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121 Palmer, John
[br]b. 1743 Bath, Avon, Englandd. 1818 Bath, Avon, England[br]English pioneer in mail transport.[br]He was the son of a brewer and maltster and part-owner of a theatre in Bath. In his early 20s his father sent him to London to organize the petition for a licence for the Orchard Street theatre, which was granted in 1768. He then organized a series of post-chaises to transport ac-tors between this and another theatre in Bristol in which his father also had an interest. By 1782 he had ready a plan for a countrywide service of mail coaches to replace the existing arrangements of conveying the mail by post-boys and -girls mounted on horseback who were by law compelled to carry the mail "at a Rate of Six Miles in the Hour at least" on penalty of one month's hard labour if found loitering. Lord Camden, Member of Parliament for Bath, put Palmer's plan before Prime Minister Pitt, who approved of it. An experimental run was tried on 2 August 1782, a coach leaving Bristol at 4 pm and arriving in London at 8 am the next morning, to return the following night from London at 8 pm and reaching Bristol at 10 am. In March 1785 the Norwich Mail Coach was started and during that year services were started to Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Chester, Holyhead, Worcester, South Wales and Milford Haven. A feature of importance was that each mail coach was accompanied by an armed guard. In August 1786 Palmer was appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post Office at a salary of £1,500 per annum and a bonus depending on all revenue over £300,000 each year. The popularity of the new service is shown by the feet that by 1813 his 2 1/2 per cent bonus came to £50,000. Due to the intrigues of his deputy, he was removed from office, but he was given a pension of £3,000 a year. He received the freedom of some eighteen towns, was made Mayor of Bath and represented that constituency in Parliament four times.[br]Further ReadingE.Vale, 1960, The Mail-Coach Men, London: Cassell.IMcN -
122 Parkes, Alexander
[br]b. 29 December 1813 Birmingham, Englandd. 29 June 1890 West Dulwich, England[br]English chemist and inventor who made the first plastic material.[br]After serving apprentice to brassfounders in Birmingham, Parkes entered Elkington's, the celebrated metalworking firm, and took charge of their casting department. They were active in introducing electroplating and Parkes's first patent, of 1841, was for the electroplating of works of art. The electrodeposition of metals became a lifelong interest.Notably, he achieved the electroplating of fragile objects, such as flowers, which he patented in 1843. When Prince Albert visited Elkington's, he was presented with a spider's web coated with silver. Altogether, Parkes was granted sixty-six patents over a period of forty-six years, mainly relating to metallurgy.In 1841 he patented a process for waterproofing textiles by immersing them in a solution of indiarubber in carbon disulphide. Elkingtons manufactured such fabrics until they sold the process to Mackintosh Company, which continued making them for many years. While working for Elkingtons in south Wales, Parkes developed the use of zinc for desilvering lead. He obtained a patent in 1850 for this process, which was one of his most important inventions and became widely used.The year 1856 saw Parkes's first patent on pyroxylin, later called Xylonite or celluloid, the first plastic material. Articles made of Parkesine, as it came to be called, were shown at the International Exhibition in London in 1862, and he was awarded a medal for his work. Five years later, Parkesine featured at the Paris Exhibition. Even so, Parkes's efforts to promote the material commercially, particularly as a substitute for ivory, remained stubbornly unsuccessful.[br]Bibliography1850, British patent no. 13118 (the desilvering of lead). 1856, British patent no. 235 (the first on Parkesine).1865, Parkes gave an account of his invention of Parkesine in J.Roy.Arts, (1865), 14, 81–.Further ReadingObituary, 1890, Engineering, (25 July): 111.Obituary, 1890, Mining Journal (26 July): 855.LRD -
123 Paxton, Sir Joseph
[br]b. 3 August 1801 Milton Bryant, Bedfordshire, Englandd. 8 June 1865 Sydenham, London, England[br]English designer of the Crystal Palace, the first large-scale prefabricated ferrovitreous structure.[br]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.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1851. MP for Coventry 1854–65. Fellow Linnaean Society 1853; Horticultural Society 1826. Order of St Vladimir, Russia, 1844.Further ReadingP.Beaver, 1986, The Crystal Palace: A Portrait of Victorian Enterprise, Phillimore. George F.Chadwick, 1961, Works of Sir Joseph Paxton 1803–1865, Architectural Press.DY -
124 Pilcher, Percy Sinclair
