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41 Boulsover, Thomas
[br]b. 1704d. 1788[br]English cutler, metalworker and inventor of Sheffield plate.[br]Boulsover, originally a small-scale manufacturer of cutlery, is believed to have specialized in making knife-handle components. About 1742 he found that a thin sheet of silver could be fused to copper sheet by rolling or beating to flatten it. Thus he developed the plating of silver, later called Sheffield plate.The method when perfected consisted of copper sheet overlaid by thin sheet silver being annealed by red heat. Protected by iron sheeting, the copper and silver were rolled together, becoming fused to a single plate capable of undergoing further manufacturing processes. Later developments included methods of edging the fused sheets and the placing of silver sheet on both lower and upper surfaces of copper, to produce high-quality silver plate, in much demand by the latter part of the century. Boulsover himself is said to have produced only small articles such as buttons and snuff boxes from this material, which by 1758 was being exploited more commercially by Joseph Hancock in Sheffield making candlesticks, hot-water pots and coffee pots. Matthew Boulton introduced its manufacture in very high-quality products during the 1760s to Birmingham, where the technique was widely adopted later. By the 1770s Boulsover was engaged in rolling his plated copper for industry elsewhere, also trading in iron and purchasing blister steel which he converted by the Huntsman process to crucible steel. Blister steel was converted on his behalf to shear steel by forging. He is thought to have also been responsible for improving this product further, introducing "double-shear steel", by repeating the forging and faggoting of shear steel bars. Thomas Boulsover had become a Sheffield entrepreneur, well known for his numerous skills with metals.[br]Further ReadingH.W.Dickinson, 1937, Matthew Boulton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (describes Boulsover's innovation and further development of Sheffield plate).J.Holland, 1834, Manufactures in Metal III, 354–8.For activities in steel see: K.C.Barraclough, 1991, "Steel in the Industrial Revolution", in J.Day and R.F.Tylecote (eds), The Industrial Revolution in Metals, The Institute of Metals.JD -
42 Castner, Hamilton Young
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 11 September 1858 Brooklyn, New York, USAd. 11 October 1899 Saranoe Lake, New York, USA[br]American chemist, inventor of the electrolytic production of sodium.[br]Around 1850, the exciting new metal aluminium began to be produced by the process developed by Sainte-Claire Deville. However, it remained expensive on account of the high cost of one of the raw materials, sodium. It was another thirty years before Castner became the first to work successfully the process for producing sodium, which consisted of heating sodium hydroxide with charcoal at a high temperature. Unable to interest American backers in the process, Castner took it to England and set up a plant at Oldbury, near Birmingham. At the moment he achieved commercial success, however, the demand for cheap sodium plummeted as a result of the development of the electrolytic process for producing aluminium. He therefore sought other uses for cheap sodium, first converting it to sodium peroxide, a bleaching agent much used in the straw-hat industry. Much more importantly, Castner persuaded the gold industry to use sodium instead of potassium cyanide in the refining of gold. With the "gold rush", he established a large market in Australia, the USA, South Africa and elsewhere, but the problem was to meet the demand, so Castner turned to the electrolytic method. At first progress was slow because of the impure nature of the sodium hydroxide, so he used a mercury cathode, with which the released sodium formed an amalgam. It then reacted with water in a separate compartment in the cell to form sodium hydroxide of a purity hitherto unknown in the alkali industry; chlorine was a valuable by-product.In 1894 Castner began to seek international patents for the cell, but found he had been anticipated in Germany by Kellner, an Austrian chemist. Preferring negotiation to legal confrontation, Castner exchanged patents and processes with Kellner, although the latter's had been less successful. The cell became known as the Castner-Kellner cell, but the process needed cheap electricity and salt, neither of which was available near Oldbury, so he set up the Castner-Kellner Alkali Company works at Runcorn in Cheshire; at the same time, a pilot plant was set up in the USA at Saltville, Virginia, with a larger plant being established at Niagara Falls.[br]Further ReadingA.Fleck, 1947, "The life and work of Hamilton Young Castner" (Castner Memorial Lecture), Chemistry and Industry 44:515-; Fifty Years of Progress: The Story of the Castner-Kellner Company, 1947.T.K.Derry and T.I.Williams, 1960, A Short History of Technology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 549–50 (provides a summary of his work).LRDBiographical history of technology > Castner, Hamilton Young
