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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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Dedicated to the relief of suffering, Florence Nightingale spent her early years visiting civil and military hospitals all over Europe. She then attended a course of formal training at Kaiserwerth in Germany and with the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul in Paris.

She had returned to London and was managing, after having reformed, a hostel for invalid gentlewomen when in 1854 the appalling conditions of the wounded in Turkey during the Crimean War led to her taking a party of thirty-eight nurses out to Scutari. The application of principles of hygiene and sanitation resulted in dramatic improvements in conditions and on her return to England in 1856 she applied the large sums which had been raised in her honour to the founding in 1861 of the St Thomas's School of Nursing.

From this base she acted as adviser, goad and promoter of sound nursing common sense for the remainder of a long life marred by a chronic invalidism quite out of keeping with the rigorousness of her role in the nursing field. It was not only in the training and conduct of nursing that her influence was primal. Many concepts of hospital technology relating to hygiene, ventilation and ward design are to be attributed to her forthright common sense. The "Nightingale ward", for a time the target of progressive reformers, has been shown still to have abiding virtues.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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Largely educated by his father, he worked for some time for Huygens at Ley den, then for a time in London where he assisted Robert Boyle with his experiments on the air pump. He supposedly invented the double-acting air pump. He travelled to Venice and worked there for a time, but was back in London in 1684 before taking up the position of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Marburg (in 1669 or 1670 he became a Doctor of Medicine at Angers), where he remained from 1687 to 1695. Then followed a period at Cassel, where he was employed by the Duke of Hesse. In this capacity he was much involved in the application of steam-power to pumping water for the Duke's garden fountains. Papin finally returned to London in 1707. He is best known for his "digester", none other than the domestic pressure-cooker. John Evelyn describes it in his diary (12 April 1682): "I went this Afternoone to a Supper, with severall of the R.Society, which was all dressed (both fish and flesh) in Monsieur Papins Digestorie; by which the hardest bones of Biefe itself, \& Mutton, were without water, or other liquor, \& with less than 8 ounces of Coales made as soft as Cheeze, produc'd an incredible quantity of Gravie…. This Philosophical Supper raised much mirth among us, \& exceedingly pleased all the Companie." The pressure-cooker depends on the increase in the boiling point of water with increase of pressure. To avoid the risk of the vessel exploding, Papin devised a weight-loaded lever-type safety valve.

There are those who would claim that Papin preceded Newcomen as the true inventor of the steam engine. There is no doubt that as early as 1690 Papin had the idea of an atmospheric engine, in which a piston in a cylinder is forced upwards by expanding steam and then returned by the weight of the atmosphere upon the piston, but he lacked practical engineering skill such as was necessary to put theory into practice. The story is told of his last trip from Cassel, when returning to England. It is said that he built his own steamboat, intending to make the whole journey by this means, ending with a triumphal journey up the Thames. However, boatmen on the river Weser, thinking that the steamboat threatened their livelihood, attacked it and broke it up. Papin had to travel by more orthodox means. Papin is said to have co-operated with Thomas Savery in the development of the lat-ter's steam engine, on which he was working c. 1705.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Major von Parseval and his colleague Captain von Sigsfeld were serving in the German army during the 1890s when improved military observation from the air was being pursued. Tethered observation balloons, raised and lowered by a winch, had been used since 1794, but in strong winds a spherical balloon became very unstable. Manned kites were being developed by "Colonel" S.F. Cody, in Britain, and others, but kites were a problem if the wind dropped. A very successful compromise was achieved in 1897 by von Parseval and von Sigsfeld, who developed a kite-balloon, the Drachen ("Dragon"), which was elongated like an airship and fitted with large inflated fins. It was attached to its tethering cable in such a way that it flew with a positive incidence (nose up) to the wind, thus producing some lift—like a kite. The combination of these factors made the kite-balloon very stable. Other countries followed suit and a version designed by the Frenchman Albert Caquot was widely used during the First World War for observing the results of artillery fire. Caquot balloons were also used around London as a barrage to obstruct enemy aircraft, and "barrage balloons" were widely used during the Second World War. After working at a government balloon factory in Berlin where non-rigid airships were built, von Parseval designed his own non-rigid airship. The Parseval I which flew in 1906 was small, but larger and faster non-rigids followed. These were built by Luftfahrzeug-Gesellschaft m.b.H. of Berlin founded in 1908 to build and operate Parseval airships. The British Admiralty ordered three Parseval airships, two to be built by Vickers of Barrow (who had built the rigid airship R 1 Mayfly in 1911), and one to be built in Berlin. This one was flown from Berlin to Farnborough in 1913 and joined the Vickers-built Parseval in the Naval Air Service. During the First World War, Parseval airships had the unique distinction of serving on both sides. Three small Parseval airships were built between 1929 and 1932 for use in advertising.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

