mining+and+extraction+technology

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Mining and extraction technology

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Bissell first pursued a career in education, as Professor of Languages at the University of Norwich, Vermont, and then as Superintendent of Schools in New Orleans. After dabbling in journalism, he turned to law and was admitted to the Bar in New York City in 1853. The following year he was deeply impressed by the picture of a derrick on the label on a bottle of brine from Samuel M.Kier's brine well. Bissell saw in it a new possibility of producing petroleum and, with Jonathan G.Elveleth, formed the world's first oil company, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, on 30 December 1854. The Company obtained a sample of oil at Hibbard Farm, Titusville, Pennsylvania, and sent it for examination to Benjamin Silliman Jr, Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. He reported on 16 April 1855 that by simple means nearly all the oil could be converted into useful substances. Bissell acted on this and began drilling near Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. On 27 August 1859 his contractor struck oil at 60 ft (18 m). This date is usually taken as the starting point of the modern oil industry, even though oil had been obtained two years earlier in Europe by drilling near Hannover and at Ploesti in Romania. Bissell returned to New York in 1863 and spent the rest of his life promoting enterprises connected with the oil industry.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Mining and extraction technology

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Leupold was essentially an academic of great learning in the tradition of the Renaissance. He was basically a scientist with a principal interest in the extraction of minerals, and in 1725 was made a Commissioner of Mines. He was also a member of the Academy of Berlin. The nine volumes of his work Theatrum Machinarum are detailed studies of the various disciplines, with existing practices illustrated in woodcuts. These nine volumes (see below, Bibliography) were brought to England by the younger members of the aristocracy returning from their Grand Tour. The large water-wheel created for raising water at Painshill, in Surrey, was a straight copy of the relevant illustration in Wasser- Bau-Kunst (1724). The volume Mühlen-Bau-Kunst is a good reference book on German milling practice, which remains essentially unchanged in existing mills.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mining and extraction technology

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Having been employed in railway construction in Sardinia, Sommeiller was working as an engineer at the University of Turin when, in 1857, he was commissioned to take charge of the French part in the construction of the 13 km (8 mile) tunnel under Mont Cénis between Modane, France, and Bardonècchia, Italy. This was to be the first long-distance tunnel through rock in the Alps driven from two headings with no intervening shafts; it is a landmark in the history of technology thanks to the use of a number of pioneering techniques in its construction.

As steam power was unsuitable because of the difficulties in transmitting power over long distances, Sommeiller developed ideas for the use of compressed-air machinery, first mooted by Daniel Colladon of Geneva in 1855; this also solved the problems of ventilation. He also decided to adapt the principle of his compressed-air ram to supply extra power to locomotives on steep gradients. In 1860 he took out a patent in France for a combined compressor-pump, and in 1861 his first percussion drill, mounted on a carriage, was introduced. Although it was of little use at first, Sommeiller improved his drill through trial and error, including the use of the diamond drill-crowns patented by Georges Auguste Leschot in 1862. The invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel contributed decisively to the speedy completion of the tunnel by the end of 1870, several years ahead of schedule.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology, Ports and shipping

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Williams was articled by his father, Owen Williams of Treffos in Anglesey, to the prominent Flintshire lawyer John Lloyd, whose daughter Catherine he is believed to have married. By 1769 Williams, lessee of the mansion and estate of Llanidan, was an able lawyer with excellent connections in Anglesey. His life changed dramatically when he agreed to act on behalf of the Lewis and Hughes families of Llysdulas, who had begun a lawsuit against Sir Nicholas Bayly of Plas Newydd concerning the ownership and mineral rights of copper mines on the western side of Parys mountain. During a prolonged period of litigation, Williams managed these mines for Margaret Lewis on behalf of Edward Hughes, who was established after a judgement in Chancery in 1776 as one of two legal proprietors, the other being Nicholas Bayly. The latter then decided to lease his portion to the London banker John Dawes, who in 1778 joined Hughes and Thomas Williams when they founded the Parys Mine Company.

