that'll+be+john

"Джон Коллинз" [напиток из содовой воды, джина, сахара, лимонного сока и льда] [первонач. амер.]

ср. тж good man

tas izskatās pēc Džona

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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He was the son of Francis Barber, coalmaster of Greasley, and Elizabeth Fletcher. In his will of 1765. his uncle, John Fletcher, left the bulk of his property, including collieries and Stainsby House, Horsley Woodhouse, Derbyshire, to John Barber. Another uncle, Robert, bequeathed him property in the next village, Smalley. It is clear that at this time John Barber was a man of considerable means. On a tablet erected by John in 1767, he acknowledges his debt to his uncle John in the words "in remembrance of the man who trained him up from a youth". At this time John Barber was living at Stainsby House and had already been granted his first patent, in 1766. The contents of this patent, which included a reversible water turbine, and his subsequent patents, suggest that he was very familiar with mining equipment, including the Newcomen engine. It comes as rather a surprise that c.1784 he became bankrupt and had to leave Stainsby House, evidently moving to Attleborough. In a strange twist, a descendent of Mr Sitwell, the new owner, bought the prototype Akroyd Stuart oil engine from the Doncaster Show in 1891.

The second and fifth (final) patents, in 1773 and 1792, were concerned with smelting and the third, in 1776, featured a boiler-mounted impulse steam turbine. The fourth and most important patent, in 1791, describes and engine that could be applied to the "grinding of corn, flints, etc.", "rolling, slitting, forging or battering iron and other metals", "turning of mills for spinning", "turning up coals and other minerals from mines", and "stamping of ores, raising water". Further, and importantly, the directing of the fluid stream into smelting furnaces or at the stern of ships to propel them is mentioned. The engine described comprised two retorts for heating coal or oil to produce an inflammable gas, one to operate while the other was cleansed and recharged. The resultant gas, together with the right amount of air, passed to a beam-operated pump and a water-cooled combustion chamber, and then to a water-cooled nozzle to an impulse gas turbine, which drove the pumps and provided the output. A clear description of the thermodynamic sequence known as the Joule Cycle (Brayton in the USA) is thus given. Further, the method of gas production predates Murdoch's lighting of the Soho foundry by gas.

It seems unlikely that John Barber was able to get his engine to work; indeed, it was well over a hundred years before a continuous combustion chamber was achieved. However, the details of the specification, for example the use of cooling water jackets and injection, suggest that considerable experimentation had taken place.

To be active in the taking out of patents over a period of 26 years is remarkable; that the best came after bankruptcy is more so. There is nothing to suggest that the cost of his experiments was the cause of his financial troubles.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology, Ports and shipping

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John Harrison was the son of a carpenter and was brought up to that trade. He was largely self-taught and learned mechanics from a copy of Nicholas Saunderson's lectures that had been lent to him. With the assistance of his younger brother, James, he built a series of unconventional clocks, mainly of wood. He was always concerned to reduce friction, without using oil, and this influenced the design of his "grasshopper" escapement. He also invented the "gridiron" compensation pendulum, which depended on the differential expansion of brass and steel. The excellent performance of his regulator clocks, which incorporated these devices, convinced him that they could also be used in a sea dock to compete for the longitude prize. In 1714 the Government had offered a prize of £20,000 for a method of determining longitude at sea to within half a degree after a voyage to the West Indies. In theory the longitude could be found by carrying an accurate timepiece that would indicate the time at a known longitude, but the requirements of the Act were very exacting. The timepiece would have to have a cumulative error of no more than two minutes after a voyage lasting six weeks.

