pioneer+equipment

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Metallurgy, Public utilities, Telecommunications

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Born Carl Wilhelm, he attended craft schools in Lübeck and Magdeburg, followed by an intensive course in natural science at Göttingen as a pupil of Weber. At the age of 19 Siemens travelled to England and sold an electroplating process developed by his brother Werner Siemens to Richard Elkington, who was already established in the plating business. From 1843 to 1844 he obtained practical experience in the Magdeburg works of Count Stolburg. He settled in England in 1844 and later assumed British nationality, but maintained close contact with his brother Werner, who in 1847 had co-founded the firm Siemens \& Halske in Berlin to manufacture telegraphic equipment. William began to develop his regenerative principle of waste-heat recovery and in 1856 his brother Frederick (1826–1904) took out a British patent for heat regeneration, by which hot waste gases were passed through a honeycomb of fire-bricks. When they became hot, the gases were switched to a second mass of fire-bricks and incoming air and fuel gas were led through the hot bricks. By alternating the two gas flows, high temperatures could be reached and considerable fuel economies achieved. By 1861 the two brothers had incorporated producer gas fuel, made by gasifying low-grade coal.

Heat regeneration was first applied in ironmaking by Cowper in 1857 for heating the air blast in blast furnaces. The first regenerative furnace was set up in Birmingham in 1860 for glassmaking. The first such furnace for making steel was developed in France by Pierre Martin and his father, Emile, in 1863. Siemens found British steelmakers reluctant to adopt the principle so in 1866 he rented a small works in Birmingham to develop his open-hearth steelmaking furnace, which he patented the following year. The process gradually made headway; as well as achieving high temperatures and saving fuel, it was slower than Bessemer's process, permitting greater control over the content of the steel. By 1900 the tonnage of open-hearth steel exceeded that produced by the Bessemer process.

In 1872 Siemens played a major part in founding the Society of Telegraph Engineers (from which the Institution of Electrical Engineers evolved), serving as its first President. He became President for the second time in 1878. He built a cable works at Charlton, London, where the cable could be loaded directly into the holds of ships moored on the Thames. In 1873, together with William Froude, a British shipbuilder, he designed the Faraday, the first specialized vessel for Atlantic cable laying. The successful laying of a cable from Europe to the United States was completed in 1875, and a further five transatlantic cables were laid by the Faraday over the following decade.