As the active partner in this enterprise, Williams began to establish his own smelting and fabricating works in South Wales, Lancashire and Flintshire, where coal was cheap. He soon broke the power of Associated Smelters, a combine holding the Anglesey mine owners to ransom. The low production cost of Anglesey ore gave him a great advantage over the Cornish mines and he secured very profitable contracts for the copper sheathing of naval and other vessels. After several British and French copper-bottomed ships were lost because of corrosion failure of the iron nails and bolts used to secure the sheathing, Williams introduced a process for manufacturing heavily work-hardened copper bolts and spikes which could be substituted directly for iron fixings, avoiding the corrosion difficulty. His new product was adopted by the Admiralty in 1784 and was soon used extensively in British and European dockyards.

In 1785 Williams entered into partnership with Lord Uxbridge, son and heir of Nicholas Bayly, to run the Mona Mine Company at the Eastern end of Parys Mountain. This move ended much enmity and litigation and put Williams in effective control of all Anglesey copper. In the same year, Williams, with Matthew Boulton and John Wilkinson, persuaded the Cornish miners to establish a trade cooperative, the Cornish Metal Company, to market their ores. When this began to fall in 1787, Williams took over its administration, assets and stocks and until 1792 controlled the output and sale of all British copper. He became known as the "Copper King" and the output of his many producers was sold by the Copper Offices he established in London, Liverpool and Birmingham. In 1790 he became Member of Parliament for the borough of Great Marlow, and in 1792 he and Edward Hughes established the Chester and North Wales Bank, which in 1900 was absorbed by the Lloyds group.

After 1792 the output of the Anglesey mines started to decline and Williams began to buy copper from all available sources. The price of copper rose and he was accused of abusing his monopoly. By this time, however, his health had begun to deteriorate and he retreated to Bath.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mining and extraction technology, Ports and shipping

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His mother died when he was 7 years old, a year later he went to college in Gisors and later to the Seminary of Sainte-Nicaise at Rouen. From 1786 to 1792 he followed a career in the French navy as a junior officer. In Rouen he met Sophie Kingdom, daughter of a British Navy contractor, whom he was later to marry. In July 1793 Marc sailed for America from Le Havre. He was to remain there for six years, and became an American citizen, occupying himself as a land surveyor and as an architect. He became Chief Engineer to the City of New York. At General Hamilton's dinner table he learned that the British Navy used over 100,000 ship's blocks every year; this started him thinking how the manufacture of blocks could be mechanized. He roughed out a set of machines to do the job, resigned his post as Chief Engineer and sailed for England in February 1799.

In London he was shortly introduced to Henry Maudslay, to whom he showed the drawings of his proposed machines and with whom he placed an order for their manufacture. The first machines were completed by mid-1803. Altogether Maudslay produced twenty-one machines for preparing the shells, sixteen for preparing the sheaves and eight other machines.

In February 1809 he saw troops at Portsmouth returning from Corunna, the victors, with their lacerated feet bound in rags. He resolved to mechanize the production of boots for the Army and, within a few months, had twenty-four disabled soldiers working the machinery he had invented and installed near his Battersea sawmill. The plant could produce 400 pairs of boots and shoes a day, selling at between 9s. 6d. and 20s. a pair. One day in 1817 at Chatham dockyard he observed a piece of scrap keel timber, showing the ravages wrought by the shipworm, Teredo navalis, which, with its proboscis protected by two jagged concave triangular shells, consumes, digests and finally excretes the ship's timbers as it gnaws its way through them. The excreted material provided material for lining the walls of the tunnel the worm had drilled. Brunel decided to imitate the action of the shipworm on a large scale: the Thames Tunnel was to occupy Marc Brunel for most of the remainder of his life. Boring started in March 1825 and was completed by March 1843. The project lay dormant for long periods, but eventually the 1,200 ft (366 m)-long tunnel was completed. Marc Isambard Brunel died at the age of 80 and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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The son of a "coal viewer", Curr was brought up in the West Durham colliery district. In 1777 he went to the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at Sheffield, where in 1880 he was appointed Superintendent. There coal was conveyed underground in baskets on sledges: Curr replaced the wicker sledges with wheeled corves, i.e. small four-wheeled wooden wagons, running on "rail-roads" with cast-iron rails and hauled from the coal-face to the shaft bottom by horses. The rails employed hitherto had usually consisted of plates of iron, the flange being on the wheels of the wagon. Curr's new design involved flanges on the rails which guided the vehicles, the wheels of which were unflanged and could run on any hard surface. He appears to have left no precise record of the date that he did this, and surviving records have been interpreted as implying various dates between 1776 and 1787. In 1787 John Buddle paid tribute to the efficiency of the rails of Curr's type, which were first used for surface transport by Joseph Butler in 1788 at his iron furnace at Wingerworth near Chesterfield: their use was then promoted widely by Benjamin Outram, and they were adopted in many other English mines. They proved serviceable until the advent of locomotives demanded different rails.