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The son of a farmer, he had worked in gardens since boyhood and at the age of 21 was employed as Undergardener at the Horticultural Society Gardens in Chiswick, from where he went on to become Head Gardener for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. It was there that he developed his methods of glasshouse construction, culminating in the Great Conservatory of 1836–40, an immense structure some 277 ft (84.4 m) long, 123 ft (37.5 m) wide and 67 ft (20.4 m) high. Its framework was of iron and its roof of glass, with wood to contain the glass panels; it is now demolished. Paxton went on to landscape garden design, fountain and waterway engineering, the laying out of the model village of Edensor, and to play a part in railway and country house projects.

The structure that made Paxton a household name was erected in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was aptly dubbed, by Punch, the Crystal Palace. The idea of holding an international exhibition for industry had been mooted in 1849 and was backed by Prince Albert and Henry Cole. The money for this was to be raised by public subscription and 245 designs were entered into a competition held in 1850; however, most of the concepts, received from many notable architects and engineers, were very costly and unsuitable, and none were accepted. That same year, Paxton published his scheme in the Illustrated London News and it was approved after it received over-whelming public support.

Paxton's Crystal Palace, designed and erected in association with the engineers Fox and Henderson, was a prefabricated glasshouse of vast dimensions: it was 1,848 ft (563.3 m) long, 408 ft (124.4 m) wide and over 100 ft (30.5 m) high. It contained 3,300 iron columns, 2,150 girders. 24 miles (39 km) of guttering, 600,000 ft3 (17,000 m³) of timber and 900,000 ft2 (84,000 m) of sheet glass made by Chance Bros, of Birmingham. One of the chief reasons why it was accepted by the Royal Commission Committee was that it fulfilled the competition proviso that it should be capable of being erected quickly and subsequently dismantled and re-erected elsewhere. The Crystal Palace was to be erected at a cost of £79,800, much less than the other designs. Building began on 30 July 1850, with a labour force of some 2,000, and was completed on 31 March 1851. It was a landmark in construction at the time, for its size, speed of construction and its non-eclectic design, and, most of all, as the first great prefabricated building: parts were standardized and made in quantity, and were assembled on site. The exhibition was opened by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851 and had received six million visitors when it closed on 11 October. The building was dismantled in 1852 and reassembled, with variations in design, at Sydenham in south London, where it remained until its spectacular conflagration in 1936.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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A free black, he was the son of Vincent Rillieux, a white engineer, and Constance Vivant, a quadroon. The family was prosperous enough to send him to France to be educated, at the Ecole Centrale in Paris. There he studied engineering and later taught mechanical engineering, developing a special interest in thermodynamics and steampower. In 1830 he devised a vacuum evaporation system with industrial possibilities, but he was unable to interest any French firms in the device. He therefore returned to New Orleans and ob-tained his first patent in 1843. Two years later he was able to have the evaporation system installed on a plantation to refine sugar. It soon demonstrated its worth, for planters were able to recoup the cost of the plant within a year through raised production and reduced operating costs. It came to be the generally accepted method for processing sugar-cane juice, and the price of refined sugar fell so that white sugar ceased to be a luxury food for the rich.

