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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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Parker was born of English immigrant stock and grew up on his parents' farm in Iowa. He matriculated at Upper Iowa University and then joined the Valentine School of Telegraphy at Jamesville, Wisconsin: within a year he was on the staff. He supplemented his meagre school-master's pay by selling fountain pens to his students. He found that the pens needed constant attention, and his students were continually bringing them back to him for repair. The more he sold, the more he repaired. The work furnished him, first, with a detailed knowledge of the design and construction of the fountain pen and then with the thought that he could make a better pen himself. He gave up his teaching career and in 1888 began experimenting. He established his own company and in the following year he registered his first patent. The Parker Pen Company was formally incorporated on 8 March 1892.

In the following years he patented many improvements, including the Lucky Curve pen and ink-feed system, patented in 1894. That was the real breakthrough for Parker and the pen was an immediate success. It solved the problem that had bedevilled the fountain pen before and since, by incorporating an ink-feed system that ensured a free and uniform flow of ink to where it was wanted, the nib, and not to other undesirable places.

Parker established a reputation for manufacturing high-quality pens that looked good and worked well and reliably. The pens were in demand worldwide and the company grew.

During the First World War, Parker introduced the Trench Pen for use on the Western Front. A tablet of pigment was inserted in a blind cap at the end of the pen. When this tablet was placed in the barrel and the barrel was filled with water, the pen was ready for use.

Later developments included the Duofold pen, designed and launched in 1920. It had an enlarged ink capacity, a red barrel and a twentyfive-year guarantee on the nib. It became immensely popular with the public and was the flagship product throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, until the Vacumatic was launched in 1933.

Parker handed over control of the company to this two sons, Kenneth and Russell, during the 1920s, remaining President until his retirement in 1933.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Synthetic materials

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Photography, film and optics

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Paul was educated at the City of London School and Finsbury Technical College. He worked first for a short time in the Bell Telephone Works in Antwerp, Belgium, and then in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers in the Strand until 1891, when he opened an instrument-making business at 44 Hatton Garden, London. He specialized in the design and manufacture of electrical instruments, including the Ayrton Mather galvanometer. In 1902, with a purpose-built factory, he began large batch production of his instruments. He also opened a factory in New York, where uncalibrated instruments from England were calibrated for American customers. In 1903 Paul introduced the Unipivot galvanometer, in which the coil was supported at the centre of gravity of the moving system on a single pivot. The pivotal friction was less than in a conventional instrument and could be used without accurate levelling, the sensitivity being far beyond that of any pivoted galvanometer then in existence.

In 1894 Paul was asked by two entrepreneurs to make copies of Edison's kinetoscope, the pioneering peep-show moving-picture viewer, which had just arrived in London. Discovering that Edison had omitted to patent the machine in England, and observing that there was considerable demand for the machine from show-people, he began production, making six before the end of the year. Altogether, he made about sixty-six units, some of which were exported. Although Edison's machine was not patented, his films were certainly copyrighted, so Paul now needed a cinematographic camera to make new subjects for his customers. Early in 1895 he came into contact with Birt Acres, who was also working on the design of a movie camera. Acres's design was somewhat impractical, but Paul constructed a working model with which Acres filmed the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March, and the Derby at Epsom on 29 May. Paul was unhappy with the inefficient design, and developed a new intermittent mechanism based on the principle of the Maltese cross. Despite having signed a ten-year agreement with Paul, Acres split with him on 12 July 1895, after having unilaterally patented their original camera design on 27 May. By the early weeks of 1896, Paul had developed a projector mechanism that also used the Maltese cross and which he demonstrated at the Finsbury Technical College on 20 February 1896. His Theatrograph was intended for sale, and was shown in a number of venues in London during March, notably at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. There the renamed Animatographe was used to show, among other subjects, the Derby of 1896, which was won by the Prince of Wales's horse "Persimmon" and the film of which was shown the next day to enthusiastic crowds. The production of films turned out to be quite profitable: in the first year of the business, from March 1896, Paul made a net profit of £12,838 on a capital outlay of about £1,000. By the end of the year there were at least five shows running in London that were using Paul's projectors and screening films made by him or his staff.

