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121 Beaumont, Huntingdon
SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology[br]b. c.1560 Coleorton (?), Leicestershire, Englandd. 1624 Nottingham, England[br]English speculator in coal-mining, constructor of the first surface railway in Britain.[br]Huntingdon Beaumont was a younger son of a landed family whose estates included coal-mines at Coleorton and Bedworth. From these, no doubt, originated his great expertise in coal-mining and mine management. His subsequent story is a complex one of speculation in coal mines: agreements, partnerships, and debts, and, in trying to extricate himself from the last, attempts to improve profitability, and ever-greater enterprises. He leased mines in 1601 at Wollaton, near Nottingham, and in 1603 at Strelley, which adjoins Wollaton but is further from Nottingham, where lay the market for coal. To reduce the transport cost of Strelley coal, Beaumont laid a wooden wagonway for two miles or so to Wollaton Lane End, the point at which the coal was customarily sold. In earlier times wooden railways had probably been used in mines, following practice on the European continent, but Beaumont's was the first on the surface in Britain. The market for coal in Nottingham being limited, Beaumont, with partners, attempted to send coal to London by water, but the difficult navigation of the Trent at this period made the venture uneconomic. With a view still to supplying London, c.1605 they took leases of mines near Blyth, north of Newcastle upon Tyne. Here too Beaumont built wagonways, to convey coal to the coast, but despite considerable expenditure the mines could not be made economic and Beaumont returned to Strelley. Although he worked the mine night and day, he was unable to meet the demands of his creditors, who eventually had him imprisoned for debt. He died in gaol.[br]Further ReadingR.S.Smith, 1957, "Huntingdon Beaumont. Adventurer in coal mines", Renaissance \& Modern Studies 1; Smith, 1960, "England's first rails: a reconsideration", Renaissance\& Modern Studies 4, University of Nottingham (both are well-researched papers discussing Beaumont and his wagonways).PJGR -
122 Belling, Charles Reginald
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 11 May 1884 Bodmin, Cornwall, Englandd. 8 February 1965 while on a cruise[br]English electrical engineer best known as the pioneer of the wire-wound clay-former heating element which made possible the efficient domestic electric fire.[br]Belling was educated at Burts Grammar School in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, and at Crossley Schools in Halifax, Yorkshire. In 1903 he was apprenticed to Crompton \& Co. at Chelmsford in Essex, the firm that in 1894 offered for sale the earliest electric heaters. These electric radiant panels were intended as heating radiators or cooking hotplates, but were not very successful because, being cast-iron panels into which heating wires had been embedded in enamel, they tended to fracture due to the different rates of thermal expansion of the iron and the enamel. Other designs of electric heaters followed, notably the introduction of large, sausage-shaped carbon filament bulbs fitted into a fire frame and backed by reflectors. This was the idea of H. Dowsing, a collaborator of Crompton, in 1904.After qualifying in 1906, Belling left Crompton \& Co. and went to work for Ediswan at Ponders End in Hertfordshire. He left in 1912 to set up his own business, which he began in a small shed in Enfield. With a small staff and capital of £450, he took out his first patent for his wire-wound-former electric fire in the same year. The resistance wire, made from nickel-chrome alloy such as that patented in 1906 by A.L. Marsh, was coiled round a clay former. Six such bars were attached to a cast-iron frame with heating control knobs, and the device was marketed as the Standard Belling Fire. Advertised in 1912, the fire was an immediate success and was followed by many other variations. Improvements to the first model included wire safety guards, enamel finishes and a frame ornamented with copper and brass.Belling turned his attention to hotplates, cookers, immersion heaters, electric irons, water urns and kettles, producing the Modernette Cooker (1919), the multi-parabola fire bar (1921), the plate and dish warmer (1924), the storage heater (1926) and the famous Baby Belling cookers, the first of which appeared in 1929. By 1955 business had developed so well that Belling opened another factory at Burnley, Lancashire. He partly underwrote, for the amount of £1 million, a proposed scientific technical college for the electrical industry at Enfield.[br]Further Reading1985, Dictionary of Business Biography, Butterworth.G.Jukes, 1963, The Story of Belling, Belling and Co. Ltd (produced by the company in its Golden Jubilee year).DYBiographical history of technology > Belling, Charles Reginald
