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1 полученный патент
Economy: obtained patent -
2 Whitney, Eli
[br]b. 8 December 1765 Westborough, Massachusetts, USAd. 8 January 1825 New Haven, Connecticut, USA[br]American inventor of the cotton gin and manufacturer of firearms.[br]The son of a prosperous farmer, Eli Whitney as a teenager showed more interest in mechanics than school work. At the age of 15 he began an enterprise business manufacturing nails in his father's workshop, even having to hire help to fulfil his orders. He later determined to acquire a university education and, his father having declined to provide funds, he taught at local schools to obtain the means to attend Leicester Academy, Massachusetts, in preparation for his entry to Yale in 1789. He graduated in 1792 and then decided to study law. He accepted a position in Georgia as a tutor that would have given him time for study; this post did not materialize, but on his journey south he met General Nathanael Greene's widow and the manager of her plantations, Phineas Miller (1764–1803). A feature of agriculture in the southern states was that the land was unsuitable for long-staple cotton but could yield large crops of green-seed cotton. Green-seed cotton was difficult to separate from its seed, and when Whitney learned of the problem in 1793 he quickly devised a machine known as the cotton gin, which provided an effective solution. He formed a partnership with Miller to manufacture the gin and in 1794 obtained a patent. This invention made possible the extraordinary growth of the cotton industry in the United States, but the patent was widely infringed and it was not until 1807, after amendment of the patent laws, that Whitney was able to obtain a favourable decision in the courts and some financial return.In 1798 Whitney was in financial difficulties following the failure of the initial legal action against infringement of the cotton gin patent, but in that year he obtained a government contract to supply 10,000 muskets within two years with generous advance payments. He built a factory at New Haven, Connecticut, and proposed to use a new method of manufacture, perhaps the first application of the system of interchangeable parts. He failed to supply the firearms in the specified time, and in fact the first 500 guns were not delivered until 1801 and the full contract was not completed until 1809.In 1812 Whitney made application for a renewal of his cotton gin patent, but this was refused. In the same year, however, he obtained a second contract from the Government for 15,000 firearms and a similar one from New York State which ensured the success of his business.[br]Further ReadingJ.Mirsky and A.Nevins, 1952, The World of Eli Whitney, New York (a good biography). P.J.Federico, 1960, "Records of Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent", Technology and Culture 1: 168–76 (for details of the cotton gin patent).R.S.Woodbury, 1960, The legend of Eli Whitney and interchangeable parts', Technology and Culture 1:235–53 (challenges the traditional view of Eli Whitney as the sole originator of the "American" system of manufacture).See also Technology and Culture 14(1973):592–8; 18(1977):146–8; 19(1978):609–11.RTS -
3 Donisthorpe, George Edmond
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]fl. c.1842 England[br]English inventor of a wool-combing machine.[br]Edmund Cartwright's combing machine needed a great deal of improvement before it could be used to tackle the finer qualities of wool. Various people carried out experiments over the next thirty years, including G.E.Donisthorpe of Leicester. Together with Henry Rawson, Donisthorpe obtained his first patent for improvements to wool combing in 1835, but his important ones were obtained in 1842 and 1843. These attracted the attention of S.C. Lister, who had become interested in developing a machine to comb wool after seeing the grim working conditions of the hand-combers supplying his mill at Manningham. Lister was quick to perceive that Donisthorpe's invention carried sufficient promise to replace the hand-comber, so in 1842 he made Donisthorpe an offer, which was accepted, of £2,000 for half the patent rights. In the following year Lister purchased the other half of the patent for £10,000, whereby Donisthorpe ceased to have any pecuniary interest in it. Lister took Donisthorpe into partnership and they worked together over the ensuing years with patience and diligence until they eventually succeeded in bringing out a combing machine that was generally acceptable. They were combing fine botany wool for the first time by machine in 1843. Further patents were taken out in their joint names in 1849 and 1850: these included the "nip" mechanism, the priority of which was disputed by Heilmann. Donisthorpe also took out patents for wool combing with John Whitehead in 1849 and John Crofts in 1853.[br]Bibliography1835, British patent no. 6,808 (improvements to wool combing). 1842. British patent no. 9,404.1843. British patent no. 9,966.1843, British patent no. 9,780.1849, with S.C.Lister, British patent no. 12,712.1849, with S.C.Lister, British patent no. 13,009. 1849, with S.C.Lister, British patent no. 13,532. 1849, with John Whitehead, British patent no. 12,603. 1853, with John Crofts, British patent no. 216.Further ReadingJ.Hogg (ed.), c.1888, Fortunes Made in Business, London (provides an account of the association between Donisthorpe and Lister).W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (explains the technical details of combing machines).C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press (includes a good section on combing machines).RLHBiographical history of technology > Donisthorpe, George Edmond
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4 Lister, Samuel Cunliffe, 1st Baron Masham
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 1 January 1815 Calverly Hall, Bradford, Englandd. 2 February 1906 Swinton Park, near Bradford, England[br]English inventor of successful wool-combing and waste-silk spinning machines.[br]Lister was descended from one of the old Yorkshire families, the Cunliffe Listers of Manningham, and was the fourth son of his father Ellis. After attending a school on Clapham Common, Lister would not go to university; his family hoped he would enter the Church, but instead he started work with the Liverpool merchants Sands, Turner \& Co., who frequently sent him to America. In 1837 his father built for him and his brother a worsted mill at Manningham, where Samuel invented a swivel shuttle and a machine for making fringes on shawls. It was here that he first became aware of the unhealthy occupation of combing wool by hand. Four years later, after seeing the machine that G.E. Donisthorpe was trying to work out, he turned his attention to mechanizing wool-combing. Lister took Donisthorpe into partnership after paying him £12,000 for his patent, and developed the Lister-Cartwright "square nip" comber. Until this time, combing machines were little different from Cartwright's original, but Lister was able to improve on this with continuous operation and by 1843 was combing the first fine botany wool that had ever been combed by machinery. In the following year he received an order for fifty machines to comb all qualities of wool. Further combing patents were taken out with Donisthorpe in 1849, 1850, 1851 and 1852, the last two being in Lister's name only. One of the important features of these patents was the provision of a gripping device or "nip" which held the wool fibres at one end while the rest of the tuft was being combed. Lister was soon running nine combing mills. In the 1850s Lister had become involved in disputes with others who held combing patents, such as his associate Isaac Holden and the Frenchman Josué Heilmann. Lister bought up the Heilmann machine patents and afterwards other types until he obtained a complete monopoly of combing machines before the patents expired. His