In 1730 Harrison went to London with his proposal for a sea clock, supported by examples of his grasshopper escapement and his gridiron pendulum. His proposal received sufficient encouragement and financial support, from George Graham and others, to enable him to return to Barrow and construct his first sea clock, which he completed five years later. This was a large and complicated machine that was made out of brass but retained the wooden wheelwork and the grasshopper escapement of the regulator clocks. The two balances were interlinked to counteract the rolling of the vessel and were controlled by helical springs operating in tension. It was the first timepiece with a balance to have temperature compensation. The effect of temperature change on the timekeeping of a balance is more pronounced than it is for a pendulum, as two effects are involved: the change in the size of the balance; and the change in the elasticity of the balance spring. Harrison compensated for both effects by using a gridiron arrangement to alter the tension in the springs. This timekeeper performed creditably when it was tested on a voyage to Lisbon, and the Board of Longitude agreed to finance improved models. Harrison's second timekeeper dispensed with the use of wood and had the added refinement of a remontoire, but even before it was tested he had embarked on a third machine. The balance of this machine was controlled by a spiral spring whose effective length was altered by a bimetallic strip to compensate for changes in temperature. In 1753 Harrison commissioned a London watchmaker, John Jefferys, to make a watch for his own personal use, with a similar form of temperature compensation and a modified verge escapement that was intended to compensate for the lack of isochronism of the balance spring. The time-keeping of this watch was surprisingly good and Harrison proceeded to build a larger and more sophisticated version, with a remontoire. This timekeeper was completed in 1759 and its performance was so remarkable that Harrison decided to enter it for the longitude prize in place of his third machine. It was tested on two voyages to the West Indies and on both occasions it met the requirements of the Act, but the Board of Longitude withheld half the prize money until they had proof that the timekeeper could be duplicated. Copies were made by Harrison and by Larcum Kendall, but the Board still continued to prevaricate and Harrison received the full amount of the prize in 1773 only after George III had intervened on his behalf.

Although Harrison had shown that it was possible to construct a timepiece of sufficient accuracy to determine longitude at sea, his solution was too complex and costly to be produced in quantity. It had, for example, taken Larcum Kendall two years to produce his copy of Harrison's fourth timekeeper, but Harrison had overcome the psychological barrier and opened the door for others to produce chronometers in quantity at an affordable price. This was achieved before the end of the century by Arnold and Earnshaw, but they used an entirely different design that owed more to Le Roy than it did to Harrison and which only retained Harrison's maintaining power.

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See also: Burgi, Jost; Huygens, Christiaan

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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John Deere was the son of a tailor, and first worked as a tanner before becoming apprenticed to a blacksmith. He married Demarius Lamb in 1827, but it appears that competition for blacksmiths was fierce, and the Deere family moved frequently. Two attempts to establish forges ended in fires, and changing partnerships and arguments over debts were to be a feature of Deere's working life. In 1836 John Deere moved west on his own, in an attempt to establish himself. He settled in Grand Detour, Illinois. In this new frontier a blacksmith's skills were sought after, and the blacksmith, with no ready supply of raw materials, had to be able to operate both a furnace for melting metal and a forge for working it. Deere was sufficiently successful for his family to be able to join him. A chance visit to a sawmill and the acquisition of a broken saw blade led to the making of a plough that was to establish John Deere in manufacturing. There were two distinctive features associated with the plough: the soil in the area failed to stick to the steel blade, with obvious benefits to the draught of the implement; and second, the shape of the working mouldboard was square. The reputation that developed with his first three ploughs established that Deere had made the transition from blacksmith to manufacturer.

