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121 Napier, David
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 1785 Scotlandd. 1873[br]Scottish engineer who devised printing machinery incorporating important improvements.[br]Born in Scotland, Napier moved to London to set up an engineering workshop in St Giles. In 1824 he was commissioned by Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), who from 1803 began printing the debates in the Houses of Parliament, to make a perfecting press, i.e. one that printed on both sides of the paper. Known as the NayPeer, it was the first to incorporate grippers in order to improve register (the correct positioning of the paper on the inked type); the grippers took hold of a sheet of paper as it was fed on to the impression cylinder. Napier made several machines for Hansard, hand-powered at first but steam-powered from 1832. Napier did not patent the Nay-Peer, but in 1828 he took out a patent for a four-feeder press with a single impression cylinder, which had the then-usual "stop and start" action while the bed carrying the inked type passed to and fro beneath it. To speed output, two years later Napier patented a press with two cylinders revolving in the same direction in place of the single-stop cylinder. Also in 1830, the firm of Napier and Son introduced an improved form of bed and platen press, which became the most popular of its kind; one remained in use at Oxford University Press into the twentieth century. Another invention of Napier's, in 1825, was an automatic inking device, with which turning the rounce or mechanism for moving the type bed under the platen activated inking rollers working on the type. Napier is credited with being the first to introduce the printing machine to Ireland, for the Dublin Evening Post. His cylinder machine was the first of its kind in North America, where it was seen by Hoe and others.[br]Further ReadingJ.Moran, 1973, PrintingPresses, London: Faber \& Faber (contains details of Napier's printing machines).LRD -
122 Northrop, James H.
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]fl. 1890s Keighley, Yorkshire, England[br]English-born American inventor of the first successful loom to change the shuttles automatically when the weft ran out.[br]Although attempts had been continuing since about 1840 to develop a loom on which the shuttles were changed automatically when the weft was exhausted, it was not until J.H.Northrop invented his cop-changer and patented it in the United States in 1894 that the automatic loom really became a serious competitor to the ordinary power loom. Northrop was born at Keighley in Yorkshire but emigrated to America, where he developed his loom. In about 1891 he appears to have been undecided whether to work on the shuttle-changing system or the copchanging system, for in that year he took out three patents, one of which was for a shuttle changer and the other two for cop-changers.A communication from W.F.Draper, Northrop's employer, was used in 1894 as a patent in Britain for a cop-or bobbin-changing automatic loom, which was in fact the Northrop loom. A further five patents for stop motions were taken out in 1895, and yet another in 1896. In one shuttle-box, a feeler was pushed through a hole in the side of the shuttle each time the shuttle entered the box. When the cop of weft was full, the loom carried on working normally. If lack of weft enabled the feeler to enter beyond a certain point, a device was activated which pushed a full cop down into the place of the old one. The full cops were contained in a rotary magazine, ready for insertion.The full Northrop loom comprised several basic inventions in addition to the cop-changer, namely a self-threading shuttle, a weft-fork mechanism to stop the loom, a warp let-off mechanism and a warp-stop motion. The Northrop loom revolutionized cotton weaving in America and the Northrop system became the basis for most later automatic looms. While Northrop looms were made in America and on the European continent, they never achieved much popularity in Britain, where finer cloth was usually woven.[br]Further ReadingW.A.Hanton, 1929, Automatic Weaving, London (describes the Northrop loom and has good illustrations of the mechanism).W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (explains the Northrop system). C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. V, Oxford: Clarendon Press.RLH -
123 Noyce, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 12 December 1927 Burlington, Iowa, USA[br]American engineer responsible for the development of integrated circuits and the microprocessor chip.[br]Noyce was the son of a Congregational minister whose family, after a number of moves, finally settled in Grinnell, some 50 miles (80 km) east of Des Moines, Iowa. Encouraged to follow his interest in science, in his teens he worked as a baby-sitter and mower of lawns to earn money for his hobby. One of his clients was Professor of Physics at Grinnell College, where Noyce enrolled to study mathematics and physics and eventually gained a top-grade BA. It was while there that he learned of the invention of the transistor by the team at Bell Laboratories, which included John Bardeen, a former fellow student of his professor. After taking a PhD in physical electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953, he joined the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia to work on the development of transistors. Then in January 1956 he accepted an invitation from William Shockley, another of the Bell transistor team, to join the