invention stimulated demand for wool by cheapening the product and gave a vital boost to the Australian wool trade. By 1856 he was at the head of a wool-combing business such as had never been seen before, with mills at Manningham, Bradford, Halifax, Keighley and other places in the West Riding, as well as abroad.His inventive genius also extended to other fields. In 1848 he patented automatic compressed air brakes for railways, and in 1853 alone he took out twelve patents for various textile machines. He then tried to spin waste silk and made a second commercial career, turning what was called "chassum" and hitherto regarded as refuse into beautiful velvets, silks, plush and other fine materials. Waste silk consisted of cocoon remnants from the reeling process, damaged cocoons and fibres rejected from other processes. There was also wild silk obtained from uncultivated worms. This is what Lister saw in a London warehouse as a mass of knotty, dirty, impure stuff, full of bits of stick and dead mulberry leaves, which he bought for a halfpenny a pound. He spent ten years trying to solve the problems, but after a loss of £250,000 and desertion by his partner his machine caught on in 1865 and brought Lister another fortune. Having failed to comb this waste silk, Lister turned his attention to the idea of "dressing" it and separating the qualities automatically. He patented a machine in 1877 that gave a graduated combing. To weave his new silk, he imported from Spain to Bradford, together with its inventor Jose Reixach, a velvet loom that was still giving trouble. It wove two fabrics face to face, but the problem lay in separating the layers so that the pile remained regular in length. Eventually Lister was inspired by watching a scissors grinder in the street to use small emery wheels to sharpen the cutters that divided the layers of fabric. Lister took out several patents for this loom in his own name in 1868 and 1869, while in 1871 he took out one jointly with Reixach. It is said that he spent £29,000 over an eleven-year period on this loom, but this was more than recouped from the sale of reasonably priced high-quality velvets and plushes once success was achieved. Manningham mills were greatly enlarged to accommodate this new manufacture.In later years Lister had an annual profit from his mills of £250,000, much of which was presented to Bradford city in gifts such as Lister Park, the original home of the Listers. He was connected with the Bradford Chamber of Commerce for many years and held the position of President of the Fair Trade League for some time. In 1887 he became High Sheriff of Yorkshire, and in 1891 he was made 1st Baron Masham. He was also Deputy Lieutenant in North and West Riding.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCreated 1st Baron Masham 1891.Bibliography1849, with G.E.Donisthorpe, British patent no. 12,712. 1850, with G.E. Donisthorpe, British patent no. 13,009. 1851, British patent no. 13,532.1852, British patent no. 14,135.1877, British patent no. 3,600 (combing machine). 1868, British patent no. 470.1868, British patent no. 2,386.1868, British patent no. 2,429.1868, British patent no. 3,669.1868, British patent no. 1,549.1871, with J.Reixach, British patent no. 1,117. 1905, Lord Masham's Inventions (autobiography).Further ReadingJ.Hogg (ed.), c. 1888, Fortunes Made in Business, London (biography).W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London; and C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press (both cover the technical details of Lister's invention).RLHBiographical history of technology > Lister, Samuel Cunliffe, 1st Baron Masham
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5 Heilmann, Josué (Joshua)
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 1796 Alsaced. 1848[br]Alsatian inventor of the first machine for combing cotton.[br]Josué Heilmann, of Mulhouse, was awarded 5,000 francs offered by the cotton spinners of Alsace for a machine that would comb cotton. It was a process not hitherto applied to this fibre and, when perfected, enabled finer, smoother and more lustrous yarns to be spun. The important feature of Heilmann's method was to use a grip or nip to hold the end of the sliver that was being combed. Two or more combs passed through the protruding fibres to comb them thoroughly, and a brush cylinder and knife cleared away the noils. The combed section was passed forward so that the part held in the nip could then be combed. The combed fibres were joined up with the length already finished. Heilmann obtained a British patent in 1846, but no machines were put to work until 1851. Six firms of cotton spinners in Lancashire paid £30,000 for the cotton-combing rights and Marshall's of Leeds paid £20,000 for the rights to comb flax. Heilmann's machine was used on the European continent for combing silk as well as flax, wool and cotton, so it proved to be very versatile. Priority of his patent was challenged in England because Lister had patented a combing machine with a gripper or nip in 1843; in 1852 the parties went to litigation and cross-suits were instituted. While Heilmann obtained a verdict of infringement against Lister for certain things, Lister also obtained one against Heilmann for other matters. After this outcome, Heilmann's patent was bought on speculation by Messrs Akroyd and Titus Salt for £30,000, but was afterwards resold to Lister for the same amount. In this way Lister was able to exploit his own patent through suppressing Heilmann's.[br]Bibliography1846, British patent no. 11,103 (cotton-combing machine).Further ReadingFor descriptions of his combing machine see: W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London; T.K.Derry and T.I.Williams, 1960, A Short History of Technology from the Earliest Times to AD 1900, Oxford; and C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol.IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press.RLHBiographical history of technology > Heilmann, Josué (Joshua)
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6 Robert, Nicolas Louis
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 2 December 1761 Paris, Franced. 8 August 1828 Dreux, France[br]French inventor of the papermaking machine.[br]Robert was born into a prosperous family and received a fair education, after which he became a lawyer's clerk. In 1780, however, he enlisted in the Army and joined the artillery, serving with distinction in the West Indies, where he fought against the English. When dissatisfied with his prospects, Robert returned to Paris and obtained a post as proof-reader to the firm of printers and publishers owned by the Didot family. They were so impressed with his abilities that they promoted him, c. 1790, to "clerk inspector of workmen" at their paper mill at Essonnes, south of Paris, under the control of Didot St Leger.It was there that Robert conceived the idea of a continuous papermaking machine. In 1797 he made a model of it and, after further models, he obtained a patent in 1798. The paper was formed on a continuously revolving wire gauze, from which the sheets were lifted off and hung up to dry. Didot was at first scathing, but he came round to encouraging Robert to make a success of the machine. However, they quarrelled over the financial arrangements and Robert left to try setting up his own mill near Rouen. He failed for lack of capital, and in 1800 he returned to Essonnes and sold his patent to Didot for part cash, part proceeds from the operation of the mill. Didot left for England to enlist capital and technical skills to exploit the invention, while Robert was left in charge at Essonnes. It was the Fourdrinier brothers and Bryan Donkin who developed the papermaking machine into a form in which it could succeed. Meanwhile the mill at Essonnes under Robert's direction had begun to falter and declined to the point where it had to be sold. He had never received the full return from the sale of his patent, but he managed to recover his rights in it. This profited him little, for Didot obtained a patent in France for the Fourdrinier machine and had two examples erected in 1814 and the following year, respectively, neatly side-tracking Robert, who was now without funds or position. To support himself and his family, Robert set up a primary school in Dreux and there passed his remaining years. Although it was the Fourdrinier papermaking machine that was generally adopted, it is Robert who deserves credit for the original initiative.[br]Further ReadingR.H.Clapperton, 1967, The Papermaking Machine, Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 279–83 (provides a full description of Robert's invention and patent, together with a biography).LRD -
