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61 Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 25 May 1889 Kiev, Ukrained. 26 October 1972 Easton, Connecticut, USA[br]Russian/American pioneer of large aeroplanes, flying boats, and helicopters.[br]Sikorsky trained as an engineer but developed an interest in aviation at the age of 19 when he was allowed to spend several months in Paris to meet French aviators. He bought an Anzani aero-engine and took it back to Russia, where he designed and built a helicopter. In his own words, "It had one minor technical problem—it would not fly—but otherwise it was a good helicopter".Sikorsky turned to aeroplanes and built a series of biplanes: by 1911 the 5–5 was capable of flights lasting an hour. Following this success, the Russian-Baltic Railroad Car Company commissioned Sikorsky to build a large aeroplane. On 13 May 1913 Sikorsky took off in the Grand, the world's first four-engined aeroplane. With a wing span of 28 m (92 ft) it was also the world's largest, and was unique in that the crew were in an enclosed cabin with dual controls. The even larger Ilia Mourometz flew the following year and established many records, including the carriage of sixteen people. During the First World War many of these aircraft were built and served as heavy bombers.Following the revolution in Russia during 1917, Sikorsky emigrated first to France and then the United States, where he founded his own company. After building the successful S-38 passenger-carrying amphibian, the Sikorsky Aviation Corporation became part of the United Aircraft Corporation and went on to produce several large flying boats. Of these, the four-engined S-42 was probably the best known, for its service to Hawaii in 1935 and trial flights across the Atlantic in 1937.In the late 1930s Sikorsky once again turned his attention to helicopters, and on 14 September 1939 his VS-300 made its first tentative hop, with Sikorsky at the controls. Many improvements were made and on 6 May 1941 Sikorsky made a record-breaking flight of over 1½ hours. The Sikorsky design of a single main lifting rotor combined with a small tail rotor to balance the torque effect has dominated helicopter design to this day. Sikorsky produced a long series of outstanding helicopter designs which are in service throughout the world.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsChevalier de la Légion d'honneur 1960. Presidential Certificate of Merit 1948. Aeronautical Society Silver Medal 1949.Bibliography1971, "Sixty years in flying", Aeronautical Journal (Royal Aeronautical Society) (November) (interesting and amusing).1938, The Story of the Winged S., New York; 1967, rev. edn.Further ReadingD.Cochrane et al., 1990, The Aviation Careers of Igor Sikorsky, Seattle.K.N.Finne, 1988, Igor Sikorsky: The Russian Years, ed. C.J.Bobrow and V.Hardisty, Shrewsbury; orig. pub. in Russian, 1930.F.J.Delear, 1969, Igor Sikorsky: His Three Careers in Aviation, New York.JDSBiographical history of technology > Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich
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62 Sobrero, Ascanio
[br]b. 12 October 1812 Cassale, Monteferrato, Italyd. 26 May 1888 Turin, Italy[br]Italian chemist, inventor of nitroglycerine.[br]Sobrero initially studied medicine, qualifying as both a physician and surgeon, and then went on to study chemistry in Turin, Paris and Giessen. In 1847 he created nitroglycerine by slowly adding glycerine to a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids. The explosive injured both him and a number of others in the laboratory, and he was so horrified by its power and its potential effect on warfare that he refused to exploit his discovery; its introduction into general use thus had to wait for Immanuel and Alfred Nobel. In 1849 Sobrero was appointed Professor of Applied Chemistry at the Technical Institute, Turin, and he later became Professor of Pure Chemistry as well. He retired in 1882.[br]BibliographyHe was the author of numerous scientific papers reflecting his wide-ranging interests in chemistry.CM -
63 Walschaert, Egide
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 20 January 1820 Mechlin, Belgiumd. 18 February 1901 Saint-Lilies, Brussels, Belgium[br]Belgian inventor of Walschaerrt valve gear for steam engines.[br]Walschaert was appointed Foreman of the Brussels Midi workshops of the Belgian State Railways in 1844, when they were opened, and remained in this position until 1885. He invented his valve gear the year he took up his appointment and was allowed to fit it to a 2–2–2 locomotive in 1848, the results being excellent. It was soon adopted in Belgium and to a lesser extent in France, but although it offered accessibility, light weight and mechanical efficiency, railways elsewhere were remarkably slow to take it up. It was first used in the British Isles in 1878, on a 0–4–4 tank locomotive built to the patent of Robert Fairlie, but was not used again there until 1890. By contrast, Fairlie had already used Walchaert's valve gear in 1873, on locomotives for New Zealand, and when New Zealand Railways started to build their own locomotives in 1889 they perpetuated it. The valve gear was only introduced to the USA following a visit by an executive of the Baldwin Locomotive Works to New Zealand ten years later. Subsequently it came to be used almost everywhere there were steam locomotives. Walschaert himself invented other improvements for steam engines, but none with lasting effect.