plans+area

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Mining and extraction technology, Weapons and armour

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The son of a barber-surgeon who deserted his family to serve in the Swedish army, Nobel showed little interest in academic pursuits as a child and was sent to sea at the age of 16, but jumped ship in Egypt and was eventually employed as an architect by the pasha. Returning to Sweden, he won a scholarship to the Stockholm School of Architecture, where he studied from 1821 to 1825 and was awarded a number of prizes. His interest then leaned towards mechanical matters and he transferred to the Stockholm School of Engineering. Designs for linen-finishing machines won him a prize there, and he also patented a means of transforming rotary into reciprocating movement. He then entered the real-estate business and was successful until a fire in 1833 destroyed his house and everything he owned. By this time he had married and had two sons, with a third, Alfred (of Nobel Prize fame; see Alfred Nobel), on the way. Moving to more modest quarters on the outskirts of Stockholm, Immanuel resumed his inventions, concentrating largely on India rubber, which he applied to surgical instruments and military equipment, including a rubber knapsack.

It was talk of plans to construct a canal at Suez that first excited his interest in explosives. He saw them as a means of making mining more efficient and began to experiment in his backyard. However, this made him unpopular with his neighbours, and the city authorities ordered him to cease his investigations. By this time he was deeply in debt and in 1837 moved to Finland, leaving his family in Stockholm. He hoped to interest the Russians in land and sea mines and, after some four years, succeeded in obtaining financial backing from the Ministry of War, enabling him to set up a foundry and arms factory in St Petersburg and to bring his family over. By 1850 he was clear of debt in Sweden and had begun to acquire a high reputation as an inventor and industrialist. His invention of the horned contact mine was to be the basic pattern of the sea mine for almost the next 100 years, but he also created and manufactured a central-heating system based on hot-water pipes. His three sons, Ludwig, Robert and Alfred, had now joined him in his business, but even so the outbreak of war with Britain and France in the Crimea placed severe pressures on him. The Russians looked to him to convert their navy from sail to steam, even though he had no experience in naval propulsion, but the aftermath of the Crimean War brought financial ruin once more to Immanuel. Amongst the reforms brought in by Tsar Alexander II was a reliance on imports to equip the armed forces, so all domestic arms contracts were abruptly cancelled, including those being undertaken by Nobel. Unable to raise money from the banks, Immanuel was forced to declare himself bankrupt and leave Russia for his native Sweden. Nobel then reverted to his study of explosives, particularly of how to adapt the then highly unstable nitroglycerine, which had first been developed by Ascanio Sobrero in 1847, for blasting and mining. Nobel believed that this could be done by mixing it with gunpowder, but could not establish the right proportions. His son Alfred pursued the matter semi-independently and eventually evolved the principle of the primary charge (and through it created the blasting cap), having taken out a patent for a nitroglycerine product in his own name; the eventual result of this was called dynamite. Father and son eventually fell out over Alfred's independent line, but worse was to follow. In September 1864 Immanuel's youngest son, Oscar, then studying chemistry at Uppsala University, was killed in an explosion in Alfred's laboratory: Immanuel suffered a stroke, but this only temporarily incapacitated him, and he continued to put forward new ideas. These included making timber a more flexible material through gluing crossed veneers under pressure and bending waste timber under steam, a concept which eventually came to fruition in the form of plywood.

In 1868 Immanuel and Alfred were jointly awarded the prestigious Letterstedt Prize for their work on explosives, but Alfred never for-gave his father for retaining the medal without offering it to him.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering

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The son of Caleb and Sally Pratt, Thomas Pratt attended public school in Boston before going on to the Rensselaer School (now the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, New York. While at school, his spare time was spent assisting his father, a well-known architect, in his practice. He is said to have drawn a complete set of plans for a substantial house when only 12 years old. At the conclusion of his studies, he was offered a teaching position at Rensselaer but turned it down as he was planning an engineering career; he became a government assistant on the construction of dry docks at Charleston, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia.