The Siemens factory in Charlton also supplied equipment for some of the earliest electric-lighting installations in London, including the British Museum in 1879 and the Savoy Theatre in 1882, the first theatre in Britain to be fully illuminated by electricity. The pioneer electric-tramway system of 1883 at Portrush, Northern Ireland, was an opportunity for the Siemens company to demonstrate its equipment.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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For the first twenty-five years of his life, Gestetner was a rolling stone and accordingly gathered no moss. Leaving school in 1867, he began working for an uncle in Sopron, making sausages. Four years later he apprenticed himself to another uncle, a stockbroker, in Vienna. The financial crisis of 1873 prompted a move to a restaurant, also in the family, but tiring of a menial existence, he emigrated to the USA, travelling steerage. He began to earn a living by selling Japanese kites: these were made of strong Japanese paper coated with lacquer, and he noted their long fibres and great strength, an observation that was later to prove useful when he was searching for a suitable medium for stencil duplicating. However, he did not prosper in the USA and he returned to Europe, first to Vienna and finally to London in 1879. He took a job with Fairholme \& Co., stationers in Shoe Lane, off Holborn; at last Gestetner found an outlet for his inventive genius and he began his life's work in developing stencil duplicating. His first patent was in 1879 for an application of the hectograph, an early method of duplicating documents. In 1881, he patented the toothed-wheel pen, or Cyclostyle, which made good ink-passing perforations in the stencil paper, with which he was able to pioneer the first practicable form of stencil duplicating. He then adopted a better stencil tissue of Japanese paper coated with wax, and later an improved form of pen. This assured the success of Gestetner's form of stencil duplicating and it became established practice in offices in the late 1880s. Gestetner began to manufacture the apparatus in premises in Sun Street, at first under the name of Fairholme, since they had defrayed the patent expenses and otherwise supported him financially, in return for which Gestetner assigned them his patent rights. In 1882 he patented the wheel pen in the USA and appointed an agent to sell the equipment there. In 1884 he moved to larger premises, and three years later to still larger premises. The introduction of the typewriter prompted modifications that enabled stencil duplicating to become both the standard means of printing short runs of copy and an essential piece of equipment in offices. Before the First World War, Gestetner's products were being sold around the world; in fact he created one of the first truly international distribution networks. He finally moved to a large factory to the north-east of London: when his company went public in 1929, it had a share capital of nearly £750,000. It was only with the development of electrostatic photocopying and small office offset litho machines that stencil duplicating began to decline in the 1960s. The firm David Gestetner had founded adapted to the new conditions and prospers still, under the direction of his grandson and namesake.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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William was the second son and one of eleven children of Samuel Priestman, who had moved to Hull after retiring as a corn miller in Kirkstall, Leeds, and who in retirement had become a director of the North Eastern Railway Company. The family were strict Quakers, so William was sent to the Quaker School in Bootham, York. He left school at the age of 17 to start an engineering apprenticeship at the Humber Iron Works, but this company failed so the apprenticeship was continued with the North Eastern Railway, Gateshead. In 1869 he joined the hydraulics department of Sir William Armstrong \& Company, Newcastle upon Tyne, but after a year there his father financed him in business at a small, run down works, the Holderness Foundry, Hull. He was soon joined by his brother, Samuel, their main business being the manufacture of dredging equipment (grabs), cranes and winches. In the late 1870s William became interested in internal combustion engines. He took a sublicence to manufacture petrol engines to the patents of Eugène Etève of Paris from the British licensees, Moll and Dando. These engines operated in a similar manner to the non-compression gas engines of Lenoir. Failure to make the two-stroke version of this engine work satisfactorily forced him to pay royalties to Crossley Bros, the British licensees of the Otto four-stroke patents.

Fear of the dangers of petrol as a fuel, reflected by the associated very high insurance premiums, led William to experiment with the use of lamp oil as an engine fuel. His first of many patents was for a vaporizer. This was in 1885, well before Ackroyd Stuart. What distinguished the Priestman engine was the provision of an air pump which pressurized the fuel tank, outlets at the top and bottom of which led to a fuel atomizer injecting continuously into a vaporizing chamber heated by the exhaust gases. A spring-loaded inlet valve connected the chamber to the atmosphere, with the inlet valve proper between the chamber and the working cylinder being camoperated. A plug valve in the fuel line and a butterfly valve at the inlet to the chamber were operated, via a linkage, by the speed governor; this is believed to be the first use of this method of control. It was found that vaporization was only partly achieved, the higher fractions of the fuel condensing on the cylinder walls. A virtue was made of this as it provided vital lubrication. A starting system had to be provided, this comprising a lamp for preheating the vaporizing chamber and a hand pump for pressurizing the fuel tank.

Engines of 2–10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW) were exhibited to the press in 1886; of these, a vertical engine was installed in a tram car and one of the horizontals in a motor dray. In 1888, engines were shown publicly at the Royal Agricultural Show, while in 1890 two-cylinder vertical marine engines were introduced in sizes from 2 to 10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW), and later double-acting ones up to some 60 hp (45 kW). First, clutch and gearbox reversing was used, but reversing propellers were fitted later (Priestman patent of 1892). In the same year a factory was established in Philadelphia, USA, where engines in the range 5–20 hp (3.7–15 kW) were made. Construction was radically different from that of the previous ones, the bosses of the twin flywheels acting as crank discs with the main bearings on the outside.

On independent test in 1892, a Priestman engine achieved a full-load brake thermal efficiency of some 14 per cent, a very creditable figure for a compression ratio limited to under 3:1 by detonation problems. However, efficiency at low loads fell off seriously owing to the throttle governing, and the engines were heavy, complex and expensive compared with the competition.