Rillieux's patents protected him from repeated efforts to counterfeit the process, which thus earned him considerable wealth. However, because of increasing hostility and discriminatory laws against blacks in New Orleans, he did not long enjoy it and he returned to France, taking up the study of egyptology.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Textiles

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Richard Roberts was the son of a shoemaker and tollkeeper and received only an elementary education at the village school. At the age of 10 his interest in mechanics was stimulated when he was allowed by the Curate, the Revd Griffith Howell, to use his lathe and other tools. As a young man Roberts acquired a considerable local reputation for his mechanical skills, but these were exercised only in his spare time. For many years he worked in the local limestone quarries, until at the age of 20 he obtained employment as a pattern-maker in Staffordshire. In the next few years he worked as a mechanic in Liverpool, Manchester and Salford before moving in 1814 to London, where he obtained employment with Henry Maudslay. In 1816 he set up on his own account in Manchester. He soon established a reputation there for gear-cutting and other general engineering work, especially for the textile industry, and by 1821 he was employing about twelve men. He built machine tools mainly for his own use, including, in 1817, one of the first planing machines.

One of his first inventions was a gas meter, but his first patent was obtained in 1822 for improvements in looms. His most important contribution to textile technology was his invention of the self-acting spinning mule, patented in 1825. The normal fourteen-year term of this patent was extended in 1839 by a further seven years. Between 1826 and 1828 Roberts paid several visits to Alsace, France, arranging cottonspinning machinery for a new factory at Mulhouse. By 1826 he had become a partner in the firm of Sharp Brothers, the company then becoming Sharp, Roberts \& Co. The firm continued to build textile machinery, and in the 1830s it built locomotive engines for the newly created railways and made one experimental steam-carriage for use on roads. The partnership was dissolved in 1843, the Sharps establishing a new works to continue locomotive building while Roberts retained the existing factory, known as the Globe Works, where he soon after took as partners R.G.Dobinson and Benjamin Fothergill (1802–79). This partnership was dissolved c. 1851, and Roberts continued in business on his own for a few years before moving to London as a consulting engineer.

During the 1840s and 1850s Roberts produced many new inventions in a variety of fields, including machine tools, clocks and watches, textile machinery, pumps and ships. One of these was a machine controlled by a punched-card system similar to the Jacquard loom for punching rivet holes in plates. This was used in the construction of the Conway and Menai Straits tubular bridges. Roberts was granted twenty-six patents, many of which, before the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852, covered more than one invention; there were still other inventions he did not patent. He made his contribution to the discussion which led up to the 1852 Act by publishing, in 1830 and 1833, pamphlets suggesting reform of the Patent Law.

In the early 1820s Roberts helped to establish the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, and in 1823 he was elected a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. He frequently contributed to their proceedings and in 1861 he was made an Honorary Member. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1838. From 1838 to 1843 he served as a councillor of the then-new Municipal Borough of Manchester. In his final years, without the assistance of business partners, Roberts suffered financial difficulties, and at the time of his death a fund for his aid was being raised.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Domestic appliances and interiors, Electricity, Land transport

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Salomans inherited his baronetcy from his uncle, Sir David Salomans (1797–1873), who had been Member of Parliament for Greenwich and the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London. He was the archetypal amateur engineer and inventor of the Victorian age, indulging in such interests as photography, motoring, electricity, woodworking, polariscopy and astronomy. His house, "Broomhill", near Tun bridge Wells in Kent, was one of the first to be lit by electricity and is said to have been the first to use electricity for cooking. He acted as architect for the building of the stables, the water tower and the 150-seat theatre at his home. In 1874 he was granted a patent for an automatic railway signalling system. He was the founder in 1895 of the first motoring organization in Great Britain, the Self Propelled Traffic Association, forerunner of the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). He was also the organizer of the first motor show to be held in Britain, on 15 October 1895. It is said that, in spite of being the Mayor of Tunbridge Wells, Salomans defied the law and drove without the obligatory pedestrian with a red flag preceding his vehicle; this requirement was removed with the later Light (Road) Locomotives Act, which raised the speed limit to 12 mph (19 km/h).

