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21 Bacon, Francis Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 21 December 1904 Billericay, Englandd. 24 May 1992 Little Shelford, Cambridge, England[br]English mechanical engineer, a pioneer in the modern phase of fuel-cell development.[br]After receiving his education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Bacon served with C.A. Parsons at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1925 to 1940. From 1946 to 1956 he carried out research on Hydrox fuel cells at Cambridge University and was a consultant on fuel-cell design to a number of organizations throughout the rest of his life.Sir William Grove was the first to observe that when oxygen and hydrogen were supplied to platinum electrodes immersed in sulphuric acid a current was produced in an external circuit, but he did not envisage this as a practical source of electrical energy. In the 1930s Bacon started work to develop a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that operated at moderate temperatures and pressures using an alkaline electrolyte. In 1940 he was appointed to a post at King's College, London, and there, with the support of the Admiralty, he started full-time experimental work on fuel cells. His brief was to produce a power source for the propulsion of submarines. The following year he was posted as a temporary experimental officer to the Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment at Fairlie, Ayrshire, and he remained there until the end of the Second World War.In 1946 he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, receiving a small amount of money from the Electrical Research Association. Backing came six years later from the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC), the development of the fuel cell being transferred to Marshalls of Cambridge, where Bacon was appointed Consultant.By 1959, after almost twenty years of individual effort, he was able to demonstrate a 6 kW (8 hp) power unit capable of driving a small truck. Bacon appreciated that when substantial power was required over long periods the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell associated with high-pressure gas storage would be more compact than conventional secondary batteries.The development of the fuel-cell system pioneered by Bacon was stimulated by a particular need for a compact, lightweight source of power in the United States space programme. Electro-chemical generators using hydrogen-oxygen cells were chosen to provide the main supplies on the Apollo spacecraft for landing on the surface of the moon in 1969. An added advantage of the cells was that they simultaneously provided water. NRDC was largely responsible for the forma-tion of Energy Conversion Ltd, a company that was set up to exploit Bacon's patents and to manufacture fuel cells, and which was supported by British Ropes Ltd, British Petroleum and Guest, Keen \& Nettlefold Ltd at Basingstoke. Bacon was their full-time consultant. In 1971 Energy Conversion's operation was moved to the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, as Fuel Cells Ltd. Bacon remained with them until he retired in 1973.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOBE 1967. FRS 1972. Royal Society S.G. Brown Medal 1965. Royal Aeronautical Society British Silver Medal 1969.Bibliography27 February 1952, British patent no. 667,298 (hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell). 1963, contribution in W.Mitchell (ed.), Fuel Cells, New York, pp. 130–92.1965, contribution in B.S.Baker (ed.), Hydrocarbon Fuel Cell Technology, New York, pp. 1–7.Further ReadingObituary, 1992, Daily Telegraph (8 June).A.McDougal, 1976, Fuel Cells, London (makes an acknowledgement of Bacon's contribution to the design and application of fuel cells).D.P.Gregory, 1972, Fuel Cells, London (a concise introduction to fuel-cell technology).GW -
22 Braun, Wernher Manfred von
[br]b. 23 March 1912 Wirsitz, Germanyd. 16 June 1977 Alexandria, Virginia, USA[br]German pioneer in rocket development.[br]Von Braun's mother was an amateur astronomer who introduced him to the futuristic books of Jules Verne and H.G.Wells and gave him an astronomical telescope. He was a rather slack and undisciplined schoolboy until he came across Herman Oberth's book By Rocket to Interplanetary Space. He discovered that he required a good deal of mathematics to follow this exhilarating subject and immediately became an enthusiastic student.The Head of the Ballistics and Armaments branch of the German Army, Professor Karl Becker, had asked the engineer Walter Dornberger to develop a solid-fuel rocket system for short-range attack, and one using liquid-fuel rockets to carry bigger loads of explosives beyond the range of any known gun. Von Braun joined the Verein für Raumschiffsfahrt (the German Space Society) as a young man and soon became a leading member. He was asked by Rudolf Nebel, VfR's chief, to persuade the army of the value of rockets as weapons. Von Braun wisely avoided all mention of the possibility of space