a farm which had a working post-mill, but at 24 years of age he joined the firm of Wallis, Haslam \& Stevens, agricultural engineers and steam engine builders in Basingstoke. From there he went to the millwrighting firm of Brown \& May of Devizes, where he worked for five years.

In 1872 he founded his own firm in Warminster, where his principal work as an agricultural engineer was on hay and straw elevators. In 1876 he moved his firm to the Woodcock Ironworks, also in Warminster. There he carried on his work as an agricultural engineer, but he also had an iron foundry. By 1884 the firm was installing water pumps on estates around Warminster, and it was about that time that he built his first wind engines. Between 1884 and 1903, when illness forced his retirement, his wind engines were built primarily with adjustable sails. These wind engines, under the trade marks "Woodcock" and "Simplex", consisted of a lattice tower with the sails mounted on a a ring at the top. The sails were turned to face the wind by means of a fantail geared to the ring or by a wooden vane. The important feature lay in the sails, which were made of canvas on a wood-and-iron frame mounted in a ring. The ends of the sail frames were hinged to the sail circumferences. In the middle of the sail a circular strap was attached so that all the frames had the same aspect for a given setting of the bar. The importance lies in the adjustable sails, which gave the wind engine the ability to work in variable winds.

Whilst this was not an original patent of John Wallis Titt, he is known to be the only maker of wind engines in Britain who built his business on this highly efficient form of sail. In design terms it derives from the annular sails of the conventional windmills at Haverhill in Suffolk and Roxwell in Essex. After his retirement, his sons reverted to the production of the fixed-bladed galvanized-iron wind engine.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Hugo Bilgram studied mechanical engineering at the Augsburg Maschinenbau Schule and graduated in 1865. He worked as a machinist and draughtsman for several firms in Germany before going to the United States in 1869.

In America he first worked for L.B.Flanders Company and Southwark Foundry \& Machine Company in Philadelphia, designing instruments and machines. In the 1870s he also assisted in an evening class in drawing at The Franklin Institute. He devised the Bilgram Valve Diagram for analysing the action of steam engine slide valves and he developed a method of drawing accurate outlines of gear teeth. This led him to design a machine for cutting the teeth of gear wheels, particularly bevel wheels, which he patented in 1884. He was in charge of the American branch of Brehmer Brothers Company from 1879 and in 1884 became the sole owner of the company, which was later incorporated as the Bilgram Machine Works. He was responsible for several other inventions and developments in gear manufacture.

Bilgram was a member of the Franklin Institute, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Philadelphia Technische Verein and the Philadelphia Engineer's Club, and was elected a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1885. He was also an amateur botanist, keenly interested in microscopic work.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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First, from 1262, he was engaged in hydraulic-engineering works for Kublai Khan. He began astronomical and calendrical investigations in 1276, and became the greatest astronomer of the Yuan dynasty. He perfected interpolation formulae (a method of finite differences) and was the founder of the study of spherical trigonometry in China; this was applied to the circles of the heavenly sphere. He planned the Ji Zhou, the summit section of the Grand Canal through the Shandong foothills, in 1283. Although the canal had to await further improvement before it could become fully effective, it was nevertheless the world's first successful entirely artificial summit canal.

Guo Shoujing was responsible for the construction of the Tong Hui He (Channel of Communicating Grace) canal with twenty lock gates in 1293, in addition to the overhaul of the entire Grand Canal. He constructed a number of devices, including 40 ft (12 m) gnomons in 1276, with which he made some of the most accurate measurements of the sun's solstitial shadows, the results of which were collected in a book that is now lost. Between 1276 and 1279 he also constructed at least one water-driven mechanical escapement clock with sophisticated jack work, and the Beijing observatory and its equipment.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Charles Holtzapffel was the son of John Holtzapffel, a native of Germany who settled in London c.1787 and set up as a manufacturer of lathes and tools for amateur mechanics. Charles Holtzapffel received a good English education and training in his father's workshop, and subsequently became a partner and ultimately succeeded to the business. He was engaged in the construction of machinery for printing banknotes, of lathes for cutting rosettes and for ornamental and plain turning. Holtzapffel is chiefly remembered for his monumental work entitled Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, intended as a work of general reference and practical instruction on the lathe. Publication began in 1843 and only the first two volumes were published in his lifetime. A third volume was edited by his widow from his notes and published shortly after his death. The fourth and fifth volumes were completed by his son, John Jacob Holtzapffel, more than thirty years later. Holtzapffel was an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers and served on its Council: he was also a member of the Society of Arts and Chairman of its Committee on Mechanics.

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Mining and extraction technology

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Leupold was essentially an academic of great learning in the tradition of the Renaissance. He was basically a scientist with a principal interest in the extraction of minerals, and in 1725 was made a Commissioner of Mines. He was also a member of the Academy of Berlin. The nine volumes of his work Theatrum Machinarum are detailed studies of the various disciplines, with existing practices illustrated in woodcuts. These nine volumes (see below, Bibliography) were brought to England by the younger members of the aristocracy returning from their Grand Tour. The large water-wheel created for raising water at Painshill, in Surrey, was a straight copy of the relevant illustration in Wasser- Bau-Kunst (1724). The volume Mühlen-Bau-Kunst is a good reference book on German milling practice, which remains essentially unchanged in existing mills.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Public utilities

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Jesse Ramsden was the son of an innkeeper but received a good general education: after attending the free school at Halifax, he was sent at the age of 12 to his uncle for further study, particularly in mathematics. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to a cloth-worker in Halifax and on completion of the apprenticeship in 1755 he moved to London to work as a clerk in a cloth warehouse. In 1758 he became an apprentice in the workshop of a London mathematical instrument-maker named Burton. He quickly gained the skill, particularly in engraving, and by 1762 he was able to set up on his own account. He married in 1765 or 1766 the youngest daughter of the optician John Dollond FRS (1706– 61) and received a share of Dollond's patent for making achromatic lenses.