In 1788 Curr also developed a system for drawing a full corve up a mine shaft while lowering an empty one, with guides to separate them. At the surface the corves were automatically emptied by tipplers. Four years later he was awarded a patent for using double ropes for lifting heavier loads. As the weight of the rope itself became a considerable problem with the increasing depth of the shafts, Curr invented the flat hemp rope, patented in 1798, which consisted of several small round ropes stitched together and lapped upon itself in winding. It acted as a counterbalance and led to a reduction in the time and cost of hoisting: at the beginning of a run the loaded rope began to coil upon a small diameter, gradually increasing, while the unloaded rope began to coil off a large diameter, gradually decreasing.

Curr's book The Coal Viewer (1797) is the earliest-known engineering work on railway track and it also contains the most elaborate description of a Newcomen pumping engine, at the highest state of its development. He became an acknowledged expert on construction of Newcomen-type atmospheric engines, and in 1792 he established a foundry to make parts for railways and engines.

Because of the poor financial results of the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at the end of the century, Curr was dismissed in 1801 despite numerous inventions and improvements which he had introduced. After his dismissal, six more of his patents were concerned with rope-making: the one he gained in 1813 referred to the application of flat ropes to horse-gins and perpendicular drum-shafts of steam engines. Curr also introduced the use of inclined planes, where a descending train of full corves pulled up an empty one, and he was one of the pioneers employing fixed steam engines for hauling. He may have resided in France for some time before his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Mining and extraction technology

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He was the older brother of John Gilbert and, trained as a lawyer, he became Land Agent to Earl Gower and Legal Adviser to the Duke of Bridgewater (Francis Egerton). Brindley had carried out work for Gilbert on the Gower estates and the standard of work impressed him. In 1759 he recommended Brindley to his brother at Worsley as a competent engineer who would be valuable in the construction of the new canal. Gilbert became Member of Parliament for Newcastle under Lyme in 1763 and was thus able to sponsor the Trent and Mersey Bill when it came before Parliament. He joined the committee of the Trent and Mersey, representing the interests of both Earl Gower and himself. He was also involved with the East Shropshire mines and canals with his brother. He continued as a Member of Parliament (until 1768 for Newcastle and afterwards for Lichfield) until December 1794.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Educated at Truro Grammar School, he then studied under Dr Avery at Wadebridge to become a doctor of medicine. He settled as a surgeon in Wadebridge, spending his leisure time in building an organ and in the study of chemistry and mechanical science. He married Elizabeth Symons in 1814, and in 1820 moved with his wife to London. He delivered a course of lectures at the Surrey Institution on the elements of chemical science, attended by, amongst others, the young Michael Faraday. While there, Gurney made his first invention, the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. For this he received the Gold Medal of the Society of Arts. He experimented with lime and magnesia for the production of an illuminant for lighthouses with some success. He invented a musical instrument of glasses played like a piano.