7 Roberts, Richard
[br]b. 22 April 1789 Carreghova, Llanymynech, Montgomeryshire, Walesd. 11 March 1864 London, England[br]Welsh mechanical engineer and inventor.[br]Richard Roberts was the son of a shoemaker and tollkeeper and received only an elementary education at the village school. At the age of 10 his interest in mechanics was stimulated when he was allowed by the Curate, the Revd Griffith Howell, to use his lathe and other tools. As a young man Roberts acquired a considerable local reputation for his mechanical skills, but these were exercised only in his spare time. For many years he worked in the local limestone quarries, until at the age of 20 he obtained employment as a pattern-maker in Staffordshire. In the next few years he worked as a mechanic in Liverpool, Manchester and Salford before moving in 1814 to London, where he obtained employment with Henry Maudslay. In 1816 he set up on his own account in Manchester. He soon established a reputation there for gear-cutting and other general engineering work, especially for the textile industry, and by 1821 he was employing about twelve men. He built machine tools mainly for his own use, including, in 1817, one of the first planing machines.One of his first inventions was a gas meter, but his first patent was obtained in 1822 for improvements in looms. His most important contribution to textile technology was his invention of the self-acting spinning mule, patented in 1825. The normal fourteen-year term of this patent was extended in 1839 by a further seven years. Between 1826 and 1828 Roberts paid several visits to Alsace, France, arranging cottonspinning machinery for a new factory at Mulhouse. By 1826 he had become a partner in the firm of Sharp Brothers, the company then becoming Sharp, Roberts \& Co. The firm continued to build textile machinery, and in the 1830s it built locomotive engines for the newly created railways and made one experimental steam-carriage for use on roads. The partnership was dissolved in 1843, the Sharps establishing a new works to continue locomotive building while Roberts retained the existing factory, known as the Globe Works, where he soon after took as partners R.G.Dobinson and Benjamin Fothergill (1802–79). This partnership was dissolved c. 1851, and Roberts continued in business on his own for a few years before moving to London as a consulting engineer.During the 1840s and 1850s Roberts produced many new inventions in a variety of fields, including machine tools, clocks and watches, textile machinery, pumps and ships. One of these was a machine controlled by a punched-card system similar to the Jacquard loom for punching rivet holes in plates. This was used in the construction of the Conway and Menai Straits tubular bridges. Roberts was granted twenty-six patents, many of which, before the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852, covered more than one invention; there were still other inventions he did not patent. He made his contribution to the discussion which led up to the 1852 Act by publishing, in 1830 and 1833, pamphlets suggesting reform of the Patent Law.In the early 1820s Roberts helped to establish the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, and in 1823 he was elected a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. He frequently contributed to their proceedings and in 1861 he was made an Honorary Member. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1838. From 1838 to 1843 he served as a councillor of the then-new Municipal Borough of Manchester. In his final years, without the assistance of business partners, Roberts suffered financial difficulties, and at the time of his death a fund for his aid was being raised.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember, Institution of Civil Engineers 1838.Further ReadingThere is no full-length biography of Richard Roberts but the best account is H.W.Dickinson, 1945–7, "Richard Roberts, his life and inventions", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 25:123–37.W.H.Chaloner, 1968–9, "New light on Richard Roberts, textile engineer (1789–1864)", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 41:27–44.RTS -
8 Spencer, Christopher Miner
[br]b. 10 June 1833 Manchester, Connecticut, USAd. 14 January 1922 Hartford, Connecticut, USA[br]American mechanical engineer and inventor.[br]Christopher M.Spencer served an apprenticeship from 1847 to 1849 in the machine shop at the silk mills of Cheney Brothers in his native town and remained there for a few years as a journeyman machinist. In 1853 he went to Rochester, New York, to obtain experience with machinery other than that used in the textile industry. He then spent some years with the Colt Armory at Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to Cheney Brothers, where he obtained his first patent, which was for a silk-winding machine.Spencer had long been interested in firearms and in 1860 he obtained a patent for a repeating rifle. The Spencer Repeating Rifle Company was organized for its manufacture, and before the end of the American Civil War about 200,000 rifles had been produced. He patented a number of other improvements in firearms and in 1868 was associated with Charles E.Billings (1835–1920) in the Roper Arms Company, set up at Amherst, Massachusetts, to manufacture Spencer's magazine gun. This was not a success, however, and in 1869 they moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and formed the Billings \& Spencer Company. There they developed the technology of the drop hammer and Spencer continued his inventive work, which included an automatic turret lathe for producing metal screws. The patent that he obtained for this in 1873 inexplicably failed to protect the essential feature of the machine which provided the automatic action, with the result that Spencer received no patent right on the most valuable feature of the machine.In 1874 Spencer withdrew from active connection with Billings \& Spencer, although he remained a director, and in 1876 he formed with others the Hartford Machine Screw Company. However, he withdrew in 1882 to form the Spencer Arms Company at Windsor, Connecticut, for the manufacture of another of his inventions, a repeating shotgun. But this company failed and Spencer returned to the field of automatic lathes, and in 1893 he organized the Spencer Automatic Machine Screw Company at Windsor, where he remained until his retirement.[br]Further ReadingJ.W.Roe, 1916, English and American Tool Builders, New Haven; reprinted 1926, New York, and 1987, Bradley, Ill. (briefly describes his career and his automatic lathes).L.T.C.Rolt, 1965, Tools for the Job, London; repub. 1986 (gives a brief description of Spencer's automatic lathes).RTSBiographical history of technology > Spencer, Christopher Miner
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9 Eisler, Paul
