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41 Roebling, John Augustus
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 12 July 1806 Muhlhausen, Prussiad. 22 July 1869 Brooklyn, New York, USA[br]German/American bridge engineer and builder.[br]The son of Polycarp Roebling, a tobacconist, he studied mathematics at Dr Unger's Pedagogium in Erfurt and went on to the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, from which he graduated in 1826 with honours in civil engineering. He spent the next three years working for the Prussian government on the construction of roads and bridges. With his brother and a group of friends, he emigrated to the United States, sailing from Bremen on 23 May 1831 and docking in Philadelphia eleven weeks later. They bought 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) in Butler County, western Pennsylvania, and established a village, at first called Germania but later known as Saxonburg. Roebling gave up trying to establish himself as a farmer and found work for the state of Pennsylvania as Assistant Engineer on the Beaver River canal and others, then surveying a railroad route across the Allegheny Mountains. During his canal work, he noted the failings of the hemp ropes that were in use at that time, and recalled having read of wire ropes in a German journal; he built a rope-walk at his Saxonburg farm, bought a supply of iron wire and trained local labour in the method of wire twisting.At this time, many canals crossed rivers by means of aqueducts. In 1844, the Pennsylvania Canal aqueduct across the Allegheny River was due to be renewed, having become unsafe. Roebling made proposals which were accepted by the canal company: seven wooden spans of 162 ft (49 m) each were supported on either side by a 7 in. (18 cm) diameter cable, Roebling himself having to devise all the machinery required for the erection. He subsequently built four more suspension aqueducts, one of which was converted to a toll bridge and was still in use a century later.In 1849 he moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where he set up a new wire rope plant. In 1851 he started the construction (completed in 1855) of an 821 ft (250 m) long suspension railroad bridge across the Niagara River, 245 ft (75 m) above the rapids; each cable consisted of 3,640 wrought iron wires. A lower deck carried road traffic. He also constructed a bridge across the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, a task which was much protracted due to the Civil War; this bridge was finally completed in 1866.Roebling's crowning achievement was to have been the design and construction of the bridge over the Hudson River between Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York, but he did not live to see its completion. It had a span of 1,595 ft (486 m), designed to bear a load of 18,700 tons (19,000 tonnes) with a headroom of 135 ft (41 m). The work of building had barely started when, at the Brooklyn wharf, a boat crushed Roebling's foot against the timbering and he died of tetanus three weeks later. His son, Washington Augustus Roebling, then took charge of this great work.[br]Further ReadingD.B.Steinman and S.R.Watson, 1941, Bridges and their Builders, New York: Dover Books.D.McCullough, 1982, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, New York: Simon \& Schuster.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Roebling, John Augustus
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42 Roebuck, John
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 1718 Sheffield, Englandd. 17 July 1794[br]English chemist and manufacturer, inventor of the lead-chamber process for sulphuric acid.[br]The son of a prosperous Sheffield manufacturer, Roebuck forsook the family business to pursue studies in medicine at Edinburgh University. There he met Dr Joseph Black (1727–99), celebrated Professor of Chemistry, who aroused in Roebuck a lasting interest in chemistry. Roebuck continued his studies at Leyden, where he took his medical degree in 1742. He set up in practice in Birmingham, but in his spare time he continued chemical experiments that might help local industries.Among his early achievements was his new method of refining gold and silver. Success led to the setting up of a large laboratory and a reputation as a chemical consultant. It was at this time that Roebuck devised an improved way of making sulphuric acid. This vital substance was then made by burning sulphur and nitre (potassium nitrate) over water in a glass globe. The scale of the process was limited by the fragility of the glass. Roebuck substituted "lead chambers", or vessels consisting of sheets of lead, a metal both cheap and resistant to acids, set in wooden frames. After the first plant was set up in 1746, productivity rose and the price of sulphuric acid fell sharply. Success encouraged Roebuck to establish a second, larger