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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Between 1911 and 1914 Heinrich Focke and Georg Wulf built a monoplane and some years later, in 1924, they founded the Focke-Wulf company. They designed and built a variety of civil and military aircraft including the F 19Ente, a tail-first design of 1927. This canard layout was thought to be safer than conventional designs but, unfortunately, it crashed, killing Wulf. Around 1930 Focke became interested in rotary-wing aircraft, and in 1931 he set up a company with Gerd Achgelis to conduct research in this field. The Focke-Wulf company took out a licence to build Cierva autogiros. Focke designed an improved autogiro, the Fw 186, which flew in 1938; it was entered for a military competition, but it was beaten by a fixed-wing aircraft, the Fieseler Storch. In May 1935 Focke resigned from Focke-Wulf to concentrate on helicopter development with the Focke-Achgelis company. His first design was the Fa 61 helicopter, which utilized the fuselage and engine of a conventional aeroplane but instead of wings had two out-riggers, each carrying a rotor. The engine drove these rotors in opposite directions to counteract the adverse torque effect (with a single rotor the fuselage tends to rotate in the opposite direction to the rotor). Following its first flight on 26 June 1936, the Fa 61 went on to break several world records. However, it attracted more public attention when it was flown inside the huge Deutschlandhalle in Berlin by the famous female test pilot Hanna Reitsch in February 1938. Focke continued to develop his helicopter projects for the Focke-Achgelis company and produced the Fa 223 Drache in 1940. This used twin contra-rotating rotors, like the Fa 61, but could carry six people. Its production was hampered by allied bombing of the factory. During the Second World War Focke- Achgelis also produced a rotor kite which could be towed behind a U-boat to provide a flying "crow's nest", as well as designs for an advanced convertiplane (part aeroplane, part helicopter). After the war, Focke worked in France, the Netherlands and Brazil, then in 1954 he became Professor of Aeroplane and Helicopter Design at the University of Stuttgart.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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After Menzies conceived his idea of breaking off coal with machines in 1761, many inventors subsequently followed his proposals through into the practice of underground working. More than one century later, Garforth became one of the principal pioneers of machine-holing combined with the longwall method of working in order to reduce production costs and increase the yield of coal. Having been appointed agent to Pope \& Pearson's Collieries, West Yorkshire, in 1879, of which company he later became Managing Director and Chairman, he gathered a great deal of experience with different methods of cutting coal. The first disc machine was exhibited in London as early as 1851, and ten years later a pick machine was invented. In 1893 he introduced an improved type of deep undercutting machine, his "diamond" disc coal-cutter, driven by compressed air, which also became popular on the European continent.

Besides the considerable economic advantages it created, the use of machinery for mining coal increased the safety of working in hard and thin seams. The improvement of safety in mining technology was always his primary concern, and as a result of his inventions and his many publications he became the leading figure in the British coal mining industry at the beginning of the twentieth century; safety lamps still carry his name. In 1885 he invented a firedamp detector, and following a severe explosion in 1886 he concentrated on coal-dust experiments. From the information he obtained of the effect of stone-dust on a coal-dust explosion he proposed the stone-dust remedy to prevent explosions of coal-dust. As a result of discussions which lasted for decades and after he had been entrusted with the job of conducting the British coal-dust experiments, in 1921 an Act made it compulsory in all mines which were not naturally wet throughout to treat all roads with incombustible dust so as to ensure that the dust always consisted of a mixture containing not more than 50 per cent combustible matter. In 1901 Garforth erected a surface gallery which represented the damaged roadways of a mine and could be filled with noxious fumes to test self-contained breathing apparata. This gallery formed the model from which all the rescue-stations existing nowadays have been developed.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Orphaned as a child, Hamilton went to work for Southern Pacific Railroad in his teens, and then worked for several other companies. In his spare time he learned mathematics and physics from a retired professor. In 1911 he joined the White Motor Company, makers of road motor vehicles in Denver, Colorado, where he had gone to recuperate from malaria. He remained there until 1922, apart from an eighteenth-month break for war service.

Upon his return from war service, Hamilton found White selling petrol-engined railbuses with mechanical transmission, based on road vehicles, to railways. He noted that they were not robust enough and that the success of petrol railcars with electric transmission, built by General Electric since 1906, was limited as they were complex to drive and maintain. In 1922 Hamilton formed, and became President of, the Electro- Motive Engineering Corporation (later Electro-Motive Corporation) to design and produce petrol-electric rail cars. Needing an engine larger than those used in road vehicles, yet lighter and faster than marine engines, he approached the Win ton Engine Company to develop a suitable engine; in addition, General Electric provided electric transmission with a simplified control system. Using these components, Hamilton arranged for his petrol-electric railcars to be built by the St Louis Car Company, with the first being completed in 1924. It was the beginning of a highly successful series. Fuel costs were lower than for steam trains and initial costs were kept down by using standardized vehicles instead of designing for individual railways. Maintenance costs were minimized because Electro-Motive kept stocks of spare parts and supplied replacement units when necessary. As more powerful, 800 hp (600 kW) railcars were produced, railways tended to use them to haul trailer vehicles, although that practice reduced the fuel saving. By the end of the decade Electro-Motive needed engines more powerful still and therefore had to use cheap fuel. Diesel engines of the period, such as those that Winton had made for some years, were too heavy in relation to their power, and too slow and sluggish for rail use. Their fuel-injection system was erratic and insufficiently robust and Hamilton concluded that a separate injector was needed for each cylinder.

