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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: Architecture and building

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Lubetkin studied in Moscow, where in the years immediately after 1917 he met Vesnin and Rodchenko and absorbed the contemporary Constructivist ideas. He then moved on to Paris and worked with Auguste Perret, coming in on the ground floor of the modern movement. He went to England in 1930 and two years later formed the Tecton group, leading six young architects who had newly graduated from the Architectural Association in London. Lubetkin's early commissions in England were for animals rather than humans. He designed the gorilla house (1932) at the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens, after which came his award-winning Penguin Pool there, a sculptural blend of curved planes in reinforced concrete. He also worked at Whipsnade and at Dudley Zoo. The name of Tecton had quickly became synonymous with modern methods of design and structure, particularly the use of reinforced concrete; such work was not common in the 1930s in Britain. In 1938–9 the firm was responsible for another pace-setting design, the Finsbury Health Centre in London. Tecton was disbanded during the Second World War, and although it was reformed in the late 1940s it did not recover its initiative in leading the field of modern work. Lubetkin lived on to be an old man but his post-war career did not fulfil his earlier promise and brilliance. He was appointed Architect-Planner of the Peterlee New Town in 1948, but he resigned after a few years and no other notable commissions materialized. In 1982 the Royal Institute of British Architects belatedly remembered him with the award of their Gold Medal.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Townsend, who described himself in his first patent as a framework knitter and afterwards as a hosier of Leicester, took out a patent in 1847 for the application of a "machine like that of a point net frame to an ordinary stocking-frame". He described needles and hooks of a peculiar shape which were able to take the work off the knitting machine, reverse the loops and return them again so that ribbed knitting could be made on circular machines. These became popular for knitting stockings which, although not fully fashioned, had sufficient strength to fit the leg. In 1854 he took out a patent for making round hose with heels and toes fashioned on other machines. In yet another patent, in 1856, he described a method of raising looped pile on knitted fabrics for making "terry" towelling fabrics. He could use different coloured yarns in the fabric that were controlled by a Jacquard mechanism. It was in the same year, 1856, in a further patent that he described his tumbler or latch needles as well as the making of figured patterns in knitting on both sides of the fabric with a Jacquard mechanism. The latch needles were self-acting, being made to move up and down or backwards and forwards by the action of cams set in the cylindrical body of the machine. Normally the needle worked in a vertical or inclined position with the previous loop on the shank below the latch. Weft yarn was placed in the hook of the needle. The needle was drawn down between fixed plates which formed a new loop with the weft. At the same time, the original loop already on the shank of the needle moved along the shank and closed the latch so that it could pass over the newly formed loop in the needle hook and fall over the end of the needle incorporating the new loop on its way to make the next row of stitches. The latch needle obviated the need for loop wheels and pressers and thus simplified the knitting mechanism. Townsend's invention was the forerunner of an entirely new generation of knitting machines, but it was many years before its full potential was realized, the bearded needle of William Lee being preferred because the hinge of the latch could not be made as fine as the bearded needle.

Townsend was in the first rank of skilful manufacturers of fancy Leicester hosiery and had a good practical knowledge of the machinery used in his trade. Having patented his needles, he seems not to have succeeded in getting them into very profitable or extensive use, possibly because he fixed the royalty too high. His invention proved to be most useful and profitable in the hands of others, for it gave great impetus to the trade in seamless hose. For various reasons he discontinued his business in Leicester. He emigrated to the USA, where, after some initial setbacks, he began to reap the rewards of his skill.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Of Scottish stock, McKay was the son of a farmer and the grandson of a loyalist officer who had left the United States after the War of Independence. After some elementary shipwright training in Nova Scotia, McKay travelled to New York to apprentice to the great American shipbuilder Isaac Webb, then building some of the outstanding ships of the nineteenth century. At the age of 21 and a fully fledged journeyman, McKay again set out and worked in various shipyards before joining William Currier in 1841 to establish a yard in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He moved on again in 1843 to form another venture, the yard of McKay and Pickett in the same locality.

