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121 Ayre, Sir Amos Lowrey
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 23 July 1885 South Shields, Englandd. 13 January 1952 London, England[br]English shipbuilder and pioneer of the inter-war "economy" freighters; Chairman of the Shipbuilding Conference.[br]Amos Ayre grew up on the Tyne with the stimulus of shipbuilding and seafaring around him. After an apprenticeship as a ship draughtsman and distinction in his studies, he held responsible posts in the shipyards of Belfast and later Dublin. His first dramatic move came in 1909 when he accepted the post of Manager of the new Employment Exchange at Govan, then just outside Glasgow. During the First World War he was in charge of fleet coaling operations on the River Forth, and later was promoted Admiralty District Director for shipyard labour in Scotland.Before the conclusion of hostilities, with his brother Wilfrid (later Sir Wilfrid Ayre) he founded the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Fife. Setting up on a green field site allowed the brothers to show innovation in design, production and marketing. Such was their success that the new yard was busy throughout the Depression, building standard ships which incorporated low operating costs with simplicity of construction.Through public service culminating in the 1929 Safety of Life at Sea Conference, Amos Ayre became recognized not only as an eminent naval architect, but also as a skilled negotiator. In 1936 he was invited to become Chairman of the Shipbuilding Conference and thereby virtual leader of the industry. As war approached he planned with meticulous care the rearrangement of national shipbuilding capacity, enabling Britain to produce standard hulls ranging from the legendary TID tugs to the standard freighters built in Sunderland or Port Glasgow. In 1939 he became Director of Merchant Shipbuilding, a position he held until 1944, when with typical foresight he asked to be released to plan for shipbuilding's return to normality.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1937. KBE 1943. Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.Bibliography1919, "The theory and design of British shipbuilding", The Syren and Shipping, London.Further ReadingWilfrid Ayre, 1968, A Shipbuilders Yesterdays, Fife (published privately). James Reid, 1964, James Lithgow, Master of Work, London.Maurice E.Denny, 1955, "The man and his work" (First Amos Ayre Lecture), Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects vol. 97.FMW -
122 Bacon, Francis Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 21 December 1904 Billericay, Englandd. 24 May 1992 Little Shelford, Cambridge, England[br]English mechanical engineer, a pioneer in the modern phase of fuel-cell development.[br]After receiving his education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Bacon served with C.A. Parsons at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1925 to 1940. From 1946 to 1956 he carried out research on Hydrox fuel cells at Cambridge University and was a consultant on fuel-cell design to a number of organizations throughout the rest of his life.Sir William Grove was the first to observe that when oxygen and hydrogen were supplied to platinum electrodes immersed in sulphuric acid a current was produced in an external circuit, but he did not envisage this as a practical source of electrical energy. In the 1930s Bacon started work to develop a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that operated at moderate temperatures and pressures using an alkaline electrolyte. In 1940 he was appointed to a post at King's College, London, and there, with the support of the Admiralty, he started full-time experimental work on fuel cells. His brief was to produce a power source for the propulsion of submarines. The following year he was posted as a temporary experimental officer to the Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment at Fairlie, Ayrshire, and he remained there until the end of the Second World War.In 1946 he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, receiving a small amount of money from the Electrical Research Association. Backing came six years later from the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC), the development of the fuel cell being transferred to Marshalls of Cambridge, where Bacon was appointed Consultant.By 1959, after almost twenty years of individual effort, he was able to demonstrate a 6 kW (8 hp) power unit capable of driving a small truck. Bacon appreciated that when substantial power was required over long periods the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell associated with high-pressure gas storage would be more compact than conventional secondary batteries.The development of the fuel-cell system pioneered by Bacon was stimulated by a particular need for a compact, lightweight source of power in the United States space programme. Electro-chemical generators using hydrogen-oxygen cells were chosen to provide the main supplies on the Apollo spacecraft for landing on the surface of the moon in 1969. An added advantage of the cells was that they simultaneously provided water. NRDC was largely responsible for the forma-tion of Energy Conversion Ltd, a company that was set up to exploit Bacon's patents and to manufacture fuel cells, and which was supported by British Ropes Ltd, British Petroleum and Guest, Keen \& Nettlefold Ltd at Basingstoke. Bacon was their full-time consultant. In 1971 Energy Conversion's operation was moved to the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, as Fuel Cells Ltd. Bacon remained with them until he retired in 1973.