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Textiles

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Titus Salt arrived in Bradford with his father, who was a wool merchant in the town, in 1822. He soon set up his own company and it was there that he experimented with the textile worsted. Alpaca wool comes from an animal of the camel family that resembles the llama, and flocks of domesticated breeds of the animal had been raised in the high Andes since the days of the Incas. The wool was introduced into Europe via Spain and, later, Germany and France. The first attempts to spin and weave the yarn in England were made in 1808, but despite experimentation over the years the material was difficult to work. It was in 1836 that Salt evolved his method of utilizing a cotton warp with part alpaca weft. The method proved a great success and Bradford gained a reputation as a manufacturing centre for alpaca wool, exporting both yarn and cloth in quantity, especially to the USA. By 1850 Salt, who owned six mills, was Bradford's biggest employer and was certainly its richest citizen. He decided to move out of the city and built a new mill works, the architects of which were Lockwood and Mawson, on the banks of the River Aire a few miles from the city. Around the works, between 1851 and 1871, he built houses, a hospital, library, church, institute and almshouses for his workers. The buildings were solid, good-standard structures of local stone and the houses were pleasantly situated, with their amenities making them seem palaces compared to the slums in which other Bradford textile workers lived at the time. The collection of buildings was the first example in Britain of a "model new town", and was, indeed still is, a remarkable prototype of its kind. Apart from being a philanthropist and social reformer, Salt was also concerned with taking advantage of the technical developments of his time. His mill works, which eventually covered ten acres of land, was of fashionably Italianate architectural style (its chimney even a copy of the campanile of the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa in Venice), although its structure was of iron framing. The weaving shed held 1,200 looms and had capacity for 3,000 workers, who produced 30,000 yards of cloth per day. Water from the river was used to produce steam to power the matchinery used in the manufacturing processes of scouring, dyeing and finishing. For the export of goods, the nearby Leeds-Liverpool Canal linked the works to Britain's chief ports, and the Midland Railway (an extension of the LeedsBradford line which opened in 1846) was of great use for the same purpose.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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Soon after his birth, Senefelder's family moved to Mannheim, where his father, an actor, had obtained a position in the state theatre. He was educated there, until he gained a scholarship to the university of Ingolstadt. The young Senefelder wanted to follow his father on to the stage, but the latter insisted that he study law. He nevertheless found time to write short pieces for the theatre. One of these, when he was 18 years old, was an encouraging success. When his father died in 1791, he gave up his studies and took to a new life as poet and actor. However, the wandering life of a repertory actor palled after two years and he settled for the more comfortable pursuit of playwriting. He had some of his work printed, which acquainted him with the art of printing, but he fell out with his bookseller. He therefore resolved to carry out his own printing, but he could not afford the equipment of a conventional letterpress printer. He began to explore other ways of printing and so set out on the path that was to lead to an entirely new method.

He tried writing in reverse on a copper plate with some acid-resisting material and etching the plate, to leave a relief image that could then be inked and printed. He knew that oily substances would resist acid, but it required many experiments to arrive at a composition of wax, soap and charcoal dust dissolved in rainwater. The plates wore down with repeated polishing, so he substituted stone plates. He continued to etch them and managed to make good prints with them, but he went on to make the surprising discovery that etching was unnecessary. If the image to be printed was made with the oily composition and the stone moistened, he found that only the oily image received the ink while the moistened part rejected it. The printing surface was neither raised (as in letterpress printing) nor incised (as in intaglio printing): Senefelder had discovered the third method of printing.

He arrived at a workable process over the years 1796 to 1799, and in 1800 he was granted an English patent. In the same year, lithography (or "writing on stone") was introduced into France and Senefelder himself took it to England, but it was some time before it became widespread; it was taken up by artists especially for high-quality printing of art works. Meanwhile, Senefelder improved his techniques, finding that other materials, even paper, could be used in place of stone. In fact, zinc plates were widely used from the 1820s, but the name "lithography" stuck. Although he won world renown and was honoured by most of the crowned heads of Europe, he never became rich because he dissipated his profits through restless experimenting.

