military+version

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Major von Parseval and his colleague Captain von Sigsfeld were serving in the German army during the 1890s when improved military observation from the air was being pursued. Tethered observation balloons, raised and lowered by a winch, had been used since 1794, but in strong winds a spherical balloon became very unstable. Manned kites were being developed by "Colonel" S.F. Cody, in Britain, and others, but kites were a problem if the wind dropped. A very successful compromise was achieved in 1897 by von Parseval and von Sigsfeld, who developed a kite-balloon, the Drachen ("Dragon"), which was elongated like an airship and fitted with large inflated fins. It was attached to its tethering cable in such a way that it flew with a positive incidence (nose up) to the wind, thus producing some lift—like a kite. The combination of these factors made the kite-balloon very stable. Other countries followed suit and a version designed by the Frenchman Albert Caquot was widely used during the First World War for observing the results of artillery fire. Caquot balloons were also used around London as a barrage to obstruct enemy aircraft, and "barrage balloons" were widely used during the Second World War. After working at a government balloon factory in Berlin where non-rigid airships were built, von Parseval designed his own non-rigid airship. The Parseval I which flew in 1906 was small, but larger and faster non-rigids followed. These were built by Luftfahrzeug-Gesellschaft m.b.H. of Berlin founded in 1908 to build and operate Parseval airships. The British Admiralty ordered three Parseval airships, two to be built by Vickers of Barrow (who had built the rigid airship R 1 Mayfly in 1911), and one to be built in Berlin. This one was flown from Berlin to Farnborough in 1913 and joined the Vickers-built Parseval in the Naval Air Service. During the First World War, Parseval airships had the unique distinction of serving on both sides. Three small Parseval airships were built between 1929 and 1932 for use in advertising.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Pliny was well educated in Rome, and for ten years or so followed a military career with which he was able to combine literary work, writing especially on historical subjects. He completed his duties c. 57 AD and concentrated on writing until he resumed his official career in 69 AD with administrative duties. During this last phase he began work on his only extant work, the thirty-seven "books" of his Historia Naturalis (Natural History), each dealing with a broad subject such as astronomy, geography, mineralogy, etc. His last post was the command of the fleet based at Misenum, which came to an end when he sailed too near Vesuvius during the eruption that engulfed Pompeii and he was overcome by the fumes.

Pliny developed an insatiable curiosity about the natural world. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans made few original contributions to scientific thought and observation, but some made careful compilations of the learning and observations of Greek scholars. The most notable and influential of these was the Historia Naturalis. To the ideas about the natural world gleaned from earlier Greek authors, he added information about natural history, mineral resources, crafts and some technological processes, such as the extraction of metals from their ores, reported to him from the corners of the Empire. He added a few observations of his own, noted during travels on his official duties. Not all the reports were reliable, and the work often presents a tangled web of fact and fable. Gibbon described it as an immense register in which the author has "deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind". Pliny was indefatigable in his relentless note-taking, even dictating to his secretary while dining.

During the Dark Ages and early Middle Ages in Western Europe, Pliny's Historia Naturalis was the largest known collection of facts about the natural world and was drawn upon freely by a succession of later writers. Its influence survived the influx into Western Europe, from the twelfth century, of translations of the works of Greek and Arab scholars. After the invention of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century, Pliny was the first work on a scientific subject to be printed, in 1469. Many editions followed and it may still be consulted with profit for its insights into technical knowledge and practice in the ancient world.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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After early education at the Jonkoping elementary school and the Weixo Gymnasium, George Scheutz entered the University of Lund, gaining a degree in law in 1805. Following five years' legal work, he moved to Stockholm in 1811 to work at the Supreme Court and, in 1814, as a military auditor. In 1816, he resigned, bought a printing business and became editor of a succession of industrial and technical journals, during which time he made inventions relating to the press. It was in 1830 that he learned from the Edinburgh Review of Babbage's ideas for a difference engine and started to make one from wood, pasteboard and wire. In 1837 his 15-yearold student son, Edvard Raphael Scheutz, offered to make it in metal, and by 1840 they had a working machine with two five-digit registers, which they increased the following year and then added a printer. Obtaining a government grant in 1851, by 1853 they had a fully working machine, now known as Swedish Difference Engine No. 1, which with an experienced operator could generate 120 lines of tables per hour and was used to calculate the logarithms of the numbers 1 to 10,000 in under eighty hours. This was exhibited in London and then at the Paris Great Exhibition, where it won the Gold Medal. It was subsequently sold to the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, for US$5,000 and is now in a Chicago museum.

