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101 Hackworth, Timothy
[br]b. 22 December 1786 Wylam, Northumberland, Englandd. 7 July 1850 Shildon, Co. Durham, England[br]English engineer, pioneer in construction and operation of steam locomotives.[br]Hackworth trained under his father, who was Foreman Blacksmith at Wylam colliery, and succeeded him upon his death in 1807. Between 1812 and 1816 he helped to build and maintain the Wylam locomotives under William Hedley. He then moved to Walbottle colliery, but during 1824 he took temporary charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s works while George Stephenson was surveying the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway and Robert Stephenson was away in South America. In May 1825 Hackworth was appointed to the Stockton \& Darlington Railway (S \& DR) "to have superintendence of the permanent (i.e. stationary) and locomotive engines". He established the workshops at Shildon, and when the railway opened in September he became in effect the first locomotive superintendent of a railway company. From experience of operating Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s locomotives he was able to make many detail improvements, notably spring safety valves. In 1827 he designed and built the locomotive Royal George, with six wheels coupled and inverted vertical cylinders driving the rear pair. From the pistons, drive was direct by way of piston rods and connecting rods to crankpins on the wheels, the first instance of the use of this layout on a locomotive. Royal George was the most powerful and satisfactory locomotive on the S \& DR to date and was the forerunner of Hackworth's type of heavy-goods locomotive, which was built until the mid-1840s.For the Rainhill Trials in 1829 Hackworth built and entered the locomotive Sans Pareil, which was subsequently used on the Bol ton \& Leigh Railway and is now in the Science Museum, London. A working replica was built for the 150th anniversary of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1980. In 1833 a further agreement with the S \& DR enabled Hackworth, while remaining in charge of their locomotives, to set up a locomotive and engineering works on his own account. Its products eventually included locomotives for the London, Brighton \& South Coast and York, Newcastle \& Berwick Railways, as well as some of the earliest locomotives exported to Russia and Canada. Hackworth's son, John Wesley Hackworth, was also an engineer and invented the radial valve gear for steam engines that bears his name.[br]Further ReadingR.Young, 1975, Timothy Hackworth and the Locomotive, Shildon: Shildon "Stockton \& Darlington Railway" Silver Jubilee Committee; orig. pub. 1923, London (tends to emphasize Hackworth's achievements at the expense of other contemporary engineers).L.T.C.Rolt, 1960, George and Robert Stephenson, London: Longmans (describes much of Hackworth's work and is more objective).E.L.Ahrons, 1927, The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825–1925, London: The Locomotive Publishing Co.PJGR -
102 Locke, Joseph
[br]b. 9 August 1805 Attercliffe, Yorkshire, Englandd. 18 September 1860 Moffat, Scotland[br]English civil engineer who built many important early main-line railways.[br]Joseph Locke was the son of a colliery viewer who had known George Stephenson in Northumberland before moving to Yorkshire: Locke himself became a pupil of Stephenson in 1823. He worked with Robert Stephenson at Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s locomotive works and surveyed railways, including the Leeds \& Selby and the Canterbury \& Whitstable, for George Stephenson.When George Stephenson was appointed Chief Engineer for construction of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1826, the first resident engineer whom he appointed to work under him was Locke, who took a prominent part in promoting traction by locomotives rather than by fixed engines with cable haulage. The pupil eventually excelled the master and in 1835 Locke was appointed in place of Stephenson as Chief Engineer for construction of the Grand Junction Railway. He introduced double-headed rails carried in chairs on wooden sleepers, the prototype of the bullhead track that became standard on British railways for more than a century. By preparing the most detailed specifications, Locke was able to estimate the cost of the railway much more accurately than was usual at that time, and it was built at a cost close to the estimate; this made his name. He became Engineer to the London \& Southampton Railway and completed the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyme \& Manchester Railway, including the 3-mile (3.8 km) Woodhead Tunnel, which had been started by Charles Vignoles. He was subsequently responsible for many British main lines, including those of the companies that extended the West Coast Route northwards from Preston to Scotland. He was also Engineer to important early main lines in France, notably that from Paris to Rouen and its extension to Le Havre, and in Spain and Holland. In 1847 Locke was elected MP for Honiton.Locke appreciated early in his career that steam locomotives able to operate over gradients steeper than at first thought practicable would be developed. Overall his monument is not great individual works of engineering, such as the famous bridges of his close contemporaries Robert Stephenson and I.K. Brunel, but a series of lines built economically but soundly through rugged country without such works; for example, the line over Shap, Cumbria.