With the later application of the offset principle, initiated by Barclay, lithography has become the most widely used method of printing.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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James Small served his apprenticeship as a wright and blacksmith at Hutton in Berwickshire, and then travelled for a time in England. It is possible that he learned his trade from the ploughwright Pashley, who ran the "Manufactory" in Rotherham. On his return to Scotland he settled at Blackadder Mount, Berwickshire, and there began to make his ploughs. He used a spring balance to determine the draft of the plough and fashioned the mouldboard from a soft wood so that the wear would show quickly on its surface. Repeated trials indicated the best shape to be adopted, and he had his mouldboards cast at the Carron Ironworks. At trials held at Dalkeith, Small's plough, pulled by two horses, outperformed the old Scotch plough hauled by as many as eight oxen, and his ploughs were soon to be found in all areas of the country. He established workshops in Leith Walk, where he made ploughs and other implements. It was in Edinburgh in 1784 that he published Treatise on Ploughs, in which he set out his methods and calculations. He made no attempt to patent his ideas, feeling that they should be available to all, and the book provided sufficient information for it to be used by his rivals. As a result he died a poor man at the age of 52. His family were supported with a £1,500 subscription raised on their behalf by Sir John Sinclair, President of the Board of Agriculture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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As a boy, Smeaton showed mechanical ability, making for himself a number of tools and models. This practical skill was backed by a sound education, probably at Leeds Grammar School. At the age of 16 he entered his father's office; he seemed set to follow his father's profession in the law. In 1742 he went to London to continue his legal studies, but he preferred instead, with his father's reluctant permission, to set up as a scientific instrument maker and dealer and opened a shop of his own in 1748. About this time he began attending meetings of the Royal Society and presented several papers on instruments and mechanical subjects, being elected a Fellow in 1753. His interests were turning towards engineering but were informed by scientific principles grounded in careful and accurate observation.

In 1755 the second Eddystone lighthouse, on a reef some 14 miles (23 km) off the English coast at Plymouth, was destroyed by fire. The President of the Royal Society was consulted as to a suitable engineer to undertake the task of constructing a new one, and he unhesitatingly suggested Smeaton. Work began in 1756 and was completed in three years to produce the first great wave-swept stone lighthouse. It was constructed of Portland stone blocks, shaped and pegged both together and to the base rock, and bonded by hydraulic cement, scientifically developed by Smeaton. It withstood the storms of the English Channel for over a century, but by 1876 erosion of the rock had weakened the structure and a replacement had to be built. The upper portion of Smeaton's lighthouse was re-erected on a suitable base on Plymouth Hoe, leaving the original base portion on the reef as a memorial to the engineer.

The Eddystone lighthouse made Smeaton's reputation and from then on he was constantly in demand as a consultant in all kinds of engineering projects. He carried out a number himself, notably the 38 mile (61 km) long Forth and Clyde canal with thirty-nine locks, begun in 1768 but for financial reasons not completed until 1790. In 1774 he took charge of the Ramsgate Harbour works.

On the mechanical side, Smeaton undertook a systematic study of water-and windmills, to determine the design and construction to achieve the greatest power output. This work issued forth as the paper "An experimental enquiry concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills" and exerted a considerable influence on mill design during the early part of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1753 and 1790 Smeaton constructed no fewer than forty-four mills.