In England, the British Registrar-General, wishing to produce new tables for insurance companies, and supported by the Astronomer Royal, arranged for government finance for construction of a second machine (Swedish Difference Engine No. 2). Comprising over 1,000 working parts and weighing 1,000 lb (450 kg), this machine was used to calculate over 600 tables. It is now in the Science Museum.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Son of a successful mining engineer, Sopwith did not shine at school and, having been turned down by the Royal Navy as a result, attended an engineering college. His first interest was motor cars and, while still in his teens, he set up a business in London with a friend in order to sell them; he also took part in races and rallies.

Sopwith's interest in aviation came initially through ballooning, and in 1906 he purchased his own balloon. Four years later, inspired by the recent flights across the Channel to France and after a joy-ride at Brooklands, he bought an Avis monoplane, followed by a larger biplane, and taught himself to fly. He was awarded the Royal Aero Society's Aviator Certificate No. 31 on 21 November 1910, and he quickly distinguished himself in flying competitions on both sides of the Atlantic and started his own flying school. In his races he was ably supported by his friend Fred Sigrist, a former motor engineer. Among the people Sopwith taught to fly were an Australian, Harry Hawker, and Major Hugh Trenchard, who later became the "father" of the RAF.

In 1912, depressed by the poor quality of the aircraft on trial for the British Army, Sopwith, in conjunction with Hawker and Sigrist, bought a skating rink in Kingston-upon-Thames and, assisted by Fred Sigrist, started to design and build his first aircraft, the Sopwith Hybrid. He sold this to the Royal Navy in 1913, and the following year his aviation manufacturing company became the Sopwith Aviation Company Ltd. That year a seaplane version of his Sopwith Tabloid won the Schneider Trophy in the second running of this speed competition. During 1914–18, Sopwith concentrated on producing fighters (or "scouts" as they were then called), with the Pup, the Camel, the 1½ Strutter, the Snipe and the Sopwith Triplane proving among the best in the war. He also pioneered several ideas to make flying easier for the pilot, and in 1915 he patented his adjustable tailplane and his 1 ½ Strutter was the first aircraft to be fitted with air brakes. During the four years of the First World War, Sopwith Aviation designed thirty-two different aircraft types and produced over 16,000 aircraft.

The end of the First World War brought recession to the aircraft industry and in 1920 Sopwith, like many others, put his company into receivership; none the less, he immediately launched a new, smaller company with Hawker, Sigrist and V.W.Eyre, which they called the H.G. Hawker Engineering Company Ltd to avoid any confusion with the former company. He began by producing cars and motor cycles under licence, but was determined to resume aircraft production. He suffered an early blow with the death of Hawker in an air crash in 1921, but soon began supplying aircraft to the Royal Air Force again. In this he was much helped by taking on a new designer, Sydney Camm, in 1923, and during the next decade they produced a number of military aircraft types, of which the Hart light bomber and the Fury fighter, the first to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h), were the best known. In the mid-1930s Sopwith began to build a large aviation empire, acquiring first the Gloster Aircraft Company and then, in quick succession, Armstrong-Whitworth, Armstrong-Siddeley Motors Ltd and its aero-engine counterpart, and A.V.Roe, which produced Avro aircraft. Under the umbrella of the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company (set up in 1935) these companies produced a series of outstanding aircraft, ranging from the Hawker Hurricane, through the Avro Lancaster to the Gloster Meteor, Britain's first in-service jet aircraft, and the Hawker Typhoon, Tempest and Hunter. When Sopwith retired as Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group in 1963 at the age of 75, a prototype jump-jet (the P-1127) was being tested, later to become the Harrier, a for cry from the fragile biplanes of 1910.