In 1823 he started experiments related to steam and locomotion which necessitated taking a partner in to his medical practice, from which he resigned shortly after. His objective was to produce a steam-driven vehicle to run on common roads. His invention of the steam-jet of blast greatly improved the performance of the steam engine. In 1827 he took his steam carriage to Cyfarthfa at the request of Mr Crawshaw, and while there applied his steam-jet to the blast furnaces, greatly improving their performance in the manufacture of iron. Much of the success of George Stephenson's steam engine, the Rocket was due to Gurney's steam blast.

In July 1829 Gurney made a historic trip with his road locomotive. This was from London to Bath and back, which was accomplished at a speed of 18 mph (29 km/h) and was made at the instigation of the Quartermaster-General of the Army. So successful was the carriage that Sir Charles Dance started to run a regular service with it between Gloucester and Cheltenham. This ran for three months without accident, until Parliament introduced prohibitive taxation on all self-propelled vehicles. A House of Commons committee proposed that these should be abolished as inhibiting progress, but this was not done. Sir Goldsworthy petitioned Parliament on the harm being done to him, but nothing was done and the coming of the railways put the matter beyond consideration. He devoted his time to finding other uses for the steam-jet: it was used for extinguishing fires in coal-mines, some of which had been burning for many years; he developed a stove for the production of gas from oil and other fatty substances, intended for lighthouses; he was responsible for the heating and the lighting of both the old and the new Houses of Parliament. His evidence after a colliery explosion resulted in an Act of Parliament requiring all mines to have two shafts. He was knighted in 1863, the same year that he suffered a stroke which incapacitated him. He retired to his house at Reeds, near Bude, where he was looked after by his daughter, Anna.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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The Wylam wagonway passed Newburn, and Hedley, who went to school at Wylam, must have been familiar with this wagonway from childhood. It had been built c.1748 to carry coal from Wylam Colliery to the navigable limit of the Tyne at Lemington. In 1805 Hedley was appointed viewer, or manager, of Wylam Colliery by Christopher Blackett, who had inherited the colliery and wagonway in 1800. Unlike most Tyneside wagonways, the gradient of the Wylam line was insufficient for loaded wagons to run down by gravity and they had to be hauled by horses. Blackett had a locomotive, of the type designed by Richard Trevithick, built at Gateshead as early as 1804 but did not take delivery, probably because his wooden track was not strong enough. In 1808 Blackett and Hedley relaid the wagonway with plate rails of the type promoted by Benjamin Outram, and in 1812, following successful introduction of locomotives at Middleton by John Blenkinsop, Blackett asked Hedley to investigate the feasibility of locomotives at Wylam. The expense of re-laying with rack rails was unwelcome, and Hedley experimented to find out the relationship between the weight of a locomotive and the load it could move relying on its adhesion weight alone. He used first a model test carriage, which survives at the Science Museum, London, and then used a full-sized test carriage laden with weights in varying quantities and propelled by men turning handles. Having apparently satisfied himself on this point, he had a locomotive incorporating the frames and wheels of the test carriage built. The work was done at Wylam by Thomas Waters, who was familiar with the 1804 locomotive, Timothy Hackworth, foreman smith, and Jonathan Forster, enginewright. This locomotive, with cast-iron boiler and single cylinder, was unsatisfactory: Hackworth and Forster then built another locomotive to Hedley's design, with a wrought-iron return-tube boiler, two vertical external cylinders and drive via overhead beams through pinions to the two axles. This locomotive probably came into use in the spring of 1814: it performed well and further examples of the type were built. Their axle loading, however, was too great for the track and from about 1815 each locomotive was mounted on two four-wheeled bogies, the bogie having recently been invented by William Chapman. Hedley eventually left Wylam in 1827 to devote himself to other colliery interests. He supported the construction of the Clarence Railway, opened in 1833, and sent his coal over it in trains hauled by his own locomotives. Two of his Wylam locomotives survive— Puffing Billy at the Science Museum, London, and Wylam Dilly at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh—though how much of these is original and how much dates from the period 1827–32, when the Wylam line was re-laid with edge rails and the locomotives reverted to four wheels (with flanges), is a matter of mild controversy.