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOfficier de la Légion d'honneur, France. FRS. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1858–9.Further ReadingObituary, 1861, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 20. L.T.C.Rolt, 1962, Great Engineers, London: G. Bell \& Sons, ch. 6.Industrial Heritage, 1991, Vol. 9(2):9.See also: Brassey, ThomasPJGR -
103 Meikle, Andrew
SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology[br]b. 1719 Scotlandd. 27 November 1811[br]Scottish millwright and inventor of the threshing machine.[br]The son of the millwright James Meikle, who is credited with the introduction of the winnowing machine into Britain, Andrew Meikle followed in his father's footsteps. His inventive inclinations were first turned to developing his father's idea, and together with his own son George he built and patented a double-fan winnowing machine.However, in the history of agricultural development Andrew Meikle is most famous for his invention of the threshing machine, patented in 1784. He had been presented with a model of a threshing mill designed by a Mr Ilderton of Northumberland, but after failing to make a full-scale machine work, he developed the concept further. He eventually built the first working threshing machine for a farmer called Stein at Kilbagio. The patent revolutionized farming practice because it displaced the back-breaking and soul-destroying labour of flailing the grain from the straw. The invention was of great value in Scotland and in northern England when the land was becoming underpopulated as a result of heavy industrialization, but it was bitterly opposed in the south of England until well into the nineteenth century. Although the introduction of the threshing machine led to the "Captain Swing" riots of the 1830s, in opposition to it, it shortly became universal.Meikle's provisional patent in 1785 was a natural progression of earlier attempts by other millwrights to produce such a machine. The published patent is based on power provided by a horse engine, but these threshing machines were often driven by water-wheels or even by windmills. The corn stalks were introduced into the machine where they were fed between cast-iron rollers moving quite fast against each other to beat the grain out of the ears. The power source, whether animal, water or wind, had to cause the rollers to rotate at high speed to knock the grain out of the ears. While Meikle's machine was at first designed as a fixed barn machine powered by a water-wheel or by a horse wheel, later threshing machines became mobile and were part of the rig of an agricultural contractor.In 1788 Meikle was awarded a patent for the invention of shuttered sails for windmills. This patent is part of the general description of the threshing machine, and whilst it was a practical application, it was superseded by the work of Thomas Cubitt.At the turn of the century Meikle became a manufacturer of threshing machines, building appliances that combined the threshing and winnowing principles as well as the reciprocating "straw walkers" found in subsequent threshing machines and in conventional combine harvesters to the present day. However, he made little financial gain from his invention, and a public subscription organized by the President of the Board of Agriculture, Sir John Sinclair, raised £1,500 to support him towards the end of his life.[br]Bibliography1831, Threshing Machines in The Dictionary of Mechanical Sciences, Arts and Manufactures, London: Jamieson, Alexander.7 March 1768, British patent no. 896, "Machine for dressing wheat, malt and other grain and for cleaning them from sand, dust and smut".9 April 1788, British patent no. 1,645, "Machine which may be worked by cattle, wind, water or other power for the purpose of separating corn from the straw".Further ReadingJ.E.Handley, 1953, Scottish Farming in the 18th Century, and 1963, The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland (both place Meikle and his invention within their context).G.Quick and W.Buchele, 1978, The Grain Harvesters, American Society of Agricultural Engineers (gives an account of the early development of harvesting and cereal treatment machinery).KM / AP -
104 Pickard, James