After this experience of government work, he turned to railroad construction, first with the Boston and Lowell and Boston and Maine railroads, followed by many others. In this work, he became involved in bridge construction, mostly as consulting engineer. His best-known bridge was that over the Merrimack River at Newburyport, Massachusetts, which he built with six long timber spans and a metal drawspan. He also invented a new method of ship propulsion, a form of steam boiler, an equalizer for drawbridge supports and an improved form of combined timber and steel truss; he is best known, however, for the Pratt truss. This did not truly come into its own until the inception of all-metal construction for bridges, by which time it was too late for Pratt to gain much financial reward from it.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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A son of the manse, Russell was originally destined for the Church and commenced studies at the University of St Andrews, but shortly afterwards he transferred to Glasgow, graduating MA in 1825 when only 17 years old. He began work as a teacher in Edinburgh, working up from a school to the Mechanics Institute and then in 1832 to the University, where he took over the classes in natural philosophy following the death of the professor. During this period he designed and advised on the application of steam power to road transport and to the Forth and Clyde Canal, thereby awakening his interest in ships and naval architecture.

Russell presented papers to the British Association over several years, and one of them, The Wave Line Theory of Ship Form (although now superseded), had great influence on ship designers of the time and helped to establish the formal study of hydromechanics. With a name that was becoming well known, Russell looked around for better opportunities, and on narrowly missing appointment to the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh University he joined the upand-coming Clyde shipyard of Caird \& Co., Greenock, as Manager in 1838.

Around 1844 Russell and his family moved to London; following some business problems he was in straitened circumstances. However, appointment as Secretary to the Committee setting up the Great Exhibition of 1851 eased his path into London's intellectual society and allowed him to take on tasks such as, in 1847, the purchase of Fairbairn's shipyard on the Isle of Dogs and the subsequent building there of I.K. Brunel's Great Eastern steamship. This unhappy undertaking was a millstone around the necks of Brunel and Russell and broke the health of the former. With the yard failing to secure the order for HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy's first ironclad, Russell pulled out of shipbuilding and for the remainder of his life was a designer, consultant and at times controversial, but at all times polished and urbane, member of many important committees and societies. He is remembered as one of the founders of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1860. His last task was to design a Swiss Lake steamer for Messrs Escher Wyss, a company that coincidentally had previously retained Sir William Fairbairn.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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When Louis Blériot made his historic flight across the English Channel in 1909, the credit for the success of the flight naturally went to the pilot. Few people thought about the designer of the successful aeroplane, and those who did assumed it was Blériot himself. Blériot did design several of the aeroplanes bearing his name, but the cross- Channel No. XI was mainly designed by his friend Raymond Saulnier, a fact not; broadcast at the time.

In 1911 the Morane-Saulnier company was founded in Paris by Léon (1885–1918) and Robert (1886–1968) Morane and Raymond Saulnier, who became Chief Designer. Flying a Morane-Saulnier, Roland Garros made a recordbreaking flight to a height of 5,611 m (18,405 ft) in 1912, and the following year he made the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean. Morane-Saulnier built a series of "parasol" monoplanes which were very widely used during the early years of the First World War. With the wing placed above the fuselage, the pilot had an excellent downward view for observation purposes, but the propeller ruled out a forward-firing machine gun. During 1913–4, Raymond Saulnier was working on an idea for a synchronized machine gun to fire between the blades of the propeller. He could not overcome certain technical problems, so he devised a simple alternative: metal deflector plates were fitted to the propeller, so if a bullet hit the blade it did no harm. Roland Garros, flying a Type L Parasol, tested the device in action during April 1915 and was immediately successful. This opened the era of the true fighter aircraft. Unfortunately, Garros was shot down and the Germans discovered his secret weapon: they improved on the idea with a fully synchronized machine gun fitted to the Fokker E 1 monoplane. The Morane-Saulnier company continued in business until 1963, when it was taken over by the Potez Group.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Son of a successful mining engineer, Sopwith did not shine at school and, having been turned down by the Royal Navy as a result, attended an engineering college. His first interest was motor cars and, while still in his teens, he set up a business in London with a friend in order to sell them; he also took part in races and rallies.

Sopwith's interest in aviation came initially through ballooning, and in 1906 he purchased his own balloon. Four years later, inspired by the recent flights across the Channel to France and after a joy-ride at Brooklands, he bought an Avis monoplane, followed by a larger biplane, and taught himself to fly. He was awarded the Royal Aero Society's Aviator Certificate No. 31 on 21 November 1910, and he quickly distinguished himself in flying competitions on both sides of the Atlantic and started his own flying school. In his races he was ably supported by his friend Fred Sigrist, a former motor engineer. Among the people Sopwith taught to fly were an Australian, Harry Hawker, and Major Hugh Trenchard, who later became the "father" of the RAF.