[br]b. 1907 Vienna, Austria[br]Austrian engineer responsible for the invention of the printed circuit.[br]At the age of 23, Eisler obtained a Diploma in Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna. Because of the growing Nazi influence in Austria, he then accepted a post with the His Master's Voice (HMV) agents in Belgrade, where he worked on the problems of radio reception and sound transmission in railway trains. However, he soon returned to Vienna to found a weekly radio journal and file patents on graphical sound recording (for which he received a doctorate) and on a system of stereoscopic television based on lenticular vertical scanning.In 1936 he moved to England and sold the TV patent to Marconi for £250. Unable to find a job, he carried out experiments in his rooms in a Hampstead boarding-house; after making circuits using strip wires mounted on bakelite sheet, he filed his first printed-circuit patent that year. He then tried to find ways of printing the circuits, but without success. Obtaining a post with Odeon Theatres, he invented a sound-level control for films and devised a mirror-drum continuous-film projector, but with the outbreak of war in 1939, when the company was evacuated, he chose to stay in London and was interned for a while. Released in 1941, he began work with Henderson and Spalding, a firm of lithographic printers, to whom he unwittingly assigned all future patents for the paltry sum of £1. In due course he perfected a means of printing conducting circuits and on 3 February 1943 he filed three patents covering the process. The British Ministry of Defence rejected the idea, considering it of no use for military equipment, but after he had demonstrated the technique to American visitors it was enthusiastically taken up in the US for making proximity fuses, of which many millions were produced and used for the war effort. Subsequently the US Government ruled that all air-borne electronic circuits should be printed.In the late 1940s the Instrument Department of Henderson and Spalding was split off as Technograph Printed Circuits Ltd, with Eisler as Technical Director. In 1949 he filed a further patent covering a multilayer system; this was licensed to Pye and the Telegraph Condenser Company. A further refinement, patented in the 1950s, the use of the technique for telephone exchange equipment, but this was subsequently widely infringed and although he negotiated licences in the USA he found it difficult to license his ideas in Europe. In the UK he obtained finance from the National Research and Development Corporation, but they interfered and refused money for further development, and he eventually resigned from Technograph. Faced with litigation in the USA and open infringement in the UK, he found it difficult to establish his claims, but their validity was finally agreed by the Court of Appeal (1969) and the House of Lords (1971).As a freelance inventor he filed many other printed-circuit patents, including foil heating films and batteries. When his Patent Agents proved unwilling to fund the cost of filing and prosecuting Complete Specifications he set up his own company, Eisler Consultants Ltd, to promote food and space heating, including the use of heated cans and wallpaper! As Foil Heating Ltd he went into the production of heating films, the process subsequently being licensed to Thermal Technology Inc. in California.[br]Bibliography1953, "Printed circuits: some general principles and applications of the foil technique", Journal of the British Institution of Radio Engineers 13: 523.1959, The Technology of Printed Circuits: The Foil Technique in Electronic Production.1984–5, "Reflections of my life as an inventor", Circuit World 11:1–3 (a personal account of the development of the printed circuit).1989, My Life with the Printed Circuit, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University Press.KF -
10 Ferranti, Sebastian Ziani de
[br]b. 9 April 1864 Liverpool, Englandd. 13 January 1930 Zurich, Switzerland[br]English manufacturing engineer and inventor, a pioneer and early advocate of high-voltage alternating-current electric-power systems.[br]Ferranti, who had taken an interest in electrical and mechanical devices from an early age, was educated at St Augustine's College in Ramsgate and for a short time attended evening classes at University College, London. Rather than pursue an academic career, Ferranti, who had intense practical interests, found employment in 1881 with the Siemens Company (see Werner von Siemens) in their experimental department. There he had the opportunity to superintend the installation of electric-lighting plants in various parts of the country. Becoming acquainted with Alfred Thomson, an engineer, Ferranti entered into a short-lived partnership with him to manufacture the Ferranti alternator. This generator, with a unique zig-zag armature, had an efficiency exceeding that of all its rivals. Finding that Sir William Thomson had invented a similar machine, Ferranti formed a company with him to combine the inventions and produce the Ferranti- Thomson machine. For this the Hammond Electric Light and Power Company obtained the sole selling rights.In 1885 the Grosvenor Gallery Electricity Supply Corporation was having serious problems with its Gaulard and Gibbs series distribution system. Ferranti, when consulted, reviewed the design and recommended transformers connected across constant-potential mains. In the following year, at the age of 22, he was appointed Engineer to the company and introduced the pattern of electricity supply that was eventually adopted universally. Ambitious plans by Ferranti for London envisaged the location of a generating station of unprecedented size at Deptford, about eight miles (13 km) from the city, a departure from the previous practice of placing stations within the area to be supplied. For this venture the London Electricity Supply Corporation was formed. Ferranti's bold decision to bring the supply from Deptford at the hitherto unheard-of pressure of 10,000 volts required him to design suitable cables, transformers and generators. Ferranti planned generators with 10,000 hp (7,460 kW)engines, but these were abandoned at an advanced stage of construction. Financial difficulties were caused in part when a Board of Trade enquiry in 1889 reduced the area that the company was able to supply. In spite of this adverse situation the enterprise continued on a reduced scale. Leaving the London Electricity Supply Corporation in 1892, Ferranti again started his own business, manufacturing electrical plant. He conceived the use of wax-impregnated paper-insulated cables for high voltages, which formed a landmark in the history of cable development. This method of flexible-cable manufacture was used almost exclusively until synthetic materials became available. In 1892 Ferranti obtained a patent which set out the advantages to be gained by adopting sector-shaped conductors in multi-core cables. This was to be fundamental to the future design and development of such cables.A total of 176 patents were taken out by S.Z. de Ferranti. His varied and numerous inventions included a successful mercury-motor energy meter and improvements to textile-yarn produc-tion. A transmission-line phenomenon where the open-circuit voltage at the receiving end of a long line is greater than the sending voltage was named the Ferranti Effect after him.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1927. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1910 and 1911. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1924.Bibliography18 July 1882, British patent no. 3,419 (Ferranti's first alternator).13 December 1892, British patent no. 22,923 (shaped conductors of multi-core cables). 1929, "Electricity in the service of man", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 67: 125–30.Further ReadingG.Z.de Ferranti and R. Ince, 1934, The Life and Letters of Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, London.A.Ridding, 1964, S.Z.de Ferranti. Pioneer of Electric Power, London: Science Museum and HMSO (a concise biography).R.H.Parsons, 1939, Early Days of the Power Station Industry, Cambridge, pp. 21–41.GWBiographical history of technology > Ferranti, Sebastian Ziani de
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11 Clymer, George E.