In 1930 Electro-Motive Corporation and Winton were acquired by General Motors in pursuance of their aim to develop a diesel engine suitable for rail traction, with the use of unit fuel injectors; Hamilton retained his position as President. At this time, industrial depression had combined with road and air competition to undermine railway-passenger business, and Ralph Budd, President of the Chicago, Burlington \& Quincy Railroad, thought that traffic could be recovered by way of high-speed, luxury motor trains; hence the Pioneer Zephyr was built for the Burlington. This comprised a 600 hp (450 kW), lightweight, two-stroke, diesel engine developed by General Motors (model 201 A), with electric transmission, that powered a streamlined train of three articulated coaches. This train demonstrated its powers on 26 May 1934 by running non-stop from Denver to Chicago, a distance of 1,015 miles (1,635 km), in 13 hours and 6 minutes, when the fastest steam schedule was 26 hours. Hamilton and Budd were among those on board the train, and it ushered in an era of high-speed diesel trains in the USA. By then Hamilton, with General Motors backing, was planning to use the lightweight engine to power diesel-electric locomotives. Their layout was derived not from steam locomotives, but from the standard American boxcar. The power plant was mounted within the body and powered the bogies, and driver's cabs were at each end. Two 900 hp (670 kW) engines were mounted in a single car to become an 1,800 hp (l,340 kW) locomotive, which could be operated in multiple by a single driver to form a 3,600 hp (2,680 kW) locomotive. To keep costs down, standard locomotives could be mass-produced rather than needing individual designs for each railway, as with steam locomotives. Two units of this type were completed in 1935 and sent on trial throughout much of the USA. They were able to match steam locomotive performance, with considerable economies: fuel costs alone were halved and there was much less wear on the track. In the same year, Electro-Motive began manufacturing diesel-electrie locomotives at La Grange, Illinois, with design modifications: the driver was placed high up above a projecting nose, which improved visibility and provided protection in the event of collision on unguarded level crossings; six-wheeled bogies were introduced, to reduce axle loading and improve stability. The first production passenger locomotives emerged from La Grange in 1937, and by early 1939 seventy units were in service. Meanwhile, improved engines had been developed and were being made at La Grange, and late in 1939 a prototype, four-unit, 5,400 hp (4,000 kW) diesel-electric locomotive for freight trains was produced and sent out on test from coast to coast; production versions appeared late in 1940. After an interval from 1941 to 1943, when Electro-Motive produced diesel engines for military and naval use, locomotive production resumed in quantity in 1944, and within a few years diesel power replaced steam on most railways in the USA.

Hal Hamilton remained President of Electro-Motive Corporation until 1942, when it became a division of General Motors, of which he became Vice-President.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Paul Héroult, the son of a tanner, at the age of 16, while still at school in Caen, read Deville's book on aluminium and became obsessed with the idea of developing a cheap way of producing this metal. After his family moved to Gentillysur-Bièvre he studied at the Ecole Sainte-Barbe in Paris and then returned to Caen to work in the laboratory of his father's tannery. His first patent, filed in February and granted on 23 April 1886, described an invention almost identical to that of C.M. Hall: "the electrolysis of alumina dissolved in molten cryolite into which the current is introduced through suitable electrodes. The cryolite is not consumed." Early in 1887 Héroult attempted to obtain the support of Alfred Rangod Pechiney, the proprietor of the works at Salindres where Deville's process for making sodium-reduced aluminium was still being operated. Pechiney persuaded Héroult to modify his electrolytic process by using a cathode of molten copper, thus making it possible produce aluminium bronze rather than pure aluminium. Héroult then approached the Swiss firm J.G.Nehe Söhne, ironmasters, whose works at the Falls of Schaffhausen obtained power from the Rhine. They were looking for a new metallurgical process requiring large quantities of cheap hydroelectric power and Héroult's process seemed suitable. In 1887 they established the Société Metallurgique Suisse to test Héroult's process. Héroult became Technical Director and went to the USA to defend his patents against those of Hall. During his absence the Schaffhausen trials were successfully completed, and on 18 November 1888 the Société Metallurgique combined with the German AEG group, Oerlikon and Escher Wyss, to establish the Aluminium Industrie Aktiengesellschaft Neuhausen. In the early electrolytic baths it was occasionally found that arcs between the bath surface and electrode could develop if the electrodes were inadvertently raised. From this observation, Héroult and M.Killiani developed the electric arc furnace. In this, arcs were intentionally formed between the surface of the charge and several electrodes, each connected to a different pole of the AC supply. This furnace, the prototype of the modern electric steel furnace, was first used for the direct reduction of iron ore at La Praz in 1903. This work was undertaken for the Canadian Government, for whom Héroult subsequently designed a 5,000-amp single-phase furnace which was installed and tested at Sault-Sainte-Marie in Ontario and successfully used for smelting magnetite ore.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Public utilities