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 16 January 1867 Bath, Englandd. 2 October 1899 Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, England[br]English designer and glider aeronaut.[br]He was educated at HMS Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, from 1880 to 1882. He sailed on HMS Duke of Wellington, Agincourt, Northampton and other ships and resigned from the navy on 18 April 187 after seven years at sea. In June 1887 he was apprenticed at Randolph, Elder \& Co.'s shipyard at Govan, and was then an apprentice moulder at Cairn \& Co., Glasgow. For some time he "studied" at London University (though there is no official record of his doing so) while living with his sister at Phillbeck Gardens, South Kensington. In May 1890 he was working for John H.Biles, Manager of the Southampton Naval Works Ltd. Biles was later appointed Professor of Naval Architecture at Glasgow University with Pilcher as his Assistant Lecturer. In 1895 he was building his first glider, the Bat, which was built mainly of Riga pine and weighed 44 lb (20 kg). In succeeding months he travelled to Lichterfelde to study the gliders made by the German Lilienthal and built a further three machines, the Beetle, the Gull and the Hawk. In 1896 he applied for his only aeronautical patent, for "Improved flying and soaring machines", which was accepted on March 1897. In April 1896 he resigned his position at Glasgow University to become Assistant to Sir Hiram Maxim, who was also doing experiments with flying machines at his Nordenfeld Guns and Ammunition Co. Ltd at Crayford. He took up residence in Artillery Mansions, Victoria Street, later taken over by Vickers Ltd. Maxim had a hangar at Upper Lodge Farm, Austin Eynsford, Kent: using this, Pilcher reached a height of 12 ft (3.66m) in 1899 with a cable launch. He planned to build a 2 hp (1.5 kW) petrol engine In September 1899 he went to stay with Lord Braye at Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, where many people came to see his flying machine, a triplane. The weather was far from ideal, windy and raining, but Pilcher would not disappoint them. A bracing wire broke, the tail collapsed and the pilot crashed to the ground suffering two broken legs and concussion. He did not regain consciousness and died the following day. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery.[br]Bibliography1896, British patent no. 9144 "Improved flying and soaring machines".Further ReadingP.Jarrett, 1987, Another Icarus. Percy Pilcher and the Quest for Flight, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.A.Welch and L.Welch, 1965, The Story of Gliding, London: John Murray.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Pilcher, Percy Sinclair
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125 Rennie, John
[br]b. 7 June 1761 Phantassie, East Linton, East Lothian, Scotlandd. 4 October 1821 Stamford Street, London, England[br]Scottish civil engineer.[br]Born into a prosperous farming family, he early demonstrated his natural mechanical and structural aptitude. As a boy he spent a great deal of time, often as a truant, near his home in the workshop of Andrew Meikle. Meikle was a millwright and the inventor of a threshing machine. After local education and an apprenticeship with Meikle, Rennie went to Edinburgh University until he was 22. He then travelled south and met James Watt, who in 1784 offered him the post of Engineer at the Albion Flour Mills, London, which was then under construction. Rennie designed all the mill machinery, and it was while there that he began to develop an interest in canals, opening his own business in 1791 in Blackfriars. He carried out work on the Kennet and Avon Canal and in 1794 became Engineer for the company. He meanwhile carried out other surveys, including a proposed extension of the River Stort Navigation to the Little Ouse and a Basingstoke-to-Salisbury canal, neither of which were built. From 1791 he was also engaged on the Rochdale Canal and the Lancaster Canal, as well as the great masonry aqueduct carrying the latter canal across the river Lune at Lancaster. He also surveyed the Ipswich and Stowmarket and the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigations. He advised on the Horncastle Canal in 1799 and on the River Ancholme in 1799, both of which are in Lincolnshire. In 1802 he was engaged on the Royal Canal in Ireland, and in the same year he was commissioned by the Government to prepare a plan for flooding the Lea Valley as a defence on the eastern approach to London in case Napoleon invaded England across the Essex marshes. In 1809 he surveyed improvements on the Thames, and in the following year he was involved in a proposed canal from Taunton to Bristol. Some of his schemes, particularly in the Fens and Lincolnshire, were a combination of improvements for both drainage and navigation. Apart from his canal work he engaged extensively in the construction and development of docks and harbours including the East and West India Docks in London, Holyhead, Hull, Ramsgate and the dockyards at Chatham and Sheerness. In 1806 he proposed the great breakwater at Plymouth, where work commenced on 22 June 1811.He was also highly regarded for his bridge construction. These included Kelso and Musselburgh, as well as his famous Thames bridges: London Bridge (uncompleted at the time of his death), Waterloo Bridge (1810–17) and Southwark Bridge (1815–19). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1798.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1798.Further ReadingC.T.G.Boucher, 1963, John Rennie 1761–1821, Manchester University Press. W.Reyburn, 1972, Bridge Across the Atlantic, London: Harrap.JHB -
126 Smith, Willoughby