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 1754 Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USAd. 27 August 1834 London, England[br]American inventor of the Columbian printing press.[br]Clymer was born on his father's farm, of a family that emigrated from Switzerland in the early eighteenth century. He attended local schools, helping out on the farm in his spare time, and he showed a particular talent for maintaining farm machinery. At the age of 16 he learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, which he followed in the same district for over twenty-five years. During that time, he showed his talent for mechanical invention in many ways, including the invention of a plough specially adapted to the local soils. Around 1800, he moved to Philadelphia, where his interest was aroused by the erection of the first bridge over the Schuylkill River. He devised a pump to remove water from the cofferdams at a rate of 500 gallons per day, superior to any other pumps then in use. He obtained a US patent for this in 1801, and a British one soon after.Clymer then turned his attention to the improvement of the printing press. For three and a half centuries after its invention, the old wooden-framed press had remained virtually unchanged except in detail. The first real change came in 1800 with the introduction of the iron press by Earl Stanhope. Modified versions were developed by other inventors, notably George Clymer, who after more than ten years' effort achieved his Columbian press. With its new system of levers, it enabled perfect impressions to be obtained with far less effort by the pressman. The Columbian was also notable for its distinctive cast-iron ornamentation, including a Hermes on each pillar and alligators and other reptiles on the levers. Most spectacular, it was surmounted by an American spread eagle, usually covered in gilt, which also served as a counterweight to raise the platen. The earliest known Columbian, surviving only in an illustration, bears the inscription Columbian Press/No.25/invented by George Clymer/Anno Domini 1813/Made in Philadelphia 1816. Few American printers could afford the US$400 selling price, so in 1817 Clymer went to England, where it was taken up enthusiastically. He obtained a British patent for it the same year, and by the following March it was being manufactured by the engineering firm R.W.Cope, although Clymer was probably making it on his own account soon afterwards. The Columbian was widely used for many years and continued to be made even into the twentieth century. The King of the Netherlands awarded Clymer a gold medal for his invention and the Tsar of Russia gave him a present for installing the press in Russia. Doubtless for business reasons, Clymer spent most of his remaining years in England and Europe.[br]Further ReadingJ.Moran, 1973, Printing Presses, London: Faber \& Faber.—1969, contributed a thorough survey of the press in J. Printing Hist. Soc., no. 3.LRD -
12 Edison, Thomas Alva
SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Automotive engineering, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Metallurgy, Photography, film and optics, Public utilities, Recording, Telecommunications[br]b. 11 February 1847 Milan, Ohio, USAd. 18 October 1931 Glenmont[br]American inventor and pioneer electrical developer.[br]He was the son of Samuel Edison, who was in the timber business. His schooling was delayed due to scarlet fever until 1855, when he was 8½ years old, but he was an avid reader. By the age of 14 he had a job as a newsboy on the railway from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles (101 km). He worked a fourteen-hour day with a stopover of five hours, which he spent in the Detroit Free Library. He also sold sweets on the train and, later, fruit and vegetables, and was soon making a profit of $20 a week. He then started two stores in Port Huron and used a spare freight car as a laboratory. He added a hand-printing press to produce 400 copies weekly of The Grand Trunk Herald, most of which he compiled and edited himself. He set himself to learn telegraphy from the station agent at Mount Clements, whose son he had saved from being run over by a freight car.At the age of 16 he became a telegraphist at Port Huron. In 1863 he became railway telegraphist at the busy Stratford Junction of the Grand Trunk Railroad, arranging a clock with a notched wheel to give the hourly signal which was to prove that he was awake and at his post! He left hurriedly after failing to hold a train which was nearly involved in a head-on collision. He usually worked the night shift, allowing himself time for experiments during the day. His first invention was an arrangement of two Morse registers so that a high-speed input could be decoded at a slower speed. Moving from place to place he held many positions as a telegraphist. In Boston he invented an automatic vote recorder for Congress and patented it, but the idea was rejected. This was the first of a total of 1180 patents that he was to take out during his lifetime. After six years he resigned from the Western Union Company to devote all his time to invention, his next idea being an improved ticker-tape machine for stockbrokers. He developed a duplex telegraphy system, but this was turned down by the Western Union Company. He then moved to New York.Edison found accommodation in the battery room of Law's Gold Reporting Company, sleeping in the cellar, and there his repair of a broken transmitter marked him as someone of special talents. His superior soon resigned, and he was promoted with a salary of $300 a month. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the sole rights on future improvements on the duplex telegraph, and he moved to Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey, where he employed a gathering of specialist engineers. Within a year, he married one of his employees, Mary Stilwell, when she was only 16: a daughter, Marion, was born in 1872, and two sons, Thomas and William, in 1876 and 1879, respectively.He continued to work on the automatic telegraph, a device to send out messages faster than they could be tapped out by hand: that is, over fifty words per minute or so. An earlier machine by Alexander Bain worked at up to 400 words per minute, but was not good over long distances. Edison agreed to work on improving this feature of Bain's machine for the Automatic Telegraph Company (ATC) for $40,000. He improved it to a working speed of 500 words per minute and ran a test between Washington and New York. Hoping to sell their equipment to the Post Office in Britain, ATC sent Edison to England in 1873 to negotiate. A 500-word message was to be sent from Liverpool to London every half-hour for six hours, followed by tests on 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of cable at Greenwich. Only confused results were obtained due to induction in the cable, which lay coiled in a water tank. Edison returned to New York, where he worked on his quadruplex telegraph system, tests of which proved a success between New York and Albany in December 1874. Unfortunately, simultaneous negotiation with Western Union and ATC resulted in a lawsuit.Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for a telephone in March 1876 while Edison was still working on the same idea. His improvements allowed the device to operate over a distance of hundreds of miles instead of only a few miles. Tests were carried out over the 106 miles (170 km) between New York and Philadelphia. Edison applied for a patent on the carbon-button transmitter in April 1877, Western Union agreeing to pay him $6,000 a year for the seventeen-year duration of the patent. In these years he was also working on the development of the electric lamp and on a duplicating machine which would make up to 3,000 copies from a stencil. In 1876–7 he moved from Newark to Menlo Park, twenty-four miles (39 km) from New York on the Pennsylvania Railway, near Elizabeth. He had bought a house there around which he built the premises that would become his "inventions factory". It was there that he began the use of his 200- page pocket notebooks, each of which lasted him about two weeks, so prolific were his ideas. When he died he left 3,400 of them filled with notes and sketches.Late in 1877 he applied for a patent for a phonograph which was granted on 19 February 1878, and by the end of the year he had formed a company to manufacture this totally new product. At the time, Edison saw the device primarily as a business aid rather than for entertainment, rather as a dictating