Over the next decade he had a number of partnerships and eventually set up a factory in Moline, Illinois, in 1848. The following year he sold 2,136 ploughs, and by early 1850 he was producing 350 ploughs per month. Deere was devastated by the loss of his eldest son in the year that the company moved to Moline. However, his second son, Charles, joined him in 1851 and was to be a major influence on the way in which the company developed over the next half-century. The company branched out into the production of cultivators, harrows, drills and wagons. John Deere himself played an active part in the company, but also played an increasing role in public life, with a particular interest in education. The company was incorporated in 1868.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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John Kay was the youngest of five sons of a yeoman farmer of Walmersley, near Bury, Lancashire, who died before his birth. John was apprenticed to a reedmaker, and just before he was 21 he married a daughter of John Hall of Bury and carried on his trade in that town until 1733. It is possible that his first patent, taken out in 1730, was connected with this business because it was for an engine that made mohair thread for tailors and twisted and dressed thread; such thread could have been used to bind up the reeds used in looms. He also improved the reeds by making them from metal instead of cane strips so they lasted much longer and could be made to be much finer. His next patent in 1733, was a double one. One part of it was for a batting machine to remove dust from wool by beating it with sticks, but the patent is better known for its description of the flying shuttle. Kay placed boxes to receive the shuttle at either end of the reed or sley. Across the open top of these boxes was a metal rod along which a picking peg could slide and drive the shuttle out across the loom. The pegs at each end were connected by strings to a stick that was held in the right hand of the weaver and which jerked the shuttle out of the box. The shuttle had wheels to make it "fly" across the warp more easily, and ran on a shuttle race to support and guide it. Not only was weaving speeded up, but the weaver could produce broader cloth without any aid from a second person. This invention was later adapted for the power loom. Kay moved to Colchester and entered into partnership with a baymaker named Solomon Smith and a year later was joined by William Carter of Ballingdon, Essex. His shuttle was received with considerable hostility in both Lancashire and Essex, but it was probably more his charge of 15 shillings a year for its use that roused the antagonism. From 1737 he was much involved with lawsuits to try and protect his patent, particularly the part that specified the method of winding the thread onto a fixed bobbin in the shuttle. In 1738 Kay patented a windmill for working pumps and an improved chain pump, but neither of these seems to have been successful. In 1745, with Joseph Stell of Keighley, he patented a narrow fabric loom that could be worked by power; this type may have been employed by Gartside in Manchester soon afterwards. It was probably through failure to protect his patent rights that Kay moved to France, where he arrived penniless in 1747. He went to the Dutch firm of Daniel Scalongne, woollen manufacturers, in Abbeville. The company helped him to apply for a French patent for his shuttle, but Kay wanted the exorbitant sum of £10,000. There was much discussion and eventually Kay set up a workshop in Paris, where he received a pension of 2,500 livres. However, he was to face the same problems as in England with weavers copying his shuttle without permission. In 1754 he produced two machines for making card clothing: one pierced holes in the leather, while the other cut and sharpened the wires. These were later improved by his son, Robert Kay. Kay returned to England briefly, but was back in France in 1758. He was involved with machines to card both cotton and wool and tried again to obtain support from the French Government. He was still involved with developing textile machines in 1779, when he was 75, but he must have died soon afterwards. As an inventor Kay was a genius of the first rank, but he was vain, obstinate and suspicious and was destitute of business qualities.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology

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John Arnold was apprenticed to his father, a watchmaker, and then worked as an itinerant journeyman in the Low Countries and, later, in England. He settled in London in 1762 and rapidly established his reputation at Court by presenting George III with a miniature repeating watch mounted in a ring. He later abandoned the security of the Court for a more precarious living developing his chronometers, with some financial assistance from the Board of Longitude. Symbolically, in 1771 he moved from the vicinity of the Court at St James's to John Adam Street, which was close to the premises of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures \& Commerce.

By the time Arnold became interested in chronometry, Harrison had already demonstrated that longitude could be determined by means of a timekeeper, and the need was for a simpler instrument that could be sold at an affordable price for universal use at sea. Le Roy had shown that it was possible to dispense with a remontoire by using a detached escapement with an isochronous balance; Arnold was obviously thinking along the same lines, although he may not have been aware of Le Roy's work. By 1772 Arnold had developed his detached escapement, a pivoted detent which was quite different from that used on the European continent, and three years later he took out a patent for a compensation balance and a helical balance spring (Arnold used the spring in torsion and not in tension as Harrison had done). His compensation balance was similar in principle to that described by Le Roy and used riveted bimetallic strips to alter the radius of gyration of the balance by moving small weights radially. Although the helical balance spring was not completely isochronous it was a great improvement on the spiral spring, and in a later patent (1782) he showed how it could be made more truly isochronous by shaping the ends. In this form it was used universally in marine chronometers.

Although Arnold's chronometers performed well, their long-term stability was less satisfactory because of the deterioration of the oil on the pivot of the detent. In his patent of 1782 he eliminated this defect by replacing the pivot with a spring, producing the spring detent escapement. This was also done independendy at about the same time by Berthoud and Earnshaw, although Earnshaw claimed vehemently that Arnold had plagiarized his work. Ironically it was Earnshaw's design that was finally adopted, although he had merely replaced Arnold's pivoted detent with a spring, while Arnold had completely redesigned the escapement. Earnshaw also improved the compensation balance by fusing the steel to the brass to form the bimetallic element, and it was in this form that it began to be used universally for chronometers and high-grade watches.

As a result of the efforts of Arnold and Earnshaw, the marine chronometer emerged in what was essentially its final form by the end of the eighteenth century. The standardization of the design in England enabled it to be produced economically; whereas Larcum Kendall was paid £500 to copy Harrison's fourth timekeeper, Arnold was able to sell his chronometers for less than one-fifth of that amount. This combination of price and quality led to Britain's domination of the chronometer market during the nineteenth century.