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After attending Owens College, Manchester, Hopkinson was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1867 to read for the Mathematical Tripos. An appointment in 1872 with the lighthouse department of the Chance Optical Works in Birmingham directed his attention to electrical engineering. His most noteworthy contribution to lighthouse engineering was an optical system to produce flashing lights that distinguished between individual beacons. His extensive researches on the dielectric properties of glass were recognized when he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society at the age of 29. Moving to London in 1877 he became established as a consulting engineer at a time when electricity supply was about to begin on a commercial scale. During the remainder of his life, Hopkinson's researches resulted in fundamental contributions to electrical engineering practice, dynamo design and alternating current machine theory. In making a critical study of the Edison dynamo he developed the principle of the magnetic circuit, a concept also arrived at by Gisbert Kapp around the same time. Hopkinson's improvement of the Edison dynamo by reducing the length of the field magnets almost doubled its output. In 1890, in addition to-his consulting practice, Hopkinson accepted a post as the first Professor of Electrical Engineering and Head of the Siemens laboratory recently established at King's College, London. Although he was not involved in lecturing, the position gave him the necessary facilities and staff and student assistance to continue his researches. Hopkinson was consulted on many proposals for electric traction and electricity supply, including schemes in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. He also advised Mather and Platt when they were acting as contractors for the locomotives and generating plant for the City and South London tube railway. As early as 1882 he considered that an ideal method of charging for the supply of electricity should be based on a two-part tariff, with a charge related to maximum demand together with a charge for energy supplied. Hopkinson was one the foremost expert witnesses of his day in patent actions and was himself the patentee of over forty inventions, of which the three-wire system of distribution and the series-parallel connection of traction motors were his most successful. Jointly with his brother Edward, John Hopkinson communicated the outcome of his investigations to the Royal Society in a paper entitled "Dynamo Electric Machinery" in 1886. In this he also described the later widely used "back to back" test for determining the characteristics of two identical machines. His interest in electrical machines led him to more fundamental research on magnetic materials, including the phenomenon of recalescence and the disappearance of magnetism at a well-defined temperature. For his work on the magnetic properties of iron, in 1890 he was awarded the Royal Society Royal Medal. He was a member of the Alpine Club and a pioneer of rock climbing in Britain; he died, together with three of his children, in a climbing accident.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Junghans was of the family that owned Gebrüder Junghans, one of the largest firms in the German watch-and clockmaking industry. From 1906 to 1918 he served in the German Army, after which he took a course in metallurgy and analytical chemistry at the Technical High School in Stuttgart. Junghans was then given control of the brassworks owned by his family. He wanted to make castings simply and cheaply, but he found that he lacked the normal foundry equipment. By 1927, formulating his ideas on continuous casting, he had conceived a way of overcoming this deficiency and began experiments. By the time the firm was taken over by Wieland-Werke AG in 1931, Junghans had achieved positive results. A test plant was erected in 1932, and commercial production of continuously cast metal followed the year after. Wieland told Junghans that a brassfounder who had come up through the trade would never have hit on the idea: it took an outsider like Junghans to do it. He was made Technical Director of Wielands but left in 1935 to work privately on the development of continuous casting for all metals. He was able to license the process for non-ferrous metals during 1936–9 in Germany and other countries, but the Second World War interrupted his work; however, the German government supported him and a production plant was built. In 1948 he was able to resume work on the continuous casting of steel, which he had been considering since 1936. He pushed on in spite of financial difficulties and produced the first steel by this process at Schorndorf in March 1949. From 1950 he made agreements with four firms to work towards the pilot plant stage, and this was achieved in 1954 at Mannesmann's Huckingen works. The aim of continuous casting is to bypass the conventional processes of casting molten steel into ingots, reheating the ingots and shaping them by rolling them in a large mill. Essentially, in continuous casting, molten steel is drawn through the bottom of a ladle and down through a water-cooled copper mould. The unique feature of Junghans's process was the vertically reciprocating mould, which prevented the molten metal sticking as it passed through. A continuous length of steel is taken off and cooled until it is completely solidified into the required shape. The idea of continuous casting can be traced back to Bessemer, and although others tried to apply it later, they did not have any success. It was Junghans who, more than anybody, made the process a reality.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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His early life was spent in the Ukraine and he then studied at Tupolev's aeroplane institute in Moscow. In the mid-1930s, just before his thirtieth birthday, he joined the GIRD (Group Studying Rocket Propulsion) under Frederick Zander, a Latvian engineer, while earning a living designing aircraft in Tupolev's bureau. In 1934 he visited Konstantin Tsiolovsky. Soon after this, under the Soviet Armaments Minister, Mikhail N.Tukhachevsky, who was in favour of rocket weapons, financial support was available for the GIRD and Korolov was appointed General-Engineer (1-star) in the Soviet Army. In June 1937 the Armaments Minister and his whole staff were arrested under Stalin, but Korolov was saved by Tupolev and sent to a sharaska, or prison, near Moscow where he worked for four years on rocket-and jet-propelled aircraft, among other things. In 1946 he went with his superior, Valentin Glushko, to Germany where he watched the British test-firing of possibly three V-2s at Altenwaide, near Cuxhaven, in "Operation Backfire". They were not allowed within the wire enclosure. He remained in Germany to supervise the shipment of V-2 equipment and staff to Russia (it is possible that he underwent a second term of imprisonment from 1948), the Germans having been arrested in October 1946. He kept working in Russia until 1950 or the following year. He supervised the first Russian ballistic missile, R-1, in late 1947. Stalin died in 1953 and Korolov was rehabilitated, but freedom under Nikita Kruschev was almost as restrictive as imprisonment under Stalin. Kruschev would only refer to him as "the Chief Designer", never naming him, and would not let him go abroad or correspond with other rocket experts in the USA or Germany. Anything he published could only be under the name "Sergeyev". He continued to work on his R-7 without the approval that he sought for a satellite project. This was known as semyorka, or "old number seven". In January 1959 he added a booster stage to semyorka. He may have suffered confinement in the infamous Kolyma Gulag around this time. He designed all the Sputnik, Vostok and some of the Voshkod units and worked on the Proton space booster. In 1966 he underwent surgery performed by Dr Boris Petrovsky, then Soviet Minister of Health, for the removal, it is said, of tumours of the colon. In spite of the assistance of Dr Aleksandr Vishaevsky he bled to death on the operating table. The first moon landing (by robot) took place three weeks after his death and the first flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft a little later.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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After schooling in France and Germany, Krylov returned to St Petersburg (as it then was) and in 1878 entered the Naval College. Upon graduating, he started work with the Naval Hydrographic Department; the combination of his genius and breadth of interest became apparent, and from 1888 until 1890 he undertook simultaneously a two-year university course in mathematics and a naval architecture course at his old college. On completion of his formal studies, Krylov commenced fifty years of service to the academic bodies of St Petersburg, including eight years as Superintendent of the Russian Admiralty Ship Model Experiment Tank. For many years he was Professor of Naval Architecture in the city, reorganizing the methods of teaching of his profession in Russia. It was during this period that he laid the foundations of his remarkable research and published the first of his many books destined to become internationally accepted in the fields of waves, rolling, ship motion and vibration. Practical work was not overlooked: he was responsible for the design of many vessels for the Imperial Russian Navy, including the battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk, and went on, as Director of Naval Construction, to test anti-rolling tanks aboard military vessels in the North Atlantic in 1913. Following the Revolution, Krylov was employed by the Soviet Union to re-establish scientific links with other European countries, and on several occasions he acted as Superintendent in the procurement of important technical material from overseas. In 1919 he was appointed Head of the Marine Academy, and from then on participated in many scientific conferences and commissions, mainly in the shipbuilding field, and served on the Editorial Board of the well-respected Russian periodical Sudostroenie (Shipbuilding). The breadth of his personal research was demonstrated by the notable contributions he made to the Russian development of the gyro compass.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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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.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustav developed an interest in flying as boys, when they studied birds in flight, built models and even tried to fit wings to their arms. Gustav went on to become a successful architect while Otto, after a brilliant scholastic career, became a mechanical engineer. Otto was able to devote his spare time to the problems of flight, and Gustav helped when his work allowed. They considered manpowered and mechanically powered projects, but neither looked hopeful so they turned to gliding. Otto published his research work in a book, Bird Flight as a Basis for Aviation. By 1889 Otto Lilienthal was ready to test his first full-size gliders. No. 1 and No. 2 were not successful, but No. 3, built in 1891, showed promise. He gradually improved his designs and his launching sites as he gained experience. To take off he ran downhill carrying his hang-glider until it became airborne, then he controlled it by swinging his body weight in the appropriate direction. He even built an artificial mound near Berlin so that he could take off into the wind whichever way it was blowing.