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]fl. c. 1780 Birmingham, England[br]English patentee of the application of the crank to steam engines.[br]James Pickard, the Birmingham button maker, also owned a flour mill at Snow Hill, in 1780, where Matthew Wasborough installed one of his rotative engines with ratchet gear and a flywheel. In August 1780, Pickard obtained a patent (no. 1263) for an application to make a rotative engine with a crank as well as gearwheels, one of which was weighted to help return the piston in the atmospheric cylinder during the dead stroke and overcome the dead centres of the crank. Wasborough's flywheel made the counterweight unnecessary, and engines were built with this and Pickard's crank. Several Birmingham business people seem to have been involved in the patent, and William Chapman of Newcastle upon Tyne was assigned the sole rights of erecting engines on the Wasborough-Pickard system in the counties of Northumberland, Durham and York. Wasborough was building engines in the south until his death the following year. The patentees tried to bargain with Boulton \& Watt to exchange the use of the crank for that of the separate condenser, but Boulton \& Watt would not agree, probably because James Watt claimed that one of his workers had stolen the idea of the crank and divulged it to Pickard. To avoid infringing Pickard's patent, Watt patented his sun-and-planet motion for his rotative engines.[br]BibliographyAugust 1780, British patent no. 1,263 (rotative engine with crank and gearwheels).Further ReadingJ.Farey, 1827, A Treatise on the Steam Engine, Historical, Practical and Descriptive, reprinted 1971, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles (contains an account of Pickard's crank). R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (provides an account of Pickard's crank).R.A.Buchanan, 1978–9, "Steam and the engineering community in the eighteenth century", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 50 ("Thomas Newcomen. A commemorative symposium") (provides details about the development of his engine).RLH -
105 Smeaton, John
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 8 June 1724 Austhorpe, near Leeds, Yorkshire, Englandd. 28 October 1792 Austhorpe, near Leeds, Yorkshire, England[br]English mechanical and civil engineer.[br]As a boy, Smeaton showed mechanical ability, making for himself a number of tools and models. This practical skill was backed by a sound education, probably at Leeds Grammar School. At the age of 16 he entered his father's office; he seemed set to follow his father's profession in the law. In 1742 he went to London to continue his legal studies, but he preferred instead, with his father's reluctant permission, to set up as a scientific instrument maker and dealer and opened a shop of his own in 1748. About this time he began attending meetings of the Royal Society and presented several papers on instruments and mechanical subjects, being elected a Fellow in 1753. His interests were turning towards engineering but were informed by scientific principles grounded in careful and accurate observation.In 1755 the second Eddystone lighthouse, on a reef some 14 miles (23 km) off the English coast at Plymouth, was destroyed by fire. The President of the Royal Society was consulted as to a suitable engineer to undertake the task of constructing a new one, and he unhesitatingly suggested Smeaton. Work began in 1756 and was completed in three years to produce the first great wave-swept stone lighthouse. It was constructed of Portland stone blocks, shaped and pegged both together and to the base rock, and bonded by hydraulic cement, scientifically developed by Smeaton. It withstood the storms of the English Channel for over a century, but by 1876 erosion of the rock had weakened the structure and a replacement had to be built. The upper portion of Smeaton's lighthouse was re-erected on a suitable base on Plymouth Hoe, leaving the original base portion on the reef as a memorial to the engineer.The Eddystone lighthouse made Smeaton's reputation and from then on he was constantly in demand as a consultant in all kinds of engineering projects. He carried out a number himself, notably the 38 mile (61 km) long Forth and Clyde canal with thirty-nine locks, begun in 1768 but for financial reasons not completed until 1790. In 1774 he took charge of the Ramsgate Harbour works.On the mechanical side, Smeaton undertook a systematic study of water-and windmills, to determine the design and construction to achieve the greatest power output. This work issued forth as the paper "An experimental enquiry concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills" and exerted a considerable influence on mill design during the early part of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1753 and 1790 Smeaton constructed no fewer than forty-four mills.Meanwhile, in 1756 he had returned to Austhorpe, which continued to be his home base for the rest of his life. In 1767, as a result of the disappointing performance of an engine he had been involved with at New River Head, Islington, London, Smeaton began his important study of the steam-engine. Smeaton was the first to apply scientific principles to the steam-engine and achieved the most notable improvements in its efficiency since its invention by Newcomen, until its radical overhaul by James Watt. To compare the performance of engines quantitatively, he introduced the concept of "duty", i.e. the weight of water that could be raised 1 ft (30 cm) while burning one bushel (84 lb or 38 kg) of coal. The first engine to embody his improvements was erected at Long Benton colliery in Northumberland in 1772, with a duty of 9.45 million pounds, compared to the best figure obtained previously of 7.44 million pounds. One source of heat loss he attributed to inaccurate boring of the cylinder, which he was able to improve through his close association with Carron Ironworks near Falkirk, Scotland.