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See also: Phillips, Edouard

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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To give a smooth surface to cloth such as the old English broadcloth, the nap was raised and then sheared off. Hand-operated shears of enormous size were used to cut the fibres that stuck up when the cloth was laid over a curved table top. Great skill was required to achieve a smooth finish. Various attempts, such as that in 1784 by James Harmer, a clergyman of Sheffield, were made to mechanize the process by placing several pairs of shears in a frame and operating them by cranks, but success was not achieved. Samuel G. Dow of Albany, New York, patented a rotary shearer in England in 1794, and there was Samuel Dore in the same year too. John Lewis never claimed that he invented the rotary cutter, and it is possible that he made have seen drawings or actual examples of these earlier machines. His claim in his patent of 1815 was that, for the first time, he brought together a number of desirable features in one machine for shearing cloth to achieve the first really successful example. The local story in the Stroudwater district in Gloucestershire is that Lewis obtained this idea from Budding, who as a lad worked for the Lewis family, clothiers at Brinscombe Mills; Budding invented a lawn mower with rotary barrel blades that works on the same principle, patenting it in 1830. In the shearing machine, the cloth was moved underneath the blades, which could be of the same width so that only one operation was needed for each side. Other inventors had similar ideas, and a Stroud engineer, Stephen Price, took out a patent a month after Lewis did. These machines spread quickly in the Gloucestershire textile industry, and by 1830 hand-shearing was extinct. John Lewis was the son of Joseph, who had inherited the Brinscombe Mills in 1790 but must have died before 1815, when his children mortgaged the property for £12,000. Joseph's three sons, George, William and John, worked the mill for a time, but in 1840 William was there alone.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Textiles

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John Wyatt was the eldest son of John and Jane Wyatt, who lived in the small village of Thickbroom in the parish of Weeford, near Lichfield. John the younger was educated at Lichfield school and then worked as a carpenter at Thickbroom till 1730. In 1732 he was in Birmingham, engaged by a man named Heely, a gunbarrel forger, who became bankrupt in 1734. Wyatt had invented a machine for making files and sought the help of Lewis Paul to manufacture this commercially.

The surviving papers of Paul and Wyatt in Birmingham are mostly undated and show a variety of machines with which they were involved. There was a machine for "making lead hard" which had rollers, and "a Gymcrak of some consequence" probably refers to a machine for boring barrels or the file-making machine. Wyatt is said to have been one of the unsuccessful competitors for the erection of London Bridge in 1736. He invented and perfected the compound-lever weighing machine. He had more success with this: after 1744, machines for weighing up to five tons were set up at Birmingham, Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield and Liverpool. Road construction, bridge building, hydrostatics, canals, water-powered engines and many other schemes received his attention and it is said that he was employed for a time after 1744 by Matthew Boulton.

It is certain that in April 1735 Paul and Wyatt were working on their spinning machine and Wyatt was making a model of it in London in 1736, giving up his work in Birmingham. The first patent, in 1738, was taken out in the name of Lewis Paul. It is impossible to know which of these two invented what. This first patent covers a wide variety of descriptions of the vital roller drafting to draw out the fibres, and it is unknown which system was actually used. Paul's carding patent of 1748 and his second spinning patent of 1758 show that he moved away from the system and principles upon which Arkwright built his success. Wyatt and Paul's spinning machines were sufficiently promising for a mill to be set up in 1741 at the Upper Priory, Birmingham, that was powered by two asses. Wyatt was the person responsible for constructing the machinery. Edward Cave established another at Northampton powered by water while later Daniel Bourn built yet another at Leominster. Many others were interested too. The Birmingham mill did not work for long and seems to have been given up in 1743. Wyatt was imprisoned for debt in The Fleet in 1742, and when released in 1743 he tried for a time to run the Birmingham mill and possibly the Northampton one. The one at Leominster burned down in 1754, while the Northampton mill was advertised for sale in 1756. This last mill may have been used again in conjunction with the 1758 patent. It was Wyatt whom Daniel Bourn contacted about a grant for spindles for his Leominster mill in 1748, but this seems to have been Wyatt's last association with the spinning venture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Ports and shipping, Railways and locomotives

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Stevens, a wealthy landowner with an estate at Hoboken on the Hudson River, had his attention drawn to the steamboat of John Fitch in 1786, and thenceforth devoted much of his time and fortune to developing steamboats and mechanical transport. He also had political influence and it was at his instance that Congress in 1790 passed an Act establishing the first patent laws in the USA. The following year Stevens was one of the first recipients of a US patent. This referred to multi-tubular boilers, of both watertube and firetube types, and antedated by many years the work of both Henry Booth and Marc Seguin on the latter.