Paul played a major part in establishing the film business in England through his readiness to sell apparatus at a time when most of his rivals reserved their equipment for sole exploitation. He went on to become a leading producer of films, specializing in trick effects, many of which he pioneered. He was affectionately known in the trade as "Daddy Paul", truly considered to be the "father" of the British film industry. He continued to appreciate fully the possibilities of cinematography for scientific work, and in collaboration with Professor Silvanus P.Thompson films were made to illustrate various phenomena to students.

Paul ended his involvement with film making in 1910 to concentrate on his instrument business; on his retirement in 1920, this was amalgamated with the Cambridge Instrument Company. In his will he left shares valued at over £100,000 to form the R.W.Paul Instrument Fund, to be administered by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, of which he had been a member since 1887. The fund was to provide instruments of an unusual nature to assist physical research.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Pilkington was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in mechanical science. He spent one year at Cambridge followed by war service, which lasted until 1945. He returned to complete his degree and then joined Pilkington, the well-known glass manufacturer at St Helens' Lancashire, in 1947. Sir Alastair is not, however, related to the Pilkington family of glassmakers.

The forming of perfectly flat glass that retained its fire finish had eluded glassmakers for centuries. Until the 1950s the only way of making really flat glass was to form plate glass by continuous casting between steel rollers. This destroyed the fire finish, which had to be restored by expensive grinding and polishing. The process entailed the loss of 20 per cent of good glass. The idea of floating glass on molten metal occurred to Sir Alastair in October 1952, and thereafter he remained in charge of development until commercial success had been achieved. The idea of floating molten glass on molten tin had been patented in the United States as early as 1902, but had never been pursued. The Pilkington process in essence was to float a ribbon of molten glass on a bath of molten tin in an inert atmosphere of nitrogen, to prevent oxidation of the tin. It was patented in Britain in 1957 and in the USA two years later. The first production glass issued from the plant in May 1957, although the first good glass did not appear until July 1958. The process was publicly announced the following year and was quickly taken up by the industry. It is now the universal method for manufacturing high quality flat glass.

Having seen through the greatest single advance in glassmaking and one of the most important technological developments this century, Sir Alastair became Chairman of Pilkingtons until 1980 and President thereafter.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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The son of a Quaker schoolmaster, Ransome served his apprenticeship with a Norfolk iron manufacturer and then went into business on his own in the same town, setting up one of the first brass and iron foundries in East Anglia. At an early stage of his career he was selling into Norfolk and Suffolk, well beyond the boundaries to be expected from a local craftsman. He achieved this through the use of forty-seven agents acting on his behalf. In 1789, with one employee and £200 capital, he transferred to Ipswich, where the company was to remain and where there was easier access to both raw materials and his markets. It was there that he discovered that cooling one part of a metal share during its casting could result in a self-sharpening share, and he patented the process in 1785.

Ransome won a number of awards at the early Bath and West shows, a fact which demonstrates the extent of his markets. In 1808 he patented an all-metal plough made up of interchangeable parts, and the following year was making complete ploughs for sale. With interchangeable parts he was able to make composite ploughs suitable for a wide variety of conditions and therefore with potential markets all over the country.

In 1815 he was joined by his son James, and at about the same time by William Cubitt. With the expertise of the latter the firm moved into bridge building and millwrighting, and was therefore able to withstand the agricultural depression which began to affect other manufacturers from about 1815. In 1818, under Cubitt's direction, Ransome built the gas-supply system for the town of Ipswich. In 1830 his grandson James Ransome joined the firm, and it was under his influence that the agricultural side was developed. There was a great expansion in the business after 1835.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Railways and locomotives

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Reynolds was born into a Quaker family, his father being an iron merchant and a considerable customer for the products of the Darbys (see Abraham Darby) of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. After education at a Quaker boarding school in Pickwick, Wiltshire, Reynolds was apprenticed to William Fry, a grocer of Bristol, from whom he would have learned business methods. The year before the expiry of his apprenticeship in 1757, Reynolds was being sent on business errands to Coalbrookdale. In that year he met and married Hannah Darby, the daughter of Abraham Darby II. At the same time, he acquired a half-share in the Ketley ironworks, established not long before, in 1755. There he supervised not only the furnaces at Ketley and Horsehay and the foundry, but also the extension of the railway, linking this site to Coalbrookdale itself.

