lld

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

[br]

[br]

[br]

Froude was educated at a preparatory school at Buckfastleigh, and then at Westminster School, London, before entering Oriel College, Oxford, to read mathematics and classics. Between 1836 and 1838 he served as a pupil civil engineer, and then he joined the staff of Isambard Kingdom Brunel on various railway engineering projects in southern England, including the South Devon Atmospheric Railway. He retired from professional work in 1846 and lived with his invalid father at Dartington Parsonage. The next twenty years, while apparently unproductive, were important to Froude as he concentrated his mind on difficult mathematical and scientific problems. Froude married in 1839 and had five children, one of whom, Robert Edmund Froude (1846–1924), was to succeed him in later years in his research work for the Admiralty. Following the death of his father, Froude moved to Paignton, and there commenced his studies on the resistance of solid bodies moving through fluids. Initially these were with hulls towed through a house roof storage tank by wires taken over a pulley and attached to falling weights, but the work became more sophisticated and was conducted on ponds and the open water of a creek near Dartmouth. Froude published work on the rolling of ships in the second volume of the Transactions of the then new Institution of Naval Architects and through this became acquainted with Sir Edward Reed. This led in 1870 to the Admiralty's offer of £2,000 towards the cost of an experimental tank for ship models at Torquay. The tank was completed in 1872 and tests were carried out on the model of HMS Greyhound following full-scale towing trials which had commenced on the actual ship the previous year. From this Froude enunciated his Law of Comparisons, which defines the rules concerning the relationship of the power required to move geometrically similar floating bodies across fluids. It enabled naval architects to predict, from a study of a much less expensive and smaller model, the resistance to motion and the power required to move a full-size ship. The work in the tank led Froude to design a model-cutting machine, dynamometers and machinery for the accurate ruling of graph paper. Froude's work, and later that of his son, was prodigious and covered many fields of ship design, including powering, propulsion, rolling, steering and stability. In only six years he had stamped his academic authority on the new science of hydrodynamics, served on many national committees and corresponded with fellow researchers throughout the world. His health suffered and he sailed for South Africa to recuperate, but he contracted dysentery and died at Simonstown. He will be remembered for all time as one of the greatest "fathers" of naval architecture.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

[br]

[br]

[br]

After Menzies conceived his idea of breaking off coal with machines in 1761, many inventors subsequently followed his proposals through into the practice of underground working. More than one century later, Garforth became one of the principal pioneers of machine-holing combined with the longwall method of working in order to reduce production costs and increase the yield of coal. Having been appointed agent to Pope \& Pearson's Collieries, West Yorkshire, in 1879, of which company he later became Managing Director and Chairman, he gathered a great deal of experience with different methods of cutting coal. The first disc machine was exhibited in London as early as 1851, and ten years later a pick machine was invented. In 1893 he introduced an improved type of deep undercutting machine, his "diamond" disc coal-cutter, driven by compressed air, which also became popular on the European continent.

Besides the considerable economic advantages it created, the use of machinery for mining coal increased the safety of working in hard and thin seams. The improvement of safety in mining technology was always his primary concern, and as a result of his inventions and his many publications he became the leading figure in the British coal mining industry at the beginning of the twentieth century; safety lamps still carry his name. In 1885 he invented a firedamp detector, and following a severe explosion in 1886 he concentrated on coal-dust experiments. From the information he obtained of the effect of stone-dust on a coal-dust explosion he proposed the stone-dust remedy to prevent explosions of coal-dust. As a result of discussions which lasted for decades and after he had been entrusted with the job of conducting the British coal-dust experiments, in 1921 an Act made it compulsory in all mines which were not naturally wet throughout to treat all roads with incombustible dust so as to ensure that the dust always consisted of a mixture containing not more than 50 per cent combustible matter. In 1901 Garforth erected a surface gallery which represented the damaged roadways of a mine and could be filled with noxious fumes to test self-contained breathing apparata. This gallery formed the model from which all the rescue-stations existing nowadays have been developed.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Steam and internal combustion engines

[br]

[br]

[br]