In 1844 McKay came to know Enoch Train of Boston, then proprietor of a fleet of fast clipper ships on the US A-to-Liverpool run. He persuaded McKay to set out on his own and promised to support him with orders for ships. The partnership with Pickett was dissolved amicably and Donald McKay opened the yard in East Boston, from which some of the world's fastest ships were to be launched. McKay's natural ability as a shipwright had been enhanced by the study of mathematics and engineering drawing, something he had learned from his wife Albenia Boole, the daughter of another shipbuilder. He was not too proud to learn from other masters on the East Coast such as William H.Webb and John Willis Griffiths. The first ships from East Boston included the Washington Irvine of 1845 and the Anglo Saxon of 1846; they were well built and had especially comfortable emigrant accommodation. However, faster ships were to follow, almost all three-masted, fully rigged ships with very fine or "extreme" lines, including the Flying Cloud for the Californian gold rush of 1851, the four-masted barque Great Republic; then, c. 1854, the Lightning was ordered by James Baines of Liverpool for his Black Ball Line. The Lightning holds to this day the speed record for a square-rigged ship's daily run. As the years passed the shipbuilding scene changed, and while McKay's did build some iron ships for the US Navy, they became much less profitable and in 1875 the yard closed down, with McKay retiring to take up farming.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Mies van der Rohe was the son of a stonemason and his early constructional training came from his father. As a young man he gained experience of the modern school from study of the architecture of the earlier leaders, notably Peter Behrens, Hendrik Berlage and Frank Lloyd Wright. He commenced architectural practice in 1913 and soon after the First World War was establishing his own version of modern architecture. His building materials were always of the highest quality, of marble, stone, glass and, especially, steel. He stripped his designs of all extraneous decoration: more than any of his contemporaries he followed the theme of elegance, functionalism and an ascetic concentration on essentials. He believed that architectural design should not look backwards but should reflect the contemporary achievement of advanced technology in both its construction and the materials used, and he began early in his career to act upon these beliefs. Typical was his early concrete and glass office building of 1922, after which, more importantly, came his designs for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition of 1929. These designs included his famous Barcelona chair, made from chrome steel and leather in a geometrical design, one which has survived as a classic and is still in production. Another milestone was his Tugendhat House in Brno (1930), a long, low, rectilinear structure in glass and steel that set a pattern for many later buildings of this type. In 1930 Mies followed his colleagues as third Director of the Bauhaus, but due to the rise of National Socialism in Germany it was closed in 1933. He finally left Germany for the USA in 1937, and the following year he took up his post as Director of Architecture in Chicago at what is now known as the Illinois Institute of Technology and where he remained for twenty years. In America Mies van der Rohe continued to develop his work upon his original thesis. His buildings are always recognizable for their elegance, fine proportions, high-quality materials and clean, geometrical forms; nearly all are of glass and steel in rectangular shapes. The structure and design evolved according to the individual needs of each commission, and there were three fundamental types of design. One type was the single or grouped high-rise tower, built for apartments for the wealthy, as in his Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago (1948–51), or for city-centre offices, as in his Seagram Building in New York (1954–8, with Philip Johnson) or his Chicago Federal Centre (1964). Another form was the long, low rectangle based upon the earlier Tugendhat House and seen again in the New National Gallery in Berlin (1965–8). Third, there were the grouped schemes when the commission called for buildings of varied purpose on a single, large site. Here Mies van der Rohe achieved a variety and interest in the different shapes and heights of buildings set out in spatial harmony of landscape. Some examples of this type of scheme were housing estates (Lafayette Park Housing Development in Detroit, 1955–6), while others were for educational, commercial or shopping requirements, as at the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963–9).

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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The son of a mining officer, Oeynhausen started his career in the Prussian administration of the mining industry in 1816, immediately after he had finished his studies in natural sciences and mathematics at the University of Göttingen. From 1847 until his retirement he was a most effective head of state mines inspectorates, first in Silesia (Breslau; now Wroclaw, Poland), later in Westphalia (Dortmund). During his working life he served in all the important mining districts of Prussia, and travelled to mining areas in other parts of Germany, Belgium, France and Britain. In the 1820s, after visiting Glenck's well-known saltworks near Wimpfen, he was commissioned to search for salt deposits in Prussian territory, where he discovered the thermal springs south of Minden which later became the renowned spa carrying his name.

With deeper drills, the increased weight of the rods made it difficult to disengage the drill on each stroke and made the apparatus self-destructive on impact of the drill. Oeynhausen, from 1834, used fish joints, flexible connections between the drill and the rods. Not only did they prevent destructive impact, but they also gave a jerk on the return stroke that facilitated disengagements. He never claimed to have invented the fish joints: in fact, they appeared almost simultaneously in Europe and in America at that time, and had been used since at least the seventeenth century in China, although they were unknown in the Western hemisphere.