A steamboat built in 1798 by John Stevens, Nicholas J.Roosevelt and Stevens's brother-in-law, Robert R.Livingston, in association was unsuccessful, nor was Stevens satisfied with a boat built in 1802 in which a simple rotary steam-en-gine was mounted on the same shaft as a screw propeller. However, although others had experimented earlier with screw propellers, when John Stevens had the Little Juliana built in 1804 he produced the first practical screw steamboat. Steam at 50 psi (3.5 kg/cm²) pressure was supplied by a watertube boiler to a single-cylinder engine which drove two contra-rotating shafts, upon each of which was mounted a screw propeller. This little boat, less than 25 ft (7.6 m) long, was taken backwards and forwards across the Hudson River by two of Stevens's sons, one of whom, R.L. Stevens, was to help his father with many subsequent experiments. The boat, however, was ahead of its time, and steamships were to be driven by paddle wheels until the late 1830s.

In 1807 John Stevens declined an invitation to join with Robert Fulton and Robert R.Living-ston in their development work, which culminated in successful operation of the PS Clermont that summer; in 1808, however, he launched his own paddle steamer, the Phoenix. But Fulton and Livingston had obtained an effective monopoly of steamer operation on the Hudson and, unable to reach agreement with them, Stevens sent Phoenix to Philadelphia to operate on the Delaware River. The intervening voyage over 150 miles (240 km) of open sea made Phoenix the first ocean-going steamer.

From about 1810 John Stevens turned his attention to the possibilities of railways. He was at first considered a visionary, but in 1815, at his instance, the New Jersey Assembly created a company to build a railway between the Delaware and Raritan Rivers. It was the first railway charter granted in the USA, although the line it authorized remained unbuilt. To demonstrate the feasibility of the steam locomotive, Stevens built an experimental locomotive in 1825, at the age of 76. With flangeless wheels, guide rollers and rack-and-pinion drive, it ran on a circular track at his Hoboken home; it was the first steam locomotive to be built in America.

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See also: Allen, Horatio; Cooper, Peter

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Steam and internal combustion engines

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John was the third son of David Elder. The father came from a family of millwrights and moved to Glasgow where he worked for the well-known shipbuilding firm of Napier's and was involved with improving marine engines. John was educated at Glasgow High School and then for a while at the Department of Civil Engineering at Glasgow University, where he showed great aptitude for mathematics and drawing. He spent five years as an apprentice under Robert Napier followed by two short periods of activity as a pattern-maker first and then a draughtsman in England. He returned to Scotland in 1849 to become Chief Draughtsman to Napier, but in 1852 he left to become a partner with the Glasgow general engineering company of Randolph Elliott \& Co. Shortly after his induction (at the age of 28), the engineering firm was renamed Randolph Elder \& Co.; in 1868, when the partnership expired, it became known as John Elder \& Co. From the outset Elder, with his partner, Charles Randolph, approached mechanical (especially heat) engineering in a rigorous manner. Their knowledge and understanding of entropy ensured that engine design was not a hit-and-miss affair, but one governed by recognition of the importance of the new kinetic theory of heat and with it a proper understanding of thermodynamic principles, and by systematic development. In this Elder was joined by W.J.M. Rankine, Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Glasgow University, who helped him develop the compound marine engine. Elder and Randolph built up a series of patents, which guaranteed their company's commercial success and enabled them for a while to be the sole suppliers of compound steam reciprocating machinery. Their first such engine at sea was fitted in 1854 on the SS Brandon for the Limerick Steamship Company; the ship showed an improved performance by using a third less coal, which he was able to reduce still further on later designs.

Elder developed steam jacketing and recognized that, with higher pressures, triple-expansion types would be even more economical. In 1862 he patented a design of quadruple-expansion engine with reheat between cylinders and advocated the importance of balancing reciprocating parts. The effect of his improvements was to greatly reduce fuel consumption so that long sea voyages became an economic reality.

