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121 Hornby, Frank
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 15 May 1863 Liverpool, Englandd. 21 September 1936 Liverpool, England[br]English toy manufacturer and inventor of Meccano kits.[br]Frank Hornby left school at the age of 16 and worked as a clerk, at first for his father, a provision merchant, and later for D.H.Elliott, an importer of meat and livestock, for whom he became Managing Clerk. As a youth he was interested in engineering and in his own small workshop he became a skilled amateur mechanic. He made toys for his children and c.1900 he devised a constructional toy kit consisting of perforated metal strips which could be connected by bolts and nuts. He filed a patent application in January 1901 and, having failed to interest established toy manufacturers, he set up a small business in partnership with his employer, D.H. Elliott, who provided financial support. The kits were sold at first under the name of Mechanics Made Easy, but by 1907 the name Meccano had been registered as a trade mark. The business expanded rapidly and in 1908 Elliott withdrew from the partnership and Hornby continued on his own account, the company being incorporated as Meccano Ltd. Although parts for Meccano were produced at first by various manufacturers, Hornby soon acquired premises to produce all the components under his own control, and between 1910 and 1913 he established his own factory on a 5-acre (2-hectare) site at Binn's Road, Liverpool. The Meccano Magazine, a monthly publication with articles of general engineering interest, developed from a newsletter giving advice on the use of Meccano, and from the first issue in 1916 until 1924 was edited by Frank Hornby. In 1920 he introduced the clockwork Hornby trains, followed by the electric version five years later. These were gauge "0" (1 1/4 in./32 mm); the smaller gauge "00", or Hornby Dublo, was a later development. Another product of Meccano Ltd was the series of model vehicles known as Dinky toys, introduced in 1934.Frank Hornby served as a Member of Parliament for the Everton Division of Liverpool from 1931 to 1935.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMP, 1931–5.Further ReadingD.J.Jeremy (ed.), 1984–6, Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol. 3, London, 345–9 (a useful biography).Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 127(1934):140–1 (describes the Binn's Road factory).RTS -
122 Hunter, Matthew Albert
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 9 November 1878 Auckland Province, New Zealandd. 24 March 1961 Troy, New York, USA[br]New Zealand/American technologist and academic who was a pioneer in the production of metallic titanium.[br]Hunter arrived in England in 1902, the seventh in the succession of New Zealand students nominated for the 1851 Exhibition science research scholarships (the third, in 1894, having been Ernest Rutherford). He intended to study the metallurgy of tellurides at the Royal School of Mines, but owing to the death of the professor concerned, he went instead to University College London, where his research over two years involved the molecular aggregation of liquified gases. In 1904–5 he spent a third year in Göttingen, Paris and Karlsruhe. Hunter then moved to the USA, beginning work in 1906 with the General Electric Company in Schenectady. His experience with titanium came as part of a programme to try to discover satisfactory lamp-filament materials. He and his colleagues achieved more success in producing moderately pure titanium than previous workers had done, but found the metal's melting temperature inadequate. However, his research formed the basis for the "Hunter sodium process", a modern method for producing commercial quantities of titanium. In 1908 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Electrochemistry and Physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he was to remain until his retirement in 1949 as Dean Emeritus. In the 1930s he founded and headed the Institute's Department of Metallurgical Engineering. As a consultant, he was associated with the development of Invar, Managanin and Constantan alloys.[br]Principal Honours and Distinctions1851 Great Exhibition science research scholar 1902–5. DSc London University 1904. American Die Casting Institute Doehler Award 1959. American Society for Metals Gold Medal 1959.Bibliography1910, "Metallic titanium", Journal of the American Chemistry Society 32:330–6 (describes his work relating to titanium production).Further Reading1961, "Man of metals", Rensselaer Alumni News (December), 5–7:32.JKA -
123 Hyatt, John Wesley
[br]b. 28 November 1837 Starkey, New York, USAd. 10 May 1920 Short Hills, New Jersey, USA[br]American inventor and the first successful manufacturer of celluloid.[br]Leaving school at the age of 16, Hyatt spent ten years in the printing trade, demonstrating meanwhile a talent for invention. The offer of a prize of $10,000 for finding a substitute for ivory billiard balls stimulated Hyatt to experiment with various materials. After many failures, he arrived at a composition of paper flock, shellac and collodion, which was widely adopted. Noting the "skin" left after evaporating collodion, he continued his experiments, using nitrocellulose as a base for plastic materials, yet he remained largely ignorant of both chemistry and the dangers of this explosive substance. Independently of Parkes in England, he found that a mixture of nitrocellulose, camphor and a little alcohol could, by heating, be made soft enough to mould but became hard at room temperature. Hyatt's first patent for the material, celluloid, was dated 12 July 1870 (US pat. 105338) and was followed by many others for making domestic and decorative articles of celluloid, replacing more expensive natural materials. Manufacture began at Albany in the winter of 1872–3. In 1881 Hyatt and his brother Isiah Smith floated the Hyatt Pure Water Company. By introducing purifying coagulants into flowing water, they avoided the expense and delay of allowing the water to settle in large tanks before filtration. Many towns and paper and woollen mills adopted the new process, and in 1891 it was introduced into Europe. During 1891–2, Hyatt devised a widely used type of roller bearing. Later inventions included a sugar-cane mill, a multistitch sewing machine and a mill for the cold rolling and straightening of steel shafts. It was characteristic of Hyatt's varied inventions that they achieved improved results at less expense.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsSociety of Chemical Industry Perkin Medal 1914.Bibliography12 July 1870, US patent no. 105,338 (celluloid).Further ReadingObituary, 1920, Chem. Metal. Eng. (19 May).J. Soc. Chem. Ind. for 16 March 1914 and J. Ind. Eng. Chem. for March 1914 carried accounts of Hyatt's achievements, on the occasion of his award of the Perkin Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry in that year.LRD -