Using fish joints meant the start of a new era in deep-drilling, allowing much deeper wells to be sunk than before. Five weeks after Oeynhausen, K.G. Kind operated with a different kind of fish joint, and in 1845 another Prussian mining officer, Karl Leopold Fabian (1782–1855), Director of the salt inspectorate at Schönebeck, Elbe, improved the fish joints by developing a special device between the rod and the drill to enable the chisel, strengthened by a sinker bar, to fall onto the bottom of the hole without hindrance with a higher effect. The free-fall system became another factor in the outstanding results of deep-drilling in Prussia in the nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Giambattista della Porta spent most of his life in Naples, where some time before 1580 he established the Accademia dei Segreti, which met at his house. In 1611 he was enrolled among the Oziosi in Naples, then the most renowned literary academy. He was examined by the Inquisition, which, although he had become a lay brother of the Jesuits by 1585, banned all further publication of his books between 1592 and 1598.

His first book, the Magiae Naturalis, which covered the secrets of nature, was published in 1558. He had been collecting material for it since the age of 15 and he saw that science should not merely represent theory and contemplation but must arrive at practical and experimental expression. In this work he described the hardening of files and pieces of armour on quite a large scale, and it included the best sixteenth-century description of heat treatment for hardening steel. In the 1589 edition of this work he covered ways of improving vision at a distance with concave and convex lenses; although he may have constructed a compound microscope, the history of this instrument effectively begins with Galileo. His theoretical and practical work on lenses paved the way for the telescope and he also explored the properties of parabolic mirrors.

In 1563 he published a treatise on cryptography, De Furtivis Liter arum Notis, which he followed in 1566 with another on memory and mnemonic devices, Arte del Ricordare. In 1584 and 1585 he published treatises on horticulture and agriculture based on careful study and practice; in 1586 he published De Humana Physiognomonia, on human physiognomy, and in 1588 a treatise on the physiognomy of plants. In 1593 he published his De Refractione but, probably because of the ban by the Inquisition, no more were produced until the Spiritali in 1601 and his translation of Ptolemy's Almagest in 1605. In 1608 two new works appeared: a short treatise on military fortifications; and the De Distillatione. There was an important work on meteorology in 1610. In 1601 he described a device similar to Hero's mechanisms which opened temple doors, only Porta used steam pressure instead of air to force the water out of its box or container, up a pipe to where it emptied out into a higher container. Under the lower box there was a small steam boiler heated by a fire. He may also have been the first person to realize that condensed steam would form a vacuum, for there is a description of another piece of apparatus where water is drawn up into a container at the top of a long pipe. The container was first filled with steam so that, when cooled, a vacuum would be formed and water drawn up into it. These are the principles on which Thomas Savery's later steam-engine worked.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Jedediah Strutt was the second of three sons of William, a small farmer and maltster at South Normanton, near Alfreton, Derbyshire, where the only industry was a little framework knitting. At the age of 14 Jedediah was apprenticed to Ralph Massey, a wheelwright near Derby, and lodged with the Woollats, whose daughter Elizabeth he later married in 1755. He moved to Leicester and in 1754 started farming at Blackwell, where an uncle had died and left him the stock on his farm. It was here that he made his knitting invention.

William Lee's knitting machine remained in virtually the same form as he left it until the middle of the eighteenth century. The knitting industry moved away from London into the Midlands and in 1730 a Nottingham workman, using Indian spun yarn, produced the first pair of cotton hose ever made by mechanical means. This industry developed quickly and by 1750 was providing employment for 1,200 frameworkers using both wool and cotton in the Nottingham and Derby areas. It was against this background that Jedediah Strutt obtained patents for his Derby rib machine in 1758 and 1759.

The machine was a highly ingenious mechanism, which when placed in front of an ordinary stocking frame enabled the fashionable ribbed stockings to be made by machine instead of by hand. To develop this invention, he formed a partnership first with his brother-in-law, William Woollat, and two leading Derby hosiers, John Bloodworth and Thomas Stamford. This partnership was dissolved in 1762 and another was formed with Woollat and the Nottingham hosier Samuel Need. Strutt's invention was followed by a succession of innovations which enabled framework knitters to produce almost every kind of mesh on their machines. In 1764 the stocking frame was adapted to the making of eyelet holes, and this later lead to the production of lace. In 1767 velvet was made on these frames, and two years later brocade. In this way Strutt's original invention opened up a new era for knitting. Although all these later improvements were not his, he was able to make a fortune from his invention. In 1762 he was made a freeman of Nottingham, but by then he was living in Derby. His business at Derby was concerned mainly with silk hose and he had a silk mill there.

