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121 Humfrey, William
SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy[br]b. c.1515d. 14 July 1579[br]English goldsmith and Assay Master of the Royal Mint who attempted to introduce brass production to England.[br]William Humfrey, goldsmith of the parish of St Vedast, was appointed Assay Master of the Royal Mint in 1561. At the Tower of London he assumed responsibility for the weight of silver and for production standards at a time of intense activity in recoining the debased coinage of the realm. Separation of copper from the debased silver involved liquation techniques which enabled purification of the recovered silver and copper. German co-operation in introducing these methods to England developed their interest in English copper mining, resulting in the formation of the Mines Royal Company. Shareholders in this government-led monopoly included Humfrey, whose assay of Keswick copper ore, mined with German expertise, was bitterly disputed. As a result of this dispute, Humfrey promoted the formation of a smaller monopoly, the Company of Mineral Battery Works, with plans to mine lead and especially the zinc carbonate ore, calamine, using it to introduce brassmaking and wire manufacture into England. Humfrey acquired technical assistance from further skilled German immigrants, relying particularly on Christopher Schutz of Annaberg in Saxony, who claimed experience in such matters. However, the brassmaking project set up at Tintern was abandoned by 1569 after failure to make a brass suitable for manufacturing purposes. The works changed its production to iron wire. Humfrey had meanwhile been under suspicion of embezzlement at the Tower in connection with his work there. He died intestate while involved in litigation regarding infringement of rights and privileges claimed from his introduction of new techniques in later lead-mining activities under the auspices of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works.[br]Further ReadingM.B.Donald, 1961, Elizabethan Monopolies, London: Oliver \& Boyd (the most detailed account).——1955, Elizabethan Copper, reprinted 1989, Michael Moon.JD -
122 Hurter, Ferdinand
SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics[br]b. 15 March 1844 Schaffhausen, Switzerlandd. 5 March 1898[br]Swiss chemist who, with Vero Charles Driffield, established the basis of modern sensitometry in England.[br]Ferdinand Hurter worked for three years as a dyer's apprentice before entering the Polytechnic in Zurich; he transferred to Heidelberg, where he graduated in 1866. A year later he secured an appointment as a chemist for the British alkali manufacturing company, Gaskell, Deacon \& Co. of Widnes, Cheshire. In 1871 he was joined at the company by the young engineer Vero Charles Driffield, who was to become his co-worker. Driffield had worked for a professional photographer before beginning his engineering apprenticeship and it was in 1876, when Hurter sought to draw on this experience, that the partnership began. At this time the speed of the new gelatine halide dry plates was expressed in terms of the speed of a wet-collodion plate, an almost worthless concept as the speed of a collodion plate was itself variable. Hurter and Driffield sought to place the study of photographic emulsions on a more scientific basis. They constructed an actinometer to measure the intensity of sunlight and in 1890 published the first of a series of papers on the sensitivity of photographic plates. They suggested methods of exposing a plate to lights of known intensities and measuring the densities obtained on development. They were able to plot curves based on density and exposure which became known as the H \& D curve. Hurter and Driffield's work allowed them to express the characteristics of an emulsion with a nomenclature which was soon adopted by British plate manufacturers. From the 1890s onwards most British-made plates were identified with H \& D ratings. Hurter and Driffield's partnership was ended by the former's death in 1898.[br]Further ReadingW.B.Ferguson (ed.), 1920, The Photographic Researches of Ferdinand Hurter \& Vero C. Driffield, London: Royal Photographic Society reprinted in facsimile, with a new introd. by W.Clark, 1974, New York (a memorial volume; the most complete account of Hurter and Driffield's work, includes a reprint of all their published papers).JW -
123 Ilgner, Karl
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 27 July 1862 Neisse, Upper Silesia (now Nysa, Poland)d. 18 January 1921 Berthelsdorf, Silesia[br]German electrical engineer, inventor of a transformer for electromotors.[br]Ilgner graduated from the Gewerbeakademie (the forerunner of the Technical University) in Berlin. As the representative of an electric manufacturing company in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) from 1897, he was confronted with the fact that there were no appropriate drives for hoisting-engines or rolling-plants in steelworks. Two problems prevented the use of high-capacity electric motors in the mining as well as in the iron and steel industry: the reactions of the motors on the circuit at the peak point of stress concentration; and the complicated handling of the control system which raised the risks regarding safety. Having previously been head of the department of electrical power transmission in Hannover, he was concerned with the development of low-speed direct-current motors powered by gas engines.It was Harry Ward Leonard's switchgear for direct-current motors (USA, 1891) that permitted sudden and exact changes in the speed and direction of rotation without causing power loss, as demonstrated in the driving of a rolling sidewalk at the Paris World Fair of 1900. Ilgner connected this switchgear to a large and heavy flywheel which accumulated the kinetic energy from the circuit in order to compensate shock loads. With this combination, electric motors did not need special circuits, which were still weak, because they were working continuously and were regulated individually, so that they could be used for driving hoisting-engines in mines, rolling-plants in steelworks or machinery for producing tools and paper. Ilgner thus made a notable advance in the general progress of electrification.His transformer for hoisting-engines was patented in 1901 and was commercially used inter alia by Siemens \& Halske of Berlin. Their first electrical hoisting-engine for the Zollern II/IV mine in Dortmund gained international reputation at the Düsseldorf exhibition of 1902, and is still preserved in situ in the original machine hall of the mine, which is now a national monument in Germany. Ilgner thereafter worked with several companies to pursue his conception, became a consulting engineer in Vienna and Breslau and had a government post after the First World War in Brussels and Berlin until he retired for health reasons in 1919.[br]Bibliography1901, DRP no. 138, 387 1903, "Der elektrische Antrieb von Reversier-Walzenstraßen", Stahl und Eisen 23:769– 71.Further ReadingW.Kroker, "Karl Ilgner", Neue Deutsche Biographie, Vol. X, pp. 134–5. W.Philippi, 1924, Elektrizität im Bergbau, Leipzig (a general account).K.Warmbold, 1925, "Der Ilgner-Umformer in Förderanlagen", Kohle und Erz 22:1031–36 (a detailed description).WK -