Decline in sales of dredging equipment and bad debts forced the firm into insolvency in 1895 and receivers took over. A new company was formed, the brothers being excluded. However, they were able to attend board meetings, but to exert no influence. Engine activities ceased in about 1904 after over 1,000 engines had been made. It is probable that the Quaker ethics of the brothers were out of place in a business that was becoming increasingly cut-throat. William spent the rest of his long life serving others.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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Ferguson's father was a small farmer who expected his son to help on the farm from an early age. As a result he received little formal education, and on leaving school joined his brother in a backstreet workshop in Belfast repairing motor bikes. By the age of 19 he had built his own bike and began hill-climbing competitions and racing. His successes in these ventures gained useful publicity for the workshop. In 1907 he built his own car and entered it into competitions, and in 1909 became the first person in Britain to build and fly a machine that was heavier than air.

On the outbreak of the First World War he was appointed by the Irish Department of Agriculture to supervise the operation and maintenance of all farm tractors. His experiences convinced him that even the Ford tractor and the implements available for it were inadequate for the task, and he began to experiment with his own plough designs. The formation of the Ferguson-Sherman Corporation resulted in the production of thousands of the ploughs he had designed for the Ford tractor, but in 1928 Ford discontinued production of tractors, and Ferguson returned to Ireland. He immediately began to design his own tractor. Six years of development led to the building of a prototype that weighed only 16 cwt (813kg). In 1936 David Brown of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, began production of these tractors for Ferguson, but the partnership was not wholly successful and was dissolved after three years. In 1939 Ferguson and Ford reached their famous "Handshake agreement", in which no formal contract was signed, and the mass production of the Ford Ferguson system tractors began that year. During the next nine years 300,000 tractors and a million implements were produced under this agreement. However, on the death of Henry Ford the company began production, under his son, of their own tractor. Ferguson returned to the UK and negotiated a deal with the Standard Motor Company of Coventry for the production of his tractor. At the same time he took legal action against Ford, which resulted in that company being forced to stop production and to pay damages amounting to US$9.5 million.

Aware that his equipment would only operate when set up properly, Ferguson established a training school at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire which was to be a model for other manufacturers. In 1953, by amicable agreement, Ferguson amalgamated with the Massey Harris Company to form Massey Ferguson, and in so doing added harvesting machinery to the range of equipment produced. A year later he disposed of his shares in the new company and turned his attention again to the motor car. Although a number of experimental cars were produced, there were no long-lasting developments from this venture other than a four-wheel-drive system based on hydraulics; this was used by a number of manufacturers on occasional models. Ferguson's death heralded the end of these developments.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Recording, Telecommunications

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He obtained a BSc in electrical engineering at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, in 1923 and an MSc from Yale University, and he did postgraduate work at Columbia University. Most of the time he was also on the staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The Bell Laboratories and its predecessors had a long tradition in research in speech and hearing, and in a team of researchers under H.C. Harrison, Keller developed a number of definite improvements in electrical pick-ups, gold-sputtering for matrix work and electrical disc recording equipment. From 1931 onwards the team at Bell Labs developed disc recording for moving pictures and entered into collaboration with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra concerning transmission and recording of high-fidelity sound over wires, and stereo techniques. Keller developed a stereo recording system for disc records independently of A.D. Blumlein that was used experimentally in the Bell Labs during the 1930s. During the Second World War Keller was in a team developing sonar (sound navigation and ranging) for the US Navy. After the war he concentrated on switching equipment for telephone exchanges and developed a miniature relay. In 1966 he retired from the Bell Laboratories, where he had been Director of several departments, ending as Director of the Switching Apparatus Laboratory. After retirement he was a consultant internationally, concerning electromechanical devices in particular. When, in 1980, the Bell Laboratories decided to issue LP re-recordings of a number of the experimental records made during the 1930s, Keller was brought in from retirement to supervise the project and decide on the selections.