It was partly his need for cotton yarn and partly his wealth which led him into partnership with Richard Arkwright, John Smalley and David Thornley to exploit Arkwright's patent for spinning cotton by rollers. Together with Samuel Need, they financed the Arkwright partnership in 1770 to develop the horse-powered mill in Nottingham and then the water-powered mill at Cromford. Strutt gave advice to Arkwright about improving the machinery and helped to hold the partnership together when Arkwright fell out with his first partners. Strutt was also involved, in London, where he had a house, with the parliamentary proceedings over the passing of the Calico Act in 1774, which opened up the trade in British-manufactured all-cotton cloth.

In 1776 Strutt financed the construction of his own mill at Helper, about seven miles (11 km) further down the Derwent valley below Cromford. This was followed by another at Milford, a little lower on the river. Strutt was also a partner with Arkwright and others in the mill at Birkacre, near Chorley in Lancashire. The Strutt mills were developed into large complexes for cotton spinning and many experiments were later carried out in them, both in textile machinery and in fireproof construction for the mills themselves. They were also important training schools for engineers.

Elizabeth Strutt died in 1774 and Jedediah never married again. The family seem to have lived frugally in spite of their wealth, probably influenced by their Nonconformist background. He had built a house near the mills at Milford, but it was in his Derby house that Jedediah died in 1797. By the time of his death, his son William had long been involved with the business and became a more important cotton spinner than Jedediah.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Textiles

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John Wyatt was the eldest son of John and Jane Wyatt, who lived in the small village of Thickbroom in the parish of Weeford, near Lichfield. John the younger was educated at Lichfield school and then worked as a carpenter at Thickbroom till 1730. In 1732 he was in Birmingham, engaged by a man named Heely, a gunbarrel forger, who became bankrupt in 1734. Wyatt had invented a machine for making files and sought the help of Lewis Paul to manufacture this commercially.

The surviving papers of Paul and Wyatt in Birmingham are mostly undated and show a variety of machines with which they were involved. There was a machine for "making lead hard" which had rollers, and "a Gymcrak of some consequence" probably refers to a machine for boring barrels or the file-making machine. Wyatt is said to have been one of the unsuccessful competitors for the erection of London Bridge in 1736. He invented and perfected the compound-lever weighing machine. He had more success with this: after 1744, machines for weighing up to five tons were set up at Birmingham, Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield and Liverpool. Road construction, bridge building, hydrostatics, canals, water-powered engines and many other schemes received his attention and it is said that he was employed for a time after 1744 by Matthew Boulton.

It is certain that in April 1735 Paul and Wyatt were working on their spinning machine and Wyatt was making a model of it in London in 1736, giving up his work in Birmingham. The first patent, in 1738, was taken out in the name of Lewis Paul. It is impossible to know which of these two invented what. This first patent covers a wide variety of descriptions of the vital roller drafting to draw out the fibres, and it is unknown which system was actually used. Paul's carding patent of 1748 and his second spinning patent of 1758 show that he moved away from the system and principles upon which Arkwright built his success. Wyatt and Paul's spinning machines were sufficiently promising for a mill to be set up in 1741 at the Upper Priory, Birmingham, that was powered by two asses. Wyatt was the person responsible for constructing the machinery. Edward Cave established another at Northampton powered by water while later Daniel Bourn built yet another at Leominster. Many others were interested too. The Birmingham mill did not work for long and seems to have been given up in 1743. Wyatt was imprisoned for debt in The Fleet in 1742, and when released in 1743 he tried for a time to run the Birmingham mill and possibly the Northampton one. The one at Leominster burned down in 1754, while the Northampton mill was advertised for sale in 1756. This last mill may have been used again in conjunction with the 1758 patent. It was Wyatt whom Daniel Bourn contacted about a grant for spindles for his Leominster mill in 1748, but this seems to have been Wyatt's last association with the spinning venture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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Bothe studied under Max Planck at the University of Berlin, gaining his doctorate in 1914. After military service during the First World War, he resumed his investigations into nuclear physics and achieved a breakthrough in 1929 when he developed a method of studying cosmic radiation by placing one Geiger counter on top of another. From this he evolved the means of high-speed counting known as "coincidence counting". The following year, in conjunction with Hans Becker, Bothe made a Further stride forward when they identified a very penetrative neutral particle by bombarding beryllium with alpha particles; this was a significant advance towards creating nuclear energy in that the neutral particle was what Chadwick later identified as the neutron.