On the death of Abraham Darby II in 1763, Reynolds took charge of the whole works during the minority of Abraham Darby III. During this period, the most notable development was the introduction by the Cranage brothers of a new way of converting pig-iron to wrought iron, a process patented in 1766 that used coal in a reverberatory furnace. This, with other processes for the same purpose, remained in use until superseded by the puddling process patented by Henry Cort in 1783 and 1784. Reynolds's most important innovation was the introduction of cast-iron rails in 1767 on the railway around Coalbrookdale. A useful network had been in operation for some time with wooden rails, but these wore out quickly and were expensive to maintain. Reynolds's iron rails were an immediate improvement, and some 20 miles (32 km) were laid within a short time. In 1768 Abraham Darby III was able to assume control of the Coalbrookdale works, but Reynolds had been extending his own interest in other ironworks and various other concerns, earning himself considerable wealth. When Darby was oppressed with loan repayments, Reynolds bought the Manor of Madely, which made him Landlord of the Coalbrookdale Company; by 1780 he was virtually banker to the company.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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After the hang-gliders of pioneers such as Lilienthal, Pilcher and Chanute in the 1890s, this form of flying virtually disappeared for seventy years. It was reintroduced in the late 1960s based on Francis Rogallo's flexible wing, patented in the United States in 1948. Rogallo's wing was very basic: it consisted of a fabric delta wing with a solid boom along each leading edge and one along the centre line. Between these booms, the fabric was free to billow out into two partial cones. Variations of the Rogallo flexible wing were investigated in the 1960s by Ryans as a means of recovering space vehicles (e.g. Saturn booster), and by North American for the recovery of Gemini spacecraft. In 1963 a version with a 155 kW (210 hp) engine was tested by the US services as a potential lightweight transport vehicle. None of these made a great impact and the Rogallo wing became popular as a hang-glider c. 1970. The pilot was suspended in a harness below a lightweight Rogallo wing. A framework attached to the wing structure allowed the pilot to move his or her body in any direction relative to the wing. Thus, if they wished to dive, they would move their weight forward, which made the glider nose-heavy. This was a great improvement over the earlier hang-gliders, in which the upper part of the pilot's body was held in a fixed position and control was achieved by swinging the legs. Rogallo-wing hang-gliders became very popular as they were relatively cheap and easy to transport. Once the sport developed, powered "microlights" made their appearance and a new branch of popular flying was established.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Weapons and armour

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After an elementary education, Elisha K.Root was apprenticed as a machinist and worked in that occupation at Ware and Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. In 1832 he went to Collinsville, Connecticut, to join the Collins Company, manufacturers of axes. He started as a lathe hand but soon became Foreman and, in 1845, Superintendent. While with the company, he devised and patented special-purpose machinery for forming axes which transformed the establishment from a primitive workshop to a modern factory.

In 1849 Root was offered positions by four different manufacturers and accepted the post of Superintendent of the armoury then being planned at Hartford, Connecticut, by Samuel Colt for the manufacture of his revolver pistol, which he had invented in 1835. Initial acceptance of the revolver was slow, but by the mid1840s Colt had received sufficient orders to justify the establishment of a new factory and Root was engaged to design and install the machinery. The principle of interchangeable manufacture was adopted, and Root devised special machines for boring, rifling, making cartridges, etc., and a system of jigs, fixtures, tools and gauges. One of these special machines was a drop hammer that he invented and patented in 1853 and which established the art of die-forging on a modern basis. He was also associated with F.A. Pratt in the design of the "Lincoln" milling machine in 1855.