In 1912, depressed by the poor quality of the aircraft on trial for the British Army, Sopwith, in conjunction with Hawker and Sigrist, bought a skating rink in Kingston-upon-Thames and, assisted by Fred Sigrist, started to design and build his first aircraft, the Sopwith Hybrid. He sold this to the Royal Navy in 1913, and the following year his aviation manufacturing company became the Sopwith Aviation Company Ltd. That year a seaplane version of his Sopwith Tabloid won the Schneider Trophy in the second running of this speed competition. During 1914–18, Sopwith concentrated on producing fighters (or "scouts" as they were then called), with the Pup, the Camel, the 1½ Strutter, the Snipe and the Sopwith Triplane proving among the best in the war. He also pioneered several ideas to make flying easier for the pilot, and in 1915 he patented his adjustable tailplane and his 1 ½ Strutter was the first aircraft to be fitted with air brakes. During the four years of the First World War, Sopwith Aviation designed thirty-two different aircraft types and produced over 16,000 aircraft.

The end of the First World War brought recession to the aircraft industry and in 1920 Sopwith, like many others, put his company into receivership; none the less, he immediately launched a new, smaller company with Hawker, Sigrist and V.W.Eyre, which they called the H.G. Hawker Engineering Company Ltd to avoid any confusion with the former company. He began by producing cars and motor cycles under licence, but was determined to resume aircraft production. He suffered an early blow with the death of Hawker in an air crash in 1921, but soon began supplying aircraft to the Royal Air Force again. In this he was much helped by taking on a new designer, Sydney Camm, in 1923, and during the next decade they produced a number of military aircraft types, of which the Hart light bomber and the Fury fighter, the first to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h), were the best known. In the mid-1930s Sopwith began to build a large aviation empire, acquiring first the Gloster Aircraft Company and then, in quick succession, Armstrong-Whitworth, Armstrong-Siddeley Motors Ltd and its aero-engine counterpart, and A.V.Roe, which produced Avro aircraft. Under the umbrella of the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company (set up in 1935) these companies produced a series of outstanding aircraft, ranging from the Hawker Hurricane, through the Avro Lancaster to the Gloster Meteor, Britain's first in-service jet aircraft, and the Hawker Typhoon, Tempest and Hunter. When Sopwith retired as Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group in 1963 at the age of 75, a prototype jump-jet (the P-1127) was being tested, later to become the Harrier, a for cry from the fragile biplanes of 1910.

Sopwith also had a passion for yachting and came close to wresting the America's Cup from the USA in 1934 when sailing his yacht Endeavour, which incorporated a number of features years ahead of their time; his greatest regret was that he failed in his attempts to win this famous yachting trophy for Britain. After his retirement as Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group, he remained on the Board until 1978. The British aviation industry had been nationalized in April 1977, and Hawker Siddeley's aircraft interests merged with the British Aircraft Corporation to become British Aerospace (BAe). Nevertheless, by then the Group had built up a wide range of companies in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering, and its board conferred on Sopwith the title Founder and Life President.

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CM / JDS

SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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Telford was the son of a shepherd, who died when the boy was in his first year. Brought up by his mother, Janet Jackson, he attended the parish school at Westerkirk. He was apprenticed to a stonemason in Lochmaben and to another in Langholm. In 1780 he walked from Eskdale to Edinburgh and in 1872 rode to London on a horse that he was to deliver there. He worked for Sir William Chambers as a mason on Somerset House, then on the Eskdale house of Sir James Johnstone. In 1783–4 he worked on the new Commissioner's House and other buildings at Portsmouth dockyard.