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1753.Bibliography1759, "An experimental enquiry concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.Towards the end of his life, Smeaton intended to write accounts of his many works but only completed A Narrative of the Eddystone Lighthouse, 1791, London.Further ReadingS.Smiles, 1874, Lives of the Engineers: Smeaton and Rennie, London. A.W.Skempton, (ed.), 1981, John Smeaton FRS, London: Thomas Telford. L.T.C.Rolt and J.S.Allen, 1977, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen, 2nd edn, Hartington: Moorland Publishing, esp. pp. 108–18 (gives a good description of his work on the steam-engine).LRD -
106 Stephenson, George
[br]b. 9 June 1781 Wylam, Northumberland, Englandd. 12 August 1848 Tapton House, Chesterfield, England[br]English engineer, "the father of railways".[br]George Stephenson was the son of the fireman of the pumping engine at Wylam colliery, and horses drew wagons of coal along the wooden rails of the Wylam wagonway past the house in which he was born and spent his earliest childhood. While still a child he worked as a cowherd, but soon moved to working at coal pits. At 17 years of age he showed sufficient mechanical talent to be placed in charge of a new pumping engine, and had already achieved a job more responsible than that of his father. Despite his position he was still illiterate, although he subsequently learned to read and write. He was largely self-educated.In 1801 he was appointed Brakesman of the winding engine at Black Callerton pit, with responsibility for lowering the miners safely to their work. Then, about two years later, he became Brakesman of a new winding engine erected by Robert Hawthorn at Willington Quay on the Tyne. Returning collier brigs discharged ballast into wagons and the engine drew the wagons up an inclined plane to the top of "Ballast Hill" for their contents to be tipped; this was one of the earliest applications of steam power to transport, other than experimentally.In 1804 Stephenson moved to West Moor pit, Killingworth, again as Brakesman. In 1811 he demonstrated his mechanical skill by successfully modifying a new and unsatisfactory atmospheric engine, a task that had defeated the efforts of others, to enable it to pump a drowned pit clear of water. The following year he was appointed Enginewright at Killingworth, in charge of the machinery in all the collieries of the "Grand Allies", the prominent coal-owning families of Wortley, Liddell and Bowes, with authorization also to work for others. He built many stationary engines and he closely examined locomotives of John Blenkinsop's type on the Kenton \& Coxlodge wagonway, as well as those of William Hedley at Wylam.It was in 1813 that Sir Thomas Liddell requested George Stephenson to build a steam locomotive for the Killingworth wagonway: Blucher made its first trial run on 25 July 1814 and was based on Blenkinsop's locomotives, although it lacked their rack-and-pinion drive. George Stephenson is credited with building the first locomotive both to run on edge rails and be driven by adhesion, an arrangement that has been the conventional one ever since. Yet Blucher was far from perfect and over the next few years, while other engineers ignored the steam locomotive, Stephenson built a succession of them, each an improvement on the last.During this period many lives were lost in coalmines from explosions of gas ignited by miners' lamps. By observation and experiment (sometimes at great personal risk) Stephenson invented a satisfactory safety lamp, working independently of the noted scientist Sir Humphry Davy who also invented such a lamp around the same time.In 1817 George Stephenson designed his first locomotive for an outside customer, the Kilmarnock \& Troon Railway, and in 1819 he laid out the Hetton Colliery Railway in County Durham, for which his brother Robert was Resident Engineer. This was the first railway to be worked entirely without animal traction: it used inclined planes with stationary engines, self-acting inclined planes powered by gravity, and locomotives.On 19 April 1821 Stephenson was introduced to Edward Pease, one of the main promoters of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway (S \& DR), which by coincidence received its Act of Parliament the same day. George Stephenson carried out a further survey, to improve the proposed line, and in this he was assisted by his 18-year-old son, Robert