machine. In August 1878 he was granted a British patent. In July 1878 he tried to measure the heat from the solar corona at a solar eclipse viewed from Rawlins, Wyoming, but his "tasimeter" was too sensitive.Probably his greatest achievement was "The Subdivision of the Electric Light" or the "glow bulb". He tried many materials for the filament before settling on carbon. He gave a demonstration of electric light by lighting up Menlo Park and inviting the public. Edison was, of course, faced with the problem of inventing and producing all the ancillaries which go to make up the electrical system of generation and distribution-meters, fuses, insulation, switches, cabling—even generators had to be designed and built; everything was new. He started a number of manufacturing companies to produce the various components needed.In 1881 he built the world's largest generator, which weighed 27 tons, to light 1,200 lamps at the Paris Exhibition. It was later moved to England to be used in the world's first central power station with steam engine drive at Holborn Viaduct, London. In September 1882 he started up his Pearl Street Generating Station in New York, which led to a worldwide increase in the application of electric power, particularly for lighting. At the same time as these developments, he built a 1,300yd (1,190m) electric railway at Menlo Park.On 9 August 1884 his wife died of typhoid. Using his telegraphic skills, he proposed to 19-year-old Mina Miller in Morse code while in the company of others on a train. He married her in February 1885 before buying a new house and estate at West Orange, New Jersey, building a new laboratory not far away in the Orange Valley.Edison used direct current which was limited to around 250 volts. Alternating current was largely developed by George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, using transformers to step up the current to a higher voltage for long-distance transmission. The use of AC gradually overtook the Edison DC system.In autumn 1888 he patented a form of cinephotography, the kinetoscope, obtaining film-stock from George Eastman. In 1893 he set up the first film studio, which was pivoted so as to catch the sun, with a hinged roof which could be raised. In 1894 kinetoscope parlours with "peep shows" were starting up in cities all over America. Competition came from the Latham Brothers with a screen-projection machine, which Edison answered with his "Vitascope", shown in New York in 1896. This showed pictures with accompanying sound, but there was some difficulty with synchronization. Edison also experimented with captions at this early date.In 1880 he filed a patent for a magnetic ore separator, the first of nearly sixty. He bought up deposits of low-grade iron ore which had been developed in the north of New Jersey. The process was a commercial success until the discovery of iron-rich ore in Minnesota rendered it uneconomic and uncompetitive. In 1898 cement rock was discovered in New Village, west of West Orange. Edison bought the land and started cement manufacture, using kilns twice the normal length and using half as much fuel to heat them as the normal type of kiln. In 1893 he met Henry Ford, who was building his second car, at an Edison convention. This started him on the development of a battery for an electric car on which he made over 9,000 experiments. In 1903 he sold his patent for wireless telegraphy "for a song" to Guglielmo Marconi.In 1910 Edison designed a prefabricated concrete house. In December 1914 fire destroyed three-quarters of the West Orange plant, but it was at once rebuilt, and with the threat of war Edison started to set up his own plants for making all the chemicals that he had previously been buying from Europe, such as carbolic acid, phenol, benzol, aniline dyes, etc. He was appointed President of the Navy Consulting Board, for whom, he said, he made some forty-five inventions, "but they were pigeonholed, every one of them". Thus did Edison find that the Navy did not take kindly to civilian interference.In 1927 he started the Edison Botanic Research Company, founded with similar investment from Ford and Firestone with the object of finding a substitute for overseas-produced rubber. In the first year he tested no fewer than 3,327 possible plants, in the second year, over 1,400, eventually developing a variety of Golden Rod which grew to 14 ft (4.3 m) in height. However, all this effort and money was wasted, due to the discovery of synthetic rubber.In October 1929 he was present at Henry Ford's opening of his Dearborn Museum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the incandescent lamp, including a replica of the Menlo Park laboratory. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He died in 1931 at his home, Glenmont; throughout the USA, lights were dimmed temporarily on the day of his funeral.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the American Academy of Sciences. Congressional Gold Medal.Further ReadingM.Josephson, 1951, Edison, Eyre \& Spottiswode.R.W.Clark, 1977, Edison, the Man who Made the Future, Macdonald \& Jane.IMcN -
13 Haynes, Elwood
[br]b. 14 October 1857 Portland, Indiana, USAd. 13 April 1925 Kokomo, Indiana, USA[br]American inventor ofStellite cobalt-based alloys, early motor-car manufacturer and pioneer in stainless steels.[br]From his early years, Haynes was a practising Presbyterian and an active prohibitionist. He graduated in 1881 at Worcester, Massachusetts, and a spell of teaching in his home town was interrupted in 1884–5 while he attended the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1886 he became permanently diverted by the discovery of natural gas in Portland. He was soon appointed Superintendent of the local gas undertaking, and then in 1890 he was hired by the Indiana Natural Gas \& Oil Company. While continuing his gas-company employment until 1901, Haynes conducted numerous metallurgical experiments. He also designed an automobile: this led to the establishment of the Haynes- Apperson Company at Kokomo as one of the earliest motor-car makers in North America. From 1905 the firm traded as the Haynes Automobile Company, and before its bankruptcy in 1924 it produced more than 50,000 cars. After 1905, Haynes found the first "Stellite" alloys of cobalt and chromium, and in 1910 he was publicizing the patented material. He then discovered the valuable hardening effect of tungsten, and in 1912 began applying the "improved" Stellite to cutting tools. Three years later, the Haynes Stellite Company was incorporated, with Haynes as President, to work the patents. It was largely from this source that Haynes became a millionaire in 1920. In April 1912, Haynes's attempt to patent the use of chromium with iron to render the product rustless was unsuccessful. However, he re-applied for a US patent on 12 March 1915 and, although this was initially rejected, he persevered and finally obtained recognition of his modified claim. The American Stainless Steel Company licensed the patents of Brearley and Haynes jointly in the USA until the 1930s.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsJohn Scott Medal 1919 (awarded for useful inventions).BibliographyHaynes was the author of more than twenty published papers and articles, among them: 1907, "Materials for automobiles", Proceedings of the American Society of MechanicalEngineers 29:1,597–606; 1910, "Alloys of nickel and cobalt with chromium", Journal of Industrial Engineeringand Chemistry 2:397–401; 1912–13, "Alloys of cobalt with chromium and other metals", Transactions of the American Institute of 'Mining Engineers 44:249–55;1919–20, "Stellite and stainless steel", Proceedings of the Engineering Society of WestPennsylvania 35:467–74.1 April 1919, US patent no. 1,299,404 (stainless steel).The four US patents worked by the Haynes Stellite Company were: 17 December 1907, patent no. 873,745.1 April 1913, patent no. 1,057,423.1 April 1913, patent no. 1,057, 828.17 August 1915, patent no. 1,150, 113.Further ReadingR.D.Gray, 1979, Alloys and Automobiles. The Life of Elwood Haynes, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society (a closely documented biography).JKA -
