joseph+henry

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

[br]

[br]

[br]

Joseph Gilbert was the son of a congregational minister. His schooling was interrupted by the loss of an eye as the result of a shooting accident, but despite this setback he entered Glasgow University to study analytical chemistry, and then went to University College, London, where he was a fellow student of John Bennet Lawes. During his studies he visited Giessen, Germany, and worked in the laboratory of Justus von Liebig. In 1843, at the age of 26, he was hired as an assistant by Lawes, who was 29 at that time; an unbroken friendship and collaboration existed between the two until Lawes died in 1900. They began a series of experiments on grain production and grew plots under different applications of nitrogen, with control plots that received none at all. Much of the work at Rothampsted was on the nitrogen requirements of plants and how this element became available to them. The grain grown in these experiments was analyzed to determine whether nitrogen input affected grain quality. Gilbert was a methodical worker who by the time of his death had collected together some 50,000 carefully stored and recorded samples.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Telecommunications

[br]

[br]

[br]

Sent to stay with relatives at the age of 6 because of the illness of his father, when the latter died in 1811 Henry was apprenticed to a silversmith and then turned to the stage. Whilst he was ill himself, a book on science fired his interest and he began studying at Albany Academy, working as a tutor to finance his studies. Initially intending to pursue medicine, he then spent some time as a surveyor before becoming Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Albany Academy in 1826. There he became interested in the improvement of electromagnets and discovered that the use of an increased number of turns of wire round the core greatly increased their power; by 1831 he was able to supply to Yale a magnet capable of lifting almost a ton weight. During this time he also discovered the principles of magnetic induction and self-inductance. In the same year he made, but did not patent, a cable telegraph system capable of working over a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km). It was at this time, too, that he found that adiabatic expansion of gases led to their sudden cooling, thus paving the way for the development of refrigerators. For this he was recommended for, but never received, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. Five years later he became Professor of Natural Philosophy at New Jersey College (later Princeton University), where he deduced the laws governing the operation of transformers and observed that changes in magnetic flux induced electric currents in conductors. Later he also observed that spark discharges caused electrical effects at a distance. He therefore came close to the discovery of radio waves. In 1836 he was granted a year's leave of absence and travelled to Europe, where he was able to meet Michael Faraday. It was with his help that in 1844 Samuel Morse set up the first patented electric telegraph, but, sadly, the latter seems to have reaped all the credit and financial rewards. In 1846 he became the first secretary of the Washington Smithsonian Institute and did much to develop government support for scientific research. As a result of his efforts some 500 telegraph stations across the country were equipped with meteorological equipment to supply weather information by telegraph to a central location, a facility that eventually became the US National Weather Bureau. From 1852 he was a member of the Lighthouse Board, contributing to improvements in lighting and sound warning systems and becoming its chairman in 1871. During the Civil War he was a technical advisor to President Lincoln. He was a founder of the National Academy of Science and served as its President for eleven years.

[br]

1 Henry, Joseph Henry.

2 Henry, Patrick Henry.

3 Henry, William Henry.

4 Henry.

SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Domestic appliances and interiors, Land transport, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Public utilities

[br]

[br]

[br]

Bramah was the son of a tenant farmer and was educated at the village school before being apprenticed to a local carpenter, Thomas Allot. He walked to London c.1773 and found work with a Mr Allen that included the repair of some of the comparatively rare water-closets of the period. He invented and patented one of his own, which was followed by a water cock in 1783. His next invention, a greatly improved lock, involved the devising of a number of special machine tools, for it was one of the first devices involving interchangeable components in its manufacture. In this he had the help of Henry Maudslay, then a young and unknown engineer, who became Bramah's foreman before setting up business on his own. In 1784 he moved his premises from Denmark Street, St Giles, to 124 Piccadilly, which was later used as a showroom when he set up a factory in Pimlico. He invented an engine for putting out fires in 1785 and 1793, in effect a reciprocating rotary-vane pump. He undertook the refurbishment and modernization of Norwich waterworks c.1793, but fell out with Robert Mylne, who was acting as Consultant to the Norwich Corporation and had produced a remarkably vague specification. This was Bramah's only venture into the field of civil engineering.