Stephenson, whom he had ensured received the theoretical education which he himself lacked. It is doubtful whether either could have succeeded without the other; together they were to make the steam railway practicable.At George Stephenson's instance, much of the S \& DR was laid with wrought-iron rails recently developed by John Birkinshaw at Bedlington Ironworks, Morpeth. These were longer than cast-iron rails and were not brittle: they made a track well suited for locomotives. In June 1823 George and Robert Stephenson, with other partners, founded a firm in Newcastle upon Tyne to build locomotives and rolling stock and to do general engineering work: after its Managing Partner, the firm was called Robert Stephenson \& Co.In 1824 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) invited George Stephenson to resurvey their proposed line in order to reduce opposition to it. William James, a wealthy land agent who had become a visionary protagonist of a national railway network and had seen Stephenson's locomotives at Killingworth, had promoted the L \& MR with some merchants of Liverpool and had carried out the first survey; however, he overreached himself in business and, shortly after the invitation to Stephenson, became bankrupt. In his own survey, however, George Stephenson lacked the assistance of his son Robert, who had left for South America, and he delegated much of the detailed work to incompetent assistants. During a devastating Parliamentary examination in the spring of 1825, much of his survey was shown to be seriously inaccurate and the L \& MR's application for an Act of Parliament was refused. The railway's promoters discharged Stephenson and had their line surveyed yet again, by C.B. Vignoles.The Stockton \& Darlington Railway was, however, triumphantly opened in the presence of vast crowds in September 1825, with Stephenson himself driving the locomotive Locomotion, which had been built at Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s Newcastle works. Once the railway was at work, horse-drawn and gravity-powered traffic shared the line with locomotives: in 1828 Stephenson invented the horse dandy, a wagon at the back of a train in which a horse could travel over the gravity-operated stretches, instead of trotting behind.Meanwhile, in May 1826, the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway had successfully obtained its Act of Parliament. Stephenson was appointed Engineer in June, and since he and Vignoles proved incompatible the latter left early in 1827. The railway was built by Stephenson and his staff, using direct labour. A considerable controversy arose c. 1828 over the motive power to be used: the traffic anticipated was too great for horses, but the performance of the reciprocal system of cable haulage developed by Benjamin Thompson appeared in many respects superior to that of contemporary locomotives. The company instituted a prize competition for a better locomotive and the Rainhill Trials were held in October 1829.Robert Stephenson had been working on improved locomotive designs since his return from America in 1827, but it was the L \& MR's Treasurer, Henry Booth, who suggested the multi-tubular boiler to George Stephenson. This was incorporated into a locomotive built by Robert Stephenson for the trials: Rocket was entered by the three men in partnership. The other principal entrants were Novelty, entered by John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, and Sans Pareil, entered by Timothy Hackworth, but only Rocket, driven by George Stephenson, met all the organizers' demands; indeed, it far surpassed them and demonstrated the practicability of the long-distance steam railway. With the opening of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1830, the age of railways began.Stephenson was active in many aspects. He advised on the construction of the Belgian State Railway, of which the Brussels-Malines section, opened in 1835, was the first all-steam railway on the European continent. In England, proposals to link the L \& MR with the Midlands had culminated in an Act of Parliament for the Grand Junction Railway in 1833: this was to run from Warrington, which was already linked to the L \& MR, to Birmingham. George Stephenson had been in charge of the surveys, and for the railway's construction he and J.U. Rastrick were initially Principal Engineers, with Stephenson's former pupil Joseph Locke under them; by 1835 both Stephenson and Rastrick had withdrawn and Locke was Engineer-in-Chief. Stephenson remained much in demand elsewhere: he was particularly associated with the construction of the North Midland Railway (Derby to Leeds) and related lines. He was active in many other places and carried out, for instance, preliminary surveys for the Chester \& Holyhead and Newcastle \& Berwick Railways, which were important links in the lines of communication between London and, respectively, Dublin and Edinburgh.He eventually retired to Tapton House, Chesterfield, overlooking the North Midland. A man who was self-made (with great success) against colossal odds, he was ever reluctant, regrettably, to give others their due credit, although in retirement, immensely wealthy and full of honour, he was still able to mingle with people of all ranks.