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123 Blériot, Louis
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 1 July 1872 Cambrai, Franced. 2 August 1936 Paris, France[br]French aircraft manufacturer and pilot who in 1909 made the first flight across the English Channel in an aeroplane.[br]Having made a fortune with his patented automobile lamp, Blériot started experimenting with model aircraft in about 1900. He tried a flapping-wing layout which, surprisingly, did fly, but a full-size version was a failure. Blériot tried out a wide variety of designs: a biplane float-glider built with Gabriel Voisin; a powered float-plane with ellipsoidal biplane wings; a canard (tail-first) monoplane; a tandem monoplane; and in 1907 a monoplane of conventional layout. This last was not an immediate success, but it led to the Type XI in which Blériot made history by flying from France to England on 25 July 1909.Without a doubt, Blériot was an accomplished pilot and a successful manufacturer of aircraft, but he sometimes employed others as designers (a fact not made known at the time). It is now accepted that much of the credit for the design of the Type XI should go to Raymond Saulnier, who later made his name with the Morane-Saulnier Company.Blériot-Aéronautique became one of the leading manufacturers of aircraft and by the outbreak of war in 1914 some eight hundred aircraft had been produced. By 1918, aircraft were being built at the rate of eighteen per day. The Blériot company continued to produce aircraft until it was nationalized in 1937.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCommandeur de la Légion d'honneur. Daily Mail £1,000 prize for the first cross-Channel aeroplane flight.Further ReadingC.H.Gibbs-Smith, 1965, The Invention of the Aeroplane 1799–1909, London (contains a list of all Blériot's early aircraft).J.Stroud, 1966, European Transport Aircraft since 1920, London (for information about Blériot's later aircraft).For information relating to the cross-Channel flight, see: C.Fontaine, 1913, Comment Blériota traversé la, Manche, Paris.T.D.Crouch, 1982, Blériot XI, the Story of a Classic Aircraft, Washington, DC: National Air \& Space Museum.JDS -
124 Booth, Hubert Cecil
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Domestic appliances and interiors, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Ports and shipping[br]b. 1871 Gloucester, England d. 1955[br]English mechanical, civil and construction engineer best remembered as the inventor of the vacuum cleaner.[br]As an engineer Booth contributed to the design of engines for Royal Navy battleships, designed and supervised the erection of a number of great wheels (in Blackpool, Vienna and Paris) and later designed factories and bridges.In 1900 he attended a demonstration, at St Paneras Station in London, of a new form of railway carriage cleaner that was supposed to blow the dirt into a container. It was not a very successful experiment and Booth, having considered the problem carefully, decided that sucking might be better than blowing. He tried out his idea by placing a piece of damp cloth over an upholstered armchair. When he sucked air by mouth through his cloth the dirt upon it was tangible proof of his theory.Various attempts were being made at this time, especially in America, to find a successful cleaner of carpets and upholstery. Booth produced the first truly satisfactory machine, which he patented in 1901, and coined the term "vacuum cleaner". He formed the Vacuum Cleaner Co. (later to become Goblin BVC Ltd) and began to manufacture his machines. For some years the company provided a cleaning service to town houses, using a large and costly vacuum cleaner (the first model cost £350). Painted scarlet, it measured 54×10×42 in. (137×25×110 cm) and was powered by a petrol-driven 5 hp piston engine. It was transported through the streets on a horse-driven van and was handled by a team of operators who parked outside the house to be cleaned. With the aid of several hundred feet of flexible hose extending from the cleaner through the windows into all the rooms, the machine sucked the dirt of decades from the carpets; at the first cleaning the weight of many such carpets was reduced by 50 per cent as the dirt was sucked away.Many attempts were made in Europe and America to produce a smaller and less expensive machine. Booth himself designed the chief British model in 1906, the Trolley- Vac, which was wheeled around the house on a trolley. Still elaborate, expensive and heavy, this machine could, however, be operated inside a room and was powered from an electric light fitting. It consisted of a sophisticated electric motor and a belt-driven rotary vacuum pump. Various hoses and fitments made possible the cleaning of many different surfaces and the dust was trapped in a cloth filter within a small metal canister. It was a superb vacuum cleaner but cost 35 guineas and weighed a hundredweight (50 kg), so it was difficult to take upstairs.Various alternative machines that were cheaper and lighter were devised, but none was truly efficient until a prototype that married a small electric motor to the machine was produced in 1907 in America.