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOBE 1967. FRS 1972. Royal Society S.G. Brown Medal 1965. Royal Aeronautical Society British Silver Medal 1969.Bibliography27 February 1952, British patent no. 667,298 (hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell). 1963, contribution in W.Mitchell (ed.), Fuel Cells, New York, pp. 130–92.1965, contribution in B.S.Baker (ed.), Hydrocarbon Fuel Cell Technology, New York, pp. 1–7.Further ReadingObituary, 1992, Daily Telegraph (8 June).A.McDougal, 1976, Fuel Cells, London (makes an acknowledgement of Bacon's contribution to the design and application of fuel cells).D.P.Gregory, 1972, Fuel Cells, London (a concise introduction to fuel-cell technology).GW -
123 Barlow, Edward
SUBJECT AREA: Horology[br]baptized 15 December 1636 near Warrington, Cheshire, England d. 1716[br]English priest and mechanician who invented rack striking, repeating mechanisms for clocks and watches and, with others, patented a horizontal escapement for watches.[br]Barlow was the son of Edward Booth, but he adopted the surname of his godfather, the Benedictine monk Ambrose Barlow, as a condition of his will. In 1659 he entered the English College at Lisbon, and after being ordained a priest he was sent to the English mission. There he resided at Parkhall in Lancashire, the seat of Mr Houghton, with whom he later collaborated on the horizontal escapement.At a time when it was difficult to produce a light to examine the dial of a clock or watch at night, a mechanism that would indicate the hours and subdivisions of the hour audibly and at will was highly desirable. The count wheel, which had been used from the earliest times to control the striking of a clock, was unsuitable for this purpose as it struck the hours in sequence. If the mechanism was set off manually to determine the time, the strike would no longer correspond with the indications on the dial. In 1675 Barlow invented rack striking, where the hour struck was determined solely by the position of the hour hand. With this mechanism it was therefore possible to repeat the hour at will, without upsetting the sequence of striking. In 1687 Barlow tried to patent a method of repeating for watches, but it was rejected by James II in favour of a system produced by the watchmaker Daniel Quare and which was simpler to operate. He was successful in obtaining a patent for a horizontal escapement for watches in 1695, in collaboration with William Hough ton and Thomas Tompion. Although this escapement was little used, it can be regarded as the forerunner of the cylinder escapement that George Graham introduced c. 1725.[br]Bibliography1695 (with William Houghton and Thomas Tompion), British patent no. 344 (a horizontal escapement).Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1885, Vol. 1, Oxford, S.V.Barlow.Britten's Old Clocks \& Watches and Their Makers, 1982, rev. Cecil Clutton, 9th edn, London, pp. 148, 310, 313 (provides a technical description of rack striking, repeating work and the horizontal escapement).DV -
124 Barlow, Peter
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 13 October 1776 Norwich, Englandd. 1 March 1862 Kent, England[br]English mathematician, physicist and optician.[br]Barlow had little formal academic education, but by his own efforts rectified this deficiency. His contributions to various periodicals ensured that he became recognized as a man of considerable scientific understanding. In 1801, through competitive examination, he became Assistant Mathematics Master at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and some years later was promoted to Professor. He resigned from this post in 1847, but retained full salary in recognition of his many public services.He is remembered for several notable achievements, and for some experiments designed to overcome problems such as the deviation of compasses in iron ships. Here, he proposed the use of small iron plates designed to overcome other attractions: these were used by both the British and Russian navies. Optical experiments commenced around 1827 and in later years he carried out tests to optimize the size and shape of many parts used in the railways that were spreading throughout Britain and elsewhere at that time.In 1814 he published mathematical tables of squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots and reciprocals of all integers from 1 to 10,000. This volume was of great value in ship design and other engineering processes where heavy numerical effort is required; it was reprinted many times, the last being in 1965 when it had been all but superseded by the calculator and the computer. In the preface to the original edition, Barlow wrote, "the only motive which prompted me to engage in this unprofitable task was the utility that I conceived might result from my labour… if I have succeeded in facilitating abstruse arithmetical calculations, then I have obtained the object in view."[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1823; Copley Medal (for discoveries in magnetism) 1825. Honorary Member, Institution of Civil Engineers 1820.Bibliography1811, An Elementary Investigation of the Theory of Numbers.1814, Barlow's Tables (these have continued to be published until recently, one edition being in 1965 (London: Spon); later editions have taken the integers up to 12,500).1817, Essay on the Strength of Timber and Other Materials.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography.FMW -