His yard soon reached dimensions then unequalled on the Clyde where he employed over 4,000 workers; Elder also was always interested in the social welfare of his labour force. In 1860 the engine shops were moved to the Govan Old Shipyard, and again in 1864 to the Fairfield Shipyard, about 1 mile (1.6 km) west on the south bank of the Clyde. At Fairfield, shipbuilding was commenced, and with the patents for compounding secure, much business was placed for many years by shipowners serving long-distance trades such as South America; the Pacific Steam Navigation Company took up his ideas for their ships. In later years the yard became known as the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd, but it remains today as one of Britain's most efficient shipyards and is known now as Kvaerner Govan Ltd.

In 1869, at the age of only 45, John Elder was unanimously elected President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland; however, before taking office and giving his eagerly awaited presidential address, he died in London from liver disease. A large multitude attended his funeral and all the engineering shops were silent as his body, which had been brought back from London to Glasgow, was carried to its resting place. In 1857 Elder had married Isabella Ure, and on his death he left her a considerable fortune, which she used generously for Govan, for Glasgow and especially the University. In 1883 she endowed the world's first Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow, an act which was reciprocated in 1901 when the University awarded her an LLD on the occasion of its 450th anniversary.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping, Railways and locomotives

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The son of a mine owner and inspector, Ericsson's first education was private and haphazard. War with Russia disrupted the mines and the father secured a position on the Gotha Canal, then under construction. He enrolled John, then aged 13, and another son as cadets in a corps of military engineers engaged on the canal. There John was given a sound education and training in the physical sciences and engineering. At the age of 17 he decided to enlist in the Army, and on receiving a commission he was drafted to cartographic survey duties. After some years he decided that a career outside the Army offered him the best opportunities, and in 1826 he moved to London to pursue a career of mechanical invention.

Ericsson first developed a heat (external combustion) engine, which proved unsuccessful. Three years later he designed and constructed the steam locomotive Novelty, which he entered in the Rainhill locomotive trials on the new Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. The engine began by performing promisingly, but it later broke down and failed to complete the test runs. Later he devised a self-regulating lead (1835) and then, more important and successful, he invented the screw propeller, patented in 1835 and installed in his first screw-propelled ship of 1839. This work was carried out independently of Sir Francis Pettit Smith, who contemporaneously developed a four-bladed propeller that was adopted by the British Admiralty. Ericsson saw that with screw propulsion the engine could be below the waterline, a distinct advantage in warships. He crossed the Atlantic to interest the American government in his ideas and became a naturalized citizen in 1848. He pioneered the gun turret for mounting heavy guns on board ship. Ericsson came into his own during the American Civil War, with the construction of the epoch-making warship Monitor, a screw-propelled ironclad with gun turret. This vessel demonstrated its powers in a signal victory at Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862.

Ericsson continued to design warships and torpedoes, pointing out to President Lincoln that success in war would now depend on technological rather than numerical superiority. Meanwhile he continued to pursue his interest in heat engines, and from 1870 to 1888 he spent much of his time and resources in pursuing research into alternative energy sources, such as solar power, gravitation and tidal forces.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering

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The son of a Quaker merchant, John Fowler entered the business of a county corn merchant on leaving school, but he found this dull and left as soon as he came of age, joining the Middlesbrough company of Gilkes, Wilson \& Hopkins, railway locomotive manufacturers. In 1849, at the age of 23, Fowler visited Ireland and was so distressed by the state of Irish agriculture that he determined to develop a system to deal with the drainage of land. He designed an implement which he patented in 1850 after a period of experimentation. It was able to lay wooden pipes to a depth of two feet, and was awarded the Silver Medal at the 1850 Royal Agriculture Show. By 1854, using a steam engine made by Clayton \& Shuttleworth, he had applied steam power to his invention and gained another award that year at the Royal Show. The following year he turned his attention to steam ploughing. He first developed a single-engined system that used a double windlass with which to haul a plough backwards and forwards across fields. In 1856 he patented his balance plough, and the following year he read a paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers at their Birmingham premises, describing the system. In 1858 he won the Royal Agricultural Society award with a plough built for him by Ransomes. Fowler founded the Steam Plough Works in Leeds and in 1862 production began in partnership with William Watson Hewitson. Within two years they were producing the first of a series of engines which were to make the name Fowler known worldwide. John Fowler saw little of his success because he died in 1864 at his Yorkshire home as a result of tetanus contracted after a riding accident.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Nash's name is synonymous with the great scheme carried out for his patron, the Prince Regent, in the early nineteenth century: the development of Marylebone Park from 1811 constituted a "garden city" for the wealthy in the centre of London. Although only a part of Nash's great scheme was actually achieved, an immense amount was carried out, comprising the Regent's Park and its surrounding terraces, the Regent's Street, including All Souls' Church, and the Regent's Palace in the Mall. Not least was Nash's exotic Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