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See also: Stephenson, George

SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology, Steam and internal combustion engines

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A don of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Supérieure des Mines in Paris, Rateau joined the French Corps des Mines in 1887. Between 1888 and 1898 he taught applied mechanics and electro technics at the Ecole des Mines in St-Etienne. Trying to apply the results of his research to practise, he became into contact with commercial firms, before he was appointed Professor of Industrial Electricity at the Ecole Supérieure des Mines in Paris in 1902. He held this position until 1910, although he founded the Société Anonyme Rateau in Paris in 1903 which by the time of his death had subsidiaries in most of the industrial centres of Europe. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when the increasing problems of ventilation in coal mines had become evident and in many countries had led to several unsatisfactory mechanical constructions, Rateau concentrated on this problem soon after he began working in St-Etienne. The result of his research was the design of a centrifugal fan in 1887 with which he established the principles of mechanical ventilation on a general basis that led to future developments and helped, together with the ventilator invented by Capell in England, to pave the way for the use of electricity in mine ventilation.

Rateau continued the study of fluid mechanics and the applications of rotating engines, and after he had published widely on this subject he began to construct many steam turbines, centrifugal compressors and centrifugal pumps. The multicellular Rateau turbine of 1901 became the prototype for many others constructors. During the First World War, when he was very active in the French armaments industry, he developed the invention of the automatic supercharger for aircraft engines and later diesel engines.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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After being educated at Sheffield Grammar School, Thompson and his elder brother established Aberdare Iron Works, South Wales, where he gained experience in mine engineering from the coal-and ironstone-mines with which the works were connected. In 1811 he moved to the North of England as Managing Partner in Bewicke's Main Colliery, County Durham, which was replaced in 1814 by a new colliery at nearby Ouston. Coal from this was carried to the Tyne over the Pelew Main Wagonway, which included a 1,992 yd (1,821 m) section where horses had to haul loaded wagons between the top of one cable-worked incline and the foot of the next. Both inclines were worked by stationary steam engines, and by installing a rope with a record length of nearly 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km), in 1821 Thompson arranged for the engine of the upper incline to haul the loaded wagons along the intervening section also. To their rear was attached the rope from the engine of the lower incline, to be used in due course to haul the empties back again.

He subsequently installed this system of "reciprocal working" elsewhere, in particular in 1826 over five miles (8 km) of the Brunton \& Shields Railroad, a colliery line north of the Tyne, where trains were hauled at an average speed of 6 mph (10 km/h) including rope changes. This performance was better than that of contemporary locomotives. The directors of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway, which was then being built, considered installing reciprocal cable haulage on their line, and then decided to stage a competition to establish whether an improved steam locomotive could do better still. This competition became the Rainhill Trials of 1829 and was decisively won by Rocket, which had been built for the purpose.

Thompson meanwhile had become prominent in the promotion of the Newcastle \& Carlisle Railway, which, when it received its Act in 1829, was the longest railway so far authorized in Britain.

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See also: Rastrick, John Urpeth; Stephenson, Robert

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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In 1808 Blenkinsop became agent to J.C.Brandling, MP, owner of Middleton Colliery, from which coal was carried to Leeds over the Middle-ton Waggonway. This had been built by Brandling's ancestor Charles Brandling, who in 1758 obtained an Act of Parliament to establish agreements with owners of land over which the wagon way was to pass. That was the first railway Act of Parliament.

By 1808 horse haulage was becoming uneconomic because the price of fodder had increased due to the Napoleonic wars. Brandling probably saw the locomotive Catch-Me- Who-Can demonstrated by Richard Trevithick. In 1811 Blenkinsop patented drive by cog-wheel and rack rail, the power to be provided preferably by a steam engine. His object was to produce a locomotive able to haul a substantial load, while remaining light enough to minimize damage to rails made from cast iron which, though brittle, was at that date the strongest material from which rails could be made. The wagonway, formerly of wood, was relaid with iron-edge rails; along one side rails cast with rack teeth were laid beside the running surface. Locomotives incorporating Blenkinsop's cog-wheel drive were designed by Matthew Murray and built by Fenton Murray \& Wood. The design was developed from Trevithick's to include two cylinders, for easier starting and smoother running. The first locomotive was given its first public trial on 24 June 1812, when it successfully hauled eight wagons of coal, on to which fifty spectators climbed. Locomotives of this type entered regular service later in the summer and proved able to haul loads of 110 tons; Trevithick's locomotive of 1804 had managed 25 tons.