[br]b. 16 April 1828 Great Yarmouth, Englandd. 17 July 1891 Eastbourne, England[br]English engineer of submarine telegraph cables who observed that light reduced the resistance of selenium.[br]Smith joined the Gutta Percha Company, London, in 1848 and successfully experimented with the use of gutta-percha, a natural form of latex, for the insulation of conducting wires. As a result, he was made responsible for the laying of the first cross-Channel cable between Dover and Calais in 1850. Four years later he laid the first Mediterranean cable between Spezia, Italy, and Corsica and Sardinia, later extending it to Algeria. On its completion he became Manager of the Gutta Percha works, which in 1864 became the Telegraph and Construction Company. In 1865 he assisted on board the Great Eastern with the laying of the transatlantic cable by Bright.Clearly his management responsibilities did not stop him from experimenting practically. In 1866 he discovered that the resistance of a selenium rod was reduced by the action of incident light, an early discovery of the photoelectric effect more explicitly observed by Hertz and subsequently explained by Einstein. In 1883 he read a paper to the Society of Telegraph Engineers (later the Institution of Electrical Engineers), suggesting the possibility of wireless communication with moving trains, an idea that was later successfully taken up by others, and in 1888 he demonstrated the use of water as a practical means of communication with a lighthouse. Four years later, after his death, the system was tried between Alum Bay and the Needles in the Isle of Wight, and it was used subsequently for the Fastnet Rock lighthouse some 10 miles (16 km) off the south-west coast of Ireland.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFounder and Council Member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers 1871; President 1873.BibliographyThe effect of light on the resistance of selenium was reported in a letter to the Vice- Chairman of the Society of Telegraph Engineers on 4 February 1873.7 June 1897, British patent no. 8,159 (the use of water, instead of cable, as a conductor).November 1888, article in Electrician (describes his idea of using water as a conductor, rather than cable).Further ReadingE.Hawkes, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen.C.T.Bright, 1898, Submarine Cables, Their History, Construction and Working.See also: Field, Cyrus WestKF -
127 Todd, Leonard Jennett
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]fl. 1885 London, England[br]English (?) patentee of steam engines incorporating the uniflow principle.[br]In a uniflow system, the steam enters a steam engine cylinder at one end, pushes the pistons along, and exhausts through a ring of ports at the centre of the cylinder that are uncovered by movement of the piston. The piston is returned by steam then entering the other end of the cylinder, moving the piston arrangement back, and again making its exit through the central ports. This gave the thermodynamic advantage of the cylinder ends remaining hot and the centre colder with reheating the ends of the cylinder through compression of the residual steam. The principle was first patented by Jacob Perkins in England in 1827 and was tried in America in 1856.Little is known about Todd. The addresses given in his patent specifications show that he was living first at South Hornsey and then Stoke Newington, both in Middlesex (now in London). No obituary notices have been traced. He took out a patent in 1885 for a "terminal exhaust engine" and followed this with two more in 1886 and 1887. His aim was to "produce a double acting steam engine which shall work more efficiently, which shall produce and maintain within itself an improved gradation of temperature extending from each of its two Hot Inlets to its common central Cold Outlet". His later patents show the problems he faced with finding suitable valve gears and the compression developing during the return stroke of the piston. It was this last problem, particularly when starting a condensing engine, that probably defeated him through excessive compression pressures. There is some evidence that he hoped to apply his engines to railway locomotives.[br]Bibliography1885, British patent no. 7,301 (terminal exhaust engine). 1886, British patent no. 2,132.1887, British patent no. 6,666.Further ReadingR.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (provides the fullest discussion of his patents). H.W.Dickinson, 1938, A Short History of the Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press.J.Stumpf, 1912, The Una-Flow Steam Engine, Munich: R.Oldenbourg.RLH -
128 Trevithick, Richard
[br]b. 13 April 1771 Illogan, Cornwall, Englandd. 22 April 1833 Dartford, Kent, England[br]English engineer, pioneer of non-condensing steam-engines; designed and built the first locomotives.[br]Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.[br]BibliographyTrevithick took out fourteen patents, solely or in partnership, of which the most important are: 1802, Construction of Steam Engines, British patent no. 2,599. 1808, Stowing Ships' Cargoes, British patent no. 3,172.Further ReadingH.W.Dickinson and A.Titley, 1934, Richard Trevithick. The Engineer and the Man, Cambridge; F.Trevithick, 1872, Life of Richard Trevithick, London (these two are the principal biographies).E.A.Forward, 1952, "Links in the history of the locomotive", The Engineer (22 February), 226 (considers the case for the Coalbrookdale locomotive of 1802).See also: Blenkinsop, JohnPJGR
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