In 1934 Bothe's achievements were recognized by his appointment as Director of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, although this was after Planck himself had been deposed because of his Jewish sympathies. Bothe did, however, become primarily involved in Germany's pursuit of the atomic bomb and in 1944 constructed Germany's first cyclotron for accelerating nuclear particles. By that time Germany was faced with military defeat and Bothe was not able to develop his ideas further. Even so, for his work in the field of cosmic radiation Bothe shared the 1954 Nobel Prize for Physics with the naturalized Briton (formerly German) Max Born, whose subject was statistical mechanics.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Herreshoff, or, as he was known, Captain Nat, was seventh in a family of nine, four of whom became blind in childhood. Association with such problems may have sharpened his appreciation of shape and form; indeed, he made a lengthy European small-boat trip with a blind brother. While working on yacht designs, he used three-dimensional models in conjunction with the sheer draught on the drawing-board. With many of the family being boatbuilders, he started designing at the age of 16 and then decided to make this his career. As naval architecture was not then a graduating subject, he studied mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While still studying, c.1867, he broke new ground by preparing direct reading time handicapping tables for yachts up to 110 ft (33.5 m) long. After working with the Corliss Company, he set up the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, in partnership with J.B.Herreshoff, as shipbuilders and engineers. Over the years their output included steam machinery, fishing vessels, pleasure craft and racing yachts. They built the first torpedo boat for the US Navy and another for the Royal Navy, the only such acquisition in the late nineteenth century. Herreshoff designed six of the world's greatest yachts, of the America's Cup, between 1890 and 1920. His accomplishments included new types of lightweight wood fasteners, new systems of framing, hollow spars and better methods of cutting sails. He continued to work full-time until 1935 and his work was internationally acclaimed. He maintained cordial relations with his British rivals Fife, Nicholson and G.L. Watson, and enjoyed friendship with his compatriot Edward Burgess. Few will ever match Herreshoff as an all-round engineer and designer.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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Wang Zhen was a native of Shandong Province and was employed as a Government official. He wrote the Wang Zhen Nung Shu c. 1313 as a text to be used by local officials in their instruction of the peasantry. The text was also used as a means of spreading information on potentially useful developments from one region to another.

Curious inaccuracies in the text indicate that Wang Zhen's knowledge of agriculture was not firsthand, but rather that his texts are the distillation of information derived from interviews with farmers. In this the text differs from the other major Chinese texts, which are clearly the work of individuals with personal knowledge of the subject about which they were writing.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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Interested from childhood in anything mechanical, as a teenager Armstrong constructed a variety of wireless equipment in the attic of his parents' home, including spark-gap transmitters and receivers with iron-filing "coherer" detectors capable of producing weak Morse-code signals. In 1912, while still a student of engineering at Columbia University, he applied positive, i.e. regenerative, feedback to a Lee De Forest triode amplifier to just below the point of oscillation and obtained a gain of some 1,000 times, giving a receiver sensitivity very much greater than hitherto possible. Furthermore, by allowing the circuit to go into full oscillation he found he could generate stable continuous-waves, making possible the first reliable CW radio transmitter. Sadly, his claim to priority with this invention, for which he filed US patents in 1913, the year he graduated from Columbia, led to many years of litigation with De Forest, to whom the US Supreme Court finally, but unjustly, awarded the patent in 1934. The engineering world clearly did not agree with this decision, for the Institution of Radio Engineers did not revoke its previous award of a gold medal and he subsequently received the highest US scientific award, the Franklin Medal, for this discovery.

During the First World War, after some time as an instructor at Columbia University, he joined the US Signal Corps laboratories in Paris, where in 1918 he invented the superheterodyne, a major contribution to radio-receiver design and for which he filed a patent in 1920. The principle of this circuit, which underlies virtually all modern radio, TV and radar reception, is that by using a local oscillator to convert, or "heterodyne", a wanted signal to a lower, fixed, "intermediate" frequency it is possible to obtain high amplification and selectivity without the need to "track" the tuning of numerous variable circuits.