Sopwith also had a passion for yachting and came close to wresting the America's Cup from the USA in 1934 when sailing his yacht Endeavour, which incorporated a number of features years ahead of their time; his greatest regret was that he failed in his attempts to win this famous yachting trophy for Britain. After his retirement as Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group, he remained on the Board until 1978. The British aviation industry had been nationalized in April 1977, and Hawker Siddeley's aircraft interests merged with the British Aircraft Corporation to become British Aerospace (BAe). Nevertheless, by then the Group had built up a wide range of companies in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering, and its board conferred on Sopwith the title Founder and Life President.

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CM / JDS

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Electricity, Land transport, Ports and shipping

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Sperry was born into a farming community in Cortland County. He received a rudimentary education at the local school, but an interest in mechanical devices was aroused by the agricultural machinery he saw around him. His attendance at the Normal School in Cortland provided a useful theoretical background to his practical knowledge. He emerged in 1880 with an urge to pursue invention in electrical engineering, then a new and growing branch of technology. Within two years he was able to patent and demonstrate his arc lighting system, complete with its own generator, incorporating new methods of regulating its output. The Sperry Electric Light, Motor and Car Brake Company was set up to make and market the system, but it was difficult to keep pace with electric-lighting developments such as the incandescent lamp and alternating current, and the company ceased in 1887 and was replaced by the Sperry Electric Company, which itself was taken over by the General Electric Company.

In the 1890s Sperry made useful inventions in electric mining machinery and then in electric street-or tramcars, with his patent electric brake and control system. The patents for the brake were important enough to be bought by General Electric. From 1894 to 1900 he was manufacturing electric motor cars of his own design, and in 1900 he set up a laboratory in Washington, where he pursued various electrochemical processes.

In 1896 he began to work on the practical application of the principle of the gyroscope, where Sperry achieved his most notable inventions, the first of which was the gyrostabilizer for ships. The relatively narrow-hulled steamship rolled badly in heavy seas and in 1904 Ernst Otto Schuck, a German naval engineer, and Louis Brennan in England began experiments to correct this; their work stimulated Sperry to develop his own device. In 1908 he patented the active gyrostabilizer, which acted to correct a ship's roll as soon as it started. Three years later the US Navy agreed to try it on a destroyer, the USS Worden. The successful trials of the following year led to widespread adoption. Meanwhile, in 1910, Sperry set up the Sperry Gyroscope Company to extend the application to commercial shipping.

At the same time, Sperry was working to apply the gyroscope principle to the ship's compass. The magnetic compass had worked well in wooden ships, but iron hulls and electrical machinery confused it. The great powers' race to build up their navies instigated an urgent search for a solution. In Germany, Anschütz-Kämpfe (1872–1931) in 1903 tested a form of gyrocompass and was encouraged by the authorities to demonstrate the device on the German flagship, the Deutschland. Its success led Sperry to develop his own version: fortunately for him, the US Navy preferred a home-grown product to a German one and gave Sperry all the backing he needed. A successful trial on a destroyer led to widespread acceptance in the US Navy, and Sperry was soon receiving orders from the British Admiralty and the Russian Navy.

In the rapidly developing field of aeronautics, automatic stabilization was becoming an urgent need. In 1912 Sperry began work on a gyrostabilizer for aircraft. Two years later he was able to stage a spectacular demonstration of such a device at an air show near Paris.

Sperry continued research, development and promotion in military and aviation technology almost to the last. In 1926 he sold the Sperry Gyroscope Company to enable him to devote more time to invention.

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Совет гражданской авиации арабских государств

гражданский аэродром

гражданская авиация

навигационное управление гражданской авиации

Комитет гражданской авиации

воздушное судно гражданской авиации

полеты гражданских воздушных судов

руководство по полетам воздушных судов гражданской авиации

гражданский воздушный транспорт

гражданская авиация

полномочный орган гражданской авиации

советник по вопросам гражданской авиации

применение гражданской авиации

Управление гражданской авиации

управление гражданской авиации

рейс с гражданского воздушного судна

пассажирский вариант

конвенция по вопросам деятельности международной гражданской авиации

Европейская конференция по вопросам гражданской авиации

конец светлого времени суток

перехват гражданского воздушного судна

международная гражданская авиация

Управление внешних сношений Министерства гражданской авиации

аэродром совместного базирования гражданского и военных воздушных судов

Латиноамериканская комиссия гражданской авиации

начало светлого времени суток