14 Davenport, Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 9 July 1802 Williamstown, Vermont, USAd. 6 July 1851 Salisbury, Vermont, USA[br]American craftsman and inventor who constructed the first rotating electrical machines in the United States.[br]When he was 14 years old Davenport was apprenticed to a blacksmith for seven years. At the close of his apprenticeship in 1823 he opened a blacksmith's shop in Brandon, Vermont. He began experimenting with electromagnets after observing one in use at the Penfield Iron Works at Crown Point, New York, in 1831. He saw the device as a possible source of power and by July 1834 had constructed his first electric motor. Having totally abandoned his regular business, Davenport built and exhibited a number of miniature machines; he utilized an electric motor to propel a model car around a circular track in 1836, and this became the first recorded instance of an electric railway. An application for a patent and a model were destroyed in a fire at the United States Patent Office in December 1836, but a second application was made and Davenport received a patent the following year for Improvements in Propelling Machinery by Magnetism and Electromagnetism. A British patent was also obtained. A workshop and laboratory were established in New York, but Davenport had little financial backing for his experiments. He built a total of over one hundred motors but was defeated by the inability to obtain an inexpensive source of power. Using an electric motor of his own design to operate a printing press in 1840, he undertook the publication of a journal, The Electromagnet and Mechanics' Intelligencer. This was the first American periodical on electricity, but it was discontinued after a few issues. In failing health he retired to Vermont where in the last year of his life he continued experiments in electromagnetism.[br]Bibliography1837, US patent no. 132, "Improvements in Propelling Machinery by Magnetism and Electromagnetism".6 June 1837 British patent no. 7,386.Further ReadingF.L.Pope, 1891, "Inventors of the electric motor with special reference to the work of Thomas Davenport", Electrical Engineer, 11:1–5, 33–9, 65–71, 93–8, 125–30 (the most comprehensive account).Annals of Electricity (1838) 2:257–64 (provides a description of Davenport's motor).W.J.King, 1962, The Development of Electrical Technology in the 19th Century, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, Paper 28, pp. 263–4 (a short account).GW -
15 Johnson, Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]fl. 1800s Englandd. after 1846[br]English developer of the sizing and beaming machine, and improver of the hand loom.[br]Thomas Johnson was an assistant to William Radcliffe c.1802 in his developments of the sizing machine and hand looms. Johnson is described by Edward Baines (1835) as "an ingenious but dissipated young man to whom he [Radcliffe] explained what he wanted, and whose fertile invention suggested a great variety of expedients, so that he obtained the name of the “conjuror” among his fellow-workmen". Johnson's genius, and Radcliffe's judgement and perseverance, at length produced the dressing-machine that was soon applied to power looms and made their use economic. Cotton warps had to be dressed with a starch paste to prevent them from fraying as they were being woven. Up to this time, the paste had had to be applied as the warp was unwound from the back of the loom, which meant that only short lengths could be treated and then left to dry, holding up the weaver. Radcliffe carried out the dressing and beaming in a separate machine so that weaving could proceed without interruption. Work on the dressing-machine was carried out in 1802 and patents were taken out in 1803 and 1804. These were made out in Johnson's name because Radcliffe was afraid that if his own name were used other people, particularly foreigners, would discover his secrets. Two more patents were taken out for improvements to hand looms. The first of these was a take-up motion for the woven cloth that automatically wound the cloth onto a roller as the weaver operated the loom. This was later incorporated by H.Horrocks into his own power loom design.Radcliffe and Johnson also developed the "dandy-loom", which was a more compact form of hand loom and later became adapted for weaving by power. Johnson was the inventor of the first circular or revolving temples, which kept the woven cloth at the right width. In the patent specifications there is a patent in 1805 by Thomas Johnson and James Kay for an improved power loom and another in 1807 for a vertical type of power loom. Johnson could have been involved with further patents in the 1830s and 1840s for vertical power looms and dressing-machines, which would put his death after 1846.[br]Bibliography1802, British patent no. 2,684 (dressing-machine).1803, British patent no. 2,771 (dressing-machine).1805, with James Kay, British patent no. 2,876 (power-loom). 1807, British patent no. 6,570 (vertical powerloom).Further ReadingThere is no general account of Johnson's life, but references to his work with Radcliffe may be found in A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London; and in E.Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, London.D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s, Oxford (for the impact of the dressing-machine in America).RLH -
16 Singer, Isaac Merritt
[br]b. 27 October 1811 Pittstown, New York, USAd. 23 July 1875 Torquay, Devonshire, England[br]American inventor of a sewing machine, and pioneer of mass production.[br]The son of a millwright, Singer was employed as an unskilled labourer at the age of 12, but later gained wide experience as a travelling machinist. He also found employment as an actor. On 16 May 1839, while living at Lockport, Illinois, he obtained his first patent for a rock-drilling machine, but he soon squandered the money he made. Then in 1849, while at Pittsburgh, he secured a patent for a wood-and metal-carving machine that he had begun five years previously; however, a boiler explosion in the factory destroyed his machine and left him penniless.Near the end of 1850 Singer was engaged to redesign the Lerow \& Blodgett sewing machine at the Boston shop of Orson C.Phelps, where the machine was being repaired. He built an improved version in eleven days that was sufficiently different for him to patent on 12 August 1851. He formed a partnership with Phelps and G.B. Zieber and they began to market the invention. Singer soon purchased Phelps's interest, although Phelps continued to manufacture the machines. Then Edward Clark acquired a one-third interest and with Singer bought out Zieber. These two, with dark's flair for promotion and marketing, began to create a company which eventually would become the largest manufacturer of sewing machines exported worldwide, with subsidiary factories in England.However, first Singer had to defend his patent, which was challenged by an earlier Boston inventor, Elias Howe. Although after a long lawsuit Singer had to pay royalties, it was the Singer machine which eventually captured the market because it could do continuous stitching. In 1856 the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important pooling arrangement in American history, was formed to share the various patents so that machines could be built without infringements and manufacture could be expanded without fear of litigation. Singer contributed his monopoly on the needle-bar cam with his 1851 patent. He secured twenty additional patents, so that his original straight-needle vertical design for lock-stitching eventually included such refinements as a continuous wheel-feed, yielding presser-foot, and improved cam for moving the needle-bar. A new model, introduced in 1856, was the first to be intended solely for use in the home.Initially Phelps made all the machines for Singer. Then a works was established in New York where the parts were assembled by skilled workers through filing and fitting. Each machine was therefore a "one-off" but Singer machines were always advertised as the best on the market and sold at correspondingly high prices. Gradually, more specialized machine tools were acquired, but it was not until long after Singer had retired to Europe in 1863 that Clark made the change to mass production. Sales of machines numbered 810 in 1853 and 21,000 ten years later.[br]Bibliography12 August 1851, US patent no. 8,294 (sewing machine)Further ReadingBiographies and obituaries have appeared in Appleton's Cyclopedia of America, Vol. V; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol XVII; New York Times 25 July 1875; Scientific American (1875) 33; and National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.D.A.Hounshell, 1984, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. TheDevelopment of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore (provides a thorough account of the development of the Singer sewing machine, the competition it faced from other manufacturers and production methods).RLH -