Meanwhile, in 1756 he had returned to Austhorpe, which continued to be his home base for the rest of his life. In 1767, as a result of the disappointing performance of an engine he had been involved with at New River Head, Islington, London, Smeaton began his important study of the steam-engine. Smeaton was the first to apply scientific principles to the steam-engine and achieved the most notable improvements in its efficiency since its invention by Newcomen, until its radical overhaul by James Watt. To compare the performance of engines quantitatively, he introduced the concept of "duty", i.e. the weight of water that could be raised 1 ft (30 cm) while burning one bushel (84 lb or 38 kg) of coal. The first engine to embody his improvements was erected at Long Benton colliery in Northumberland in 1772, with a duty of 9.45 million pounds, compared to the best figure obtained previously of 7.44 million pounds. One source of heat loss he attributed to inaccurate boring of the cylinder, which he was able to improve through his close association with Carron Ironworks near Falkirk, Scotland.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Edward Somerset became 6th Earl and 2nd Marquis of Worcester and Titular Earl of Glamorgan. He was educated privately and then abroad, visiting Germany, Italy and France. He was made Councillor of Wales in 1633 and Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Monmouthshire in 1635. On the outbreak of the Civil War, he was commissioned to levy forces against the Scots in 1640. He garrisoned Raglan Castle for the King and was employed by Charles I to bring troops in from Ireland. He was declared an enemy of the realm by Parliament and was banished, remaining in France for some years. On the Restoration, he recovered most of his estates, principally in South Wales, and was able to devote most of his time to mechanical studies and experiments.

Soon after 1626, he had employed the services of a skilled Dutch or German mechanic, Caspar Kaltoff, to make small-scale models for display to interested people. In 1638 he showed Charles I a 14 ft (4.3m) diameter wheel carrying forty weights that was claimed to have solved the problem of perpetual motion. He wrote his Century of the Names and Scantlings of Such Inventions as at Present I Can Call to Mind to have Tried and Perfected in 1655, but it was not published until 1663: no. 68 describes "An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire", which has been claimed as an early steam-engine. Before the Civil War he made experiments at Raglan Castle, and after the war he built one of his engines at Vauxhall, London, where it raised water to a height of 40 ft (12 m). An Act of Parliament enabling Worcester to receive the benefit and profits of his water-commanding engine for ninety-nine years did not restore his fortunes. Descriptions of this invention are so vague that it cannot be reconstructed.

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SUBJECT AREA: Public utilities

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He began to practise in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and later moved to London, where his most important work was carried out. Little is known of his birth or, indeed, of the date of his death, although it is thought that he may have been born in Ashton-in- Makerfield.

His first known work was a water-driven pumping plant in Derby erected in 1693 to supply water to houses and to points in the town through pipes from the pumps by the river Derwent. These water-driven pumping plants and the delivery of water to various towns were the result of entrepreneurial development by groups of "adventurers". Sorocold went on to set up many more pumping plants, including those at Leeds Bridge (1694–5), Macclesfield, Wirksworth, Yarmouth, Portsmouth, Norwich and King's Lynn.

His best-known work was the installation of a pumping plant at the north end of London Bridge to replace a sixteenth-century plant. This consisted of four water-wheels placed between the starlings of the bridge. As the bridge is situated on the tidal Thames, the water-wheels were contrived so that their shafts could be raised or lowered to meet the state of the tidal flow. Whilst the waterworks designed by Sorocold are well known, it is clear that he had come to be regarded as a consulting engineer. One scheme that was carried through was the creation of a navigation between the river Trent and Derby on the line of the river Derwent. He appeared as a witness for the Derwent Navigation Act in 1703. He also held a patent for "A new machine for cutting and sawing all sorts of boards, timber and stone, and twisting all kinds of ropes, cords and cables by the strength of horses of water": this illustrates that his knowledge of power sources was predominant in his practice.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Telecommunications

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After education at Glasgow University and Peterhouse, Cambridge, a period of study in France gave Thomson an interest in experimental work and instrumentation. He became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow in 1846 and retained the position for the rest of his career, establishing the first teaching laboratory in Britain.

Among his many contributions to science and engineering was his concept, introduced in 1848, of an "absolute" zero of temperature. Following on from the work of Joule, his investigations into the nature of heat led to the first successful liquefaction of gases such as hydrogen and helium, and later to the science of low-temperature physics.