Kirk was a son of the manse, and after attending school at Arbroath he proceeded to Edinburgh University. Following graduation he served an apprenticeship at the Vulcan Foundry, Glasgow, before serving first as Chief Draughtsman with the Thames shipbuilders and engineers Maudslay Sons \& Field, and later as Engineer of Paraffin Young's Works at Bathgate and West Calder in Lothian. He was credited with the inventions of many ingenious appliances and techniques for improving production in these two establishments. About 1866 Kirk returned to Glasgow as Manager of the Cranstonhill Engine Works, then moved to Elder's Shipyard (later known as the Fairfield Company) as Engineering Manager. There he made history in producing the world's first triple-expansion engines for the single-screw steamship Propontis in 1874. That decade was to confirm the Clyde's leading role as shipbuilders to the world and to establish the iron ship with efficient reciprocating machinery as the workhorse of the British Merchant Marine. Upon the death of the great Clyde shipbuilder Robert Napier in 1876, Kirk and others took over as partners in the shipbuilding yard and engine shops of Robert Napier \& Sons. There in 1881 they built a ship that is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of British shipbuilding: the SS Aberdeen for George Thompson's Aberdeen Line to the Far East. In this ship the fullest advantage was taken of high steam temperatures and pressures, which were expanded progressively in a three-cylinder configuration. The Aberdeen, in its many voyages from London to China and Japan, was to prove the efficiency of these engines that had been so carefully designed in Glasgow. In the following years Dr Kirk (he has always been known as Doctor, although his honorary LLD was only awarded by Glasgow University in 1888) persuaded the Admiralty and several shipping companies to accept not only triple-expansion machinery but also the use of mild steel in ship construction. The successful SS Parisian, built for the Allan Line of Glasgow, was one of these pioneer ships.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Sir John MacNeill became a pupil of Thomas Telford and served under him as Superintendent of the Southern Division of the Holyhead Road from London to Shrewsbury. In this capacity he invented a "Road Indicator" or dynamometer. Like other Telford followers, he viewed the advent of railways with some antipathy, but after the death of Telford in 1834 he quickly became involved in railway construction and in 1837 he was retained by the Irish Railway Commissioners to build railways in the north of Ireland (Vignoles received the commission for the south). Much of his subsequent career was devoted to schemes for Irish railways, both those envisaged by the Commissioners and other private lines with more immediately commercial objectives. He was knighted in 1844 on the completion of the Dublin \& Drogheda Railway along the east coast of Ireland. In 1845 MacNeill lodged plans for over 800 miles (1,300 km) of Irish railways. Not all of these were built, many falling victim to Irish poverty in the years after the Famine, but he maintained a large staff and became financially embarrassed. His other schemes included the Grangemouth Docks in Scotland, the Liverpool \& Bury Railway, and the Belfast Waterworks, the latter completed in 1843 and subsequently extended by Bateman.

MacNeill was an engineer of originality, being the person who introduced iron-lattice bridges into Britain, employing the theoretical and experimental work of Fairbairn and Eaton Hodgkinson (the Boyne Bridge at Drogheda had two such spans of 250ft (76m) each). He also devised the Irish railway gauge of 5 ft 2 in. (1.57 m). Consulted by the Board of Trinity College, Dublin, regarding a School of Engineering in 1842, he was made an Honorary LLD of the University and appointed the first Professor of Civil Engineering, but he relinquished the chair to his assistant, Samuel Downing, in 1846. MacNeill was a large and genial man, but not, we are told, "of methodical and business habit": he relied heavily on his subordinates. Blindness obliged him to retire from practice several years before his death. He was an early member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, joining in 1827, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1838.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

[br]

[br]

[br]

Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.

The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.

His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.

With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

[br]

[br]

[br]

Having lost the sight of one eye from scarlet fever at the age of 4, by the time he was 22 he had become completely blind. Dissatisfied with the existing Frères system of embossed letters, he established that the twenty-six letters of the alphabet could be encompassed in only nine variously positioned symbols. These were sufficiently adaptable so that by the time of his death they had been utilized for 476 languages and dialects. Although superseded for more general use by Braille, the Moon system is still in current use for those with defective touch sense and other disabilities. With the assistance of his son, who became a physician, and his daughter, who continued the work after his death, he established a centre in Brighton where the production of Moon transcriptions in still carried on.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

[br]

[br]

[br]

Following early education at Phillips Academy, Andover, at the age of 14 years Morse went to Yale College, where he developed interests in painting and electricity. Upon graduating in 1810 he became a clerk to a Washington publisher and a pupil of Washington Allston, a well-known American painter. The following year he travelled to Europe and entered the London studio of another American artist, Benjamin West, successfully exhibiting at the Royal Academy as well as winning a prize and medal for his sculpture. Returning to Boston and finding little success as a "historical-style" painter, he built up a thriving portrait business, moving in 1818 to Charleston, South Carolina, where three years later he established the (now defunct) South Carolina Academy of Fine Arts. In 1825 he was back in New York, but following the death of his wife and both of his parents that year, he embarked on an extended tour of European art galleries. In 1832, on the boat back to America, he met Charles T.Jackson, who told him of the discovery of the electromagnet and fired his interest in telegraphy to the extent that Morse immediately began to make suggestions for electrical communications and, apparently, devised a form of printing telegraph. Although he returned to his painting and in 1835 was appointed the first Professor of the Literature of Art and Design at the University of New York City, he began to spend more and more time experimenting in telegraphy. In 1836 he invented a relay as a means of extending the cable distance over which telegraph signals could be sent. At this time he became acquainted with Alfred Vail, and the following year, when the US government published the requirements for a national telegraph service, they set out to produce a workable system, with finance provided by Vail's father (who, usefully, owned an ironworks). A patent was filed on 6 October 1837 and a successful demonstration using the so-called Morse code was given on 6 January 1838; the work was, in fact, almost certainly largely that of Vail. As a result of the demonstration a Bill was put forward to Congress for $30,000 for an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. This was eventually passed and the line was completed, and on 24 May 1844 the first message, "What hath God wrought", was sent between the two cities. In the meantime Morse also worked on the insulation of submarine cables by means of pitch tar and indiarubber.