In all, Lilienthal built some eighteen gliders with various wing shapes, including biplanes. By 1895 he was planning movable control surfaces (operated by head movement) and a powered version using a carbonic acid gas motor. Unfortunately, Lilienthal crashed and died of his injuries before these ideas could be tested. In all, he made over two thousand flights covering distances up to 300 m (300 yds. Many of these flights were recorded on photographs and so generated an interest in flying. Lilienthal's achievements also encouraged other pioneers, such as Percy Pilcher in Britain, and Octave Chanute and the Wright brothers in the United States.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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A former Second Lieutenant of the Austrian navy (hence his later nickname "Captain") and graduate of the Polytechnic Institute of Graz, Lucas decided to stay in Michigan when he visited his relatives in 1879. He changed his original name, Lucie, into the form his uncle had adopted and became a naturalized American citizen at the age of 30. He worked in the lumber industry for some years and then became a consulting mechanical and mining engineer in Washington, DC. He began working for a salt-mining company in Louisiana in 1893 and became interested in the geology of the Mexican Gulf region, with a view to prospecting for petroleum. In the course of this work he came to the conclusion that the hills in this elevated area, being geological structures distinct from the surrounding deposits, were natural reservoirs of petroleum. To prove his unusual theory he subsequently chose Spindle Top, near Beaumont, Texas, where in 1899 he began to bore a first oil-well. A second drill-hole, started in October 1900, was put through clay and quicksand. After many difficulties, a layer of rock containing marine shells was reached. When the "gusher" came out on 10 January 1901, it not only opened up a new era in the oil and gas business, but it also led to the future exploration of the terrestrial crust.