Returning to Columbia after the war and eventually becoming Professor of Electrical Engineering, he made a fortune from the sale of his patent rights and used part of his wealth to fund his own research into further problems in radio communication, particularly that of receiver noise. In 1933 he filed four patents covering the use of wide-band frequency modulation (FM) to achieve low-noise, high-fidelity sound broadcasting, but unable to interest RCA he eventually built a complete broadcast transmitter at his own expense in 1939 to prove the advantages of his system. Unfortunately, there followed another long battle to protect and exploit his patents, and exhausted and virtually ruined he took his own life in 1954, just as the use of FM became an established technique.

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SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Ports and shipping

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Little is known of Berry's early life, but it is certain that he knew the district around St Helens intimately, which was of assistance to him in his later canal works. He became Clerk and Assistant to Thomas Steers and proved his natural engineering ability in helping Steers in both the construction of the Newry navigation in Ireland and his supervision of the construction of Salthouse Dock in Liverpool. On Steers's death in 1750 Berry was appointed, at the age of 30, Dock Engineer for Liverpool Docks, and completed the Salthouse Dock three years later. In 1755 he was allowed by the Liverpool Authority—presumably because his full-time service was not required at the docks at that time—to survey and construct the Sankey Brook Navigation (otherwise known as the St Helens Canal), which was completed in 1757. Berry was instructed to make the brook navigable, but with the secret consent and connivance of one of the proprietors he built a lateral canal, the work commencing on 5 September 1755. This was the first dead-water canal in the country, as distinct from an improved river navigation, and preceded Brindley's Bridgewater Canal by some five or six years. On the canal he also constructed at Blackbrook the first pair of staircase locks to be built in England.

Berry later advised on improvements to the Weaver Navigation, and his design for the new locks was accepted. He also carried out in 1769 a survey for a Leeds and Liverpool Canal, but this was not proceeded with and it was left to others to construct this canal. He advised turnpike trustees on bridge construction, but his main work was in Liverpool dock construction and between 1767 and 1771 he built the George's Dock. His final dock work was King's Dock, which was opened on 3 October 1788; he resigned at the age of 68 when the dock was completed. He lived for another 24 years, during which he was described in the local directories as "gentleman" instead of "engineer" or "surveyor" as he had been previously.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Synthetic materials

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Dr Gibson's work towards the discovery of polythene had its origin in a visit in 1925 to Dr A. Michels of Amsterdam University; the latter had made major advances in techniques for studying chemical reactions at very high pressures. After working with Michels for a time, in 1926 Gibson joined Brunner Mond, one of the companies that went on to form the chemical giant Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The company supported research into fundamental chemical research that had no immediate commercial application, including the field being cultivated by Michels and Gibson. In 1933 Gibson was joined by another ICI chemist, E.O.Fawcett, who had worked with W.H. Carothers in the USA on polymer chemistry. They were asked to study the effects of high pressure on various reaction systems, including a mixture of benzaldehyde and ethylene. Gibson's notebook for 27 March that year records that after a loss of pressure during which the benzaldehyde was blown out of the reaction tube, a waxy solid was observed in the tube. This is generally recognized as the first recorded observation of polythene. By the following June they had shown that the white, waxy solid was a fairly high molecular weight polymer of ethylene formed at a temperature of 443°K and a pressure of 2,000 bar. However, only small amounts of the material were produced and its significance was not immediately recognized. It was not until two years later that W.P.Perrin and others, also ICI chemists, restarted work on the polymer. They showed that it could be moulded, drawn into threads and cast into tough films. It was a good electrical insulator and almost inert chemically. A British patent for producing polythene was taken out in 1936, and after further development work a production plant began operating in September 1939, just as the Second World War was breaking out. Polythene had arrived in time to make a major contribution to the war effort, for it had the insulating properties required for newly developing work on radar. When peacetime uses became possible, polythene production surged ahead and became the major industry it is today, with a myriad uses in industry and in everyday life.

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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: Aerospace