Cable telegraphy gave an impetus to the scientific measurement of electrical quantities, and for many years Thomson was a member of the British Association Committee formed in 1861 to consider electrical standards and to develop units; these are still in use. Thomson first became Scientific Adviser to the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1857, sailing on the Agamemnon and Great Eastern during the cable-laying expeditions. He invented a mirror galvanometer and more importantly the siphon recorder, which, used as a very sensitive telegraph receiver, provided a permanent record of signals. He also laid down the design parameters of long submarine cables and discovered that the conductivity of copper was greatly affected by its purity. A major part of the success of the Atlantic cable in 1866 was due to Thomson, who received a knighthood for his contribution.

Other instruments he designed included a quadrant electrostatic voltmeter to measure high voltages, and his "multi-cellular" instrument for low voltages. They could be used on alternating or direct current and were free from temperature errors. His balances for precision current measurement were widely used in standardizing laboratories.

Thomson was a prolific writer of scientific papers on subjects across the whole spectrum of physics; between 1855 and 1866 he published some 110 papers, with a total during his life of over 600. In 1892 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kelvin of Largs. By the time of his death he was looked upon as the "father" of British physics, but despite his outstanding achievements his later years were spent resisting change and progress.

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SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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The son of a locksmith, Linus Yale Jr set out to become a portrait painter but gave this up in the 1840s to embark on the same profession as his father. He opened a shop of his own at Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts; his first products were keyoperated bank locks. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London convinced him that any lock could be picked by someone with the necessary skill; he then turned his attention to the design of combination locks, designing the first doubledial bank lock in 1863. In 1868 he formed a partnership with John Henry Towne and his son Henry Robinson Towne to form the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company in Stamford, Connecticut, to make a patented key lock which incorporated a series of pin tumblers inside a cylinder. The principle of the pin-tumbler mechanism could be traced back to ancient Egypt; in Yale's cylinder lock, the serrations of the correct key raised the pin tumblers to the height at which the cylinder could turn, withdrawing the bolt. These cylinder locks made possible the use of smaller keys and became the foundation of the modern lock industry. Yale died soon after forming his partnership with the Townes.

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s.o. raised in a rural area.

βιάζω (Hom.+) nearly always as a mid. dep. βιάζομαι; aor. mid. ἐβιασάμην, pass. 2 sg. ἐβιάσθης Sir 31:21. Apart fr. Dg. 7:4; 10:15 most of this entry concerns probabilities relating to β. in Mt 11:12 and par. Lk 16:16. The principal semantic problem is whether β. is used negatively (‘in malam partem’) or positively (‘in bonam partem’), a problem compounded by the question of the function of these vss. in their literary context. In Gk. lit. β. is most often used in the unfavorable sense of attack or forcible constraint (s. L-S-J-M).

① to inflict violence on, dominate, constrain w. acc. (Herodas 2, 71; Menand., Dyscolus 253 [opp. πείθειν use of persuasion]; 371; Appian, Bell. Civ. 5, 35 §139; PAmh 35, 17 [213 B.C.] βιασάμενος αὐτούς; PGiss 19, 13; LGötzeler, Quaestiones in Appiani et Polybii dicendi genus 1890, 63; Esth 7:8 [rape]; En 103:14; 104:3) mistreat the poor people β. τοὺς ὑποδεεστέρους Dg 10:5.—With β. taken as pass., Mt 11:12 ἡ βασιλεία τ. οὐρανῶν βιάζεται is frequently understood in the unfavorable sense the reign/kingdom of heaven is violently treated, is oppressed (so the pass. e.g. Thu. 1, 77, 4; POxy 294, 16 [22 A.D.]; Sir 31:21. On the topic of violence to the divine, cp. Paus. 2, 1, 5 τὰ θεῖα βιάσασθαι=(it is difficult for a mere human) to coerce things in the realm of the divine.—GSchrenk, TW I 608ff; NRSV ‘has suffered violence’; its mng., w. β. understood as mid.: ‘has been coming violently’, s. 2 end); var. ways by which the violence is suffered have been suggested—(a) through hindrances raised against it (βιάζομαι=be hindered, be obstructed: cp. the use of the mid. in this sense: Synes., Provid. 1, 1, 89c of the evil man’s power, which strives εἴ πῃ τὸν θεῖον νόμον βιάσαιτο=[to see] whether it could perhaps ‘hinder’ the divine law; Jos., Ant. 1, 261). For the pass. in this sense, s. the versions: It., Vulg., Syr. Sin. and Cur. S. also Dalman, Worte 113–16; MDibelius, Joh. d. T. 1911, 26ff: hostile spirits.—(b) through the efforts of unauthorized pers. to compel its coming (s. HScholander, ZNW 13, 1912, 172–75)—(c) through attempts to occupy (an area) by force (a territory, Appian, Bell. Civ. 3, 24 §91).