When Colt died in 1862, Root became President of the company and continued in that capacity until his own death. It was said that he was one of the ablest and most highly paid mechanics from New England and that he was largely responsible for the success of both the Collins and the Colt companies.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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From the late nineteenth century, a variety of press fasteners began to appear. In 1885 H. Bauer patented a spring-and-stud fastener, and the following year M.D.Shipman patented a similar design in the United States.

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See also: Hannart, Louis

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors, Textiles

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Halcyon was the son of Joseph and Susan Skinner. When he was 8 years old, his parents moved to Stockbridge in Massachusetts, where he obtained education locally and worked on farms. In 1838 his father moved to West Farms, New York, where Halcyon helped his father make violins and guitars for seven years. He then worked as a general carpenter for eight years until he was hired in 1849 by Alexander Smith, a carpet manufacturer. Skinner designed and constructed a hand loom that could weave figured instead of striped carpets, and by 1851 Smith had one hundred of these at work. Skinner was retained by Smith for forty years as a mechanical expert and adviser.

Weaving carpets by power started in the 1850s on enormous and complex machines. Axminster carpets had traditionally been produced in a similar way to those made by hand in Persia, with the tufts of woollen yarn being knotted around vertical warp threads. To mechanize this process proved very difficult, but Skinner patented a loom in 1856 to weave Axminster carpets although, it was not working successfully until 1860. Then in 1864 he developed a loom for weaving ingrain carpets, and c. 1870 he altered some imported English looms for weaving tapestry carpets to double their output.

His most important invention was conceived in 1876 and patented on 16 January 1877. This was the Moquette or Royal Axminster loom, which marked yet another important step forward and enabled the use of an unlimited number of colours in carpet designs. This type of loom became known as the Spool Axminster because of the endless chain of spools carrying lengths of coloured yarns, wound in a predetermined order, from which short pieces could be cut and inserted as the tufts. It put Smith's company, Alexander Smith \& Sons, Yonkers, New York, in the lead among American carpet manufacturers. This type of loom was introduced to Britain in 1878 by Tomkinson \& Adam and spread rapidly. Skinner virtually retired in 1889 but continued to live in Yonkers.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Carding by hand required a pair of hand cards. The lump of tangled fibres was teased out by pulling one card across the other to even out the fibres and transfer them onto one of the cards from which they could be rolled up into a rollag or slubbing. When Arkwright began to use cylinder cards, the fibres were teased out as they passed from one cylinder to the next. In order to obtain a greater carding area, he soon introduced smaller cylinders and placed strips of flat card above the periphery of the main cylinder. These became clogged with short fibres and dirt, so they had to be lifted off and cleaned or "stripped" at intervals. The first to invent a self-stripping card was Archibald Buchanan, at the Catrine mills in Ayrshire, with his patent in 1823. In his arrangement each flat was turned upside down and stripped by a rotary brush. This was improved by Smith in 1834 and patented in the same year. Smith fixed the flats on an endless chain so that they travelled around the periphery of the top of the main cylinder. Just after the point where they left the cylinder, Smith placed a rotary brush and a comb to clear the brush. In this way each flat in turn was properly and regularly cleaned.