In late 1786 Telford was appointed County Surveyor for Shropshire and moved to Shrewsbury Castle, with work initially on the new infirmary and County Gaol. He designed the church of St Mary Magdalene, Bridgnorth, and also the church at Madley. Telford built his first bridge in 1790–2 at Montford; between 1790 and 1796 he built forty-five road bridges in Shropshire, including Buildwas Bridge. In September 1793 he was appointed general agent, engineer and architect to the Ellesmere Canal, which was to connect the Mersey and Dee rivers with the Severn at Shrewsbury; William Jessop was Principal Engineer. This work included the Pont Cysyllte aqueduct, a 1,000 ft (305 m) long cast-iron trough 127 ft (39 m) above ground level, which entailed an on-site ironworks and took ten years to complete; the aqueduct is still in use today. In 1800 Telford put forward a plan for a new London Bridge with a single cast-iron arch with a span of 600 ft (183 m) but this was not built.

In 1801 Telford was appointed engineer to the British Fisheries Society "to report on Highland Communications" in Scotland where, over the following eighteen years, 920 miles (1,480 km) of new roads were built, 280 miles (450 km) of the old military roads were realigned and rebuilt, over 1,000 bridges were constructed and much harbour work done, all under Telford's direction. A further 180 miles (290 km) of new roads were also constructed in the Lowlands of Scotland. From 1804 to 1822 he was also engaged on the construction of the Caledonian Canal: 119 miles (191 km) in all, 58 miles (93 km) being sea loch, 38 miles (61 km) being Lochs Lochy, Oich and Ness, 23 miles (37 km) having to be cut.

In 1808 he was invited by King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden to assist Count Baltzar von Platen in the survey and construction of a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic. Telford surveyed the 114 mile (183 km) route in six weeks; 53 miles (85 km) of new canal were to be cut. Soon after the plans for the canal were completed, the King of Sweden created him a Knight of the Order of Vasa, an honour that he would have liked to have declined. At one time some 60,000 soldiers and seamen were engaged on the work, Telford supplying supervisors, machinery—including an 8 hp steam dredger from the Donkin works and machinery for two small paddle boats—and ironwork for some of the locks. Under his direction an ironworks was set up at Motala, the foundation of an important Swedish industrial concern which is still flourishing today. The Gotha Canal was opened in September 1832.

In 1811 Telford was asked to make recommendations for the improvement of the Shrewsbury to Holyhead section of the London-Holyhead road, and in 1815 he was asked to survey the whole route from London for a Parliamentary Committee. Construction of his new road took fifteen years, apart from the bridges at Conway and over the Menai Straits, both suspension bridges by Telford and opened in 1826. The Menai bridge had a span of 579 ft (176 m), the roadway being 153 ft (47 m) above the water level.

In 1817 Telford was appointed Engineer to the Exchequer Loan Commission, a body set up to make capital loans for deserving projects in the hard times that followed after the peace of Waterloo. In 1820 he became the first President of the Engineers Institute, which gained its Royal Charter in 1828 to become the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was appointed Engineer to the St Katharine's Dock Company during its construction from 1825 to 1828, and was consulted on several early railway projects including the Liverpool and Manchester as well as a number of canal works in the Midlands including the new Harecastle tunnel, 3,000 ft (914 m) long.

Telford led a largely itinerant life, living in hotels and lodgings, acquiring his own house for the first time in 1821, 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, which was partly used as a school for young civil engineers. He died there in 1834, after suffering in his later years from the isolation of deafness. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

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Villard was one of the thirteenth-century architect-engineers who were responsible for the design and construction of the great Gothic cathedrals and other churches of the time. Their responsibilities covered all aspects of the work, including (in the spirit of the Roman architect Vitruvius) the invention and construction of mechanical devices. In their time, these men were highly esteemed and richly rewarded, although few of the inscriptions paying tribute to their achievements have survived. Villard stands out among them because a substantial part of his sketchbook has survived, in the form of thirty-three parchment sheets of drawings and notes, now kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Villard's professional career lasted roughly from 1225 to 1250. As a boy, he went to work on the building of the Cistercian monastery at Vaucelles, not far from Honnecourt, and afterwards he was apprenticed to the masons' lodge at Cambrai Cathedral, where he began copying the drawings and layouts on the tracing-house floor. All his drawings are, therefore, of the plans, elevations and sections of cathedrals. These buildings have long since been destroyed, but his drawings, perhaps among his earliest, bear witness to their architecture. He travelled widely in France and recorded features of the great works at Reims, Laon and Chartres. These include the complex system of passageways built into the fabric of a great cathedral; Villard comments that one of their purposes was "to allow circulation in case of fire".