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on its formation in 1847. Order of Leopold (Belgium) 1835. Stephenson refused both a knighthood and Fellowship of the Royal Society.Bibliography1815, jointly with Ralph Dodd, British patent no. 3,887 (locomotive drive by connecting rods directly to the wheels).1817, jointly with William Losh, British patent no. 4,067 (steam springs for locomotives, and improvements to track).Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1960, George and Robert Stephenson, Longman (the best modern biography; includes a bibliography).S.Smiles, 1874, The Lives of George and Robert Stephenson, rev. edn, London (although sycophantic, this is probably the best nineteenthcentury biography).PJGR -
107 Stephenson, Robert
[br]b. 16 October 1803 Willington Quay, Northumberland, Englandd. 12 October 1859 London, England[br]English engineer who built the locomotive Rocket and constructed many important early trunk railways.[br]Robert Stephenson's father was George Stephenson, who ensured that his son was educated to obtain the theoretical knowledge he lacked himself. In 1821 Robert Stephenson assisted his father in his survey of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway and in 1822 he assisted William James in the first survey of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He then went to Edinburgh University for six months, and the following year Robert Stephenson \& Co. was named after him as Managing Partner when it was formed by himself, his father and others. The firm was to build stationary engines, locomotives and railway rolling stock; in its early years it also built paper-making machinery and did general engineering.In 1824, however, Robert Stephenson accepted, perhaps in reaction to an excess of parental control, an invitation by a group of London speculators called the Colombian Mining Association to lead an expedition to South America to use steam power to reopen gold and silver mines. He subsequently visited North America before returning to England in 1827 to rejoin his father as an equal and again take charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co. There he set about altering the design of steam locomotives to improve both their riding and their steam-generating capacity. Lancashire Witch, completed in July 1828, was the first locomotive mounted on steel springs and had twin furnace tubes through the boiler to produce a large heating surface. Later that year Robert Stephenson \& Co. supplied the Stockton \& Darlington Railway with a wagon, mounted for the first time on springs and with outside bearings. It was to be the prototype of the standard British railway wagon. Between April and September 1829 Robert Stephenson built, not without difficulty, a multi-tubular boiler, as suggested by Henry Booth to George Stephenson, and incorporated it into the locomotive Rocket which the three men entered in the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Rainhill Trials in October. Rocket, was outstandingly successful and demonstrated that the long-distance steam railway was practicable.Robert Stephenson continued to develop the locomotive. Northumbrian, built in 1830, had for the first time, a smokebox at the front of the boiler and also the firebox built integrally with the rear of the boiler. Then in Planet, built later the same year, he adopted a layout for the working parts used earlier by steam road-coach pioneer Goldsworthy Gurney, placing the cylinders, for the first time, in a nearly horizontal position beneath the smokebox, with the connecting rods driving a cranked axle. He had evolved the definitive form for the steam locomotive.Also in 1830, Robert Stephenson surveyed the London \& Birmingham Railway, which was authorized by Act of Parliament in 1833. Stephenson became Engineer for construction of the 112-mile (180 km) railway, probably at that date the greatest task ever undertaken in of civil engineering. In this he was greatly assisted by G.P.Bidder, who as a child prodigy had been known as "The Calculating Boy", and the two men were to be associated in many subsequent projects. On the London \& Birmingham Railway there were long and deep cuttings to be excavated and difficult tunnels to be bored, notoriously at Kilsby. The line was opened in 1838.In 1837 Stephenson provided facilities for W.F. Cooke to make an experimental electrictelegraph installation at London Euston. The directors of the London \& Birmingham Railway company, however, did not accept his recommendation that they should adopt the electric telegraph and it was left to I.K. Brunel to instigate the first permanent installation, alongside the Great Western Railway. After Cooke formed the Electric Telegraph Company, Stephenson became a shareholder and was Chairman during 1857–8.Earlier, in the 1830s, Robert Stephenson