Smith was an able mechanic and Managing Partner of the Deanston mills in Scotland. He visited Manchester, where he was warmly received on the introduction of his machine there at about the same time as he patented it in Scotland. The carding engine he designed was complex, for he arranged a double feed to obtain greater production. While this part of his patent was not developed, his chain or endless flats became the basis used in later cotton carding engines. He took out at least half a dozen other patents for textile machinery. These included two in 1834, the first for a self-acting mule and the second with J.C. Dyer for improvements to winding on to spools. There were further spinning patents in 1839 and 1844 and more for preparatory machinery including carding in 1841 and 1842. He was also interested in agriculture and invented a subsoil plough and other useful things.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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As a youth, Laroy S.Starrett worked on his father's farm and later on other farms, and after a few years acquired his own 600-acre stock farm at Newburyport, Massachusetts, which he operated for four years. He had an interest in mechanics and in 1865 invented and patented a device for chopping meat. He arranged for this to be manufactured by the Athol Machine Company at Athol, Massachusetts, and it was so successful that three years later he sold his farm and purchased a controlling interest in the company. He reorganized the company for the manufacture of his meat chopper and two other inventions of his, a washing machine and a butter worker, which he had also patented in 1865. In 1877 Starrett invented the combination square and in 1880 he established the L.S.Starrett Company in Athol for manufacturing it and other small tools, such as steel rules and tapes, callipers, dividers, micrometers and depth gauges, etc. The business expanded and by 1906 he was employing over 1,000 people. He established agencies in Britain and other countries, and Starrett tools were sold throughout the world.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Educated at Harrow, where he first showed an interest in science, and at Cambridge, Talbot was an outstanding scholar and a formidable mathematician. He published over fifty scientific papers and took out twelve English patents. His interests outside the field of science were also wide and included Assyriology, etymology and the classics. He was briefly a Member of Parliament, but did not pursue a parliamentary career.

Talbot's invention of photography arose out of his frustrating attempts to produce acceptable pencil sketches using popular artist's aids, the camera discura and camera lucida. From his experiments with the former he conceived the idea of placing on the screen a paper coated with silver salts so that the image would be captured chemically. During the spring of 1834 he made outline images of subjects such as leaves and flowers by placing them on sheets of sensitized paper and exposing them to sunlight. No camera was involved and the first images produced using an optical system were made with a solar microscope. It was only when he had devised a more sensitive paper that Talbot was able to make camera pictures; the earliest surviving camera negative dates from August 1835. From the beginning, Talbot noticed that the lights and shades of his images were reversed. During 1834 or 1835 he discovered that by placing this reversed image on another sheet of sensitized paper and again exposing it to sunlight, a picture was produced with lights and shades in the correct disposition. Talbot had discovered the basis of modern photography, the photographic negative, from which could be produced an unlimited number of positives. He did little further work until the announcement of Daguerre's process in 1839 prompted him to publish an account of his negative-positive process. Aware that his photogenic drawing process had many imperfections, Talbot plunged into further experiments and in September 1840, using a mixture incorporating a solution of gallic acid, discovered an invisible latent image that could be made visible by development. This improved calotype process dramatically shortened exposure times and allowed Talbot to take portraits. In 1841 he patented the process, an exercise that was later to cause controversy, and between 1844 and 1846 produced The Pencil of Nature, the world's first commercial photographically illustrated book.

Concerned that some of his photographs were prone to fading, Talbot later began experiments to combine photography with printing and engraving. Using bichromated gelatine, he devised the first practicable method of photo engraving, which was patented as Photoglyphic engraving in October 1852. He later went on to use screens of gauze, muslin and finely powdered gum to break up the image into lines and dots, thus anticipating modern photomechanical processes.

Talbot was described by contemporaries as the "Father of Photography" primarily in recognition of his discovery of the negative-positive process, but he also produced the first photomicrographs, took the first high-speed photographs with the aid of a spark from a Leyden jar, and is credited with proposing infra-red photography. He was a shy man and his misguided attempts to enforce his calotype patent made him many enemies. It was perhaps for this reason that he never received the formal recognition from the British nation that his family felt he deserved.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Telecommunications