Villard was invited to Hungary and reached there c. 1235. He may have been responsible for the edifice dedicated to St Elizabeth of Hungary, canonized in 1235, at Kassa (now Košice, Slovakia). Villard probably returned to France c. 1240, at least before the Tartar invasion of Hungary in 1241.

His sketchbook, which dates to c. 1235, stands as a memorial to Villard's skill as a draughtsman, a student of perspective and a mechanical engineer. He took his sketchbook with him on his travels, and used ideas from it in his work abroad. It contains architectural designs, geometrical constructions for use in building, surveying exercises and drawings for various kinds of mechanical devices, for civil or military use. He was transmitting details from the highly developed French Gothic masons to the relatively underdeveloped eastern countries. The notebooks were annotated for the use of pupils and other master masons, and the notes on geometry were obviously intended for pupils. The prize examples are the pages in the book, clearly Villard's own work, related to mechanical devices. Whilst he, like many others of the period and after, played with designs for perpetual-motion machines, he concentrated on useful devices. These included the first Western representation of a perpetualmotion machine, which at least displays a concern to derive a source of energy: this was a water-powered sawmill, with automatic feed of the timber into the mill. This has been described as the first industrial automatic power-machine to involve two motions, for it not only converts the rotary motion of the water-wheel to the reciprocating motion of the saw, but incorporates a means of keeping the log pressed against the saw. His other designs included water-wheels, watermills, the Archimedean screw and other curious devices.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Zeppelin served in the German Army and retired with the rank of General in 1890. While in the army, he was impressed by the use of balloons in the American Civil War and during the Siege of Paris. By the time he retired, non-rigid airships were just beginning to make their mark. Zeppelin decided to build an airship with a rigid framework to support the gas bags. Plans were drawn up in 1893 with the assistance of Theodore Kober, an engineer, but the idea was rejected by the authorities. A company was founded in 1898 and construction began. The Luftschiff Zeppelin No. 1 (LZ1) made its first flight on 2 July 1900. Modifications were needed and the second flight took place in October. A reporter called Hugo Eckener covered this and later flights: his comments and suggestions so impressed Zeppelin that Eckener eventually became his partner, publicist, fund-raiser and pilot.

The performance of the subsequent Zeppelins gradually improved, but there was limited military interest. In November 1909 a company with the abbreviated name DELAG was founded to operate passenger-carrying Zeppelins. The service was opened by LZ 7 Deutschland in mid-June 1910, and the initial network of Frankfurt, Baden- Baden and Düsseldorf was expanded. Eckener became a very efficient Director of Flight Operations, and by the outbreak of war in 1914 some 35,000 passengers had been carried without any fatalities. During the First World War many Zeppelins were built and they carried out air-raids on Britain. Despite their menacing reputation, they were very vulnerable to attack by fighters. Zeppelin, now in his seventies, turned his attention to large bombers, following the success of Sikorsky's Grand, but he died in 1917. Eckener continued to instruct crews and improve the Zeppelin designs. When the war ended Eckener arranged to supply the Americans with an airship as part of German reparations: this became the Los Angeles. In 1928 a huge new airship, the Graf Zeppelin, was completed and Eckener took command. He took the Graf Zeppelin on many successful flights, including a voyage around the world in 1929.

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административно-хозяйственное обеспечение
Административно-хозяйственная служба ОКОИ обеспечивает хозяйственную деятельность штаба Игр, предоставляя соответствующим образом оборудованные офисные помещения для штатного и внештатного персонала, наблюдателей, консультантов, волонтеров и спонсоров в период до начала Игр и во время их проведения.
[Департамент лингвистических услуг Оргкомитета «Сочи 2014». Глоссарий терминов]

EN

office management
Office Management area plans and manages the delivery and operation of Games headquarters for the OCOG, providing suitable premises to accommodate the administrative functions (of paid staff, secondees, consultants, temporary volunteer staff and VIK staff) for the period leading up to and including the Games.
[Департамент лингвистических услуг Оргкомитета «Сочи 2014». Глоссарий терминов]

Тематики

• спорт (административно-хозяйственная деятельность)

EN

• office management