assisted his father in advising on railways in Belgium and came to be increasingly in demand as a consultant. In 1840, however, he was almost ruined financially as a result of the collapse of the Stanhope \& Tyne Rail Road; in return for acting as Engineer-in-Chief he had unwisely accepted shares, with unlimited liability, instead of a fee.During the late 1840s Stephenson's greatest achievements were the design and construction of four great bridges, as part of railways for which he was responsible. The High Level Bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle and the Royal Border Bridge over the Tweed at Berwick were the links needed to complete the East Coast Route from London to Scotland. For the Chester \& Holyhead Railway to cross the Menai Strait, a bridge with spans as long-as 460 ft (140 m) was needed: Stephenson designed them as wrought-iron tubes of rectangular cross-section, through which the trains would pass, and eventually joined the spans together into a tube 1,511 ft (460 m) long from shore to shore. Extensive testing was done beforehand by shipbuilder William Fairbairn to prove the method, and as a preliminary it was first used for a 400 ft (122 m) span bridge at Conway.In 1847 Robert Stephenson was elected MP for Whitby, a position he held until his death, and he was one of the exhibition commissioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the early 1850s he was Engineer-in-Chief for the Norwegian Trunk Railway, the first railway in Norway, and he also built the Alexandria \& Cairo Railway, the first railway in Africa. This included two tubular bridges with the railway running on top of the tubes. The railway was extended to Suez in 1858 and for several years provided a link in the route from Britain to India, until superseded by the Suez Canal, which Stephenson had opposed in Parliament. The greatest of all his tubular bridges was the Victoria Bridge across the River St Lawrence at Montreal: after inspecting the site in 1852 he was appointed Engineer-in-Chief for the bridge, which was 1 1/2 miles (2 km) long and was designed in his London offices. Sadly he, like Brunel, died young from self-imposed overwork, before the bridge was completed in 1859.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1849. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1849. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1856. Order of St Olaf (Norway). Order of Leopold (Belgium). Like his father, Robert Stephenson refused a knighthood.Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1960, George and Robert Stephenson, London: Longman (a good modern biography).J.C.Jeaffreson, 1864, The Life of Robert Stephenson, London: Longman (the standard nine-teenth-century biography).M.R.Bailey, 1979, "Robert Stephenson \& Co. 1823–1829", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 50 (provides details of the early products of that company).J.Kieve, 1973, The Electric Telegraph, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.PJGR -
108 Thompson, Benjamin
[br]b. 11 April 1779 Eccleshall, Yorkshire, Englandd. 19 April 1867 Gateshead, England[br]English coal owner and railway engineer, inventor of reciprocal cable haulage.[br]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.[br]Bibliography1821, British patent no. 4602 (reciprocal working).1847, Inventions, Improvements and Practice of Benjamin Thompson, Newcastle upon Tyne: Lambert.Further ReadingW.W.Tomlinson, 1914, The North Eastern Railway, Newcastle upon Tyne: Andrew Reid (includes a description of Thompson and his work).R.Welford, 1895, Men of Mark twixt Tyne and Tweed, Vol. 3, 506–6.C.R.Warn, 1976, Waggonways and Early Railways of Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne: Frank Graham.——c. 1981, Rails between Wear \& Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne: Frank Graham.PJGR -
109 much of a muchness
пoчти (oднo и) тo жe, пoчти тaкoй жe; люди oднoгo cклaдa, oднoгo пoля ягoдaTo the Londoner Staffordshire and Northumberland are much of a muchness (S. Chaplin). When we're young we think we're different from everyone else, but when we grow a little older we discover we're all very much of a muchness (W. S. Maugham) -
110 NF
NF, no distribution to foreign countries"не подлежит передаче иностранным государствам"————————NF, normal fireобычный вид огня; одиночный огонь————————NF, nose fairingркт носовой обтекатель————————NF, nose fuze————————NF, not releasable to foreign nationals; not for foreigners"не подлежит передаче представителям иностранных государств"; "не подлежит передаче иностранцам"————————NF, nuclear force(s)ядерные силы [средства]————————NF, Бр Royal Northumberland Fusiliers————————NF; N/F, night fighterEnglish-Russian dictionary of planing, cross-planing and slotting machines > NF
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111 RNF
RNF, radio navigation facility————————RNF, Бр Royal Northumberland FusiliersEnglish-Russian dictionary of planing, cross-planing and slotting machines > RNF
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112 Northumb.