Blenkinsop-type locomotives were introduced elsewhere in Britain and in Europe, and those upon the Kenton \& Coxlodge Wagonway, near Newcastle upon Tyne, were observed by George Stephenson. The Middleton locomotives remained at work until 1835.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mining and extraction technology

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Greathead came to England in 1859 to complete his education. In 1864 he began a three-year pupillage with the civil engineer Peter W. Barlow, after which he was engaged as an assistant engineer on the extension of the Midland Railway from Bedford to London. In 1869 he was entrusted with the construction of the Tower Subway under the River Thames; this was carried out using a cylindrical wrought-iron shield which was forced forward by six large screws as material was excavated in front of it. This work was completed the same year. In 1870 he set himself up as a consulting engineer, and from 1873 he was Resident Engineer on the Hammersmith and Richmond extensions of the Metropolitan District Railway. He assisted in the preparation of several other railway projects including the Regent's Canal Railway in 1880, the Dagenham Dock and the Metropolitan Outer Circle Railways in 1881, a new line from London to Eastbourne and a number of Irish light railways. He worked on a bill for the City and South London Railway, which was built between 1886 and 1890; here compressed air was used to prevent the inrush of water, a method for tunnelling which was generally adopted from then on. He invented apparatus for the application of water to excavate in front of the shield as well as for injecting cement-grout behind the lining of the tunnel.

He was joint engineer with Sir Douglas Fox for the construction of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, and held the same post with W.R.Galbraith on the Waterloo and City Railway; he was also associated with Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker in the construction of the Central London Railway. He died, aged 52, before the completion of some of these projects.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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Hair is best known for the folio volume A Series of Views of the Collieries in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham, published in 1839. This is a volume of engravings after watercolours by T.H.Hair which show in its forty-two pictures particular collieries and details of the workings. The accompanying text by M.Ross describes the pictures and the activities of the various collieries in considerable detail. One of Hair's most famous paintings is "Hartley Colliery after the Disaster" (1869). T.H.Hair's paintings and his book are important for they give an accurate picture of industrial Northumberland and Durham in the middle of the nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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Ingersoll worked on his father's farm and spent much of his time carrying out all kinds of mechanical experiments until 1839, when he went to Long Island, New York, to work on another farm. Having returned home in 1858, he received several patents for different mechanical devices, but he did not know how to turn his inventive talent into economic profit. His patents were sold to others for money to continue his work and support his family. In 1870, working again on Long Island, he by chance came into contact with New York City's largest contractor, who urged him to design a mechanical rock drill in order to replace hand drills in the rock-excavation business. Within one year Ingersoll built several models and a full-size machine at the machine shop of Henry Clark Sergeant, who contributed several improvements. They secured a joint patent in 1871, which was soon followed by a patent for a rock drill with tappet-valve motion.

Although the Ingersoll Drill Company was established, he again sold the patent rights and went back to Stamford, where he continued his inventive work and gained several more patents for improving the rock drill. However, he never understood how to make a fortune from his patents, and he died almost penniless. His former partner, Sergeant, who had formed his own drill company on the basis of an entirely novel valve motion which led to compressed air being used as a power source, in 1888 established the Ingersoll- Sergeant Drill Company, which in 1905 merged with Rand Drill Company, which had been a competitor, to form the Ingersoll-Rand Company. This merger led to many achievements in manufacturing rock drills and air compressors at a time when there was growing demand for such machinery.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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While attending the drilling of artesian wells in southern France in 1833, Fauvelle noticed that the debris from the borehole was carried out by the ascending water. This observation caused him to conceive the idea that the boring process need not necessarily be interrupted in order to clear the hole with an auger. It took him eleven years to develop his idea and to find financial backing to carry out his project in practice. In 1844, within a period of fifty-four days, he secretly bored an artesian well 219 m (718 ft) deep in Perpignan. One year later he secured his invention with a patent in France, and with another the following year in Spain.