125 Baudot, Jean-Maurice-Emile
[br]b. 11 September 1845 Magneux, Franced. 28 March 1903 Sceaux, France[br]French engineer who developed the multiplexed telegraph and devised a 5-bit code for data communication and control.[br]Baudot had no formal education beyond his local primary school and began his working life as a farmer, as was his father. However, in September 1869 he joined the French telegraph service and was soon sent on a course on the recently developed Hughes printing telegraph. After service in the Franco-Prussian war as a lieutenant with the military telegraph, he returned to his civilian duties in Paris in 1872. He was there encouraged to develop (in his own time!) a multiple Hughes system for time-multiplexing of several telegraph messages. By using synchronized clockwork-driven rotating switches at the transmitter and receiver he was able to transmit five messages simultaneously; the system was officially adopted by the French Post \& Telegraph Administration five years later. In 1874 he patented the idea of a 5-bit (i.e. 32-permutation) code, with equal on and off intervals, for telegraph transmission of the Roman alphabet and punctuation signs and for control of the typewriter-like teleprinter used to display the message. This code, known as the Baudot code, was found to be more economical than the existing Morse code and was widely adopted for national and international telegraphy in the twentieth century. In the 1970s it was superseded by 7—and 8-bit codes.Further development of his ideas on multiplexing led in 1894 to methods suitable for high-speed telegraphy. To commemorate his contribution to efficient telegraphy, the unit of signalling speed (i.e. the number of elements transmitted per second) is known as the baud.[br]Bibliography17 June 1874, "Système de télégraphie rapide" (Baudot's first patent).Further Reading1965, From Semaphore to Satellite, Geneva: International Telecommunications Union.P.Lajarrige, 1982, "Chroniques téléphoniques et télégraphiques", Collection historique des télécommunications.KFBiographical history of technology > Baudot, Jean-Maurice-Emile
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126 Bell, Sir Isaac Lowthian
[br]b. 15 February 1816 Newcastle upon Tyne, Englandd. 20 December 1904 Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire, England[br]English ironworks proprietor, chemical manufacturer and railway director, widely renowned for his scientific pronouncements.[br]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.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCreated baronet 1885. FRS 1875. Légion d'honneur 1878. MP, Hartlepool, 1875–80. President: British Iron Trade Association; Iron and Steel Institute; Institution of Mechanical Engineers; North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers; Institution of Mining Engineers; Society of the Chemical Industry. Iron and Steel Institute Bessemer Gold Medal 1874 (the first recipient). Society of Arts Albert Medal 1895.BibliographyThe first of several books, Bell's Chemical Phenomena of Iron Smelting… (1872), was soon translated into German, French and Swedish. He was the author of more than forty technical articles.Further Reading1900–1910, Dictionary of National Biography.C.Wilson, 1984, article in Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol. I, ed. J.Jeremy, Butterworth (a more discursive account).D.Burn, 1940, The Economic History of Steelmaking, 1867–1939: A Study in Competition, Cambridge (2nd edn 1961).JKABiographical history of technology > Bell, Sir Isaac Lowthian
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127 Braun, Wernher Manfred von
[br]b. 23 March 1912 Wirsitz, Germanyd. 16 June 1977 Alexandria, Virginia, USA[br]German pioneer in rocket development.[br]Von Braun's mother was an amateur astronomer who introduced him to the futuristic books of Jules Verne and H.G.Wells and gave him an astronomical telescope. He was a rather slack and undisciplined schoolboy until he came across Herman Oberth's book By Rocket to Interplanetary Space. He discovered that he required a good deal of mathematics to follow this exhilarating subject and immediately became an enthusiastic student.The Head of the Ballistics and Armaments branch of the German Army, Professor Karl Becker, had asked the engineer Walter Dornberger to develop a solid-fuel rocket system for short-range attack, and one using liquid-fuel rockets to carry bigger loads of explosives beyond the range of any known gun. Von Braun joined the Verein für Raumschiffsfahrt (the German Space Society) as a young man and soon became a leading member. He was asked by Rudolf Nebel, VfR's chief, to persuade the army of the value of rockets as weapons. Von Braun wisely avoided all mention of the possibility of space flight and some financial backing was assured. Dornberger in 1932 built a small test stand for liquid-fuel rockets and von Braun built a small rocket to test it; the success of this trial won over Dornberger to space rocketry.Initially research was carried out at Kummersdorf, a suburb of Berlin, but it was decided that this was not a suitable site. Von Braun recalled holidays as a boy at a resort on the Baltic, Peenemünde, which was ideally suited to rocket testing. Work started there but was not completed until August 1939, when the group of eighty engineers and scientists moved in. A great fillip to rocket research was received when Hitler was shown a film and was persuaded of the efficacy of rockets as