Ramsden's experience and reputation increased rapidly and he was generally regarded as the leading instrument-maker of his time. He opened a shop in the Haymarket and transferred to Piccadilly in 1775. His staff increased to about sixty workers and apprentices, and by 1789 he had constructed nearly 1,000 sextants as well as theodolites, micrometers, balances, barometers, quadrants and other instruments.

One of Ramsden's most important contributions to precision measurement was his development of machines for obtaining accurate division of angular and linear scales. For this work he received a premium from the Commissioners of the Board of Longitude, who published his descriptions of the machines. For the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain, initiated by General William Roy FRS (1726–90) and continued by the Board of Ordnance, Ramsden supplied a 3 ft (91 cm) theodolite and steel measuring chains, and was also engaged to check the glass tubes used to measure the fundamental base line.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Richard Edmund Reason was educated at Tonbridge School and the Royal College of Science (Imperial College), where he studied under Professor A.F.C.Pollard, Professor of Technical Optics. After graduating in 1925 he joined Taylor, Taylor and Hobson Ltd, Leicester, manufacturers of optical, electrical and scientific instruments, and remained with that firm throughout his career. One of his first contributions was in the development, with E.F.Fincham, of the Fincham Coincidence Optometer. At this time the firm, under William Taylor, was mainly concerned with optical instruments and lens manufacture, but in the 1930s Reason was also engaged in developing means for measuring the roughness of machined surfaces. The need for establishing standards and methods of measurement of surface finish was called for when the subcontracting of aero-engine components became necessary during the Second World War. This led to the development by Reason of an instrument in which a stylus was moved across the surface and the profile recorded electronically. This was called the Talysurf and was first produced in 1941. Further development followed, and from 1947 Reason tackled the problem of measuring roundness, producing the first Talyrond machine in 1949. The technology developed for these instruments was used in the production of others such as the Talymin Comparator and the Talyvel electronic level. Reason was also associated with the development of optical projection systems to measure the profile of parts such as gear teeth, screw threads and turbine blades. He retired in 1968 but continued as a consultant to the company. He served for many years on committees of the British Standards Institution on surface metrology and was a representative of Britain at the International Standards Organization.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Textiles

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Richard Roberts was the son of a shoemaker and tollkeeper and received only an elementary education at the village school. At the age of 10 his interest in mechanics was stimulated when he was allowed by the Curate, the Revd Griffith Howell, to use his lathe and other tools. As a young man Roberts acquired a considerable local reputation for his mechanical skills, but these were exercised only in his spare time. For many years he worked in the local limestone quarries, until at the age of 20 he obtained employment as a pattern-maker in Staffordshire. In the next few years he worked as a mechanic in Liverpool, Manchester and Salford before moving in 1814 to London, where he obtained employment with Henry Maudslay. In 1816 he set up on his own account in Manchester. He soon established a reputation there for gear-cutting and other general engineering work, especially for the textile industry, and by 1821 he was employing about twelve men. He built machine tools mainly for his own use, including, in 1817, one of the first planing machines.

One of his first inventions was a gas meter, but his first patent was obtained in 1822 for improvements in looms. His most important contribution to textile technology was his invention of the self-acting spinning mule, patented in 1825. The normal fourteen-year term of this patent was extended in 1839 by a further seven years. Between 1826 and 1828 Roberts paid several visits to Alsace, France, arranging cottonspinning machinery for a new factory at Mulhouse. By 1826 he had become a partner in the firm of Sharp Brothers, the company then becoming Sharp, Roberts \& Co. The firm continued to build textile machinery, and in the 1830s it built locomotive engines for the newly created railways and made one experimental steam-carriage for use on roads. The partnership was dissolved in 1843, the Sharps establishing a new works to continue locomotive building while Roberts retained the existing factory, known as the Globe Works, where he soon after took as partners R.G.Dobinson and Benjamin Fothergill (1802–79). This partnership was dissolved c. 1851, and Roberts continued in business on his own for a few years before moving to London as a consulting engineer.

During the 1840s and 1850s Roberts produced many new inventions in a variety of fields, including machine tools, clocks and watches, textile machinery, pumps and ships. One of these was a machine controlled by a punched-card system similar to the Jacquard loom for punching rivet holes in plates. This was used in the construction of the Conway and Menai Straits tubular bridges. Roberts was granted twenty-six patents, many of which, before the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852, covered more than one invention; there were still other inventions he did not patent. He made his contribution to the discussion which led up to the 1852 Act by publishing, in 1830 and 1833, pamphlets suggesting reform of the Patent Law.

In the early 1820s Roberts helped to establish the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, and in 1823 he was elected a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. He frequently contributed to their proceedings and in 1861 he was made an Honorary Member. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1838. From 1838 to 1843 he served as a councillor of the then-new Municipal Borough of Manchester. In his final years, without the assistance of business partners, Roberts suffered financial difficulties, and at the time of his death a fund for his aid was being raised.

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