[br]Further ReadingThe Story of the World's First Vacuum Cleaner, Leatherhead: BSR (Housewares) Ltd. See also Hoover, William Henry.DY -
125 Bright, Sir Charles Tilston
SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications[br]b. 8 June 1832 Wanstead, Essex, Englandd. 3 May 1888 Abbey Wood, London, England[br]English telegraph engineer responsible for laying the first transatlantic cable.[br]At the age of 15 years Bright left the London Merchant Taylors' School to join the two-year-old Electric Telegraph Company. By 1851 he was in charge of the Birmingham telegraph station. After a short time as Assistant Engineer with the newly formed British Telegraph Company, he joined his brother (who was Manager) as Engineer-in-Chief of the English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company in Liverpool, for which he laid thousands of miles of underground cable and developed a number of innovations in telegraphy including a resistance box for locating cable faults and a two-tone bell system for signalling. In 1853 he was responsible for the first successful underwater cable between Scotland and Ireland. Three years later, with the American financier Cyrus Field and John Brett, he founded and was Engineer-in-chief of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, which aimed at laying a cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. After several unsuccessful attempts this was finally completed on 5 August 1858, Bright was knighted a month later, but the cable then failed! In 1860 Bright resigned from the Magnetic Telegraph Company to set up an independent consultancy with another engineer, Joseph Latimer Clark, with whom he invented an improved bituminous cable insulation. Two years later he supervised construction of a telegraph cable to India, and in 1865 a further attempt to lay an Atlantic cable using Brunel's new ship, the Great Eastern. This cable broke during laying, but in 1866 a new cable was at last successfully laid and the 1865 cable recovered and repaired. The year 1878 saw extension of the Atlantic cable system to the West Indies and the invention with his brother of a system of neighbourhood fire alarms and even an automatic fire alarm.In 1861 Bright presented a paper to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the need for electrical standards, leading to the creation of an organization that still exists in the 1990s. From 1865 until 1868 he was Liberal MP for Greenwich, and he later assisted with preparations for the 1881 Paris Exhibition.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1858. Légion d'honneur. First President, Société Internationale des Electriciens. President, Society of Telegraph Engineers \& Electricians (later the Institution of Electrical Engineers) 1887.Bibliography1852, British patent (resistance box).1855, British patent no. 2,103 (two-tone bell system). 1878, British patent no. 3,801 (area fire alarms).1878, British patent no. 596 (automatic fire alarm)."The physical \& electrical effects of pressure \& temperature on submarine cable cores", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers XVII (describes some of his investigations of cable characteristics).Further ReadingC.Bright, 1898, Submarine Cables, Their History, Construction \& Working.—1910, The Life Story of Sir Charles Tilston Bright, London: Constable \& Co.KFBiographical history of technology > Bright, Sir Charles Tilston
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126 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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127 Cierva, Juan de la