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1 press.

compro la prensa todos los días I buy the newspapers every day

tener buena/mala prensa (figurative) to have a good/bad press

la prensa amarilla the gutter press, the tabloids

prensa del corazón gossip magazines

la prensa escrita the press

2 printing press (imprenta).

entrar en prensa to go to press

3 press.

4 vise, vice.

5 journalism, press.

6 fourth estate.

3^rd person singular (él/ella/ello) present indicative of spanish verb: prensar.

2^nd person singular (tú) Imperative of Spanish verb: prensar.

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► nombre femenino

1 (máquina) press; (de imprimir) printing press

2 (periodistas) press; (periódicos) papers plural

■ ¿lees la prensa todos los días? do you read the paper every day?

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estar en prensa (libro) to be in the press

tener buena/mala prensa to have a good/bad press

libertad de prensa freedom of the press

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1) press

2) printing-press

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1) (=publicaciones)

2) (=máquina) (Mec, Dep) press; (Tip) printing press; [de raqueta] press

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1)

a) (Period) press

b) ( imprenta) (printing) press

c) ( periodistas)

- prensa amarilla

- prensa del corazón

- prensa roja

2) (Tec) press

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- prensa hidráulica

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1)

a) (Period) press

b) ( imprenta) (printing) press

c) ( periodistas)

- prensa amarilla

- prensa del corazón

- prensa roja

2) (Tec) press

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- prensa hidráulica

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prensa¹

¹ = printing press, printing machine, press [presses, -pl.].

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1 ( Period) press

leer/comprar la prensa to read/buy the newspapers

la prensa oral radio and television

la prensa escrita the press

prensa deportiva sports press

buena/mala prensa good/bad press

la película ha tenido muy mala prensa the film has had very bad press

los ecologistas tienen muy mala prensa por aquí ecologists get a very bad press around here

2 (imprenta) press, printing press

estar en prensa to be in o at the press

lo dimos a la prensa we sent it to the printers

(periodistas): la prensa the press

asociaciones de la prensa journalists' o press associations

gutter press, yellow press

gossip magazines (pl) prensa del corazón (↑ prensa a1)

(CS) sensationalist press ( specializing in crime stories)

rotary press

B ( Tec) press

hydraulic press

trouser press

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3ª persona singular (él/ella/usted) presente indicativo

2ª persona singular (tú) imperativo

a) (Impr, Period, Tec) press;

◊ la prensa oral radio and television;

b) ( periodistas)

◊ la prensa the press;

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prensa nf

1. [periódicos, periodistas] press;

compro la prensa todos los días I buy the newspapers every day;

tener buena/mala prensa to have a good/bad press

la prensa del corazón gossip magazines;

la prensa deportiva the sports press;

la prensa diaria the daily press;

la prensa escrita the press;

la prensa especializada specialist publications

2.

3. [imprenta] printing press;

entrar en prensa to go to press

4. [máquina] press

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f press;

prensa diaria daily newspapers pl, dailies pl ;

prensa especializada specialist press;