plant at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh. He preferred to rely on secrecy rather than patents to preserve his monopoly, but a departing employee took the secret with him and the process spread rapidly in England and on the European continent. It remained the standard process until it was superseded by the contact process towards the end of the nineteenth century. Roebuck next turned his attention to ironmaking and finally selected a site on the Carron river, near Falkirk in Scotland, where the raw materials and water power and transport lay close at hand. The Carron ironworks began producing iron in 1760 and became one of the great names in the history of ironmaking. Roebuck was an early proponent of the smelting of iron with coke, pioneered by Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale. To supply the stronger blast required, Roebuck consulted John Smeaton, who c. 1760 installed the first blowing cylinders of any size.All had so far gone well for Roebuck, but he now leased coal-mines and salt-works from the Duke of Hamilton's lands at Borrowstonness in Linlithgow. The coal workings were plagued with flooding which the existing Newcomen engines were unable to overcome. Through his friendship with Joseph Black, patron of James Watt, Roebuck persuaded Watt to join him to apply his improved steam-engine to the flooded mine. He took over Black's loan to Watt of £1,200, helped him to obtain the first steam-engine patent of 1769 and took a two-thirds interest in the project. However, the new engine was not yet equal to the task and the debts mounted. To satisfy his creditors, Roebuck had to dispose of his capital in his various ventures. One creditor was Matthew Boulton, who accepted Roebuck's two-thirds share in Watt's steam-engine, rather than claim payment from his depleted estate, thus initiating a famous partnership. Roebuck was retained to manage Borrowstonness and allowed an annuity for his continued support until his death in 1794.[br]Further ReadingMemoir of John Roebuck in J.Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. 4 (1798), pp. 65–87.S.Gregory, 1987, "John Roebuck, 18th century entrepreneur", Chem. Engr. 443:28–31.LRD -
43 Stephenson, Robert
[br]b. 16 October 1803 Willington Quay, Northumberland, Englandd. 12 October 1859 London, England[br]English engineer who built the locomotive Rocket and constructed many important early trunk railways.[br]Robert Stephenson's father was George Stephenson, who ensured that his son was educated to obtain the theoretical knowledge he lacked himself. In 1821 Robert Stephenson assisted his father in his survey of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway and in 1822 he assisted William James in the first survey of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He then went to Edinburgh University for six months, and the following year Robert Stephenson \& Co. was named after him as Managing Partner when it was formed by himself, his father and others. The firm was to build stationary engines, locomotives and railway rolling stock; in its early years it also built paper-making machinery and did general engineering.In 1824, however, Robert Stephenson accepted, perhaps in reaction to an excess of parental control, an invitation by a group of London speculators called the Colombian Mining Association to lead an expedition to South America to use steam power to reopen gold and silver mines. He subsequently visited North America before returning to England in 1827 to rejoin his father as an equal and again take charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co. There he set about altering the design of steam locomotives to improve both their riding and their steam-generating capacity. Lancashire Witch, completed in July 1828, was the first locomotive mounted on steel springs and had twin furnace tubes through the boiler to produce a large heating surface. Later that year Robert Stephenson \& Co. supplied the Stockton \& Darlington Railway with a wagon, mounted for the first time on springs and with outside bearings. It was to be the prototype of the standard British railway wagon. Between April and September 1829 Robert Stephenson built, not without difficulty, a multi-tubular boiler, as suggested by Henry Booth to George Stephenson, and incorporated it into the locomotive Rocket which the three men entered in the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Rainhill Trials in October. Rocket, was outstandingly successful and demonstrated that the long-distance steam railway was practicable.Robert Stephenson continued to develop the locomotive. Northumbrian, built in 1830, had for the first time, a smokebox at the front of the boiler and also the firebox built integrally with the rear of the boiler. Then in Planet, built later the same year, he adopted a layout for the working parts used earlier by steam