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 21 September 1895 Murcia, Spaind. 9 December 1936 Croydon, England[br]Spanish engineer who played a major part in developing the autogiro in the 1920s and 1930s.[br]At the age of 17, Cierva and some of his friends built a successful two-seater biplane, the BCD-1 (C for Cierva). By 1919 he had designed a large three-engined biplane bomber, the C 3, which unfortunately crashed when its wing stalled (list its lift) during a slow-speed turn. Cierva turned all his energies to designing a flying machine which could not stall: his answer was the autogiro. Although an autogiro looks like a helicopter, its rotor blades are not driven by an engine, but free-wheel like a windmill. Forward speed is provided by a conventional engine and propeller, and even if this engine fails, the autogiro's rotors continue to free-wheel and it descends safely. Cierva patented his autogiro design in 1920, but it took him three years to put theory into practice. By 1925, after further improvements, he had produced a practical rotary-winged flying machine.He moved to England and in 1926 established the Cierva Autogiro Company Ltd. The Air Ministry showed great interest and a year later the British company Avro was commissioned to manufacture the C 6A Autogiro under licence. Probably the most significant of Cierva's autogiros was the C 30A, or Avro Rota, which served in the Royal Air Force from 1935 until 1945. Several other manufacturers in France, Germany, Japan and the USA built Cierva autogiros under licence, but only in small numbers and they never really rivalled fixed-wing aircraft. The death of Cierva in an airliner crash in 1936, together with the emergence of successful helicopters, all but extinguished interest in the autogiro.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsDaniel Guggenheim Medal. Royal Aeronautical Society Silver Medal, Gold Medal (posthumously) 1937.Bibliography1931, Wings of To-morrow: The Story of the Autogiro, New York (an early account of his work).He read a paper on his latest achievements at the Royal Aeronautical Society on 15 March 1935.Further ReadingP.W.Brooks, 1988, Cierva Autogiros: The Development of Rotary Wing Flight, Washington, DC (contains a full account of Cierva's work).Jose Warleta. 1977, Autogiro: Juan de la Cierva y su obra, Madrid (a detailed account of his work in Spain).Oliver Stewart, 1966, Aviation: The Creative Ideas, London (contains a chapter on Cierva).JDS -
128 Field, Cyrus West
SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications[br]b. 30 November 1819 Stockbridge, Massachusetts, USAd. 12 July 1892 New York City, New York, USA[br]American financier and entrepreneur noted for his successful promotion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.[br]At the age of 15 Field left home to seek his fortune in New York, starting work on Broadway as an errand boy for $1 per week. Returning to Massachusetts, in 1838 he became an assistant to his brother Matthew, a paper-maker, leaving to set up his own business two years later. By the age of 21 he was also a partner in a New York firm of paper wholesalers, but this firm collapsed because of large debts. Out of the wreckage he set up Cyrus W.Field \& Co., and by 1852 he had paid off all the debts. With $250,000 in the bank he therefore retired and travelled in South America. Returning to the USA, he then became involved with the construction of a telegraph line in Newfoundland by an English engineer, F.N. Osborne. Although the company collapsed, he had been fired by the dream of a transatlantic cable and in 1854 was one of the founders of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company. He began to promote surveys and hold discussions with British telegraph pioneers and with Isambard Brunel, who was then building the Great Eastern steamship. In 1856 he helped to set up the Atlantic Telegraph Company in Britain and, as a result of his efforts and those of the British physicist and inventor Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), work began in 1857 on the laying of the first transatlantic cable from Newfoundland to Ireland. After many tribulations the cable was completed on 5 August 1857, but it failed after barely a month. Following several unsuccessful attempts to repair and replace it, the cable was finally completed on 27 July 1866. Building upon his success, Field expanded his business interests. In 1877 he bought a controlling interest in and was President of the New York Elevated Railroad Company. He also helped develop the Wabash Railroad and became owner of the New York Mail and Express newspaper; however, he subsequently suffered large financial losses.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCongressional Gold Medal.Further ReadingA.C.Clarke, 1958, Voice Across the Sea, London: Frederick Muller (describes the development of the transatlantic telegraph).H.M.Field, 1893, Story of the Atlantic Telegraph (also describes the transatlantic telegraph development).L.J.Judson (ed.), 1893, Cyrus W.Field: His Life and Work (a complete biography).KF
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