newly formed Shockley Transistor Company, the first electronic firm to set up shop in Palo Alto, California, in what later became known as "Silicon Valley".From the start things at the company did not go well and eventually Noyce and Gordon Moore and six colleagues decided to offer themselves as a complete development team; with the aid of the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Company, the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation was born. It was there that in 1958, contemporaneously with Jack K. Wilby at Texas Instruments, Noyce had the idea for monolithic integration of transistor circuits. Eventually, after extended patent litigation involving study of laboratory notebooks and careful examination of the original claims, priority was assigned to Noyce. The invention was most timely. The Apollo Moon-landing programme announced by President Kennedy in May 1961 called for lightweight sophisticated navigation and control computer systems, which could only be met by the rapid development of the new technology, and Fairchild was well placed to deliver the micrologic chips required by NASA.In 1968 the founders sold Fairchild Semicon-ductors to the parent company. Noyce and Moore promptly found new backers and set up the Intel Corporation, primarily to make high-density memory chips. The first product was a 1,024-bit random access memory (1 K RAM) and by 1973 sales had reached $60 million. However, Noyce and Moore had already realized that it was possible to make a complete microcomputer by putting all the logic needed to go with the memory chip(s) on a single integrated circuit (1C) chip in the form of a general purpose central processing unit (CPU). By 1971 they had produced the Intel 4004 microprocessor, which sold for US$200, and within a year the 8008 followed. The personal computer (PC) revolution had begun! Noyce eventually left Intel, but he remained active in microchip technology and subsequently founded Sematech Inc.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFranklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Medal 1966. National Academy of Engineering 1969. National Academy of Science. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1978; Cledo Brunetti Award (jointly with Kilby) 1978. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1979. National Medal of Science 1979. National Medal of Engineering 1987.Bibliography1955, "Base-widening punch-through", Proceedings of the American Physical Society.30 July 1959, US patent no. 2,981,877.Further ReadingT.R.Reid, 1985, Microchip: The Story of a Revolution and the Men Who Made It, London: Pan Books.KF -
124 Owens, Michael Joseph
[br]b. 1 January 1859 Mason County, Virginia, USAd. 27 December 1923 Toledo, Ohio, USA[br]American inventor of the automatic glass bottle making machine.[br]To assist the finances of a coal miner's family, Owens entered a glassworks at Wheeling, Virginia, at the tender age of 10, stoking coal into the "glory hole" or furnace where glass was resoftened at various stages of the hand-forming process. By the age of 15 he had become a glassblower.In 1888 Owens moved to the glassworks of Edward Drummond Libbey at Toledo, Ohio, where within three months he was appointed Superintendent and, not long after, a branch manager. In 1893 Owens supervised the company's famous exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago. He had by then begun experiments that were to lead to the first automatic bottle-blowing machine. He first used a piston pump to suck molten glass into a mould, and then transferred the gathered glass over another mould into which the bottle was blown by reversing the pump. The first patents were taken out in 1895, followed by others incorporating improvements and culminating in the patent of 8 November 1904 for an essentially perfected machine. Eventually it was capable of producing four bottles a second, thus effecting a revolution in bottle making. Owens, with Libbey and others, set up the Owens Bottle Machine Company in 1903, which Owens himself managed from 1915 to 1919, becoming Vice-President from 1915 until his death. A plant was also established in Manchester in 1905.Besides this, Owens and Libbey first assisted Irving W.Colburn with his experiments on the continuous drawing of flat sheet glass and then in 1912 bought the patents, forming the Owens-Libbey Sheet Glass Company. In all, Owens was granted forty-five US patents, mainly relating to the manufacture and processing of glass. Owens's undoubted inventive genius was hampered by a lack of scientific knowledge, which he made good by judicious consultation.[br]Further Reading1923, Michael J.Owens (privately printed) (a series of memorial articles reprinted from various sources).G.S.Duncan, 1960, Bibliography of Glass, Sheffield: Society of Glass Manufacturers (cites references to Owens's papers and patents).LRD -
125 Phillips, Horatio Frederick