flight and some financial backing was assured. Dornberger in 1932 built a small test stand for liquid-fuel rockets and von Braun built a small rocket to test it; the success of this trial won over Dornberger to space rocketry.Initially research was carried out at Kummersdorf, a suburb of Berlin, but it was decided that this was not a suitable site. Von Braun recalled holidays as a boy at a resort on the Baltic, Peenemünde, which was ideally suited to rocket testing. Work started there but was not completed until August 1939, when the group of eighty engineers and scientists moved in. A great fillip to rocket research was received when Hitler was shown a film and was persuaded of the efficacy of rockets as weapons of war. A factory was set up in excavated tunnels at Mittelwerk in the Harz mountains. Around 6,000 "vengeance" weapons were built, some 3,000 of which were fired on targets in Britain and 2,000 of which were still in storage at the end of the Second World War.Peenemünde was taken by the Russians on 5 May 1945, but by then von Braun was lodging with many of his colleagues at an inn, Haus Ingeburg, near Oberjoch. They gave themselves up to the Americans, and von Braun presented a "prospectus" to the Americans, pointing out how useful the German rocket team could be. In "Operation Paperclip" some 100 of the team were moved to the United States, together with tons of drawings and a number of rocket missiles. Von Braun worked from 1946 at the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, and in 1950 moved to Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. In 1953 he produced the Redstone missile, in effect a V2 adapted to carry a nuclear warhead a distance of 320 km (199 miles). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was formed in 1958 and recruited von Braun and his team. He was responsible for the design of the Redstone launch vehicles which launched the first US satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958, and the Mercury capsules of the US manned spaceflight programme which carried Alan Shepard briefly into space in 1961 and John Glenn into earth orbit in 1962. He was also responsible for the Saturn series of large, staged launch vehicles, which culminated in the Saturn V rocket which launched the Apollo missions taking US astronauts for the first human landing on the moon in 1969. Von Braun announced his resignation from NASA in 1972 and died five years later.[br]Bibliography1981, with F.L.Ordway, History of Rocketry and Space TravelFurther ReadingP.Marsh, 1985, The Space Business, Penguin. J.Trux, 1985, The Space Race, New English Library. T.Osman, 1983, Space History, Michael Joseph.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Braun, Wernher Manfred von
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23 Goddard, Dr Robert Hutchings
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 5 October 1882 Worcester, Massachusetts, USAd. 10 August 1945 Baltimore, Maryland, USA[br]American inventory developer of rocket propulsion.[br]At the age of seventeen Goddard climbed a tree and, seeing the view from above, he became determined to make some device with which to ascend towards the planets. In an autobiography, published in 1959 in the journal Astronautics, he stated, "I was a different boy when I descended the ladder. Life now had a purpose for me." His first idea was to launch a projectile by centrifugal force, but in 1909 he started to design a rocket that was to be multi-stage and fuelled by liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Not long before the First World War he produced a report, "A method of reaching extreme altitudes", which was for the Smithsonian Institution and was published in book form in 1919. During the war he worked on solid-fuelled rockets as weapons. His book contained notes on the amount of fuel required to raise 1 lb (454 g) of payload to an infinite altitude. He incurred ridicule as "the moon man" when he proposed the use of flash powder to indicate successful arrival on the moon. In 1923 he severed his connections with military work and returned to the University of Massachusetts. On 16 March 1926 he launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket from his aunt's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts; powered by gasoline and liquid oxygen, it flew to a height of 12 m (40 ft) and travelled 54 m (177 ft) in 2.4 seconds.In November 1929 he met the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who persuaded both the Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Institute to support Goddard's experiments financially. He moved to the more suitable location of the Mescalere Ranch, near Roswell, New Mexico, where he worked until 1941. His liquid-fuelled rockets reached speeds of 1,100 km/h (700 mph) and heights of 2,500 m (8,000ft). He investigated the use of the gyroscope to steady his rockets and the assembly of power units in clusters to increase the total thrust. In 1941 he moved to the naval establishment at Annapolis, Maryland, working on liquid-fuelled rockets to assist the take-off of aircraft from carriers. He worked for the US Government on this and the development of military rockets until his death from throat cancer in 1945. In all, he was granted 214 patents, roughly three per year of his life.In 1960 the US Government admitted infringement of Goddard's patents during the rocket programme of the 1950s and awarded his widow a payment of $1,000,000, while the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) honoured him by naming the Goddard Spaceflight Center near Washington, DC, after him. The Goddard Memorial Library at Clark University, in his home town of Worcester, Massachusetts, was also named in his honour.