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He was first apprenticed in Columbus as a machinist and blacksmith. In 1872 he moved to Missouri, where he was engaged as a fireman and then engine-driver on the Iron Mountain Railroad. In his spare time he devoted much time to the study of electrical engineering. In 1878 he went to sea for two years as engineer on a British vessel. He returned to Ohio, taking up his previous occupation as engine-driver, and in 1884 he achieved his first patent, for a locomotive firebox. However, the drive towards things electrical was too strong and he set up the Woods Electric Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, to develop and market electrical inventions. Woods gained some fame as an inventor and became known as the "black Edison ". His first device, a telephone transmitter, was patented in December 1884 but faced stiff competition from similar inventions by Alexander Graham Bell and others. The following year he patented a device for transmitting messages in Morse code or by voice that was valuable enough to be bought up by the Bell Telephone Company. A stream of inventions followed, particularly for railway telegraph and electrical systems. This brought him into conflict with Edison, who was working in the same field. The US Patent Office ruled in Woods's favour; as a result of the ensuing publicity, one newspaper hailed Woods as the "greatest electrician in the world". In 1890 Woods moved to New York, where the opportunities for an electrical engineer seemed more favourable. He turned his attention to inventions that would improve the tram-car. One device enabled electric current to be transferred to the car with less friction than previously, incorporating a grooved wheel known as a "troller", whence came the popular term "trolley car".

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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In 1841, while studying at Cambridge, Sutton became interested in photography and tried out the current processes, daguerreotype, calotype and cyanotype among them. He subsequently settled in Jersey, where he continued his photographic studies. In 1855 he opened a photographic printing works in Jersey, in partnership with L.-D. Blanquart- Evrard, exploiting the latter's process for producing developed positive prints. He started and edited one of the first photographic periodicals, Photographic Notes, in 1856; until its cessation in 1867, his journal presented a fresher view of the world of photography than that given by its London-based rivals. He also drew up the first dictionary of photography in 1858.

In 1859 Sutton designed and patented a wideangle lens in which the space between two meniscus lenses, forming parts of a sphere and sealed in a metal rim, was filled with water; the lens so formed could cover an angle of up to 120 degrees at an aperture of f12. Sutton's design was inspired by observing the images produced by the water-filled sphere of a "snowstorm" souvenir brought home from Paris! Sutton commissioned the London camera-maker Frederick Cox to make the Panoramic camera, demonstrating the first model in January 1860; it took panoramic pictures on curved glass plates 152×381 mm in size. Cox later advertised other models in a total of four sizes. In January 1861 Sutton handed over manufacture to Andrew Ross's son Thomas Ross, who produced much-improved lenses and also cameras in three sizes. Sutton then developed the first single-lens reflex camera design, patenting it on 20 August 1961: a pivoted mirror, placed at 45 degrees inside the camera, reflected the image from the lens onto a ground glass-screen set in the top of the camera for framing and focusing. When ready, the mirror was swung up out of the way to allow light to reach the plate at the back of the camera. The design was manufactured for a few years by Thomas Ross and J.H. Dallmeyer.

In 1861 James Clerk Maxwell asked Sutton to prepare a series of photographs for use in his lecture "On the theory of three primary colours", to be presented at the Royal Institution in London on 17 May 1861. Maxwell required three photographs to be taken through red, green and blue filters, which were to be printed as lantern slides and projected in superimposition through three projectors. If his theory was correct, a colour reproduction of the original subject would be produced. Sutton used liquid filters: ammoniacal copper sulphate for blue, copper chloride for the green and iron sulphocyanide for the red. A fourth exposure was made through lemon-yellow glass, but was not used in the final demonstration. A tartan ribbon in a bow was used as the subject; the wet-collodion process in current use required six seconds for the blue exposure, about twice what would have been needed without the filter. After twelve minutes no trace of image was produced through the green filter, which had to be diluted to a pale green: a twelve-minute exposure then produced a serviceable negative. Eight minutes was enough to record an image through the red filter, although since the process was sensitive only to blue light, nothing at all should have been recorded. In 1961, R.M.Evans of the Kodak Research Laboratory showed that the red liquid transmitted ultraviolet radiation, and by an extraordinary coincidence many natural red dye-stuffs reflect ultraviolet. Thus the red separation was made on the basis of non-visible radiation rather than red, but the net result was correct and the projected images did give an identifiable reproduction of the original. Sutton's photographs enabled Maxwell to establish the validity of his theory and to provide the basis upon which all subsequent methods of colour photography have been founded.