Fauvelle's process involved water being forced by a pressure pump through hollow rods to the bottom of the drill, whence it ascended through the annular space between the rod and the wall of the borehole, thus flushing the mud up to the surface. This method was similar to that of Robert Beart who had secured a patent in Britain but had not put it into practice. Although Fauvelle was not primarily concerned with the rotating action of the drill, his hydraulic boring method and its subsequent developments by his stepson, Alphonse de Basterot, formed an important step towards modern rotary drilling, which began with the work of Anthony F. Lucas near Beaumont, Texas, at the turn of the twentieth century. In the 1870s Albert Fauck, who also contributed important developments to the structure of boring rigs, had combined Fauvelle's hydraulic system with core-boring in the United States.

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See also: Crælius, Per Anton

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Metallurgy

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MacArthur served his apprenticeship in the laboratory of Tennant's Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Company in Glasgow. In 1886 he was appointed Technical Manager of the Tennant-run Cassel Gold Extracting Company. By 1888 he was advocating a treatment scheme in which gold was dissolved from crushed rock by a dilute solution of alkali cyanide and then precipitated onto finely divided zinc. During the next few years, with several assistants, he was extremely active in promoting the new gold-extraction technique in various parts of the world. In 1894 significant sums in royalty payments were received, but by 1897 the patents had been successfully contested; henceforth the Cassel Company concentrated on the production and marketing of the essential sodium cyanide reagent.

MacArthur was Managing Director of the Cassel Company from 1892 to 1897; he resigned as a director in December 1905. In 1907 he created the Antimony Recovery Syndicate, and in 1911 he set up a small plant at Runcorn, Cheshire, to produce radium salts. In 1915 this radium-extraction activity was transferred to Balloch, south of Loch Lomond, where it was used until some years after his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Metallurgy

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Following an extensive education, in 1835 Bell entered the Tyneside chemical and iron business where his father was a partner; for about five years from 1845 he controlled the ironworks. In 1844, he and his two brothers leased an iron blast-furnace at Wylam on Tyne. In 1850, with partners, he started chemical works at Washington, near Gateshead. A few years later, with his two brothers, he set up the Clarence Ironworks on Teesside. In the 1880s, salt extraction and soda-making were added there; at that time the Bell Brothers' enterprises, including collieries, employed 6,000 people.

Lowthian Bell was a pioneer in applying thermochemistry to blast-furnace working. Besides his commercial interests, scientific experimentation and international travel, he found time to take a leading part in the promotion of British technical organizations; upon his death he left evidence of a prodigious level of personal activity.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Gesner qualified as a physician in London in 1827 and developed an interest in geology. Possibly through his friendship with Admiral Thomas Cochrane, later tenth Earl of Dundonald, he began experimenting with asphalt rock from Trinidad; he obtained several patents for the processes he employed to extract an oil from the rock. In 1853 the Asphalt Mining and Kerosene Company was founded to work his patents, which described how to purify the liquid produced by the dry distillation of asphalt, by mixing the liquid first with 5–10 per cent by volume of sulphuric acid to remove tars, and then with freshly calcined lime to remove water. It was then redistilled to produce an inflammable oil. Gesner called it kerosene, from the Greek keros, meaning "wax"; in Britain it came to be known as paraffin. The new oil sold well, especially when accompanied by a cheap lamp with a flat wick and glass chimney. By 1856 Gesner considered his product could replace whale oil as a fuel for lamps; success was short-lived, however, for the oil was overtaken three years later by the drilling of the first American petroleum wells.

1) промышленность, индустрия

2) отрасль промышленности