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43 Hancock, Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 8 May 1786 Marlborough, Wiltshire, Englandd. 26 March 1865 Stoke Newington, London, England[br]English founder of the British rubber industry.[br]After education at a private school in Marlborough, Hancock spent some time in "mechanical pursuits". He went to London to better himself and c.1819 his interest was aroused in the uses of rubber, which until then had been limited. His first patent, dated 29 April 1820, was for the application of rubber in clothing where some elasticity was useful, such as braces or slip-on boots. He noticed that freshly cut pieces of rubber could be made to adhere by pressure to form larger pieces. To cut up his imported and waste rubber into small pieces, Hancock developed his "masticator". This device consisted of a spiked roller revolving in a hollow cylinder. However, when rubber was fed in to the machine, the product was not the expected shredded rubber, but a homogeneous cylindrical mass of solid rubber, formed by the heat generated by the process and pressure against the outer cylinder. This rubber could then be compacted into blocks or rolled into sheets at his factory in Goswell Road, London; the blocks and sheets could be used to make a variety of useful articles. Meanwhile Hancock entered into partnership with Charles Macintosh in Manchester to manufacture rubberized, waterproof fabrics. Despite these developments, rubber remained an unsatisfactory material, becoming sticky when warmed and losing its elasticity when cold. In 1842 Hancock encountered specimens of vulcanized rubber prepared by Charles Goodyear in America. Hancock worked out for himself that it was made by heating rubber and sulphur, and obtained a patent for the manufacture of the material on 21 November 1843. This patent also included details of a new form of rubber, hardened by heating to a higher temperature, that was later called vulcanite, or ebonite. In 1846 he began making solid rubber tyres for road vehicles. Overall Hancock took out sixteen patents, covering all aspects of the rubber industry; they were a leading factor in the development of the industry from 1820 until their expiry in 1858.[br]Bibliography1857, Personal Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Caoutchouc or Indiarubber Manufacture in England, London.Further ReadingH.Schurer, 1953, "The macintosh: the paternity of an invention", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 28:77–87.LRD -
44 Hornby, Frank
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 15 May 1863 Liverpool, Englandd. 21 September 1936 Liverpool, England[br]English toy manufacturer and inventor of Meccano kits.[br]Frank Hornby left school at the age of 16 and worked as a clerk, at first for his father, a provision merchant, and later for D.H.Elliott, an importer of meat and livestock, for whom he became Managing Clerk. As a youth he was interested in engineering and in his own small workshop he became a skilled amateur mechanic. He made toys for his children and c.1900 he devised a constructional toy kit consisting of perforated metal strips which could be connected by bolts and nuts. He filed a patent application in January 1901 and, having failed to interest established toy manufacturers, he set up a small business in partnership with his employer, D.H. Elliott, who provided financial support. The kits were sold at first under the name of Mechanics Made Easy, but by 1907 the name Meccano had been registered as a trade mark. The business expanded rapidly and in 1908 Elliott withdrew from the partnership and Hornby continued on his own account, the company being incorporated as Meccano Ltd. Although parts for Meccano were produced at first by various manufacturers, Hornby soon acquired premises to produce all the components under his own control, and between 1910 and 1913 he established his own factory on a 5-acre (2-hectare) site at Binn's Road, Liverpool. The Meccano Magazine, a monthly publication with articles of general engineering interest, developed from a newsletter giving advice on the use of Meccano, and from the first issue in 1916 until 1924 was edited by Frank Hornby. In 1920 he introduced the clockwork Hornby trains, followed by the electric version five years later. These were gauge "0" (1 1/4 in./32 mm); the smaller gauge "00", or Hornby Dublo, was a later development. Another product of Meccano Ltd was the series of model vehicles known as Dinky toys, introduced in 1934.Frank Hornby served as a Member of Parliament for the Everton Division of Liverpool from 1931 to 1935.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMP, 1931–5.Further ReadingD.J.Jeremy (ed.), 1984–6, Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol. 3, London, 345–9 (a useful biography).Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 127(1934):140–1 (describes the Binn's Road factory).RTS -
45 Krupp, Alfred
[br]b. 26 April 1812 Essen, Germanyd. 14 July 1887 Bredeney, near Essen, Germany[br]German manufacturer of steel and armaments.[br]Krupp's father founded a small cast-steel works at Essen, but at his early death in 1826 the firm was left practically insolvent to his sons. Alfred's formal education ended at that point and he entered the ailing firm. The expansion of trade brought about by the Zollverein, or customs union, enabled him to increase output, and by 1843 he had 100 workers under him, making steel springs and machine parts. Five years later he was able to buy out his co-heirs, and in 1849 he secured his first major railway contract. The quality of his product was usefully advertised by displaying a flawless 2-ton steel ingot at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Krupp was then specializing in the manufacture of steel parts for railways and steamships, notably a weldless steel tire for locomotives, from which was derived the three-ring emblem of the Krupp concern. Krupp made a few cannon from 1847 but sold his first to the Khedive of Egypt in 1857. Two years later he won a major order of 312 cannon from the Prussian Government. With the development of this side of the business, he became the largest steel producer in Europe. In 1862 he adopted the Bessemer steelmaking process. The quality and design of his cannon were major factors in the victory of the Prussian artillery bombardment at Sedan in the Franco- Prussian War of 1870. Krupp expanded further during the boom years of the early 1870s and he was able to gain control of German coal and Spanish iron-ore supplies. He went on to manufacture heavy artillery, with a celebrated testing ground at Osnabrück. By this time he had a workforce of 21,000, whom he ruled with benevolent but strict control. His will instructed that the firm should not be divided.[br]Further ReadingP.Batty, 1966, The House of Krupp (includes a bibliography). G.von Klass, 1954, Krupp: The Story of an Industrial Empire.LRD -