124 McNaught, William
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 27 May 1813 Sneddon, Paisley, Scotlandd. 8 January 1881 Manchester, England[br]Scottish patentee of a very successful form of compounding beam engine with a high-pressure cylinder between the fulcrum of the beam and the connecting rod.[br]Although born in Paisley, McNaught was educated in Glasgow where his parents had moved in 1820. He followed in his father's footsteps and became an engineer through an apprenticeship with Robert Napier at the Vulcan Works, Washington Street, Glasgow. He also attended science classes at the Andersonian University in the evenings and showed such competence that at the age of 19 he was offered the position of being in charge of the Fort-Gloster Mills on the Hoogly river in India. He remained there for four years until 1836, when he returned to Scotland because the climate was affecting his health.His father had added the revolving cylinder to the steam engine indicator, and this greatly simplified and extended its use. In 1838 William joined him in the business of manufacturing these indicators at Robertson Street, Glasgow. While advising textile manufacturers on the use of the indicator, he realized the need for more powerful, smoother-running and economical steam engines. He provided the answer by placing a high-pressure cylinder midway between the fulcrum of the beam and the connecting rod on an ordinary beam engine. The original cylinder was retained to act as the low-pressure cylinder of what became a compound engine. This layout not only reduced the pressures on the bearing surfaces and gave a smoother-running engine, which was one of McNaught's aims, but he probably did not anticipate just how much more economical his engines would be; they often gave a saving of fuel up to 40 per cent. This was because the steam pipe connecting the two cylinders acted as a receiver, something lacking in the Woolf compound, which enabled the steam to be expanded properly in both cylinders. McNaught took out his patent in 1845, and in 1849 he had to move to Manchester because his orders in Lancashire were so numerous and the scope was much greater there than in Glasgow. He took out further patents for equalizing the stress on the working parts, but none was as important as his original one, which was claimed to have been one of the greatest improvements since the steam engine left the hands of James Watt. He was one of the original promoters of the Boiler Insurance and Steam Power Company and was elected Chairman in 1865, a position he retained until a short time before his death.[br]Bibliography1845, British patent no. 11,001 (compounding beam engine).Further ReadingObituary, Engineer 51.Obituary, Engineering 31.R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (the fullest account of McNaught's proposals for compounding).RLH -
125 Singer, Isaac Merritt
[br]b. 27 October 1811 Pittstown, New York, USAd. 23 July 1875 Torquay, Devonshire, England[br]American inventor of a sewing machine, and pioneer of mass production.[br]The son of a millwright, Singer was employed as an unskilled labourer at the age of 12, but later gained wide experience as a travelling machinist. He also found employment as an actor. On 16 May 1839, while living at Lockport, Illinois, he obtained his first patent for a rock-drilling machine, but he soon squandered the money he made. Then in 1849, while at Pittsburgh, he secured a patent for a wood-and metal-carving machine that he had begun five years previously; however, a boiler explosion in the factory destroyed his machine and left him penniless.Near the end of 1850 Singer was engaged to redesign the Lerow \& Blodgett sewing machine at the Boston shop of Orson C.Phelps, where the machine was being repaired. He built an improved version in eleven days that was sufficiently different for him to patent on 12 August 1851. He formed a partnership with Phelps and G.B. Zieber and they began to market the invention. Singer soon purchased Phelps's interest, although Phelps continued to manufacture the machines. Then Edward Clark acquired a one-third interest and with Singer bought out Zieber. These two, with dark's flair for promotion and marketing, began to create a company which eventually would become the largest manufacturer of sewing machines exported worldwide, with subsidiary factories in England.However, first Singer had to defend his patent, which was challenged by an earlier Boston inventor, Elias Howe. Although after a long lawsuit Singer had to pay royalties, it was the Singer machine which eventually captured the market because it could do continuous stitching. In 1856 the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important pooling arrangement in American history, was formed to share the various patents so that machines could be built without infringements and manufacture could be expanded without fear of litigation. Singer contributed his monopoly on the needle-bar cam with his 1851 patent. He secured twenty additional patents, so that his original straight-needle vertical design for lock-stitching eventually included such refinements as a continuous wheel-feed, yielding presser-foot, and improved cam for moving the needle-bar. A new model, introduced in 1856, was the first to be intended solely for use in the home.Initially Phelps made all the machines for Singer. Then a works was established in New York where the parts were assembled by skilled workers through filing and fitting. Each machine was therefore a "one-off" but Singer machines were always advertised as the best on the market and sold at correspondingly high prices. Gradually, more specialized machine tools were acquired, but it was not until long after Singer had retired to Europe in 1863 that Clark made the change to mass production. Sales of machines numbered 810 in 1853 and 21,000 ten years later.[br]Bibliography12 August 1851, US patent no. 8,294 (sewing machine)Further ReadingBiographies and obituaries have appeared in Appleton's Cyclopedia of America, Vol. V; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol XVII; New York Times 25 July 1875; Scientific American (1875) 33; and National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.D.A.Hounshell, 1984, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. TheDevelopment of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore (provides a thorough account of the development of the Singer sewing machine, the competition it faced from other manufacturers and production methods).RLH -