In 1797 he acted as an expert witness for Hornblower \& Maberley in the patent infringement case brought against them by Boulton and Watt. Having been cut short by the judge, he published his proposed evidence in "Letter to the Rt Hon. Sir James Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas…etc". In 1795 he was granted his most important patent, based on Pascal's Hydrostatic Paradox, for the hydraulic press which also incorporated the concept of hydraulics for the transmission of both power and motion and was the foundation of the whole subsequent hydraulic industry. There is no truth in the oft-repeated assertion originating from Samuel Smiles's Industrial Biography (1863) that the hydraulic press could not be made to work until Henry Maudslay invented the self-sealing neck leather. Bramah used a single-acting upstroking ram, sealed only at its base with a U-leather. There was no need for a neck leather.

He also used the concept of the weight-loaded, in this case as a public-house beer-engine. He devised machinery for carbonating soda water. The first banknote-numbering machine was of his design and was bought by the Bank of England. His development of a machine to cut twelve nibs from one goose quill started a patent specification which ended with the invention of the fountain pen, patented in 1809. His coach brakes were an innovation that was followed bv a form of hydropneumatic carriage suspension that was somewhat in advance of its time, as was his patent of 1812. This foresaw the introduction of hydraulic power mains in major cities and included the telescopic ram and the air-loaded accumulator.

In all Joseph Bramah was granted eighteen patents. On 22 March 1813 he demonstrated a hydraulic machine for pulling up trees by the roots in Hyde Park before a large crowd headed by the Duke of York. Using the same machine in Alice Holt Forest in Hampshire to fell timber for ships for the Navy, he caught a chill and died soon after at his home in Pimlico.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Metallurgy, Weapons and armour

[br]

[br]

[br]

Joseph Whitworth received his early education in a school kept by his father, but from the age of 12 he attended a school near Leeds. At 14 he joined his uncle's mill near Ambergate, Derbyshire, to learn the business of cotton spinning. In the four years he spent there he realized that he was more interested in the machinery than in managing a cotton mill. In 1821 he obtained employment as a mechanic with Crighton \& Co., Manchester. In 1825 he moved to London and worked for Henry Maudslay and later for the Holtzapffels and Joseph Clement. After these years spent gaining experience, he returned to Manchester in 1833 and set up in a small workshop under a sign "Joseph Whitworth, Tool Maker, from London".

The business expanded steadily and the firm made machine tools of all types and other engineering products including steam engines. From 1834 Whitworth obtained many patents in the fields of machine tools, textile and knitting machinery and road-sweeping machines. By 1851 the company was generally regarded as the leading manufacturer of machine tools in the country. Whitworth was a pioneer of precise measurement and demonstrated the fundamental mode of producing a true plane by making surface plates in sets of three. He advocated the use of the decimal system and made use of limit gauges, and he established a standard screw thread which was adopted as the national standard. In 1853 Whitworth visited America as a member of a Royal Commission and reported on American industry. At the time of the Crimean War in 1854 he was asked to provide machinery for manufacturing rifles and this led him to design an improved rifle of his own. Although tests in 1857 showed this to be much superior to all others, it was not adopted by the War Office. Whitworth's experiments with small arms led on to the construction of big guns and projectiles. To improve the quality of the steel used for these guns, he subjected the molten metal to pressure during its solidification, this fluid-compressed steel being then known as "Whitworth steel".