17 Trevithick, Richard
[br]b. 13 April 1771 Illogan, Cornwall, Englandd. 22 April 1833 Dartford, Kent, England[br]English engineer, pioneer of non-condensing steam-engines; designed and built the first locomotives.[br]Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.[br]BibliographyTrevithick took out fourteen patents, solely or in partnership, of which the most important are: 1802, Construction of Steam Engines, British patent no. 2,599. 1808, Stowing Ships' Cargoes, British patent no. 3,172.Further ReadingH.W.Dickinson and A.Titley, 1934, Richard Trevithick. The Engineer and the Man, Cambridge; F.Trevithick, 1872, Life of Richard Trevithick, London (these two are the principal biographies).E.A.Forward, 1952, "Links in the history of the locomotive", The Engineer (22 February), 226 (considers the case for the Coalbrookdale locomotive of 1802).See also: Blenkinsop, JohnPJGR -
18 Parkes, Alexander
[br]b. 29 December 1813 Birmingham, Englandd. 29 June 1890 West Dulwich, England[br]English chemist and inventor who made the first plastic material.[br]After serving apprentice to brassfounders in Birmingham, Parkes entered Elkington's, the celebrated metalworking firm, and took charge of their casting department. They were active in introducing electroplating and Parkes's first patent, of 1841, was for the electroplating of works of art. The electrodeposition of metals became a lifelong interest.Notably, he achieved the electroplating of fragile objects, such as flowers, which he patented in 1843. When Prince Albert visited Elkington's, he was presented with a spider's web coated with silver. Altogether, Parkes was granted sixty-six patents over a period of forty-six years, mainly relating to metallurgy.In 1841 he patented a process for waterproofing textiles by immersing them in a solution of indiarubber in carbon disulphide. Elkingtons manufactured such fabrics until they sold the process to Mackintosh Company, which continued making them for many years. While working for Elkingtons in south Wales, Parkes developed the use of zinc for desilvering lead. He obtained a patent in 1850 for this process, which was one of his most important inventions and became widely used.The year 1856 saw Parkes's first patent on pyroxylin, later called Xylonite or celluloid, the first plastic material. Articles made of Parkesine, as it came to be called, were shown at the International Exhibition in London in 1862, and he was awarded a medal for his work. Five years later, Parkesine featured at the Paris Exhibition. Even so, Parkes's efforts to promote the material commercially, particularly as a substitute for ivory, remained stubbornly unsuccessful.[br]Bibliography1850, British patent no. 13118 (the desilvering of lead). 1856, British patent no. 235 (the first on Parkesine).1865, Parkes gave an account of his invention of Parkesine in J.Roy.Arts, (1865), 14, 81–.Further ReadingObituary, 1890, Engineering, (25 July): 111.Obituary, 1890, Mining Journal (26 July): 855.LRD -
19 Sholes, Christopher Latham
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 14 February 1819 Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, USAd. 17 February 1890 USA[br]American inventor of the first commercially successful typewriter.[br]Sholes was born on his parents' farm, of a family that had originally come from England. After leaving school at 14, he was apprenticed for four years to the local newspaper, the Danville Intelligencer. He moved with his parents to Wisconsin, where he followed his trade as journalist and printer, within a year becoming State Printer and taking charge of the House journal of the State Legislature. When he was 20 he left home and joined his brother in Madison, Wisconsin, on the staff of the Wisconsin Enquirer. After marrying, he took the editorship of the Southport Telegraph, until he became Postmaster of Southport. His experiences as journalist and postmaster drew him into politics and, in spite of the delicate nature of his health and personality, he served with credit as State Senator and in the State Assembly. In 1860 he moved to Milwaukee, where he became Editor of the local paper until President Lincoln offered him the post of Collector of Customs at Milwaukee.That position at last gave Sholes time to develop his undoubted inventive talents. With a machinist friend, Samuel W.Soule, he obtained a patent for a paging machine and another two years later for a machine for numbering the blank pages of a book serially. At the small machine shop where they worked, there was a third inventor, Carlos Glidden. It was Glidden who suggested to Sholes that, in view of his numbering machine, he would be well equipped to develop a letter printing machine. Glidden drew Sholes's attention to an account of a writing machine that had recently been invented in London by John Pratt, and Sholes was so seized with the idea that he devoted the rest of his life to perfecting the machine. With Glidden and Soule, he took out a patent for a typewriter on June 1868 followed by two further patents for improvements. Sholes struggled unsuccessfully for five years to exploit his invention; his two partners gave up their rights in it and finally, on 1 March 1873, Sholes himself sold his rights to the Remington Arms Company for $12,000. With their mechanical skills and equipment, Remingtons were able to perfect the Sholes typewriter and put it on the market. This, the first commercially successful typewriter, led to a revolution not only in office work, but also in work for women, although progress was slow at first. When the New York Young Women's Christian Association bought six Remingtons in 1881 to begin classes for young women, eight turned up for the first les-son; and five years later it was estimated that there were 60,000 female typists in the USA. Sholes said, "I feel that I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will more easily enable them to earn a living."Sholes continued his work on the typewriter, giving Remingtons the benefit of his results. His last patent was granted in 1878. Never very strong, Sholes became consumptive and spent much of his remaining nine years in the vain pursuit of health.[br]Bibliography23 June 1868, US patent no. 79,265 (the first typewriter patent).Further ReadingM.H.Adler, 1973, The Writing Machine, London: Allen \& Unwin.LRDBiographical history of technology > Sholes, Christopher Latham
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20 tomografía mediante rayos X
(n.) = x-ray tomographyEx. This article describes results obtained from the creation of a patent citation network on x-ray tomography.* * *(n.) = x-ray tomographyEx: This article describes results obtained from the creation of a patent citation network on x-ray tomography.
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Patent infringement — Patent law (patents for inventions) … Wikipedia
Patent Cooperation Treaty — The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international patent law treaty, concluded in 1970. It provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states. A patent application filed under … Wikipedia
patent — patentable, adj. patentability, n. patentably, adv. patently, adv. /pat nt/ or, for 10, 12 15, /payt /; esp. Brit. /payt nt/, n. 1. the exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to manufacture, use, or sell an invention for a certain … Universalium
Patent Act (Canada) — The Patent Act is the Canadian Act of Parliament that governs the patent law in Canada. It states what can be patented and how patents are to be obtained. The Patent Act also governs the Patent Office and limits the power and responsibility of… … Wikipedia
Patent infringement under United Kingdom law — In the United Kingdom, a patent provides its proprietor with the right to exclude others from utilizing the invention claimed in that patent. Should a person utilize that invention, without the permission of the patent proprietor, they may… … Wikipedia
Patent theatre — The patent theatres were the theatres that were licensed to perform spoken drama after the English Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Other theatres were prohibited from performing such serious drama, but were permitted to show comedy, pantomime… … Wikipedia
Patent of precedence — A patent of precedence is a grant to an individual by letters patent of a higher social or professional position than the precedence to which his ordinary rank entitles him.Historical user in the English legal professionThe principal instance in… … Wikipedia