126 Starrett, Laroy S.
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 25 April 1836 China, Maine, USAd. 23 April 1922 St Petersburg, Florida, USA[br]American inventor and tool manufacturer.[br]As a youth, Laroy S.Starrett worked on his father's farm and later on other farms, and after a few years acquired his own 600-acre stock farm at Newburyport, Massachusetts, which he operated for four years. He had an interest in mechanics and in 1865 invented and patented a device for chopping meat. He arranged for this to be manufactured by the Athol Machine Company at Athol, Massachusetts, and it was so successful that three years later he sold his farm and purchased a controlling interest in the company. He reorganized the company for the manufacture of his meat chopper and two other inventions of his, a washing machine and a butter worker, which he had also patented in 1865. In 1877 Starrett invented the combination square and in 1880 he established the L.S.Starrett Company in Athol for manufacturing it and other small tools, such as steel rules and tapes, callipers, dividers, micrometers and depth gauges, etc. The business expanded and by 1906 he was employing over 1,000 people. He established agencies in Britain and other countries, and Starrett tools were sold throughout the world.[br]Further ReadingK.J.Hume, 1980, A History of Engineering Me-trology, London, 133–4 (provides a short account of L.S.Starrett and his company).RTS -
127 Stumpf, Johann
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]fl. c. 1900 Germany[br]German inventor of a successful design of uniflow steam engine.[br]In 1869 Stumpf was commissioned by the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hertford, Connecticut, to set up two triple-expansion, vertical, Corliss pumping engines. He tried to simplify this complicated system and started research with the internal combustion engine and the steam turbine particularly as his models. The construction of steam turbines in several stages where the steam passed through in a unidirectional flow was being pursued at that time, and Stumpf wondered whether it would be possible to raise the efficiency of a reciprocating steam engine to the same thermal level as the turbine by the use of the uniflow principle.Stumpf began to investigate these principles without studying the work of earlier pioneers like L.J. Todd, which he later thought would have led him astray. It was not until 1908, when he was Professor at the Institute of Technology in Berlin- Charlottenburg, that he patented his successful "una-flow" steam engine. In that year he took out six British patents for improvements in details on his original one Stumpf fully realized the thermal advantages of compressing the residual steam and was able to evolve systems of coping with excessive compression when starting. He also placed steam-jackets around the ends of the cylinder. Stumpf's first engine was built in 1908 by the Erste B runner Maschinenfabrik-Gesellschaft, and licences were taken out by many other manufacturers, including those in Britain and the USA. His engine was developed into the most economical type of reciprocating steam engine.[br]Bibliography1912, The Una-Flow Steam Engine, Munich: R. Oldenbourg (his own account of the una-flow engine).Further ReadingH.W.Dickinson, 1938, A Short History of the Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press; R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (both discuss Stumpf's engine).H.J.Braun, "The National Association of German-American Technologists and technology transfer between Germany and the United States, 1844–1930", History of Technology 8 (provides details of Stumpf's earlier work).RLH -
128 Taylor, Frederick Winslow
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 20 March 1856 Germantown, Pennsylvania, USAd. 21 March 1915 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA[br]American mechanical engineer and pioneer of scientific management.[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]Principal Honours and DistinctionsParis Exposition Gold Medal 1900. Franklin Institute Elliott Cresson Gold Medal 1900. President, American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1906. Hon. ScD, University of Pennsylvania 1906. Hon. LLD, Hobart College 1912.BibliographyF.W.Taylor was the author of about 100 patents, several papers to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, On the Art of Cutting Metals (1907, New York) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911, New York) and, with S.E.Thompson, 1905 A Treatise on Concrete, New York, and Concrete Costs, 1912, New York.Further ReadingThe standard biography is Frank B.Copley, 1923, Frederick W.Taylor, Father of Scientific Management, New York (reprinted 1969, New York) and there have been numerous commentaries on his work: see, for example, Daniel Nelson, 1980, Frederick W.Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management, Madison, Wis.RTSBiographical history of technology > Taylor, Frederick Winslow
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