In 1868 Whitworth established thirty annual scholarships for engineering students. After his death his executors permanently endowed the Whitworth Scholarships and distributed his estate of nearly half a million pounds to various educational and charitable institutions. Whitworth was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1841 and a Member in 1848 and served on its Council for many years. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1847, the year of its foundation.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

Although known as Clement in his professional life, his baptism at Asby and his death were registered under the name of Joseph Clemmet. He worked as a slater until the age of 23, but his interest in mechanics led him to spend much of his spare time in the local blacksmith's shop. By studying books on mechanics borrowed from his cousin, a watchmaker, he taught himself and with the aid of the village blacksmith made his own lathe. By 1805 he was able to give up the slating trade and find employment as a mechanic in a small factory at Kirkby Stephen. From there he moved to Carlisle for two years, and then to Glasgow where, while working as a turner, he took lessons in drawing; he had a natural talent and soon became an expert draughtsman. From about 1809 he was employed by Leys, Mason \& Co. of Aberdeen designing and making power looms. For this work he built a screw-cutting lathe and continued his self-education. At the end of 1813, having saved about £100, he made his way to London, where he soon found employment as a mechanic and draughtsman. Within a few months he was engaged by Joseph Bramah, and after a trial period a formal agreement dated 1 April 1814 was made by which Clement was to be Chief Draughtsman and Superintendent of Bramah's Pimlico works for five years. However, Bramah died in December 1814 and after his sons took over the business it was agreed that Clement should leave before the expiry of the five-year period. He soon found employment as Chief Draughtsman with Henry Maudslay \& Co. By 1817 Clement had saved about £500, which enabled him to establish his own business at Prospect Place, Newington Butts, as a mechanical draughtsman and manufacturer of high-class machinery. For this purpose he built lathes for his own use and invented various improvements in their detailed design. In 1827 he designed and built a facing lathe which incorporated an ingenious system of infinitely variable belt gearing. He had also built his own planing machine by 1820 and another, much larger one in 1825. In 1828 Clement began making fluted taps and dies and standardized the screw threads, thus anticipating on a small scale the national standards later established by Sir Joseph Whitworth. Because of his reputation for first-class workmanship, Clement was in the 1820s engaged by Charles Babbage to carry out the construction of his first Difference Engine.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

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.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

The son of a farmer, he had worked in gardens since boyhood and at the age of 21 was employed as Undergardener at the Horticultural Society Gardens in Chiswick, from where he went on to become Head Gardener for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. It was there that he developed his methods of glasshouse construction, culminating in the Great Conservatory of 1836–40, an immense structure some 277 ft (84.4 m) long, 123 ft (37.5 m) wide and 67 ft (20.4 m) high. Its framework was of iron and its roof of glass, with wood to contain the glass panels; it is now demolished. Paxton went on to landscape garden design, fountain and waterway engineering, the laying out of the model village of Edensor, and to play a part in railway and country house projects.

The structure that made Paxton a household name was erected in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was aptly dubbed, by Punch, the Crystal Palace. The idea of holding an international exhibition for industry had been mooted in 1849 and was backed by Prince Albert and Henry Cole. The money for this was to be raised by public subscription and 245 designs were entered into a competition held in 1850; however, most of the concepts, received from many notable architects and engineers, were very costly and unsuitable, and none were accepted. That same year, Paxton published his scheme in the Illustrated London News and it was approved after it received over-whelming public support.

Paxton's Crystal Palace, designed and erected in association with the engineers Fox and Henderson, was a prefabricated glasshouse of vast dimensions: it was 1,848 ft (563.3 m) long, 408 ft (124.4 m) wide and over 100 ft (30.5 m) high. It contained 3,300 iron columns, 2,150 girders. 24 miles (39 km) of guttering, 600,000 ft3 (17,000 m³) of timber and 900,000 ft2 (84,000 m) of sheet glass made by Chance Bros, of Birmingham. One of the chief reasons why it was accepted by the Royal Commission Committee was that it fulfilled the competition proviso that it should be capable of being erected quickly and subsequently dismantled and re-erected elsewhere. The Crystal Palace was to be erected at a cost of £79,800, much less than the other designs. Building began on 30 July 1850, with a labour force of some 2,000, and was completed on 31 March 1851. It was a landmark in construction at the time, for its size, speed of construction and its non-eclectic design, and, most of all, as the first great prefabricated building: parts were standardized and made in quantity, and were assembled on site. The exhibition was opened by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851 and had received six million visitors when it closed on 11 October. The building was dismantled in 1852 and reassembled, with variations in design, at Sydenham in south London, where it remained until its spectacular conflagration in 1936.