tener buena/mala prensa tb fig have a good/bad press

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prensa nf

1) : printing press

2) : press

conferencia de prensa: press conference

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prensa n

1. (en general) press

2. (periódicos) papers

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport

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Crompton was the youngest son of a widely travelled diplomat who had retired to the country and become a Whig MP after the Reform Act of 1832. During the Crimean War Crompton's father was in Gibraltar as a commander in the militia. Young Crompton enrolled as a cadet and sailed to Sebastopol, visiting an older brother, and, although only 11 years old, he qualified for the Crimean Medal. Returning to England, he was sent to Harrow, where he showed an aptitude for engineering. In the holidays he made a steam road engine on his father's estate. On leaving school he was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade and spent four years in India, where he worked on a system of steam road haulage to replace bullock trains. Leaving the Army in 1875, Crompton bought a share in an agricultural and general engineering business in Chelmsford, intending to develop his interests in transport. He became involved in the newly developing technology of electric arc lighting and began importing electric lighting equipment made by Gramme in Paris. Crompton soon decided that he could manufacture better equipment himself, and the Chemlsford business was transformed into Crompton \& Co., electrical engineers. After lighting a number of markets and railway stations, Crompton won contracts for lighting the new Law Courts in London, in 1882, and the Ring Theatre in Vienna in 1883. Crompton's interests then broadened to include domestic electrical appliances, especially heating and cooking apparatus, which provided a daytime load when lighting was not required. In 1899 he went to South Africa with the Electrical Engineers Volunteer Corps, providing telegraphs and searchlights in the Boer War. He was appointed Engineer to the new Road Board in 1910, and during the First World War worked for the Government on engineering problems associated with munitions and tanks. He believed strongly in the value of engineering standards, and in 1906 became the first Secretary of the International Electrotechnical Commission.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Davis was the son of a detective with the City of London police. At the age of 11 he entered the employment of Siebe, Gorman \& Co., manufacturers of diving and other safety equipment since 1819, at their Lambeth works. By good fortune, his neat handwriting attracted the notice of Mr Gorman and he was transferred to work in the office. He studied hard after working hours and rose steadily in the firm. In his twenties he was promoted to Assistant Manager, then General Manager, Managing Director and finally Governing Director. He retired in 1960, having been made Life President the previous year, and continued to attend the office regularly until May 1964.

Davis's entire career was devoted to research and development in the firm's special field. In 1906 he perfected the first practicable oxygen-breathing apparatus for use in mine rescue; it was widely adopted and with modifications was still in use in the 1990s. With Professor Leonard Hill he designed a deep-sea diving-bell incorporating a decompression chamber. He also invented an oxygen-breathing apparatus and heated apparel for airmen flying at high altitudes.

Immediately after the first German gas attacks on the Western Front in April 1915, Davis devised a respirator, known as the stocking skene or veil mask. He quickly organized the mass manufacture of this device, roping in members of his family and placing the work in the homes of Lambeth: within 48 hours the first consignment was being sent off to France.

He was a member of the Admiralty Deep Sea Diving Committee, which in 1933 completed tables for the safe ascent of divers with oxygen from a depth of 300 ft (91 m). They were compiled by Davis in conjunction with Professors J.B.S.Haldane and Leonard Hill and Captain G.C.Damant, the Royal Navy's leading diving expert. With revisions these tables have been used by the Navy ever since. Davis's best-known invention was first used in 1929: the Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus. It became standard equipment on submarines until it was replaced by the Built-in Breathing System, which the firm began manufacturing in 1951.

The firm's works were bombed during the Second World War and were re-established at Chessington, Surrey. The extensive research facilities there were placed at the disposal of the Royal Navy and the Admiralty Experimental Diving Unit. Davis worked with Haldane and Hill on problems of the underwater physiology of working divers. A number of inventions issued from Chessington, such as the human torpedo, midget submarine and human minesweeper. In the early 1950s the firm helped to pioneer the use of underwater television to investigate the sinking of the submarine Affray and the crashed Comet jet airliners.