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 2 February 1845 London, Englandd. 15 July 1926 Hampshire, England[br]English aerodynamicist whose cambered two-surface wing sections provided the foundations for aerofoil design.[br]At the age of 19, Phillips developed an interest in flight and constructed models with lightweight engines. He spent a large amount of time and money over many years, carrying out practical research into the science of aerodynamics. In the early 1880s he built a wind tunnel with a working section of 15 in. by 10 in. (38 cm by 25 cm). Air was sucked through the working section by an adaptation of the steam injector used in boilers and invented by Henry Giffard, the airship pioneer. Phillips tested aerofoils based on the cross-section of bird's wings, with a greater curvature on the upper surface than the lower. He measured the lift and drag and showed that the major component of lift came from suction on the upper surface, rather than pressure on the lower. He took out patents for his aerofoil sections in 1884 and 1891. In addition to his wind-tunnel test, Phillips tested his wing sections on a whirling arm, as used earlier by Cayley, Wenham and Lilienthal. After a series of tests using an arm of 15 ft (4.57 m) radius, Phillips built a massive whirling arm driven by a steam engine. His test pieces were mounted on the end of the arm, which had a radius of 50 ft (15.24 m), giving them a linear speed of 70 mph (113 km/h). By 1893 Phillips was ready to put his theories to a more practical test, so he built a large model aircraft driven by a steam engine and tethered to run round a circular track. It had a wing span of 19 ft (5.79 m), but it had fifty wings, one above the other. These wings were only 10 in. (25 cm) wide and mounted in a frame, so it looked rather like a Venetian blind. At 40 mph (64 km/h) it lifted off the track. In 1904 Phillips built a full-size multi-wing aeroplane with twenty wings which just lifted off the ground but did not fly. He built another multi-wing machine in 1907, this time with four Venetian blind' frames in tandem, giving it two hundred wings! Phillips made a short flight of almost 500 ft (152 m) which could be claimed to be the first powered aeroplane flight in England by an Englishman. He retired from flying at the age of 62.[br]Bibliography1900, "Mechanical flight and matters relating thereto", Engineering (reprint).1891–3, "On the sustentation of weight by mechanical flight", Aeronautical Society of Great Britain 23rd Report.Further ReadingJ.Laurence Pritchard, 1957, "The dawn of aerodynamics", Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (March) (good descriptions of Phillips's early work and his wind tunnel).J.E.Hodgson, 1924, The History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, London.F.W.Brearey, 1891–3, "Remarks on experiments made by Horatio Phillips", Aeronautical Society of Great Britain 23rd Report.JDSBiographical history of technology > Phillips, Horatio Frederick
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126 Piccard, Auguste
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 28 January 1884 Basel, Switzerlandd. 24 March 1962 Lausanne, Switzerland[br]Swiss physicist who developed balloons to explore the upper atmosphere.[br]Auguste Piccard and his twin brother, Jean-Félix, studied together in Zurich and qualified as a physicist and a chemist, respectively. In 1913 they made a sixteen-hour balloon flight together, and in 1915 they joined the balloon section of the Swiss Army. Auguste moved to Brussels as Professor of Applied Physics in 1922 and he carried out research into cosmic radiation. He realized that he needed to ascend into the rarefied air of the stratosphere in order to study these cosmic rays. His target was 16,000 m (52,500 ft), but no one had ever ventured to this height before.Not surprisingly, Auguste Piccard turned to a balloon for his experiments, and during 1930 he designed a hydrogen balloon with a spherical gondola to house the crew. This gondola was sealed and pressurized with air, just as a modern airliner has a pressurized cabin. With Belgian finance, Piccard was able to build his balloon, and on 27 May 1931 he and his colleague Paul Kipfer reached a height of 15,781 m (51,775 ft). Although this was a world record and created great public interest, Piccard was a scientist rather than a record breaker, and as he needed further information he prepared for another ascent. His new gondola was equipped with radio and improved scientific equipment. On 18 August 1932 it ascended from Zurich and reached a height of 16,201 m (53,152 ft).Jean-Félix was also interested in high-altitude balloon flights and in 1934, together with his wife, he ascended through a clouded sky and reached 17,550m (57,579ft). Jean- Félix also tested a gondola lifted by ninety-eight small balloons, and he developed frost-resistant windows. Other balloonists followed with record-breaking high-altitude flights, but Auguste Piccard, aided by his son Jacques, turned his attention to exploration of the depths of the ocean.[br]Bibliography1950, Between Earth and Sky, London. 1956, In Balloon and Bathyscaph, London.Further ReadingD.H.de Vorkin, 1990, Race to the Stratosphere, Berlin (the first chapters describe the work of the Piccard twins).Pierre de Latil and Jean Rivoire, 1962, Le Professeur Auguste Piccard, France.JDS -
127 Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew
[br]b. 25 March 1892 Kazan District, Russiad. 24 October 1980[br]Russian (naturalized American in 1932) electrical engineer responsible for the development of the professional tape recorder and the first commercially-successful video tape recorder (VTR).[br]Poniatoff was educated at the University of Kazan, the Imperial College in Moscow, and the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, gaining degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He was in Germany when the First World War broke out, but he managed to escape back to Russia, where he served as an Air Force pilot with the Imperial Russian Navy. During the Russian Revolution he was a pilot with the White Russian Forces, and escaped into China in 1920; there he found work as an assistant engineer in the Shanghai Power Company. In 1927 he immigrated to the USA, becoming a US citizen in 1932. He obtained a post in the research and development department of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, and later at Dalmo Victor, San Carlos, California. During the Second World War he was involved in the development of airborne radar for the US Navy.In 1944, taking his initials to form the title, Poniatoff founded the AMPEX Corporation to manufacture components for the airborne radar developed at General Electric, but in 1946 he turned to the production of audio tape recorders developed from the German wartime Telefunken Magnetophon machine (the first tape recorder in the truest sense). In this he was supported by the entertainer Bing Crosby, who needed high-quality replay facilities for broadcasting purposes, and in 1947 he was able to offer a professional-quality product and the business prospered.With the rapid post-war boom in television broadcasting in the USA, a need soon arose for a video recorder to provide "time-shifting" of live TV programmes between the different US time zones. Many companies therefore endeavoured to produce a video tape recorder (VTR) using the same single-track, fixed-head, longitudinal-scan system used for audio, but the very much higher bandwidth required involved an unacceptably high tape-speed. AMPEX attempted to solve the problem by using twelve parallel tracks and a machine was demonstrated in 1952, but it proved unsatisfactory.The development team, which included Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby, then devised a four-head transverse-scan system in which a quadruplex head rotating at 14,400 rpm was made to scan across the width of a 2 in. (5 cm) tape with a tape-to-head speed of the order of 160 ft/sec (about 110 mph; 49 m/sec or 176 km/h) but with a longitudinal tape speed of only 15 in./sec (0.38 m/sec). In this way, acceptable picture quality was obtained with an acceptable tape consumption. Following a public demonstration on 14 April 1956, commercial produc-tion of studio-quality machines began to revolutionize the production and distribution of TV programmes, and the perfecting of time-base correctors which could stabilize the signal timing to a few nanoseconds made colour VTRs a practical proposition. However, AMPEX did not rest on its laurels and in the face of emerging competition from helical scan machines, where the tracks are laid diagonally on the tape, the company was able to demonstrate its own helical machine in 1957. Another development was the Videofile system, in which 250,000 pages of facsimile could be recorded on a single tape, offering a new means of archiving information. By 1986, quadruplex VTRs were obsolete, but Poniatoff's role in making television recording possible deserves a place in history.Poniatoff was President of AMPEX Corporation until 1955 and then became Chairman of the Board, a position he held until 1970.[br]Further ReadingA.Abrahamson, 1953, "A short history of television recording", Part I, JSMPTE 64:73; 1973, Part II, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 82:188 (provides a fuller background).Audio Biographies, 1961, ed. G.A.Briggs, Wharfedale Wireless Works, pp. 255–61 (contains a few personal details about Poniatoff's escape from Germany to join the Russian Navy).E.Larsen, 1971, A History of Invention.Charles Ginsburg, 1981, "The horse or the cowboy. Getting television on tape", Journal of the Royal Television Society 18:11 (a brief account of the AMPEX VTR story).KF / GB-NBiographical history of technology > Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew
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128 Ransome, Frederick
[br]b. 18 June 1818 Rushmere, Suffolk, Englandd. 19 April 1893 London, England[br]English engineer and inventor of a type of artificial stone.[br]Frederick Ransome was the son of James Ransome (1782–1849) and grandson of Robert Ransome, founder of the well-known Ipswich firm of engineers. He did not become a partner in the family firm, but devoted his life to experiments to develop an artificial stone. These experiments were recorded in a paper which he presented to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1848 and in a long series of over thirty patents dating from 1844. The material so formed was a sandstone, the particles of which were bonded together by a silicate of lime. It could be moulded into any required form while in its initial soft state, and when hard was suitable for surface-dressing or carving. It was used for many public buildings, but time proved it unsuitable for outside work. Ransome also used his artificial stone to make grinding wheels by incorporating emery powder in the mixture. These were found to be much superior to those made of natural stone. Another use of the artificial stone was in a porous form which could be used as a filter. In later years Ransome turned his attention to the manufacture of Portland cement and of a cheaper substitute incorporating blast-furnace slag. He also invented a rotary kiln for burning the cement, the first of these being built in 1887. It was 26 ft (7.9 m) long and 5 ft (1.5 m) in diameter; although reasonably successful, the development of such kilns of much greater length was carried out in America rather than England. Ransome was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1848 and served as an Associate of[br]Bibliography1848, "On the manufacture of artificial stone with a silica base", Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 7:57.RTS
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