From the early years of the nineteenth century, Nash and a number of other architects took advantage of the use of structural materials developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution; these included wrought and cast iron and various cements. Nash utilized iron widely in the Regent Street Quadrant, Carlton House Terrace and at the Brighton Pavilion. In the first two of these his iron columns were masonry clad, but at Brighton he unashamedly constructed iron column supports, as in the Royal Kitchen, and his ground floor to first floor cast-iron staircase, in which he took advantage of the malleability of the material to create a "Chinese" bamboo design, was particularly notable. The great eighteenth-century terrace architecture of Bath and much of the later work in London was constructed in stone, but as nineteenth-century needs demanded that more buildings needed to be erected at lower cost and greater speed, brick was used more widely for construction; this was rendered with a cement that could be painted to imitate stone. Nash, in particular, employed this method at Regent's Park and used a stucco made from sand, brickdust, powdered limestone and lead oxide that was suited for exterior work.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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John Heathcote had shown that it was possible to make lace by machine with his patents of 1808 and 1809. His machines were developed and improved by John Levers. Levers was originally a hosiery frame-smith and setter-up at Sutton-in-Ashfield but moved to Nottingham, where he extended his operations to the construction of point-net and warp-lace machinery. In the years 1812 and 1813 he more or less isolated himself in the garret of a house in Derby Road, where he assembled his lacemaking machine by himself. He was helped by two brothers and a nephew who made parts, but they saw it only when it was completed. Financial help for making production machines came from the firm of John Stevenson \& Skipwith, lace manufacturers in Nottingham. Levers never sought a patent, as he was under the mistaken impression that additions or improvements to an existing patented machine could not be protected. An early example of the machine survives at the Castle Museum in Nottingham. Although his prospects must have seemed good, for some reason Levers dissolved his partnership with Stevenson \& Co. and continued to work on improving his machine. In 1817 he altered it from the horizontal to the upright position, building many of the machines each year. He was a friendly, kind-hearted man, but he seems to have been unable to apply himself to his business, preferring the company of musicians—he was a bandmaster of the local militia—and was soon frequently without money, even to buy food for his family. He emigrated in 1821 to Rouen, France, where he set up his lace machines and where he subsequently died; when or in what circumstances is unknown. His machine continued to be improved and was adapted to work with the Jacquard mechanism to select the pattern.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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John Wallis Titt grew up on a farm which had a working post-mill, but at 24 years of age he joined the firm of Wallis, Haslam \& Stevens, agricultural engineers and steam engine builders in Basingstoke. From there he went to the millwrighting firm of Brown \& May of Devizes, where he worked for five years.

In 1872 he founded his own firm in Warminster, where his principal work as an agricultural engineer was on hay and straw elevators. In 1876 he moved his firm to the Woodcock Ironworks, also in Warminster. There he carried on his work as an agricultural engineer, but he also had an iron foundry. By 1884 the firm was installing water pumps on estates around Warminster, and it was about that time that he built his first wind engines. Between 1884 and 1903, when illness forced his retirement, his wind engines were built primarily with adjustable sails. These wind engines, under the trade marks "Woodcock" and "Simplex", consisted of a lattice tower with the sails mounted on a a ring at the top. The sails were turned to face the wind by means of a fantail geared to the ring or by a wooden vane. The important feature lay in the sails, which were made of canvas on a wood-and-iron frame mounted in a ring. The ends of the sail frames were hinged to the sail circumferences. In the middle of the sail a circular strap was attached so that all the frames had the same aspect for a given setting of the bar. The importance lies in the adjustable sails, which gave the wind engine the ability to work in variable winds.

Whilst this was not an original patent of John Wallis Titt, he is known to be the only maker of wind engines in Britain who built his business on this highly efficient form of sail. In design terms it derives from the annular sails of the conventional windmills at Haverhill in Suffolk and Roxwell in Essex. After his retirement, his sons reverted to the production of the fixed-bladed galvanized-iron wind engine.

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