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SUBJECT AREA: Recording

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He graduated from the Dover Academy (Delaware) in 1882 and was apprenticed in a machine-repair firm in Philadelphia and studied in evening classes at the Spring Garden Institute. In 1888 he took employment in a small Philadelphia machine shop owned by Andrew Scull, specializing in repair and bookbinding machinery. After travels in the western part of the US, in 1891 he became a partner in Scull \& Johnson, Manufacturing Machinists, and established a further company, the New Jersey Wire Stitching Machine Company. He bought out Andrew Scull's interest in October 1894 (the last instalment being paid in 1897) and became an independent general machinist. In 1896 he had perfected a spring motor for the Berliner flat-disc gramophone, and he started experimenting with a more direct method of recording in a spiral groove: that of cutting in wax. Co-operation with Berliner eventually led to the incorporation of the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901. The innumerable court cases stemming from the fact that so many patents for various elements in sound recording and reproduction were in very many hands were brought to an end in 1903 when Johnson was material in establishing cross-licencing agreements between Victor, Columbia Graphophone and Edison to create what is known as a patent pool. Early on, Johnson had a thorough experience in all matters concerning the development and manufacture of both gramophones and records. He made and patented many major contributions in all these fields, and his approach was very business-like in that the contribution to cost of each part or process was always a decisive factor in his designs. This attitude was material in his consulting work for the sister company, the Gramophone Company, in London before it set up its own factories in 1910. He had quickly learned the advantages of advertising and of providing customers with durable equipment and records. This motivation was so strong that Johnson set up a research programme for determining the cause of wear in records. It turned out to depend on groove profile, and from 1911 one particular profile was adhered to and processes for transforming the grooves of valuable earlier records were developed. Without precise measuring instruments, he used the durability as the determining factor. Johnson withdrew more and more to the role of manager, and the Victor Talking Machine Company gained such a position in the market that the US anti-trust legislation was used against it. However, a generation change in the Board of Directors and certain erroneous decisions as to product line started a decline, and in February 1926 Johnson withdrew on extended sick leave: these changes led to the eventual sale of Victor. However, Victor survived due to the advent of radio and the electrification of replay equipment and became a part of Radio Corporation of America. In retirement Johnson took up various activities in the arts and sciences and financially supported several projects; his private yacht was used in 1933 in work with the Smithsonian Institution on a deep-sea hydrographie and fauna-collecting expedition near Puerto Rico.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.

The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.

His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.

With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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In the mid-1850s Saxby was a foreman in the Brighton Works of the London Brighton \& South Coast Railway, where he had no doubt become familiar with construction of semaphore signals of the type invented by C.H. Gregory; the London-Brighton line was one of the first over which these were installed. In the 1850s points and signals were usually worked independently, and it was to eliminate the risk of accident from conflicting points and signal positions that Saxby in 1856 patented an arrangement by which related points and signals would be operated simultaneously by a single lever.

Others were concerned with the same problem. In 1855 Vignier, an employee of the Western Railway of France, had made an interlocking apparatus for junctions, and in 1859 Austin Chambers, who worked for the North London Railway, installed at Kentish Town Junction an interlocking lever frame in which a movement that depended upon another could not even commence until the earlier one was completed. He patented it early in 1860; Saxby patented his own version of such an apparatus later the same year. In 1863 Saxby left the London Brighton \& South Coast Railway to enter into a partnership with J.S.Farmer and established Saxby \& Farmer's railway signalling works at Kilburn, London. The firm manufactured, installed and maintained signalling equipment for many prominent railway companies. Its interlocking frames made possible installation of complex track layouts at increasingly busy London termini possible.

In 1867 Saxby \& Farmer purchased Chambers's patent of 1860, Later developments by the firm included effective interlocking actuated by lifting a lever's catch handle, rather than by the lever itself (1871), and an improved locking frame known as the "gridiron" (1874). This was eventually superseded by tappet interlocking, which had been invented by James Deakin of the rival firm Stevens \& Co. in 1870 but for which patent protection had been lost through non-renewal.

Saxby \& Farmer's equipment was also much used on the European continent, in India and in the USA, to which it introduced interlocking. A second manufacturing works was set up in 1878 at Creil (Oise), France, and when the partnership terminated in 1888 Saxby moved to Creil and managed the works himself until he retired to Sussex in 1900.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Volk was the son of a German immigrant clockmaker and continued the business with his mother after his father died in 1869, although when he married in 1879 his profession was described as "electrician". He installed Brighton's first telephone the same year and in 1880 he installed electric lighting in his own house, using a Siemens Brothers dynamo (see Siemens, Dr Ernst Werner von) driven by a Crossley gas engine. This was probably one of the first half-dozen such installations in Britain. Magnus Volk \& Co. became noted electrical manufacturers and contractors, and, inter alia, installed electric light in Brighton Pavilion in place of gas.