With success achieved, Morse offered his invention to the Government for $100,000, but this was declined, so the invention remained in private hands. To exploit it, Morse founded the Magnetic Telephone Company in 1845, amalgamating the following year with the telegraph company of a Henry O'Reilly to form Western Union. Having failed to obtain patents in Europe, he now found himself in litigation with others in the USA, but eventually, in 1854, the US Supreme Court decided in his favour and he soon became very wealthy. In 1857 a proposal was made for a telegraph service across the whole of the USA; this was completed in just over four months in 1861. Four years later work began on a link to Europe via Canada, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Russia, but it was abandoned with the completion of the transatlantic cable, a venture in which he also had some involvement. Showered with honours, Morse became a generous philanthropist in his later years. By 1883 the company he had created was worth $80 million and had a virtual monopoly in the USA.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

Osborne Reynolds's father, a clergyman and schoolteacher, had been a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge; it was to Queens' that the young Reynolds went to study mathematics, graduating as 7th Wrangler in 1867, and going on in his turn to become a Fellow of the College. Reynolds had developed an interest in practical applications of physics and engineering, and for a short time he entered the office of the London civil engineers Lawson and Mansergh. In 1868 he was appointed to the new Chair of Engineering at Owens College, Manchester, and he remained in this post for thirty-seven years, until he retired in 1905. During this period he presided over a department that grew steadily in size and reputation, and undertook prolonged research projects into phenomena such as lubrication, the laws governing the flow of water in pipes, turbulence and other physical features with practical applications. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1877, being nominated Royal Medallist in 1888. In 1883 he became a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and in 1885 he was awarded the Telford Premium of the Institution. He served as Secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society from 1874 to 1883, and was appointed President in 1888–9 and Dalton Medallist in 1903. He was President of Section G of the British Association for the History of Science in 1887, and in 1884 he received the degree of LLD from Glasgow University. Among his many students at Owens College was J.J. (later Sir Joseph) Thomson (1856–1940), who entered the college in 1871. Reynolds's collected scientific papers were published in 1900–3.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

Frederick W.Taylor received his early education from his mother, followed by some years of schooling in France and Germany. Then in 1872 he entered Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, to prepare for Harvard Law School, as it was intended that he should follow his father's profession. However, in 1874 he had to abandon his studies because of poor eyesight, and he began an apprenticeship at a pump-manufacturing works in Philadelphia learning the trades of pattern-maker and machinist. On its completion in 1878 he joined the Midvale Steel Company, at first as a labourer but then as Shop Clerk and Foreman, finally becoming Chief Engineer in 1884. At the same time he was able to resume study in the evenings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, and in 1883 he obtained the degree of Mechanical Engineer (ME). He also found time to take part in amateur sport and in 1881 he won the tennis doubles championship of the United States.

It was while with the Midvale Steel Company that Taylor began the systematic study of workshop management, and the application of his techniques produced significant increases in the company's output and productivity. In 1890 he became Manager of a company operating large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin, until 1893 when he set up on his own account as a consulting engineer specializing in management organization. In 1898 he was retained exclusively by the Bethlehem Steel Company, and there continued his work on the metal-cutting process that he had started at Midvale. In collaboration with J.Maunsel White (1856–1912) he developed high-speed tool steels and their heat treatment which increased cutting capacity by up to 300 per cent. He resigned from the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1901 and devoted the remainder of his life to expounding the principles of scientific management which became known as "Taylorism". The Society to Promote the Science of Management was established in 1911, renamed the Taylor Society after his death. He was an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and was its President in 1906; his presidential address "On the Art of Cutting Metals" was reprinted in book form.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Electronics and information technology, Weapons and armour

[br]

[br]

[br]

Following education at Brechin High School, Watson-Watt entered University College, Dundee (then a part of the University of St Andrews), obtaining a BSc in engineering in 1912. From 1912 until 1921 he was Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews, but during the First World War he also held various posts in the Meteorological Office. During. this time, in 1916 he proposed the use of cathode ray oscillographs for radio-direction-finding displays. He joined the newly formed Radio Research Station at Slough when it was opened in 1924, and 3 years later, when it amalgamated with the Radio Section of the National Physical Laboratory, he became Superintendent at Slough. At this time he proposed the name "ionosphere" for the ionized layer in the upper atmosphere. With E.V. Appleton and J.F.Herd he developed the "squegger" hard-valve transformer-coupled timebase and with the latter devised a direction-finding radio-goniometer.