124 Jenkins, Charles Francis
[br]b. 1867 USAd. 1934 USA[br]American pioneer of motion pictures and television.[br]During the early years of the motion picture industry, Jenkins made many innovations, including the development in 1894 of his own projector, the "Phantoscope", which was widely used for a number of years. In the same year he also suggested the possibility of electrically transmitting pictures over a distance, an interest that led to a lifetime of experimentation. As a result of his engineering contributions to the practical realization of moving pictures, in 1915 the National Motion Picture Board of Trade asked him to chair a committee charged with establishing technical standards for the industry. This in turn led to his proposing the creation of a professional society for those engineers in the industry, and the following year the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (later to become the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) was formed, with Jenkins as its first President. Soon after this he began experiments with mechanical television, using both the Nipkow hole-spiral disc and a low-definition system of his own, based on rotating bevelled glass discs (his so-called "prismatic rings") and alkali-metal photocells. In the 1920s he gave many demonstrations of mechanical television, including a cable transmission of a crude silhouette of President Harding from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia in 1923 and a radio broadcast from Washington in 1928. The following year he formed the Jenkins Television Company to make television transmitters and receivers, but it soon went into debt and was acquired by the de Forest Company, from whom RCA later purchased the patents.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFirst President, Society of Motion Picture Engineers 1916.Bibliography1923, "Radio photographs, radio movies and radio vision", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 16:78.1923, "Recent progress in the transmission of motion pictures by radio", Transactions ofthe Society of Motion Picture Engineers 17:81.1925, "Radio movies", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 21:7. 1930, "Television systems", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 15:445. 1925. Vision by Radio.Further ReadingJ.H.Udelson, 1982, The Great Television Race: A History of the American Television Industry, 1925–41: University of Alabama Press.R.W.Hubbell, 1946, 4,000 Years of Television, London: G.Harrap \& Sons.1926. "The Jenkins system", Wireless World 18: 642 (contains a specific account of Jenkins's work).KFBiographical history of technology > Jenkins, Charles Francis
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125 Johnson, Percival Norton
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. 29 September 1792 London, Englandd. 1 June 1866 Stoke Fleming, Devon, England[br]English chemist, assayer, mining engineer and founder of the firm Johnson Matthey.[br]He was the son of John Johnson, then sole Commercial Assayer in London, from whom he inherited his aptitude for chemistry and metallurgy. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to his father by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Ore samples then being analysed in Johnson's office introduced him to the new metal platinum, and resulted in a paper to Philosophical Magazine in 1812. Johnson established himself as a "practical mineralogist" in Maiden Lane, London, in 1818 and in Hatton Garden after 1822. He was greatly assisted by a fellow metallurgist, Thomas Cock (1787–1842), who developed the platinum fabrication and pigment sides of die business. In 1827 Johnson was consulted by the Russian government about the exploitation of the rich platinum deposits that had been discovered in the Urals in 1819. Between 1829 and 1832 Johnson became the first in England to manufacture nickel, extracted from nickel-bearing material imported from Germany at his plant at Bow Common on the Regent's Canal. In 1832 he began to réfine gold imported from the Imperial Brazilian Association by a process which separated without loss the metals silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium and iridium. This profitable activity continued until the Brazilian company was wound up in 1852. Since 1824, Johnson had been named "assay master" by a number of mining companies. From 1843 until the mid-1850s he had a considerable mining interest in the West Country. Meanwhile, the Hatton Garden establishment continued to prosper. In 1839 he was joined by George Matthey, who particularly fostered the Russian platinum business, and in 1851 he was taken unto partnership and the firm became the celebrated Johnson Matthey. In the following year the firm was officially recognized as one of the four Assayers to the Bank of England appointed to handle the flood of gold dust then arriving in England from the Australian gold fields. Soon after, however, ill health compelled him to retire to his Devon country house.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1846.Bibliography1812, "Experiments which prove platina, when combined with gold and silver, to be soluble in nitric acid", Philosophical Magazine (1st series) 40(171):3–4.Further ReadingD.McDonald, 1951, Percival Norton Johnson, London: Johnson Matthey (includes lists of his publications and his honours and awards).——1964, The Johnsons of Morden Lane, London: Martins.——1960, A History of Platinum, London: Johnson Matthey.ASDBiographical history of technology > Johnson, Percival Norton