By 1883 Volk had moved house. He had kept the dynamo and gas engine used to light his previous house, and he also had available an electric motor from a cancelled order. After approaching the town clerk of Brighton, he was given permission for a limited period to build and operate a 2 ft (61 cm) gauge electric railway along the foreshore. Using the electrical equipment he already had, Volk built the line, a quarter of a mile (400 m) long, in eight weeks. The car was built by a local coachbuilder, with the motor under the seat; electric current at 50 volts was drawn from one running rail and returned through the other.

The railway was opened on 4 August 1883. It operated regularly for several months and then, permission to run it having been renewed, it was rebuilt for the 1884 season to 2 ft 9 in. (84 cm) gauge, with improved equipment. Despite storm damage from time to time, Volk's Electric Railway, extended in length, has become an enduring feature of Brighton's sea front. In 1887 Volk made an electric dogcart, and an electric van which he built for the Sultan of Turkey was probably the first motor vehicle built in Britain for export. In 1896 he opened the Brighton \& Rottingdean Seashore Electric Tramroad, with very wide-gauge track laid between the high-and low-tide lines, and a long-legged, multi-wheel car to run upon it, through the water if necessary. This lasted only until 1901, however. Volk subsequently became an early enthusiast for aircraft.

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1) General subject: pioneer tools

2) Military: entrenching tool, field fortification entrenching tools, field fortification entrenchment tools, field fortification hand tools, Е-tool

3) Engineering: entrenching tools

4) Construction: digging tools

5) Arms production: intrenching equipment

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f < Transp> rail, railway (rly, Ry) (BE), railroad (AE) ■ mit der Bahn verschicken < Transp> ship by rail

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Born of English parents and educated in Paris, Acres travelled to England in the 1880s. He worked for the photographic manufacturing firm Elliott \& Co. in Barnet, near London, and became the Manager. He became well known through his frequent lectures, demonstrations and articles in the photographic press. The appearance of the Edison kinetoscope in 1893 seems to have aroused his interest in the recording and reproduction of movement.

At the beginning of 1895 he took his idea for a camera to Robert Paul, an instrument maker, and they collaborated on the building of a working camera, which Acres used to record the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March 1895. He filmed the Derby at Epsom on 29 May and the opening of the Kiel Canal in June, as well as ten other subjects for the kinetoscope, which were sold by Paul. Acres's association with Paul ended in July 1895. Acres had patented the camera design, the Kinetic Lantern, on 27 May 1895 and then went on to design a projector with which he gave the first successful presentation of projected motion pictures to take place in Britain, at the Royal Photographic Society's meeting on 14 January 1896. At the end of the month Acres formed his own business, the Northern Photographic Company, to supply film stock, process and print exposed film, and to make finished film productions.

His first shows to the public, using the renamed Kineopticon projector, started in Piccadilly Circus on 21 March 1896. He later toured the country with his show. He was honoured with a Royal Command Performance at Marlborough House on 21 July 1896 before members of the royal family. Although he made a number of films for his own use, they and his equipment were used only for his own demonstrations. His last contribution to cinematography was the design and patenting in 1898 of the first low-cost system for amateur use, the Birtac, which was first shown on 25 January 1899 and marketed in May of that year. It used half-width film, 17.5 mm wide, and the apparatus served as camera, printer and projector.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Bunsen's father was Librarian and Professor of Linguistics at Göttingen University and Bunsen himself studied chemistry there. Obtaining his doctorate at the age of only 19, he travelled widely, meeting some of the leading chemists of the day and visiting many engineering works. On his return he held various academic posts, finally as Professor of Chemistry at Heidelberg in 1852, a post he held until his retirement in 1889.

During 1837–41 Bunsen studied a series of compounds shown to contain the cacodyl (CH3)2As-group or radical. The elucidation of the structure of these compounds gave support to the radical theory in organic chemistry and earned him fame, but it also cost him the sight of an eye and other ill effects resulting from these dangerous and evil-smelling substances. With the chemist Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824–87), Bunsen pioneered the use of spectroscopy in chemical analysis from 1859, and with its aid he discovered the elements caesium and rubidium. He developed the Bunsen cell, a zinc-carbon primary cell, with which he isolated a number of alkali and other metals by electrodeposition from solution or electrolysis of fused chlorides.