In 1933 he was asked to investigate possible aircraft counter-measures. He soon showed that it was impossible to make the wished-for radio "death-ray", but had the idea of using the detection of reflected radio-waves as a means of monitoring the approach of enemy aircraft. With six assistants he developed this idea and constructed an experimental system of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) in which arrays of aerials were used to detect the reflected signals and deduce the bearing and height. To realize a practical system, in September 1936 he was appointed Director of the Bawdsey Research Station near Felixstowe and carried out operational studies of radar. The result was that within two years the East Coast of the British Isles was equipped with a network of radar transmitters and receivers working in the 7–14 metre band—the so-called "chain-home" system—which did so much to assist the efficient deployment of RAF Fighter Command against German bombing raids on Britain in the early years of the Second World War.

In 1938 he moved to the Air Ministry as Director of Communications Development, becoming Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, then Deputy Chairman of the War Cabinet Radio Board in 1943. After the war he set up Sir Robert Watson-Watt \& Partners, an industrial consultant firm. He then spent some years in relative retirement in Canada, but returned to Scotland before his death.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

[br]

[br]

[br]

The sixth child of James Watt, merchant and general contractor, and Agnes Muirhead, Watt was a weak and sickly child; he was one of only two to survive childhood out of a total of eight, yet, like his father, he was to live to an age of over 80. He was educated at local schools, including Greenock Grammar School where he was an uninspired pupil. At the age of 17 he was sent to live with relatives in Glasgow and then in 1755 to London to become an apprentice to a mathematical instrument maker, John Morgan of Finch Lane, Cornhill. Less than a year later he returned to Greenock and then to Glasgow, where he was appointed mathematical instrument maker to the University and was permitted in 1757 to set up a workshop within the University grounds. In this position he came to know many of the University professors and staff, and it was thus that he became involved in work on the steam engine when in 1764 he was asked to put in working order a defective Newcomen engine model. It did not take Watt long to perceive that the great inefficiency of the Newcomen engine was due to the repeated heating and cooling of the cylinder. His idea was to drive the steam out of the cylinder and to condense it in a separate vessel. The story is told of Watt's flash of inspiration as he was walking across Glasgow Green one Sunday afternoon; the idea formed perfectly in his mind and he became anxious to get back to his workshop to construct the necessary apparatus, but this was the Sabbath and work had to wait until the morrow, so Watt forced himself to wait until the Monday morning.

Watt designed a condensing engine and was lent money for its development by Joseph Black, the Glasgow University professor who had established the concept of latent heat. In 1768 Watt went into partnership with John Roebuck, who required the steam engine for the drainage of a coal-mine that he was opening up at Bo'ness, West Lothian. In 1769, Watt took out his patent for "A New Invented Method of Lessening the Consumption of Steam and Fuel in Fire Engines". When Roebuck went bankrupt in 1772, Matthew Boulton, proprietor of the Soho Engineering Works near Birmingham, bought Roebuck's share in Watt's patent. Watt had met Boulton four years earlier at the Soho works, where power was obtained at that time by means of a water-wheel and a steam engine to pump the water back up again above the wheel. Watt moved to Birmingham in 1774, and after the patent had been extended by Parliament in 1775 he and Boulton embarked on a highly profitable partnership. While Boulton endeavoured to keep the business supplied with capital, Watt continued to refine his engine, making several improvements over the years; he was also involved frequently in legal proceedings over infringements of his patent.

In 1794 Watt and Boulton founded the new company of Boulton \& Watt, with a view to their retirement; Watt's son James and Boulton's son Matthew assumed management of the company. Watt retired in 1800, but continued to spend much of his time in the workshop he had set up in the garret of his Heathfield home; principal amongst his work after retirement was the invention of a pantograph sculpturing machine.

James Watt was hard-working, ingenious and essentially practical, but it is doubtful that he would have succeeded as he did without the business sense of his partner, Matthew Boulton. Watt coined the term "horsepower" for quantifying the output of engines, and the SI unit of power, the watt, is named in his honour.

[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]

1. Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.)

2. Doctor of Laws (LLD)

3. legum doctor (LL D)

 

нижний предел обнаружения
—
[А.С.Гольдберг. Англо-русский энергетический словарь. 2006 г.]

Тематики

• энергетика в целом

EN

• lower limit of detection
• LLD