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He was educated at HMS Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, from 1880 to 1882. He sailed on HMS Duke of Wellington, Agincourt, Northampton and other ships and resigned from the navy on 18 April 187 after seven years at sea. In June 1887 he was apprenticed at Randolph, Elder \& Co.'s shipyard at Govan, and was then an apprentice moulder at Cairn \& Co., Glasgow. For some time he "studied" at London University (though there is no official record of his doing so) while living with his sister at Phillbeck Gardens, South Kensington. In May 1890 he was working for John H.Biles, Manager of the Southampton Naval Works Ltd. Biles was later appointed Professor of Naval Architecture at Glasgow University with Pilcher as his Assistant Lecturer. In 1895 he was building his first glider, the Bat, which was built mainly of Riga pine and weighed 44 lb (20 kg). In succeeding months he travelled to Lichterfelde to study the gliders made by the German Lilienthal and built a further three machines, the Beetle, the Gull and the Hawk. In 1896 he applied for his only aeronautical patent, for "Improved flying and soaring machines", which was accepted on March 1897. In April 1896 he resigned his position at Glasgow University to become Assistant to Sir Hiram Maxim, who was also doing experiments with flying machines at his Nordenfeld Guns and Ammunition Co. Ltd at Crayford. He took up residence in Artillery Mansions, Victoria Street, later taken over by Vickers Ltd. Maxim had a hangar at Upper Lodge Farm, Austin Eynsford, Kent: using this, Pilcher reached a height of 12 ft (3.66m) in 1899 with a cable launch. He planned to build a 2 hp (1.5 kW) petrol engine In September 1899 he went to stay with Lord Braye at Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, where many people came to see his flying machine, a triplane. The weather was far from ideal, windy and raining, but Pilcher would not disappoint them. A bracing wire broke, the tail collapsed and the pilot crashed to the ground suffering two broken legs and concussion. He did not regain consciousness and died the following day. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

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Albert received a sound education in the arts and sciences, carefully designed to fit him for a role as consort to the future Queen Victoria. After their marriage in 1840, Albert threw himself into the task of establishing his position as, eventually, Prince Consort and uncrowned king of England. By his undoubted intellectual gifts, unrelenting hard work and moral rectitude, Albert moulded the British constitutional monarchy into the form it retains to this day. The purchase in 1845 of the Osborne estate in the Isle of Wight provided not only the growing royal family with a comfortable retreat from London and public life, but Albert with full scope for his abilities as architect and planner. With Thomas Cubitt, the eminent engineer and contractor, Albert erected at Osborne one of the most remarkable buildings of the nineteenth century. He went on to design the house and estate at Balmoral in Scotland, another notable creation.

Albert applied his abilities as architect and planner in the promotion of such public works as the London sewer system and, in practical form, the design of cottages for workers, such as those in south London, as well as those on the royal estates. Albert's other main contribution to technology was as educationist in a broad sense. In 1847, he was elected Chancellor of Cambridge University. He was appalled at the low standards and narrow curriculum prevailing there and at Oxford. He was no mere figurehead, but took a close and active interest in the University's affairs. With his powerful influence behind them, the reforming fellows were able to force measures to raise standards and widen the curriculum to take account, in particular, of the rapid progress in the natural sciences. Albert was instrumental in ending the lethargy of centuries and laying the foundations of the modern British university system.

In 1847 the Prince became Secretary of the Royal Society of Arts. With Henry Cole, the noted administrator who shared Albert's concern for the arts, he promoted a series of exhibitions under the auspices of the Society. From these grew the idea of a great exhibition of the products of the decorative and industrial arts. It was Albert who decided that its scope should be international. As Chairman of the organizing committee, by sheer hard work he drove the project through to a triumphant conclusion. The success of the Exhibition earned it a handsome profit for which Albert had found a use even before it closed. The proceeds went towards the purchase of a site in South Kensington, for which he drew up a grand scheme for a complex of museums and colleges for the education of the people in the sciences and the arts. This largely came to fruition and South Kensington today is a fitting memorial to the Prince Consort's wisdom and concern for the public good.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Belling was educated at Burts Grammar School in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, and at Crossley Schools in Halifax, Yorkshire. In 1903 he was apprenticed to Crompton \& Co. at Chelmsford in Essex, the firm that in 1894 offered for sale the earliest electric heaters. These electric radiant panels were intended as heating radiators or cooking hotplates, but were not very successful because, being cast-iron panels into which heating wires had been embedded in enamel, they tended to fracture due to the different rates of thermal expansion of the iron and the enamel. Other designs of electric heaters followed, notably the introduction of large, sausage-shaped carbon filament bulbs fitted into a fire frame and backed by reflectors. This was the idea of H. Dowsing, a collaborator of Crompton, in 1904.

After qualifying in 1906, Belling left Crompton \& Co. and went to work for Ediswan at Ponders End in Hertfordshire. He left in 1912 to set up his own business, which he began in a small shed in Enfield. With a small staff and capital of £450, he took out his first patent for his wire-wound-former electric fire in the same year. The resistance wire, made from nickel-chrome alloy such as that patented in 1906 by A.L. Marsh, was coiled round a clay former. Six such bars were attached to a cast-iron frame with heating control knobs, and the device was marketed as the Standard Belling Fire. Advertised in 1912, the fire was an immediate success and was followed by many other variations. Improvements to the first model included wire safety guards, enamel finishes and a frame ornamented with copper and brass.