Bunsen's main work was in chemical analysis, in the course of which he devised some important laboratory equipment, such as a filter pump. The celebrated Bunsen gas burner was probably devised by his technician Peter Desdega. During 1838–44 Bunsen applied his methods of gas analysis to the study of the gases produced by blast furnaces for the production of cast iron. He demonstrated that no less than 80 per cent of the heat was lost during smelting, and that valuable gaseous by-products, such as ammonia, were also lost. Lyon Playfair in England was working along similar lines, and in 1848 the two men issued a paper, "On the gases evolved from iron furnaces", to draw attention to these drawbacks.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Soon after graduating from the Ecole des Mines at St-Etienne in 1910, Chevenard joined the Société de Commentry Fourchambault et Decazeville at their steelworks at Imphy, where he remained for the whole of his career. Imphy had for some years specialized in the production of nickel steels. From this venture emerged the first austenitic nickel-chromium steel, containing 6 per cent chromium and 22–4 per cent nickel and produced commercially in 1895. Most of the alloys required by Guillaume in his search for the low-expansion alloy Invar were made at Imphy. At the Imphy Research Laboratory, established in 1911, Chevenard conducted research into the development of specialized nickel-based alloys. His first success followed from an observation that some of the ferro-nickels were free from the low-temperature brittleness exhibited by conventional steels. To satisfy the technical requirements of Georges Claude, the French cryogenic pioneer, Chevenard was then able in 1912 to develop an alloy containing 55–60 per cent nickel, 1–3 per cent manganese and 0.2–0.4 per cent carbon. This was ductile down to −190°C, at which temperature carbon steel was very brittle.

By 1916 Elinvar, a nickel-iron-chromium alloy with an elastic modulus that did not vary appreciably with changes in ambient temperature, had been identified. This found extensive use in horology and instrument manufacture, and even for the production of high-quality tuning forks. Another very popular alloy was Platinite, which had the same coefficient of thermal expansion as platinum and soda glass. It was used in considerable quantities by incandescent-lamp manufacturers for lead-in wires. Other materials developed by Chevenard at this stage to satisfy the requirements of the electrical industry included resistance alloys, base-metal thermocouple combinations, magnetically soft high-permeability alloys, and nickel-aluminium permanent magnet steels of very high coercivity which greatly improved the power and reliability of car magnetos. Thermostatic bimetals of all varieties soon became an important branch of manufacture at Imphy.

During the remainder of his career at Imphy, Chevenard brilliantly elaborated the work on nickel-chromium-tungsten alloys to make stronger pressure vessels for the Haber and other chemical processes. Another famous alloy that he developed, ATV, contained 35 per cent nickel and 11 per cent chromium and was free from the problem of stress-induced cracking in steam that had hitherto inhibited the development of high-power steam turbines. Between 1912 and 1917, Chevenard recognized the harmful effects of traces of carbon on this type of alloy, and in the immediate postwar years he found efficient methods of scavenging the residual carbon by controlled additions of reactive metals. This led to the development of a range of stabilized austenitic stainless steels which were free from the problems of intercrystalline corrosion and weld decay that then caused so much difficulty to the manufacturers of chemical plant.

Chevenard soon concluded that only the nickel-chromium system could provide a satisfactory basis for the subsequent development of high-temperature alloys. The first published reference to the strengthening of such materials by additions of aluminium and/or titanium occurs in his UK patent of 1929. This strengthening approach was adopted in the later wartime development in Britain of the Nimonic series of alloys, all of which depended for their high-temperature strength upon the precipitated compound Ni3Al.

In 1936 he was studying the effect of what is now known as "thermal fatigue", which contributes to the eventual failure of both gas and steam turbines. He then published details of equipment for assessing the susceptibility of nickel-chromium alloys to this type of breakdown by a process of repeated quenching. Around this time he began to make systematic use of the thermo-gravimetrie balance for high-temperature oxidation studies.

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