road-coach pioneer Goldsworthy Gurney, placing the cylinders, for the first time, in a nearly horizontal position beneath the smokebox, with the connecting rods driving a cranked axle. He had evolved the definitive form for the steam locomotive.Also in 1830, Robert Stephenson surveyed the London \& Birmingham Railway, which was authorized by Act of Parliament in 1833. Stephenson became Engineer for construction of the 112-mile (180 km) railway, probably at that date the greatest task ever undertaken in of civil engineering. In this he was greatly assisted by G.P.Bidder, who as a child prodigy had been known as "The Calculating Boy", and the two men were to be associated in many subsequent projects. On the London \& Birmingham Railway there were long and deep cuttings to be excavated and difficult tunnels to be bored, notoriously at Kilsby. The line was opened in 1838.In 1837 Stephenson provided facilities for W.F. Cooke to make an experimental electrictelegraph installation at London Euston. The directors of the London \& Birmingham Railway company, however, did not accept his recommendation that they should adopt the electric telegraph and it was left to I.K. Brunel to instigate the first permanent installation, alongside the Great Western Railway. After Cooke formed the Electric Telegraph Company, Stephenson became a shareholder and was Chairman during 1857–8.Earlier, in the 1830s, Robert Stephenson assisted his father in advising on railways in Belgium and came to be increasingly in demand as a consultant. In 1840, however, he was almost ruined financially as a result of the collapse of the Stanhope \& Tyne Rail Road; in return for acting as Engineer-in-Chief he had unwisely accepted shares, with unlimited liability, instead of a fee.During the late 1840s Stephenson's greatest achievements were the design and construction of four great bridges, as part of railways for which he was responsible. The High Level Bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle and the Royal Border Bridge over the Tweed at Berwick were the links needed to complete the East Coast Route from London to Scotland. For the Chester \& Holyhead Railway to cross the Menai Strait, a bridge with spans as long-as 460 ft (140 m) was needed: Stephenson designed them as wrought-iron tubes of rectangular cross-section, through which the trains would pass, and eventually joined the spans together into a tube 1,511 ft (460 m) long from shore to shore. Extensive testing was done beforehand by shipbuilder William Fairbairn to prove the method, and as a preliminary it was first used for a 400 ft (122 m) span bridge at Conway.In 1847 Robert Stephenson was elected MP for Whitby, a position he held until his death, and he was one of the exhibition commissioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the early 1850s he was Engineer-in-Chief for the Norwegian Trunk Railway, the first railway in Norway, and he also built the Alexandria \& Cairo Railway, the first railway in Africa. This included two tubular bridges with the railway running on top of the tubes. The railway was extended to Suez in 1858 and for several years provided a link in the route from Britain to India, until superseded by the Suez Canal, which Stephenson had opposed in Parliament. The greatest of all his tubular bridges was the Victoria Bridge across the River St Lawrence at Montreal: after inspecting the site in 1852 he was appointed Engineer-in-Chief for the bridge, which was 1 1/2 miles (2 km) long and was designed in his London offices. Sadly he, like Brunel, died young from self-imposed overwork, before the bridge was completed in 1859.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1849. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1849. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1856. Order of St Olaf (Norway). Order of Leopold (Belgium). Like his father, Robert Stephenson refused a knighthood.Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1960, George and Robert Stephenson, London: Longman (a good modern biography).J.C.Jeaffreson, 1864, The Life of Robert Stephenson, London: Longman (the standard nine-teenth-century biography).M.R.Bailey, 1979, "Robert Stephenson \& Co. 1823–1829", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 50 (provides details of the early products of that company).J.Kieve, 1973, The Electric Telegraph, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.PJGR -
44 способ записи
Русско-английский словарь по информационным технологиям > способ записи
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45 Te Ohu Kai Moana
Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission: Main task is the development of a method for allocation of assets to iwi, according to the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Settlement Act 1992, and the Deed of Settlement 1992.
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