Lucas's boring was a breakthrough for the rotary drilling system, which was still in its early days although its principles had been established by the English engineer Robert Beart in his patent of 1884. It proved to have advantages over the pile-driving of pipes. A pipe with a simple cutter at the lower end was driven with a constantly revolving motion, grinding down on the bottom of the well, thus gouging and chipping its way downward. To deal with the quicksand he adopted the use of large and heavy casings successively telescoped one into the other. According to Fauvelle's method, water was forced through the pipe by means of a pump, so the well was kept full of circulating liquid during drilling, flushing up the mud. When the salt-rock was reached, a diamond drill was used to test the depth and the character of the deposit.

When the well blew out and flowed freely he developed a preventer in order to save the oil and, even more importantly at the time, to shut the well and to control the oil flow. This assembly, patented in 1903, consisted of a combined system of pipes, valves and casings diverting the stream into a horizontal direction.

Lucas's fame spread around the world, but as he had to relinquish the larger part of his interest to the oil company supporting the exploration, his financial reward was poor. One year after his success at Spindle Top he started oil exploration in Mexico, where he stayed until 1905, when he resumed his consulting practice in Washington, DC.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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Martin acquired a general knowledge of engineering as an industrial worker in Belfast. In 1929 he established the Martin Aircraft Company, which was merged five years later with another concern to form the Martin-Baker Aircraft Company at Denham, Buckinghamshire. They became known for designing and constructing efficient, lightweight military aircraft, and Martin supervised personally every aspect of the work of his factory. During the Second World War they developed a number of aircraft weapons, including an explosive device carried on a bomber's wings for cutting the cables of barrage balloons, the flat-feed system for the 20 mm Hispano cannon used on British fighter planes and the twelve-gun pack mounted in the nose of the Havoc night fighter. Martin began devising means of rapid escape from a disabled fighter plane. First came a quick-release canopy for the Spitfire, followed by an improved form sliding on guides set in the fuselage. Then came the Martin-Baker seat, which ejected the pilot from his plane by an explosive charge. Ground tests were made to determine the rates of acceleration that could be tolerated by the pilot, and the first test in the air with a pilot took place in July 1946 at a speed of 320 mph (515 km/h) and an altitude of 8,000 ft (2,400 m). Its first use in a genuine emergency was in May 1949.

After the Second World War, the firm specialized in making components, particularly the ejector seat, rather than complete aircraft. The higher speeds and altitudes of supersonic jet aircraft made it necessary to modify the ejector seat: a device to hold the pilot's legs together, to prevent their being broken, was incorporated. In addition, with the Institute of Aviation Medicine, Martin developed a face blind to prevent skin damage at low temperatures. Another modification was to allow the seat to fall freely for the first 10,000 ft (3,000 m) to enable the pilot to reach breathable air more quickly; in October 1959 a successful demonstration took place at 1,250 mph (2,000 km/h) and 40,000 ft (12,000 m) altitude. During the inventor's lifetime, it is estimated that his ejector seat saved the lives of some 4,700 airmen.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Land transport

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McAdam was the son of one of the founder of the first bank in Ayr. As an infant, he nearly died in a fire which destroyed the family's house of Laywyne, in Carsphairn parish; the family then moved to Blairquhan, near Straiton. Thence he went to the parish school in Maybole, where he is said to have made a model section of a local road. In 1770, when his father died, he was sent to America where he was brought up by an uncle who was a merchant in New York. He stayed in America until the close of the revolution, becoming an agent for the sale of prizes and managing to amass a considerable fortune. He returned to Scotland where he settled at Sauchrie in Ayrshire. There he was a magistrate, Deputy-Lieutenant of the county and a road trustee, spending thirteen years there. In 1798 he moved to Falmouth in Devon, England, on his appointment as agent for revictualling of the Royal Navy in western ports.

He continued the series of experiments started in Ayrshire on the construction of roads. From these he concluded that a road should be built on a raised foundation with drains formed on either side, and should be composed of a number of layers of hard stone broken into angular fragments of roughly cubical shape; the bottom layer would be larger rocks, with layers of progressively smaller rocks above, all bound together with fine gravel. This would become compacted and almost impermeable to water by the action of the traffic passing over it. In 1815 he was appointed Surveyor-General of Bristol's roads and put his theories to the test.

In 1823 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to consider the use of "macadamized" roads in larger towns; McAdam gave evidence to this committee, and it voted to give him £10,000 for his past work. In 1827 he was appointed Surveyor-General of Roads and moved to Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. From there he made yearly visits to Scotland and it was while returning from one of these that he died, at Moffat in the Scottish Borders. He had married twice, both times to American women; his first wife was the mother of all seven of his children.