JW / BC

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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He succeeded his father, who had founded the family firm of Chubb \& Son, and patented many improvements to locks, safes, strong rooms and the like. He was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1845, where he delivered an important paper on locks and keys which included a list of all British patents in the field up to the date of the paper as well as of all communications on the same subject to the Royal Society of Arts; for this he was awarded the Telford Medal.

John Chubb was followed into the family business by his three sons, John C.Chubb, George H.Chubb (who was created Lord Hayter of Chislehurst in 1928) and Henry W.Chubb.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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As a young man Georges Demenÿ was a pioneer of physical education in France, and this led him to contact the physiologist Professor Marey in 1880. Marey had made a special study of animal movement, and Demenÿ hoped to work with him on research into physiological problems related to gymnastics. He joined Marey the following year, and when in 1882 the Physiological Station was set up near Paris to develop sequence photography for the study of movement. Demenÿ was made Head of the laboratory. He worked with the multiple-image fixed-plate cameras, and was chiefly responsible for the analysis of the records, having considerable mathematical and graphical ability. He also appeared as the subject in a number of the sequences. When in 1888 Marey began the development of a film camera, Demenÿ was involved in its design and operation. He became interested in the possibility of using animated sequence photographs as an aid to teaching of the deaf. He made close-up records of himself speaking short phrases, "Je vous aime" and "Vive la France" for example, which were published in such journals as Paris Photographe and La Nature in 1891 and 1892. To present these in motion, he devised the Phonoscope, which he patented on 3 March 1892. The series of photographs were mounted around the circumference of a disc and viewed through a counter-rotating slotted disc. The moving images could be viewed directly, or projected onto a screen. La Nature reported tests he had made in which deaf lip readers could interpret accurately what was being said. On 20 December 1892 Demenÿ formed a company, Société Générale du Phonoscope, to exploit his invention, hoping that "speaking portraits" might replace family-album pictures. This commercial activity led to a rift between Marey and Demenÿ in July 1893. Deprived of access to the film cameras, Demenÿ developed designs of his own, patenting new camera models in France on 10 October 1893 and 27 July 1894. The design covered by the latter had been included in English and German patents filed in December 1893, and was to be of some significance in the early development of cinematography. It was for an intermittent movement of the film, which used an eccentrically mounted blade or roller that, as it rotated, bore on the film, pulling down the length of one frame. As the blade moved away, the film loop so formed was taken up by the rotation of the take-up reel. This "beater" movement was employed extensively in the early years of cinematography, being effective yet inexpensive. It was first employed in the Chronophotographe apparatus marketed by Gaumont, to whom Demenÿ had licensed the patent rights, from the autumn of 1896. Demenÿ's work provided a link between the scientific purposes of sequence photography— chronophotography—and the introduction of commercial cinematography.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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As a youth, Dyer constructed an unsinkable life-boat but did not immediately pursue his mechanical bent, for at 16 he entered the counting-house of a French refugee named Nancrède and succeeded to part of the business. He first went to England in 1801 and finally settled in 1811 when he married Ellen Jones (d. 1842) of Gower Street, London. Dyer was already linked with American inventors and brought to England Perkins's plan for steel engraving in 1809, shearing and nail-making machines in 1811, and also received plans and specifications for Fulton's steamboats. He seems to have acted as a sort of British patent agent for American inventors, and in 1811 took out a patent for carding engines and a card clothing machine. In 1813 there was a patent for spinning long-fibred substances such as hemp, flax or grasses, and in 1825 there was a further patent for card making machinery. Joshua Field, on his tour through Britain in 1821, saw a wire drawing machine and a leather splitting machine at Dyer's works as well as the card-making machines. At first Dyer lived in Camden Town, London, but he had a card clothing business in Birmingham. He moved to Manchester c.1816, where he developed an extensive engineering works under the name "Joseph C.Dyer, patent card manufacturers, 8 Stanley Street, Dale Street". In 1832 he founded another works at Gamaches, Somme, France, but this enterprise was closed in 1848 with heavy losses through the mismanagement of an agent. In 1825 Dyer improved on Danforth's roving frame and started to manufacture it. While it was still a comparatively crude machine when com-pared with later versions, it had the merit of turning out a large quantity of work and was very popular, realizing a large sum of money. He patented the machine that year and must have continued his interest in these machines as further patents followed in 1830 and 1835. In 1821 Dyer had been involved in the foundation of the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) and he was linked with the construction of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He was not so successful with the ill-fated Bank of Manchester, of which he was a director and in which he lost £98,000. Dyer played an active role in the community and presented many papers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He helped to establish the Royal Institution in London and the Mechanics Institution in Manchester. In 1830 he was a member of the delegation to Paris to take contributions from the town of Manchester for the relief of those wounded in the July revolution and to congratulate Louis-Philippe on his accession. He called for the reform of Parliament and helped to form the Anti-Corn Law League. He hated slavery and wrote several articles on the subject, both prior to and during the American Civil War.