46 Lombe, John
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. c. 1693 probably Norwich, Englandd. 20 November 1722 Derby, England[br]English creator of the first successful powered textile mill in Britain.[br]John Lombe's father, Henry Lombe, was a worsted weaver who married twice. John was the second son of the second marriage and was still a baby when his father died in 1695. John, a native of the Eastern Counties, was apprenticed to a trade and employed by Thomas Cotchett in the erection of Cotchett's silk mill at Derby, which soon failed however. Lombe went to Italy, or was sent there by his elder half-brother, Thomas, to discover the secrets of their throwing machinery while employed in a silk mill in Piedmont. He returned to England in 1716 or 1717, bringing with him two expert Italian workmen.Thomas Lombe was a prosperous London merchant who financed the construction of a new water-powered silk mill at Derby which is said to have cost over £30,000. John arranged with the town Corporation for the lease of the island in the River Derwent, where Cotchett had erected his mill. During the four years of its construction, John first set up the throwing machines in other parts of the town. The machines were driven manually there, and their product helped to defray the costs of the mill. The silk-throwing machine was very complex. The water wheel powered a horizontal shaft that was under the floor and on which were placed gearwheels to drive vertical shafts upwards through the different floors. The throwing machines were circular, with the vertical shafts running through the middle. The doubled silk threads had previously been wound on bobbins which were placed on spindles with wire flyers at intervals around the outer circumference of the machine. The bobbins were free to rotate on the spindles while the spindles and flyers were driven by the periphery of a horizontal wheel fixed to the vertical shaft. Another horizontal wheel set a little above the first turned the starwheels, to which were attached reels for winding the silk off the bobbins below. Three or four sets of these spindles and reels were placed above each other on the same driving shaft. The machine was very complicated for the time and must have been expensive to build and maintain.John lived just long enough to see the mill in operation, for he died in 1722 after a painful illness said to have been the result of poison administered by an Italian woman in revenge for his having stolen the invention and for the injury he was causing the Italian trade. The funeral was said to have been the most superb ever known in Derby.[br]Further ReadingSamuel Smiles, 1890, Men of Invention and Industry, London (probably the only biography of John Lombe).Rhys Jenkins, 1933–4, "Historical notes on some Derbyshire industries", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 14 (provides an acount of John Lombe and his part in the enterprise at Derby).R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (briefly covers the development of early silk-throwing mills).W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (includes a chapter on "Lombe's Silk Machine").P.Barlow, 1836, Treatise of Manufactures and Machinery of Great Britain, London (describes Lombe's mill and machinery, but it is not known how accurate the account may be).RLH -
47 Sperry, Elmer Ambrose
[br]b. 21 October 1860 Cincinnatus, Cortland County, New York, USAd. 16 June 1930 Brooklyn, New York, USA[br]American entrepreneur who invented the gyrocompass.[br]Sperry was born into a farming community in Cortland County. He received a rudimentary education at the local school, but an interest in mechanical devices was aroused by the agricultural machinery he saw around him. His attendance at the Normal School in Cortland provided a useful theoretical background to his practical knowledge. He emerged in 1880 with an urge to pursue invention in electrical engineering, then a new and growing branch of technology. Within two years he was able to patent and demonstrate his arc lighting system, complete with its own generator, incorporating new methods of regulating its output. The Sperry Electric Light, Motor and Car Brake Company was set up to make and market the system, but it was difficult to keep pace with electric-lighting developments such as the incandescent lamp and alternating current, and the company ceased in 1887 and was replaced by the Sperry Electric Company, which itself was taken over by the General Electric Company.In the 1890s Sperry made useful inventions in electric mining machinery and then in electric street-or tramcars, with his patent electric brake and control system. The patents for the brake were important enough to be bought by General Electric. From 1894 to 1900 he was manufacturing electric motor cars of his own design, and in 1900 he set up a laboratory in Washington, where he pursued various electrochemical processes.In 1896 he began