McAdam's method of road construction was much cheaper than that of Thomas Telford, and did much to ease travel and communications; it was therefore adopted by the majority of Turnpike Trusts in Britain, and the macadamization process quickly spread to other countries.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Merica graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1908. Before proceeding to the University of Berlin, he spent some time teaching in Wisconsin and in China. He obtained his doctorate in Berlin in 1914, and in that year he joined the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Washington. During his five years there, he investigated the causes of the phenomenon of age-hardening of the important new alloy of aluminium, Duralumin.

This phenomenon had been discovered not long before by Dr Alfred Wilm, a German research metallurgist. During the early years of the twentieth century, Wilm had been seeking a suitable light alloy for making cartridge cases for the Prussian government. In the autumn of 1909 he heated and quenched an aluminium alloy containing 3.5 per cent copper and 0.5 per cent magnesium and found its properties unremarkable. He happened to test it again some days later and was impressed to find its hardness and strength were much improved: Wilm had accidentally discovered age-hardening. He patented the alloy, but he made his rights over to Durener Metallwerke, who marketed it as Duralumin. This light and strong alloy was taken up by aircraft makers during the First World War, first for Zeppelins and then for other aircraft.

Although age-hardened alloys found important uses, the explanation of the phenomenon eluded metallurgists until in 1919 Merica and his colleagues at the NBS gave the first rational explanation of age-hardening in light alloys. When these alloys were heated to temperatures near their melting points, the alloying constituents were taken into solution by the matrix. Quenching retained the alloying metals in supersaturated solid solution. At room temperature very small crystals of various intermetallic compounds were precipitated and, by inserting themselves in the aluminium lattice, had the effect of increasing the hardness and strength of the alloy. Merica's theory stimulated an intensive study of hardening and the mechanism that brought it about, with important consequences for the development of new alloys with special properties.

In 1919 Merica joined the International Nickel Company as Director of Research, a post he held for thirty years and followed by a three-year period as President. He remained in association with the company until his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Newcomen was probably born at a house on the quay at Dartmouth, Devon, England, the son of Elias Newcomen and Sarah Trenhale. Nothing is known of his education, and there is only dubious evidence of his apprenticeship to an ironmonger in Exeter. He returned to Dartmouth and established himself there as an "ironmonger". The term "ironmonger" at that time meant more than a dealer in ironmongery: a skilled craftsman working in iron, nearer to today's "blacksmith". In this venture he had a partner, John Calley or Caley, who was a plumber and glazier. Besides running his business in Dartmouth, it is evident that Newcomen spent a good deal of time travelling round the mines of Devon and Cornwall in search of business.

Eighteenth-century writers and others found it impossible to believe that a provincial ironmonger could have invented the steam-engine, the concept of which had occupied the best scientific brains in Europe, and postulated a connection between Newcomen and Savery or Papin, but scholars in recent years have failed to find any evidence of this. Certainly Savery was in Dartmouth at the same time as Newcomen but there is nothing to indicate that they met, although it is possible. The most recent biographer of Thomas Newcomen is of the opinion that he was aware of Savery and his work, that the two men had met by 1705 and that, although Newcomen could have taken out his own patent, he could not have operated his own engines without infringing Savery's patent. In the event, they came to an agreement by which Newcomen was enabled to sell his engines under Savery's patent.

The first recorded Newcomen engine is dated 1712, although this may have been preceded by a good number of test engines built at Dartmouth, possibly following a number of models. Over one hundred engines were built to Newcomen's design during his lifetime, with the first engine being installed at the Griff Colliery near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.

On the death of Thomas Savery, on 15 May 1715, a new company, the Proprietors of the Engine Patent, was formed to carry on the business. The Company was represented by Edward Elliot, "who attended the Sword Blade Coffee House in Birchin Lane, London, between 3 and 5 o'clock to receive enquiries and to act as a contact for the committee". Newcomen was, of course, a member of the Proprietors.

A staunch Baptist, Newcomen married Hannah Waymouth, who bore him two sons and a daughter. He died, it is said of a fever, in London on 5 August 1729 and was buried at Bunhill Fields.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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At the age of fifteen, Porsche built a complete electrical installation for his home. In 1894 he went to technical school in Vienna. Four years later he became Manager of the test department of the Bela Egger concern, which later became part of the Brown Boveri organization where he became the first Assistant in the calculating section. In 1899 he joined the long-established coachbuilders Jacob Lohner, and in 1902 a car of his design with mixed drive won the 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) class in the Exelberg races. In 1905 he joined the Austro-Daimler Company as Technical Director; his subsequent designs included an 85 hp mixed-drive racing car in 1907 and in 1912 an air-cooled aircraft engine which came to be known in later years as the "great-grandfather" of the Volkswagen engine. In 1916, he became Managing Director of Austro-Daimler.

In 1921 he designed his first small car, which, appearing under the name of Sasch, won its class in the 1922 Targa Florio, a gruelling road-race in Italy. In 1923 Porsche left Austro-Daimler and joined the Daimler Company in Untertürk-heim, near Stuttgart, Germany. In 1929 he joined the firm of Steyr in Austria as a director and chief engineer, and in 1930 he set up his own independent design office in Stuttgart. In 1932 he visited Russia, and in the same year completed the design calculations for the Auto-Union racing car.