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See also: Arnold, Aza

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Harington was a writer and poet and was a godson of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1596 he published a satire entitled A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject called the Metamorphosis of Ajax, which described the water-closet that he constructed for his home in Kelston, near Bath. Ajax was a whimsical reference to "jakes", a euphemism for privy or closet. The use of the water-closet, he declared, "would make unsavoury Places sweet, noisome Places wholesome and filthy Places cleanly". The water-closet was illustrated in his book and was, in effect, a water-fed and -controlled close-stool. Water was pumped up into a cistern, which fed a closet pan, and was retained there by the operation of a valve. The water action was controlled by a handle set into the seat of the pan, thus causing the sewage to be discharged into a cesspool beneath. However, because of the lack of adequate water supplies and sewage systems, Harington's invention was not generally taken up until 1775, when Alexander Cumming patented it.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Born into a prosperous Jewish merchant family, Mond studied at the Polytechnic in Cassel and then under the distinguished chemists Hermann Kolbe at Marburg and Bunsen at Heidelberg from 1856. In 1859 he began work as an industrial chemist in various works in Germany and Holland. At this time, Mond was pursuing his method for recovering sulphur from the alkali wastes in the Leblanc soda-making process. Mond came to England in 1862 and five years later settled permanently, in partnership with John Hutchinson \& Co. at Widnes, to perfect his process, although complete success eluded him. He became a naturalized British subject in 1880.

In 1872 Mond became acquainted with Ernest Solvay, the Belgian chemist who developed the ammonia-soda process which finally supplanted the Leblanc process. Mond negotiated the English patent rights and set up the first ammoniasoda plant in England at Winnington in Cheshire, in partnership with John Brunner. After overcoming many difficulties by incessant hard work, the process became a financial success and in 1881 Brunner, Mond \& Co. was formed, for a time the largest alkali works in the world. In 1926 the company merged with others to form Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd (ICI). The firm was one of the first to adopt the eight-hour day and to provide model dwellings and playing fields for its employees.

From 1879 Mond took up the production of ammonia and this led to the Mond producer-gas plant, patented in 1883. The process consisted of passing air and steam over coal and coke at a carefully regulated temperature. Ammonia was generated and, at the same time, so was a cheap and useful producer gas. Mond's major discovery followed the observation in 1889 that carbon monoxide could combine with nickel in its ore at around 60°C to form a gaseous compound, nickel carbonyl. This, on heating to a higher temperature, would then decompose to give pure nickel. Mond followed up this unusual way of producing and purifying a metal and by 1892 had succeeded in setting up a pilot plant to perfect a large-scale process and went on to form the Mond Nickel Company.

Apart from being a successful industrialist, Mond was prominent in scientific circles and played a leading role in the setting up of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1881. The success of his operations earned him great wealth, much of which he donated for learned and charitable purposes. He formed a notable collection of pictures which he bequeathed to the National Gallery.

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