② to gain an objective by force, use force, intr. (X., Mem. 3, 9, 10; Diod S 4, 12, 5 οἱ βιαζόμενοι=the ones who use force, the intruders; Plut., Mor. 203c; Epict. 4, 8, 40; Lucian, Necyom. 20, Hermot. 22; SIG 1042, 8 [Dssm., NB 85f (BS 258)]; 888, 24; 1243, 4f; PTebt 6, 31; PFlor 382, 54; Dt 22:25, 28; Philo, Mos. 1, 215; Jos., Bell. 3, 493; 518) of compulsion οὐ βιαζόμενος without using force (opp. πείθειν) Dg 7:4.—Of forcing one’s way (Demosth. 55, 17; Appian, Hann. 24 §106) w. εἴς τι enter forcibly into someth. (Thu. 1, 63, 1; 7, 69, 4; Polyb. 1, 74, 5; Plut., Otho 1072 [12, 10]; Philo, Mos. 1, 108 of a gnat forcing its way into bodily orifices εἰς τἀντὸς βιάζεται; Jos., Bell. 3, 423) ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ εὐαγγελίζεται καὶ πᾶς εἰς αὐτὴν βιάζεται the reign of God is being proclaimed and everyone takes (or tries to take [cp. Polemo Soph. B 11 Reader, s. p. 266f]) it by force Lk 16:16 (hyperbolic usage; on the question whether this is a perspective attributed to Jesus or to his opposition concerning moral miscalculation, s. FDanker, JBL 77, ’58, 234–36).— Makes its way w. triumphant force is preferred for Mt 11:12 by FBaur; TZahn; AHarnack, SBBerlAk 1907, 947–57; WBrandt, ZNW 11, 1910, 247f; ROtto, Reich Gottes u. Menschensohn ’34, 84–88; cp. NRSV mg. ‘has been coming violently’.—EGraesser, D. Problem der Parusieverzögerung, ZNW Beih. 22, ’57, 180ff; OBetz, Jesu heiliger Krieg, NovT 2, ’57, 116–37.

③ go after someth. w. enthusiasm, seek fervently, try hard, the sense is sought w. burning zeal is preferred by HHoltzmann; FDibelius, StKr 86, 1913, 285–88; et al. for Mt 11:12. A variation of this interpretation is the sense try hard, but the support sought in Epict. 4, 7, 20f is questionable, for this latter pass. rather refers to attempts at forced entry when one is not welcome.

④ constrain (warmly) if βιάζεται Lk 16:16 is to be understood as a passive, as POxy 294, 16 (22 A.D.), or in the same sense as the mid. in Gen 33:11; Judg 13:15, the sense would be invite urgently of the ‘genteel constraint imposed on a reluctant guest’ (so vHoffmann et al.; s. FDibelius [s. 3 above]; cp. the sense of Lk 14:23 ἀνάγκασον εἰσελθεῖν ‘compel them to come in’).—On usage at Qumran s. BThiering, NovT 21, ’79, 293–97.—DELG s.v. βία. M-M. TW. Spicq. Sv.

1. terrace (i.e. a rooftop terrace or a flat, raised, paved area outside). 2. terrace, offset (made in a slope). 3. geog. terrace. - katı penthouse.