to work on the practical application of the principle of the gyroscope, where Sperry achieved his most notable inventions, the first of which was the gyrostabilizer for ships. The relatively narrow-hulled steamship rolled badly in heavy seas and in 1904 Ernst Otto Schuck, a German naval engineer, and Louis Brennan in England began experiments to correct this; their work stimulated Sperry to develop his own device. In 1908 he patented the active gyrostabilizer, which acted to correct a ship's roll as soon as it started. Three years later the US Navy agreed to try it on a destroyer, the USS Worden. The successful trials of the following year led to widespread adoption. Meanwhile, in 1910, Sperry set up the Sperry Gyroscope Company to extend the application to commercial shipping.At the same time, Sperry was working to apply the gyroscope principle to the ship's compass. The magnetic compass had worked well in wooden ships, but iron hulls and electrical machinery confused it. The great powers' race to build up their navies instigated an urgent search for a solution. In Germany, Anschütz-Kämpfe (1872–1931) in 1903 tested a form of gyrocompass and was encouraged by the authorities to demonstrate the device on the German flagship, the Deutschland. Its success led Sperry to develop his own version: fortunately for him, the US Navy preferred a home-grown product to a German one and gave Sperry all the backing he needed. A successful trial on a destroyer led to widespread acceptance in the US Navy, and Sperry was soon receiving orders from the British Admiralty and the Russian Navy.In the rapidly developing field of aeronautics, automatic stabilization was becoming an urgent need. In 1912 Sperry began work on a gyrostabilizer for aircraft. Two years later he was able to stage a spectacular demonstration of such a device at an air show near Paris.Sperry continued research, development and promotion in military and aviation technology almost to the last. In 1926 he sold the Sperry Gyroscope Company to enable him to devote more time to invention.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsJohn Fritz Medal 1927. President, American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1928.BibliographySperry filed over 400 patents, of which two can be singled out: 1908. US patent no. 434,048 (ship gyroscope); 1909. US patent no. 519,533 (ship gyrocompass set).Further ReadingT.P.Hughes, 1971, Elmer Sperry, Inventor and Engineer, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (a full and well-documented biography, with lists of his patents and published writings).LRD -
48 Whinfield, John Rex
[br]b. 16 February 1901 Sutton, Surrey, Englandd. 6 July 1955 Dorking, Surrey, England[br]English inventor ofTerylene.[br]Whinfield was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied chemistry. Before embarking on his career as a research chemist, he worked as an un-paid assistant to the chemist C.F. Cross, who had taken part in the discovery of rayon. Whinfield then joined the Calico Printers' Association. There his interest was aroused by the discovery of nylon by W.H. Carothers to seek other polymers which could be produced in fibre form, usable by the textile industries. With his colleague J.T. Dickson, he discovered in 1941 that a polymerized condensate of terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, polyethylene terephthgal-late, could be drawn into strong fibres. Whinfield and Dickson filed a patent application in the same year, but due to war conditions it was not published until 1946. The Ministry of Supply considered that the new material might have military applications and undertook further research and development. Its industrial and textile possibilities were evaluated by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1943 and "Terylene", as it came to be called, was soon recognized as being as important as nylon.In 1946, Dupont acquired rights to work the Calico Printers' Association patent in the USA and began large-scale manufacture in 1954, marketing the product under the name "Dacron". Meanwhile ICI purchased world rights except for the USA and reached the large-scale manufacture stage in 1955. A new branch of the textile industry has grown up from Whinfield's discovery: he lived to see most people in the western world wearing something made of Terylene. It was one of the major inventions of the twentieth century, yet Whinfield, perhaps because he published little, received scant recognition, apart from the CBE in 1954.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCBE 1954.Further ReadingObituary, 1966, The Times (7 July).Obituary, 1967, Chemistry in Britain 3:26.J.Jewkes, D.Sawers and R.Stillerman, 1969, The Sources of Invention, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan.LRD -
49 Invention
Although we have taken no voyage comparable to Darwin's it seems to us that the variety of human inventions seems in its own way as overwhelming and inexplicable as the infinite variety of life forms that Darwin saw. (Feldman, 1980, p. 36)he sudden inventions characteristic of the sixth stage [of infant development] are in reality the product of a long evolution of schemata and not only of an internal maturation of perceptive structures.... This is revealed by the existence of a fifth stage, characterized by experimental groping.... What does this mean if not that the practice of actual experience is necessary in order to acquire the practice of mental experience and that invention does not arise entirely preformed despite appearances? (Piaget, 1952, p. 348)Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Invention
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