Belling turned his attention to hotplates, cookers, immersion heaters, electric irons, water urns and kettles, producing the Modernette Cooker (1919), the multi-parabola fire bar (1921), the plate and dish warmer (1924), the storage heater (1926) and the famous Baby Belling cookers, the first of which appeared in 1929. By 1955 business had developed so well that Belling opened another factory at Burnley, Lancashire. He partly underwrote, for the amount of £1 million, a proposed scientific technical college for the electrical industry at Enfield.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Ernest-Sylvain Bollée was the founder of an extensive dynasty of bellfounders based in Le Mans and in Orléans. He and his three sons, Amédée (1844–1917), Ernest-Sylvain fils (1846–1917) and Auguste (1847-?), were involved in work and patents on steam-and petrol-driven cars, on wind engines and on hydraulic rams. The presence of the Bollées' car industry in Le Mans was a factor in the establishment of the car races that are held there.

In 1868 Ernest-Sylvain Bollée père took out a patent for a wind engine, which at that time was well established in America and in England. In both these countries, variable-shuttered as well as fixed-blade wind engines were in production and patented, but the Ernest-Sylvain Bollée patent was for a type of wind engine that had not been seen before and is more akin to the water-driven turbine of the Jonval type, with its basic principle being parallel to the "rotor" and "stator". The wind drives through a fixed ring of blades on to a rotating ring that has a slightly greater number of blades. The blades of the fixed ring are curved in the opposite direction to those on the rotating blades and thus the air is directed onto the latter, causing it to rotate at a considerable speed: this is the "rotor". For greater efficiency a cuff of sheet iron can be attached to the "stator", giving a tunnel effect and driving more air at the "rotor". The head of this wind engine is turned to the wind by means of a wind-driven vane mounted in front of the blades. The wind vane adjusts the wind angle to enable the wind engine to run at a constant speed.

The fact that this wind engine was invented by the owner of a brass foundry, with all the gear trains between the wind vane and the head of the tower being of the highest-quality brass and, therefore, small in scale, lay behind its success. Also, it was of prefabricated construction, so that fixed lengths of cast-iron pillar were delivered, complete with twelve treads of cast-iron staircase fixed to the outside and wrought-iron stays. The drive from the wind engine was taken down the inside of the pillar to pumps at ground level.

Whilst the wind engines were being built for wealthy owners or communes, the work of the foundry continued. The three sons joined the family firm as partners and produced several steam-driven vehicles. These vehicles were the work of Amédée père and were l'Obéissante (1873); the Autobus (1880–3), of which some were built in Berlin under licence; the tram Bollée-Dalifol (1876); and the private car La Mancelle (1878). Another important line, in parallel with the pumping mechanism required for the wind engines, was the development of hydraulic rams, following the Montgolfier patent. In accordance with French practice, the firm was split three ways when Ernest-Sylvain Bollée père died. Amédée père inherited the car side of the business, but it is due to Amédée fils (1867– 1926) that the principal developments in car manufacture came into being. He developed the petrol-driven car after the impetus given by his grandfather, his father and his uncle Ernest-Sylvain fils. In 1887 he designed a four-stroke single-cylinder engine, although he also used engines designed by others such as Peugeot. He produced two luxurious saloon cars before putting Torpilleur on the road in 1898; this car competed in the Tour de France in 1899. Whilst designing other cars, Amédée's son Léon (1870–1913) developed the Voiturette, in 1896, and then began general manufacture of small cars on factory lines. The firm ceased work after a merger with the English firm of Morris in 1926. Auguste inherited the Eolienne or wind-engine side of the business; however, attracted to the artistic life, he sold out to Ernest Lebert in 1898 and settled in the Paris of the Impressionists. Lebert developed the wind-engine business and retained the basic "stator-rotor" form with a conventional lattice tower. He remained in Le Mans, carrying on the business of the manufacture of wind engines, pumps and hydraulic machinery, describing himself as a "Civil Engineer".

The hydraulic-ram business fell to Ernest-Sylvain fils and continued to thrive from a solid base of design and production. The foundry in Le Mans is still there but, more importantly, the bell foundry of Dominique Bollée in Saint-Jean-de-Braye in Orléans is still at work casting bells in the old way.

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