[br]Further ReadingA.Osman, 1983, Space History, London: Michael Joseph. P.Marsh, 1985, The Space Business, Harmondsworth: Penguin.K.C.Parley, 1991, Robert H.Goddard, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press. T.Streissguth, 1994, Rocket Man: The Story of Robert Goddard, Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Goddard, Dr Robert Hutchings
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24 Langley, Samuel Pierpont
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 22 August 1834 Roxbury, Massachusetts, USAd. 27 February 1906 Aiken, South Carolina, USA[br]American scientist who built an unsuccessful aeroplane in 1903, just before the success of the Wright brothers.[br]Professor Langley was a distinguished mathematician and astronomer who became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (US National Museum) in 1887. He was also interested in aviation and embarked on a programme of experiments with a whirling arm to test wings and with a series of free-flying models. In 1896 one of his steam-powered models made a flight of 4,199 ft (1,280 m): this led to a grant from the Government to subsidize the construction of a manned aeroplane. Langley commissioned Stephen M. Balzer, an automobile engine designer, to build a lightweight aero-engine and appointed his assistant, Charles M.Manly, to oversee the project. After many variations, including rotary and radical designs, two versions of the Balzer-Manly engine were produced, one quarter size and one full size. In August 1903 the small engine powered a model which thus became the first petrol-engined aeroplane to fly. Langley designed his full-size aeroplane (which he called an Aerodrome) with tandem wings and a cruciform tail unit. The Balzer-Manly engine drove two pusher propellers. Manly was to be the pilot as Langley was now almost 70 years old. Most early aviators tested their machines by making tentative hops, but Langley decided to launch his Aerodrome by catapult from the roof of a houseboat on the Potomac river. Two attempts were made and on both occasions the Aerodrome crashed into the river: catapult problems and perhaps a structural weakness were to blame. The second crash occurred on 8 December 1903 and it is ironic that the Wright brothers, with limited funds and no Government support, successfully achieved a manned flight just nine days later. Langley was heartbroken. After his death there followed a strange affair in 1914 when Glenn Curtiss took Langley's Aerodrome, modified it, and tried to prove that but for the faulty catapult it would have flown before the Wrights' Flyer. A brief flight was made with floats instead of the catapult, and it flew rather better after more extensive modifications and a new engine.[br]Bibliography1897, Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Part 1, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution; 1911, Part 2.Further ReadingJ.Gordon Vaeth, 1966, Langley: Man of Science and Flight, New York (biography).Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, 1985, Aviation, London (includes an analysis of Langley's work).Tom D.Crouch, 1981, A Dream of Wings, New York.Robert B.Meyer Jr (ed.), 1971, Langley's Aero Engine of 1903, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Annals of Flight, No. 6 (provides details about the engine).JDSBiographical history of technology > Langley, Samuel Pierpont
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25 Noyce, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 12 December 1927 Burlington, Iowa, USA[br]American engineer responsible for the development of integrated circuits and the microprocessor chip.