[br]

1909-1993

   Nacido en Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, educado en la Columbia University, en 1928 pasa varios meses como periodista en Berlin. En 1929, con la ayuda de su hermano mayor, Herman, que dirigia el departamento de guiones en Paramount, es contratado como guionista. Primero se dedico a escribir intertitulos para poder proyectar las peliculas, ya sonoras, en salas de cine que todavia no estuvieran adaptadas al sistema; en 1934, ya consolidado como guionista, pasa a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer y despues a Fox, donde se convierte en director, con frecuencia de sus propios guiones, en 1946. Su filmografia es modelica, con obras de verdadera importancia cinematografica como Carta a tres esposas (A Letter to Three Wives, 1948), Eva al desnudo (All About Eve, 1950), La condesa descalza (The Barefoot Contessa, 1954) o Mujeres en Venecia (The Honey Pot, 1967). Es autor, tambien, de la extrana, intimista y desmesurada Cleopatra (1961-63), y de un estimulante western lleno de ideas vivas, de desverguenza y de sabiduria cinematografica.

   FILMOGRAFIA

    There Was a Crooked Man... (El dia de los tramposos). 1970. 126 minutos. Technicolor. Panavision. WB. Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith, Hume Cronyn, Warren Oates, Arthur O’Connell.

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

[br]

[br]

[br]

Hall was a practical man with no theoretical background: his active years were spent at Bloomfield Ironworks, Tipton, Staffordshire. Around 1816 he began experimenting in the production of wrought iron. At that time, blast-furnace or cast iron was converted to wrought iron by the dry puddling process invented by Henry Cort in 1784. In this process, the iron was decarburized (i.e. had its carbon removed) by heating it in a current of air in a furnace with a sand bed. Some of the iron combined with the silica in the sand to form a slag, however, so that no less than 2 tons of cast iron were needed to produce 1 ton of wrought. Hall found that if bosh cinder was charged into the furnace, a vigorous reaction occurred in which the cast iron was converted much more quickly than before, to produce better quality wrought iron, a ton of which could be formed by no more than 21 cwt (1,067 kg) of cast iron. Because of the boiling action, the process came to be known as pig boiling. Bosh cinder, essentially iron oxide, was formed in the water troughs or boshes in which workers cooled their tools used in puddling and reacted with the carbon in the cast iron. The advantages of pig boiling over dry puddling were striking enough for the process to be widely used by the late 1820s. By mid-century it was virtually the only process used for producing wrought iron, an essential material for mechanical and civil engineering during the Industrial Revolution. Hall reckoned that if he had patented his invention he would have "made a million". As luck would have it, the process that he did patent in 1838 left his finances unchanged: this was for the roasting of cinder for use as the base of the puddling furnace, providing better protection than the bosh cinder for the iron plates that formed the base.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

[br]

[br]

[br]

He was the son of a headmaster who, when Mitchell was aged 6 years, set up his own printing business. Mitchell was apprenticed at the age of 16 to a locomotive builder in Stoke and also studied engineering, mechanics, mathematics and drawing at night-school. With the outbreak of war in 1914 he became increasingly interested in aircraft and in 1916 joined the Supermarine Aviation Works at Southampton. Such was his talent for aviation design that within three years he had risen to be Chief Engineer Designer. Initially Mitchell's work was concentrated on flying boats, but with the resurrection after the First World War of the biennial Schneider Trophy races for seaplanes he turned his attention increasingly to high-speed floatplanes. He first achieved success with his S-5 in the 1927 race at Venice and followed it up with further victories in 1929 and 1931 with the S-6 and S-6B, enabling Britain to win the trophy outright (See also Royce, Sir Frederick Henry). Using the experience gained from the Schneider Trophy races, Mitchell now began to design fighter aircraft. He was dissatisfied with his first attempt, which was to produce a fighter to an Air Ministry specification, and started afresh on his own. The result was the Supermarine Spitfire, which was to become one of the outstanding aircraft of the Second World War. Sadly, he died of cancer before his project came to full fruition, with the Spitfire not entering Royal Air Force service until June 1938. The success of Mitchell's designs was due to his ability to combine good engineering with aerodynamic grace.