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126 Lanston, Tolbert
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 3 February 1844 Troy, Ohio, USAd. 18 February 1913 Washington, DC, USA[br]American inventor of the Monotype typesetting machine.[br]Although reared in a farming community, Lanston was able to develop his mechanical talent. After serving in the American Civil War he secured a clerkship in the Pensions Office in Washington, where he remained for twenty-two years. He studied law in his spare time and was called to the Bar. At the same time, he invented a whole variety of mechanical devices, many of which he patented. Around 1883 Lanston began taking an interest in machines for composing printers' type, probably stimulated by Ottmar Mergenthaler, who was then in Washington and working in this field. Four years' work were rewarded on 7 June 1887 by the grant of a patent, followed by three more, for a machine "to produce justified lines of type". The machine, the Monotype, consisted of two components: first a keyboard unit produced a strip of paper tape with holes punched in patterns corresponding to the characters required; this tape controlled the matrices in the caster, the second and "hot metal" component, from which types were ejected singly and fed to an assembly point until a complete line of type had been formed. Lanston resigned his post and set up the Lanston Type Machine Company in Washington. He laboured for ten years to convert the device defined in his patents into a machine that could be made and used commercially. In 1897 the perfected Monotype appeared. The company was reorganized as the Lanston Monotype Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia, and Lanston devoted himself to promoting and improving the machine. Monotype, with Mergenthaler's Linotype, steadily supplanted hand-setting and the various inadequate mechanical methods that were then in use, and by the 1920s they reigned supreme, until the 1960s, when they themselves began to be superseded by computer-controlled photosetting methods.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFranklin Institute Cresson Gold Medal 1896.Further ReadingObituary, 1913, American Printer (March).L.A.Legros and J.C.Grant, 1916, Typographical Printing Surfaces, London.J.Moran, 1964, The Composition of Reading Matter, London.LRD -
127 Lenoir, Jean Joseph Etienne
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines, Telecommunications[br]b. 1822 Mussey-la-Ville, Belgiumd. 1900 Verenna Saint-Hildar, France[br]Belgian (naturalized French in 1870) inventor of internal combustion engines, an electroplating process and railway telegraphy systems.[br]Leaving his native village for Paris at the age of 16, Lenoir became a metal enameller. Experiments with various electroplating processes provided a useful knowledge of electricity that showed in many of his later ideas. Electric ignition, although somewhat unreliable, was a feature of the Lenoir gas engine which appeared in 1860. Resembling the steam engine of the day, Lenoir engines used a non-compression cycle of operations, in which the gas-air mixture of about atmospheric pressure was being ignited at one-third of the induction stroke. The engines were double acting. About five hundred of Lenoir's engines were built, mostly in Paris by M.Hippolyte Marinoni and by Lefébvre; the Reading Ironworks in England built about one hundred. Many useful applications of the engine are recorded, but the explosive shock that occurred on ignition, together with the unreliable ignition systems, prevented large-scale acceptance of the engine in industry. However, Lenoir's effort and achievements stimulated much discussion, and N.A. Otto is reported to have carried out his first experiments on a Lenoir engine.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsAcadémie des Sciences Prix Montyon Prize 1870. Société d'Encouragement, Silver Prize of 12,000 francs. Légion d'honneur 1881 (for his work in telegraphy).Bibliography8 February 1860, British patent no. 335 (the first Lenoir engine).1861, British patent no. 107 (the Lenoir engine).Further ReadingDugald Clerk, 1895, The Gas and Oil Engine, 6th edn, London, pp. 13–15, 30, 118, 203.World Who's Who in Science, 1968 (for an account of Lenoir's involvement in technology).KABBiographical history of technology > Lenoir, Jean Joseph Etienne
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128 Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo
[br]b. 25 April 1874 Bologna, Italyd. 20 July 1937 Rome, Italy[br]Italian radio pioneer whose inventiveness and business skills made radio communication a practical proposition.[br]Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsNobel Prize for Physics (jointly with K.F. Braun) 1909. Russian Order of S t Anne. Commander of St Maurice and St Lazarus. Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown (i.e. Knight) of Italy 1902. Freedom of Rome 1903. Honorary DSc Oxford. Honorary LLD Glasgow. Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy 1905. Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal. Honorary knighthood (GCVO) 1914. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1920. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1924. Created Marquis (Marchese) 1929. Nominated to the Italian Senate 1929. President, Italian Academy 1930. Rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1934.Bibliography1896, "Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and in apparatus thereof", British patent no. 12,039.1 June 1898, British patent no. 12,326 (transformer or "jigger" resonant circuit).1901, British patent no. 7,777 (selective tuning).1904, British patent no. 763,772 ("four circuit" tuning arrangement).Further ReadingD.Marconi, 1962, My Father, Marconi.W.J.Baker, 1970, A History of the Marconi Company, London: Methuen.KFBiographical history of technology > Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo
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