weapons of war. A factory was set up in excavated tunnels at Mittelwerk in the Harz mountains. Around 6,000 "vengeance" weapons were built, some 3,000 of which were fired on targets in Britain and 2,000 of which were still in storage at the end of the Second World War.Peenemünde was taken by the Russians on 5 May 1945, but by then von Braun was lodging with many of his colleagues at an inn, Haus Ingeburg, near Oberjoch. They gave themselves up to the Americans, and von Braun presented a "prospectus" to the Americans, pointing out how useful the German rocket team could be. In "Operation Paperclip" some 100 of the team were moved to the United States, together with tons of drawings and a number of rocket missiles. Von Braun worked from 1946 at the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, and in 1950 moved to Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. In 1953 he produced the Redstone missile, in effect a V2 adapted to carry a nuclear warhead a distance of 320 km (199 miles). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was formed in 1958 and recruited von Braun and his team. He was responsible for the design of the Redstone launch vehicles which launched the first US satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958, and the Mercury capsules of the US manned spaceflight programme which carried Alan Shepard briefly into space in 1961 and John Glenn into earth orbit in 1962. He was also responsible for the Saturn series of large, staged launch vehicles, which culminated in the Saturn V rocket which launched the Apollo missions taking US astronauts for the first human landing on the moon in 1969. Von Braun announced his resignation from NASA in 1972 and died five years later.[br]Bibliography1981, with F.L.Ordway, History of Rocketry and Space TravelFurther ReadingP.Marsh, 1985, The Space Business, Penguin. J.Trux, 1985, The Space Race, New English Library. T.Osman, 1983, Space History, Michael Joseph.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Braun, Wernher Manfred von
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128 Bulleid, Oliver Vaughan Snell
[br]b. 19 September 1882 Invercargill, New Zealandd. 25 April 1970 Malta[br]New Zealand (naturalized British) locomotive engineer noted for original experimental work in the 1940s and 1950s.[br]Bulleid's father died in 1889 and mother and son returned to the UK from New Zealand; Bulleid himself became a premium apprentice under H.A. Ivatt at Doncaster Works, Great Northern Railway (GNR). After working in France and for the Board of Trade, Bulleid returned to the GNR in 1912 as Personal Assistant to Chief Mechanical Engineer H.N. Gresley. After a break for war service, he returned as Assistant to Gresley on the latter's appointment as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London \& North Eastern Railway in 1923. He was closely associated with Gresley during the late 1920s and early 1930s.In 1937 Bulleid was appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern Railway (SR). Concentration of resources on electrification had left the Southern short of up-to-date steam locomotives, which Bulleid proceeded to provide. His first design, the "Merchant Navy" class 4–6– 2, appeared in 1941 with chain-driven valve gear enclosed in an oil-bath, and other novel features. A powerful "austerity" 0−6−0 appeared in 1942, shorn of all inessentials to meet wartime conditions, and a mixed-traffic 4−6−2 in 1945. All were largely successful.Under Bulleid's supervision, three large, mixed-traffic, electric locomotives were built for the Southern's 660 volt DC system and incorporated flywheel-driven generators to overcome the problem of interruptions in the live rail. Three main-line diesel-electric locomotives were completed after nationalization of the SR in 1948. All were carried on bogies, as was Bulleid's last steam locomotive design for the SR, the "Leader" class 0−6−6−0 originally intended to meet a requirement for a large, passenger tank locomotive. The first was completed after nationalization of the SR, but the project never went beyond trials. Marginally more successful was a double-deck, electric, suburban, multiple-unit train completed in 1949, with alternate high and low compartments to increase train capacity but not length. The main disadvantage was the slow entry and exit by passengers, and the type was not perpetuated, although the prototype train ran in service until 1971.In 1951 Bulleid moved to Coras Iompair Éireann, the Irish national transport undertaking, as Chief Mechanical Engineer. There he initiated a large-scale plan for dieselization of the railway system in 1953, the first such plan in the British Isles. Simultaneously he developed, with limited success, a steam locomotive intended to burn peat briquettes: to burn peat, the only native fuel, had been a long-unfulfilled ambition of railway engineers in Ireland. Bulleid retired in 1958.[br]BibliographyBulleid took out six patents between 1941 and 1956, covering inter alia valve gear, boilers, brake apparatus and wagon underframes.Further ReadingH.A.V.Bulleid, 1977, Bulleid of the Southern, Shepperton: Ian Allan (a good biography written by the subject's son).C.Fryer, 1990, Experiments with Steam, Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens (provides details of the austerity 0–6–0, the "Leader" locomotive and the peat-burning locomotive: see Chs 19, 20 and 21 respectively).PJGRBiographical history of technology > Bulleid, Oliver Vaughan Snell
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