In 1934, with his son Ferry (b. 1909), he prepared a plan for the construction of the German "people's car", a project initiated by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime; in June of that year he signed a contract for the design work on the Volkswagen. Racing cars of his design were also successful in 1934: the rear-engined Auto-Union won the German Grand Prix, and another Au to-Union car took the Flying Kilometre speed record at 327 km/h (203.2 mph). In 1935 Daimler-Benz started preproduction on the Volkswagen. The first trials of the cars took place in the autumn of 1936, and the following year thirty experimental cars were built by Daimler-Benz. In that year, Porsche visited the United States, where he met Henry Ford; in October an Auto-Union took the Flying Five Kilometre record at 404.3 km/h (251.2 mph). On 26 May 1938, the foundation stone of the Volkswagen factory was laid in Wolfsburg, near Braunschweig, Germany.

In October 1945 Ferdinand Porsche was arrested by a unit of the United States Army and taken to Hessen; the French army removed him to Baden-Baden, then to Paris and later to Dijon. During this time he was consulted by Renault engineers regarding the design of their 4CV and designed a diesel-engined tractor. He was finally released on 5 August 1947. His last major work before his death was the approval of the design for the Cisitalia Grand Prix car.

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SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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William was the second son and one of eleven children of Samuel Priestman, who had moved to Hull after retiring as a corn miller in Kirkstall, Leeds, and who in retirement had become a director of the North Eastern Railway Company. The family were strict Quakers, so William was sent to the Quaker School in Bootham, York. He left school at the age of 17 to start an engineering apprenticeship at the Humber Iron Works, but this company failed so the apprenticeship was continued with the North Eastern Railway, Gateshead. In 1869 he joined the hydraulics department of Sir William Armstrong \& Company, Newcastle upon Tyne, but after a year there his father financed him in business at a small, run down works, the Holderness Foundry, Hull. He was soon joined by his brother, Samuel, their main business being the manufacture of dredging equipment (grabs), cranes and winches. In the late 1870s William became interested in internal combustion engines. He took a sublicence to manufacture petrol engines to the patents of Eugène Etève of Paris from the British licensees, Moll and Dando. These engines operated in a similar manner to the non-compression gas engines of Lenoir. Failure to make the two-stroke version of this engine work satisfactorily forced him to pay royalties to Crossley Bros, the British licensees of the Otto four-stroke patents.

Fear of the dangers of petrol as a fuel, reflected by the associated very high insurance premiums, led William to experiment with the use of lamp oil as an engine fuel. His first of many patents was for a vaporizer. This was in 1885, well before Ackroyd Stuart. What distinguished the Priestman engine was the provision of an air pump which pressurized the fuel tank, outlets at the top and bottom of which led to a fuel atomizer injecting continuously into a vaporizing chamber heated by the exhaust gases. A spring-loaded inlet valve connected the chamber to the atmosphere, with the inlet valve proper between the chamber and the working cylinder being camoperated. A plug valve in the fuel line and a butterfly valve at the inlet to the chamber were operated, via a linkage, by the speed governor; this is believed to be the first use of this method of control. It was found that vaporization was only partly achieved, the higher fractions of the fuel condensing on the cylinder walls. A virtue was made of this as it provided vital lubrication. A starting system had to be provided, this comprising a lamp for preheating the vaporizing chamber and a hand pump for pressurizing the fuel tank.

Engines of 2–10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW) were exhibited to the press in 1886; of these, a vertical engine was installed in a tram car and one of the horizontals in a motor dray. In 1888, engines were shown publicly at the Royal Agricultural Show, while in 1890 two-cylinder vertical marine engines were introduced in sizes from 2 to 10 hp (1.5–7.5 kW), and later double-acting ones up to some 60 hp (45 kW). First, clutch and gearbox reversing was used, but reversing propellers were fitted later (Priestman patent of 1892). In the same year a factory was established in Philadelphia, USA, where engines in the range 5–20 hp (3.7–15 kW) were made. Construction was radically different from that of the previous ones, the bosses of the twin flywheels acting as crank discs with the main bearings on the outside.

On independent test in 1892, a Priestman engine achieved a full-load brake thermal efficiency of some 14 per cent, a very creditable figure for a compression ratio limited to under 3:1 by detonation problems. However, efficiency at low loads fell off seriously owing to the throttle governing, and the engines were heavy, complex and expensive compared with the competition.