[br]

1) Образование: Joseph Henry Science Fair

2) Общественная организация: Joseph Henry Science Foundation

1) Военный термин: jacketed hollow point

2) Религия: Jewish Heritage Program

3) СМИ: Jackson Harbor Press, Joseph Henry Press, Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, Journal of the History of Philosophy

4) Имена и фамилии: John Henry Patterson (1844-1922)

See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

[br]

Achard, Franz

Albone, Daniel

Appert, Nicolas

Appleby, John F.

Bakewell, Robert

Bell, Revd Patrick

Berry, George

Birdseye, Clarence

Blith, Walter

Carroll, Thomas

Cartwright, Revd Edmund

Carver, George Washington

Case, Jerome Increase

Cobbett, William

Codd, Hiram

Columella, Lucius Iunius Moderatus

Deere, John

Deering, William

Durand, Peter

Evans, Oliver

Ferguson, Harry

Gilbert, Joseph Henry

Goucher, John

Harris, Alanson

Harrison, James

Holt, Benjamin

Jia Sixie

Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de

Lawes, Sir John Bennet

Li Bing

Liebig, Justus von

McCormick, Cyrus

McKay, Hugh Victor

Marsden, Samuel

Marshall, William

Massey, Daniel

Meikle, Andrew

Menzies, Michael

Moore, Hiram

Mouriés, Hippolyte Mège

Muller, Paul Hermann

Murchland, William

Owens, Michael Joseph

Palladius, Rutilius Taurus

Pasteur, Louis

Ransome, Robert

Ridley, John

Rillieux, Norbert

Small, James

Song Yingxing

Titt, John Wallis

Townshend, Charles

Tull, Jethro

Voelcker, John Augustus

Voelcker, John Christopher

Wang Zhen

Wolseley, Frederick York

Xu Guangqi

Young, Arthur

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

[br]

[br]

[br]

Lawes's education at Eton and Oxford did little to inform his early taste for chemistry, which he developed largely on his own. By the age of 20 he had fitted up the best bedroom in his house as a fully equipped chemical laboratory. His first interest was in the making of drugs; it was said that he knew the Pharmacopoeia, by heart. He did, however, receive some instruction from Anthony Todd Thomson of University College, London. His father having died in 1822, Lawes entered into possession of the Rothamsted estate when he came of age in 1834. He began experiments with plants with uses as drugs, but following an observation by a neighbouring farmer of the effect of bones on the growth of certain crops Lawes turned to experiments with bones dissolved in sulphuric acid on his turnip crop. The results were so promising that he took out a patent in 1842 for converting mineral and fossil phosphates into a powerful manure by the action of sulphuric acid. The manufacture of these superphosphates became a major industry of tremendous benefit to agriculture. Lawes himself set up a factory at Deptford in 1842 and a larger one in 1857 at Barking Creek, both near London. The profits from these and other chemical manufacturing concerns earned Lawes profits which funded his experimental work at Rothamsted. In 1843, Lawes set up the world's first agricultural experiment station. Later in the same year he was joined by Joseph Henry Gilbert, and together they carried out a considerable number of experiments of great benefit to agriculture, many of the results of which were published in the leading scientific journals of the day, including the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In all, 132 papers were published, most of them jointly with Gilbert. A main theme of the work on plants was the effect of various chemical fertilizers on the growth of different crops, compared with the effects of farm manure and of no treatment at all. On animal rearing, they studied particularly the economical feeding of animals.

The work at Rothamsted soon brought Lawes into prominence; he joined the Royal Agricultural Society in 1846 and became a member of its governing body two years later, a position he retained for over fifty years. Numerous distinctions followed and Rothamsted became a place of pilgrimage for people from many parts of the world who were concerned with the application of science to agriculture. Rothamsted's jubilee in 1893 was marked by a public commemoration headed by the Prince of Wales.

[br]