[br]Noyce was the son of a Congregational minister whose family, after a number of moves, finally settled in Grinnell, some 50 miles (80 km) east of Des Moines, Iowa. Encouraged to follow his interest in science, in his teens he worked as a baby-sitter and mower of lawns to earn money for his hobby. One of his clients was Professor of Physics at Grinnell College, where Noyce enrolled to study mathematics and physics and eventually gained a top-grade BA. It was while there that he learned of the invention of the transistor by the team at Bell Laboratories, which included John Bardeen, a former fellow student of his professor. After taking a PhD in physical electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953, he joined the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia to work on the development of transistors. Then in January 1956 he accepted an invitation from William Shockley, another of the Bell transistor team, to join the newly formed Shockley Transistor Company, the first electronic firm to set up shop in Palo Alto, California, in what later became known as "Silicon Valley".From the start things at the company did not go well and eventually Noyce and Gordon Moore and six colleagues decided to offer themselves as a complete development team; with the aid of the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Company, the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation was born. It was there that in 1958, contemporaneously with Jack K. Wilby at Texas Instruments, Noyce had the idea for monolithic integration of transistor circuits. Eventually, after extended patent litigation involving study of laboratory notebooks and careful examination of the original claims, priority was assigned to Noyce. The invention was most timely. The Apollo Moon-landing programme announced by President Kennedy in May 1961 called for lightweight sophisticated navigation and control computer systems, which could only be met by the rapid development of the new technology, and Fairchild was well placed to deliver the micrologic chips required by NASA.In 1968 the founders sold Fairchild Semicon-ductors to the parent company. Noyce and Moore promptly found new backers and set up the Intel Corporation, primarily to make high-density memory chips. The first product was a 1,024-bit random access memory (1 K RAM) and by 1973 sales had reached $60 million. However, Noyce and Moore had already realized that it was possible to make a complete microcomputer by putting all the logic needed to go with the memory chip(s) on a single integrated circuit (1C) chip in the form of a general purpose central processing unit (CPU). By 1971 they had produced the Intel 4004 microprocessor, which sold for US$200, and within a year the 8008 followed. The personal computer (PC) revolution had begun! Noyce eventually left Intel, but he remained active in microchip technology and subsequently founded Sematech Inc.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFranklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Medal 1966. National Academy of Engineering 1969. National Academy of Science. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1978; Cledo Brunetti Award (jointly with Kilby) 1978. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1979. National Medal of Science 1979. National Medal of Engineering 1987.Bibliography1955, "Base-widening punch-through", Proceedings of the American Physical Society.30 July 1959, US patent no. 2,981,877.Further ReadingT.R.Reid, 1985, Microchip: The Story of a Revolution and the Men Who Made It, London: Pan Books.KF -
26 Popoff, Andrei Alexandrovitch
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 21 September 1821 Russiad. 6 March 1898 Russia[br]Russian admiral and naval constructor involved in the building of unusual warships.[br]After graduating from the Naval School Popoff served in the Russian Navy, ultimately commanding the cruiser Meteor. During the Crimean War he was Captain of a steamship and was later Manager of Artillery Supplies at Sevastopol. At the conclusion of the war he was appointed to supervise the construction of all steamships and so started his real career in naval procurement. For the best part of thirty years he oversaw the Russian naval building programme, producing many new ships at St Petersburg. Probably the finest was the battleship Petr Veliki (Peter the Great), of 9,000 tons displacement, built at Galernii Island in 1869. With some major refits the ship remained in the fleet until 1922. Two remarkable ships were produced at St Petersburg, the Novgorod and the Vice Admiral Popoff in 1874 and 1876, respectively. Their hull form was almost circular in the hope of creating stable and steady gun platforms and to lessen the required depth of water for their duties as defence ships in the shallow waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Despite support for the idea from Sir Edward Reed of the Royal Navy, the designs failed owing to unpleasant oscillations and poor manoeuvring qualities. One further attempt was made to find a successful outcome to this good idea in the construction of the Russian Imperial Yacht Livadia at Elder's Glasgow shipyard in 1880: for many reasons the Livadia never fulfilled her purpose. Despite their great advantages, the age of the Popoffkas was over. Popoff had a remarkable effect on Russian shipbuilding and warship design. He had authority, and used it wisely at a time when the Russian shipbuilding industry was developing quickly.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsHonorary Associate of the Institution of Naval Architects, London.Further ReadingFred T.Jane, 1899, The Imperial Russian Navy, London.AK / FMWBiographical history of technology > Popoff, Andrei Alexandrovitch
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