Decline in sales of dredging equipment and bad debts forced the firm into insolvency in 1895 and receivers took over. A new company was formed, the brothers being excluded. However, they were able to attend board meetings, but to exert no influence. Engine activities ceased in about 1904 after over 1,000 engines had been made. It is probable that the Quaker ethics of the brothers were out of place in a business that was becoming increasingly cut-throat. William spent the rest of his long life serving others.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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After working as a millwright in Halifax, Riley found employment at the Ormesby Ironworks in Middlesbrough until, in 1869, he became manager of the Askam Ironworks in Cumberland. Three years later, in 1872, he was appointed Blast-furnace Manager at the pioneering Siemens Steel Company's works at Landore, near Swansea in South Wales. Using Spanish ore, he produced the manganese-rich iron (spiegeleisen) required as an additive to make satisfactory steel. Riley was promoted in 1874 to be General Manager at Landore, and he worked with William Siemens to develop the use of the latter's regenerative furnace for the production of open-hearth steel. He persuaded Welsh makers of tin plate to use sheets rolled from lowcarbon (mild) steel instead of from charcoal iron and, partly by publishing some test results, he was instrumental in influencing the Admiralty to build two naval vessels of mild steel, the Mercury and the Iris.

In 1878 Riley moved north on his appointment as General Manager of the Steel Company of Scotland, a firm closely associated with Charles Tennant that was formed in 1872 to make steel by the Siemens process. Already by 1878, fourteen Siemens melting furnaces had been erected, and in that year 42,000 long tons of ingots were produced at the company's Hallside (Newton) Works, situated 8 km (5 miles) south-east of Glasgow. Under Riley's leadership, steelmaking in open-hearth furnaces was initiated at a second plant situated at Blochairn. Plates and sections for all aspects of shipbuilding, including boilers, formed the main products; the company also supplied the greater part of the steel for the Forth (Railway) Bridge. Riley was associated with technical modifications which improved the performance of steelmaking furnaces using Siemens's principles. He built a gasfired cupola for melting pig-iron, and constructed the first British "universal" plate mill using three-high rolls (Lauth mill).

At the request of French interests, Riley investigated the properties of steels containing various proportions of nickel; the report that he read before the Iron and Steel Institute in 1889 successfully brought to the notice of potential users the greatly enhanced strength that nickel could impart and its ability to yield alloys possessing substantially lower corrodibility.

The Steel Company of Scotland paid dividends in the years to 1890, but then came a lean period. In 1895, at the age of 54, Riley moved once more to another employer, becoming General Manager of the Glasgow Iron and Steel Company, which had just laid out a new steelmaking plant at Wishaw, 25 km (15 miles) south-east of Glasgow, where it already had blast furnaces. Still the technical innovator, in 1900 Riley presented an account of his experiences in introducing molten blast-furnace metal as feed for the open-hearth steel furnaces. In the early 1890s it was largely through Riley's efforts that a West of Scotland Board of Conciliation and Arbitration for the Manufactured Steel Trade came into being; he was its first Chairman and then its President.

In 1899 James Riley resigned from his Scottish employment to move back to his native Yorkshire, where he became his own master by acquiring the small Richmond Ironworks situated at Stockton-on-Tees. Although Riley's 1900 account to the Iron and Steel Institute was the last of the many of which he was author, he continued to contribute to the discussion of papers written by others.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Most early aero-engines were adaptations of automobile engines, but Louis Séguin and his brother Laurent set out to produce a genuine aero-engine. They decided to build a "rotary" engine in which the crankshaft remained stationary and the cylinders rotated: the propeller was attached to the cylinders. The idea was not new, for rotary engines had been proposed by engineers from James Watt to Samuel P. Langley, rival of the Wright brothers. (An engine with stationary cylinders and a rotating crankshaftplus-propeller is classed as a "radial".) Louis Séguin formed the Société des Moteurs Gnome in 1906 to build stationary industrial engines. Laurent joined him to develop a lightweight engine specifically for aeronautical use. They built a fivecylinder air-cooled radial engine in 1908 and then a prototype seven-cylinder rotary engine. Later in the year the Gnome Oméga rotary, developing 50 hp (37 kW), was produced. This was test-flown in a Voisin biplane during June 1909. The Gnome was much lighter than its conventional rivals and surprisingly reliable in view of the technical problems of supplying rotating cylinders with the petrol-air mixture and a spark to ignite it. It was an instant success.

Gnomes were mass-produced for use during the First World War. Both sides built and flew rotary engines, which were improved over the years until, by 1917, their size had grown to such an extent that a further increase was not practicable. The gyroscopic effects of a large rotating engine became a serious handicap to manoeuvrability, and the technical problems inherent in a rotary engine were accentuated.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology, Photography, film and optics

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Snellen took his degree in medicine at Utrecht in 1857, and after continued study was appointed Lecturer in Ophthalmology and Surgeon to the Hospital for Diseases of the Eye. In 1877 he succeeded Franciscus Cornelius Donders, an outstanding figure in the development of the understanding of the optics and physiology of vision, as Professor. He held this post until 1899 when he was succeeded by his son.

Although involved in virtually all aspects of the speciality, he particularly laid the basis for the scientific recording of visual acuity with the publication of his Optotypes in 1862. Optotypes were based on the concept of an average standard of vision permitting the discrimination of separate objects which subtended an angle of one minute of arc on the retina. While the concept does not take into account aspects of vision such as perception, it has stood the test of time in terms of practicality, even when abstract figures such as Landolt's rings replace the lines of single letters of the original.

Snellen originated many other advances of a surgical nature, his procedure for eyelid deformity is still practised, and he developed the use of glass in the manufacture of artificial eyes.

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