[br]Further ReadingP.Ransome-Wallis (ed.), 1959, The Concise Encyclopaedia, of World Railway Locomotives, London: Hutchinson (includes both a brief biography of Walschaert (p.502) and a technical description of his valve gear (p. 298)).E.L.Ahrons, 1927, The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825–1925, London: The Locomotive Publishing Co., pp. 224 and 289 (describes the introduction of the valve gear to Britain).J.B.Snell, 1964, Early Railways, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson, 103.PJGR -
64 Zworykin, Vladimir Kosma
[br]b. 30 July 1889 Mourum (near Moscow), Russiad. 29 July 1982 New York City, New York, USA[br]Russian (naturalized American 1924) television pioneer who invented the iconoscope and kinescope television camera and display tubes.[br]Zworykin studied engineering at the Institute of Technology in St Petersburg under Boris Rosing, assisting the latter with his early experiments with television. After graduating in 1912, he spent a time doing X-ray research at the Collège de France in Paris before returning to join the Russian Marconi Company, initially in St Petersburg and then in Moscow. On the outbreak of war in 1917, he joined the Russian Army Signal Corps, but when the war ended in the chaos of the Revolution he set off on his travels, ending up in the USA, where he joined the Westinghouse Corporation. There, in 1923, he filed the first of many patents for a complete system of electronic television, including one for an all-electronic scanning pick-up tube that he called the iconoscope. In 1924 he became a US citizen and invented the kinescope, a hard-vacuum cathode ray tube (CRT) for the display of television pictures, and the following year he patented a camera tube with a mosaic of photoelectric elements and gave a demonstration of still-picture TV. In 1926 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Pittsburgh and in 1928 he was granted a patent for a colour TV system.In 1929 he embarked on a tour of Europe to study TV developments; on his return he joined the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) as Director of the Electronics Research Group, first at Camden and then Princeton, New Jersey. Securing a budget to develop an improved CRT picture tube, he soon produced a kinescope with a hard vacuum, an indirectly heated cathode, a signal-modulation grid and electrostatic focusing. In 1933 an improved iconoscope camera tube was produced, and under his direction RCA went on to produce other improved types of camera tube, including the image iconoscope, the orthicon and image orthicon and the vidicon. The secondary-emission effect used in many of these tubes was also used in a scintillation radiation counter. In 1941 he was responsible for the development of the first industrial electron microscope, but for most of the Second World War he directed work concerned with radar, aircraft fire-control and TV-guided missiles.After the war he worked for a time on high-speed memories and medical electronics, becoming Vice-President and Technical Consultant in 1947. He "retired" from RCA and was made an honorary vice-president in 1954, but he retained an office and continued to work there almost up until his death; he also served as Director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research from 1954 until 1962.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsZworykin received some twenty-seven awards and honours for his contributions to television engineering and medical electronics, including the Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1965; US Medal of Science 1966; and the US National Hall of Fame 1977.Bibliography29 December 1923, US patent no. 2,141, 059 (the original iconoscope patent; finally granted in December 1938!).13 July 1925, US patent no. 1,691, 324 (colour television system).1930, with D.E.Wilson, Photocells and Their Applications, New York: Wiley. 1934, "The iconoscope. A modern version of the electric eye". Proceedings of theInstitute of Radio Engineers 22:16.1946, Electron Optics and the Electron Microscope.1940, with G.A.Morton, Television; revised 1954.1949, with E.G.Ramberg, Photoelectricity and Its Applications. 1958, Television in Science and Industry.Further ReadingJ.H.Udelson, 1982, The Great Television Race: History of the Television Industry 1925– 41: University of Alabama Press.KFBiographical history of technology > Zworykin, Vladimir Kosma
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