English-Russian dictionary of modern abbreviations > Northumb.
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См. также в других словарях:
Northumberland — Geografie Status Unitary Authority Zeremonielle Grafschaft Region North East England Fläche 5.013 … Deutsch Wikipedia
Northumberland — Condado de Inglaterra … Wikipedia Español
Northumberland — es un condado de Inglaterra, en el Reino Unido. Está situado en la frontera con Escocia. El límite más extenso del condado se extiende a lo largo del río Humber al norte, al igual que el antiguo reino de Northumbria del rey Edwin. En la… … Enciclopedia Universal
Northumberland — Northumberland, PA U.S. borough in Pennsylvania Population (2000): 3714 Housing Units (2000): 1772 Land area (2000): 1.568288 sq. miles (4.061848 sq. km) Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km) Total area (2000): 1.568288 sq.… … StarDict's U.S. Gazetteer Places
Northumberland, PA — U.S. borough in Pennsylvania Population (2000): 3714 Housing Units (2000): 1772 Land area (2000): 1.568288 sq. miles (4.061848 sq. km) Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km) Total area (2000): 1.568288 sq. miles (4.061848 sq. km) … StarDict's U.S. Gazetteer Places
Northumberland [1] — Northumberland (spr. thömberländ, Northumbrĭen), engl. Grafschaft, wird im O. von der Nordsee, im Norden und NW. von Schottland, im W. von der Grafschaft Cumberland, im S. von Durham begrenzt und umfaßt 5226 qkm (94,9 QM.) mit (1901) 603,498 Einw … Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon
Northumberland [1] — Northumberland (spr. Nohrshömberl nd, Northumbrien), 1) nördlichste Grafschaft in England, am Deutschen Meere u. Schottland gelegen; 90,98 QM., theils wellenförmig, theils gebirgig durch die Cheviot Hills (im Nord Westen).; felsige Küsten; Flüsse … Pierer's Universal-Lexikon
Northumberland [2] — Northumberland, Titel mehrer berühmter Geschlechter Englands, bes. der Familie Percy; diese ist normannischen Ursprungs u. ihr Ahnherr kam mit Wilhelm dem Eroberer nach England; ihre Glieder gehörten bald zu den mächtigsten Edelleuten in York u.… … Pierer's Universal-Lexikon
Northumberland [2] — Northumberland (spr. thömberländ), engl. Grafen und Herzogstitel, war zunächst an das alte Geschlecht der Percys geknüpft, dessen Ahnherr William de Percy (gest. um 1096), mit Wilhelm dem Eroberer nach England gekommen, weite Ländereien in den… … Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon
Northumberland — (spr. nohrthömmb rländ), nördlichste Grafsch. Englands, 5219 qkm, (1901) 602.859 E.; Hauptstadt Newcastle (on Tyne) … Kleines Konversations-Lexikon
Northumberland [2] — Northumberland (spr. nohrthömmb rländ), Grafen und Herzogstitel mehrerer berühmter Geschlechter Englands, bes. der Familie Percy. – Henry, Lord Percy, 1377 Graf von N., erst Anhänger, dann Feind Heinrichs IV., suchte diesen mit Hilfe der Schotten … Kleines Konversations-Lexikon
