the Royal Institution

см. ARICS

royal ['rɔɪəl]

1 adjective

(a) (seal, residence, visit) royal; (horse, household, vehicle) royal, du roi, de la reine;

∎ by royal charter par acte du souverain;

∎ the royal "we" le "nous" de majesté

(b) figurative formal (splendid) royal, princier;

∎ they gave us a (right) royal welcome ils nous ont accueillis comme des rois;

∎ to be in royal spirits être d'excellente humeur

(c) familiar (for emphasis) sombre, de première;

∎ that guy is a right royal pain in the neck ce type est un véritable emmerdeur;

∎ her whining gives me a royal pain elle me fait vraiment chier avec ses jérémiades;

∎ he's a royal idiot c'est un sombre crétin ou un crétin de première

(d) (paper) (format m) grand raisin m;

∎ royal octavo/quarto in-huit m/in-quarto m raisin

2 noun

familiar = membre de la famille royale;

∎ the Royals la famille royale^□

►► the Royal Academy (of Arts) Académie f royale britannique des beaux-arts;

the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art = Conservatoire national d'art dramatique, à Londres;

the Royal Academy of Music = conservatoire national de musique, à Londres;

the Royal Air Force armée f de l'air britannique;

Royal Ascot = événement hippique annuel, étalé sur plusieurs jours, qui entre dans le calendrier mondain de la haute société anglaise;

royal assent = signature royale qui officialise une loi;

the Royal Ballet = compagnie nationale de ballet qui a son siège à Covent Garden à Londres;

royal blue bleu m roi;

the Royal British Legion = association britannique d'anciens militaires;

royal burgh ville f établie par charte royale;

the Royal Canadian Mounted Police la Gendarmerie royale du Canada;

the Royal College of Music Collège m royal de musique (école de musique située à Londres);

the Royal College of Physicans Collège m royal de médecine (organisation de médecins);

the Royal College of Surgeons Collège m royal de chirurgie (organisation de chirurgiens);

the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Collège m royal de médecine vétérinaire (organisation de vétérinaires);

the Royal Commission = commission nommée par le monarque sur recommandation du premier ministre;

the Royal Court = théâtre à Londres;

Royal Doulton = porcelaine fine anglaise;

the Royal Enclosure = tribune de la famille royale à Royal Ascot;

the Royal Engineers le génie militaire britannique;

the Royal Family la famille royale;

Botany royal fern osmonde f royale;

Cards royal flush quinte f royale; (in poker) flush m royal;

Royal Highland Show = grande foire agricole annuelle qui a lieu à Ingleston, près d'Édimbourg;

Your Royal Highness Votre Altesse Royale;

∎ His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales Son Altesse Royale, le prince de Galles;

Their Royal Highnesses Leurs Altesses Royales;

the Royal Horse Guards = la garde à cheval qui assure la garde du palais et du souverain;

British Cookery royal icing = glaçage à base de sucre glace et de blancs d'œufs (utilisé pour les cakes);

the Royal Institute of British Architects = institut d'architectes, à Londres;

the Royal Institution l'Académie f des sciences britannique;

royal jelly gelée f royale;

the Royal Mail = la Poste britannique;

the Royal Marines les Marines mpl (britanniques);

Nautical royal mast mât m de cacatois;

the Royal Mile = rue d'Édimbourg qui relie le château au palais de Holyrood;

the Royal Mint = la Monnaie britannique, ≃ (l'hôtel m de) la Monnaie;

the Royal Navy la marine f nationale britannique;

the Royal Opera House l'opéra m de Covent Garden;

Botany royal palm palmier m royal;

royal prerogative prérogative f du souverain;

∎ to exercise the royal prerogative faire acte de souverain;

the Royal School of Music École f royale de musique;

Royal Scottish Academy Académie f royale écossaise des beaux-arts;

the Royal Shakespeare Company = célèbre troupe de théâtre basée à Stratford-on-Avon et à Londres;

the Royal Show = le salon annuel de l'agriculture en Grande-Bretagne;

the Royal Society l'Académie f des sciences britannique;

Royal Society of Medicine Fondation f britannique de médecine;

the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals = société britannique protectrice des animaux, ≃ SPA f;

British the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children ≃ Fondation f pour l'enfance;

the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds = ligue britannique pour la protection des oiseaux;

royal standard = drapeau représentant les armoiries de la couronne britannique, hissé lorsque le monarque est au château;

the Royal Tournament = meeting annuel destiné au public organisé par les forces armées, avec entre autres choses des démonstrations de gymnastique;

the Royal Ulster Constabulary = corps de police d'Irlande du Nord;

the Royal Variety Show = spectacle de variétés organisé à Londres en faveur de la Fédération des artistes de variétés;

royal warrant brevet m de fournisseur du souverain;

Royal Worcester = porcelaine fine anglaise

ⓘ THE ROYAL SOCIETY Cette société à vocation scientifique, fondée par Charles II en 1660, contribua à renforcer la crédibilité des hommes de science, qui jouirent également d'une plus grande liberté. En firent notamment partie Isaac Newton et Robert Boyle.

{'rɔiəl}
I. 1. a кралски, царски
ROYAL Institution Кралски британски институт за разпространение на научни знания
2. царски, величествен, великолепен, разкошен
to have a ROYAL time прекарвам чудесно
to be in ROYAL spirits в отлично настроение съм
II. 1. кралска/царска особа
2. елен с напълно развити рога
3. мор. бомбрамсел
4. печ. голям формат хартия
5. ост. вид златна монета
the ROYAL s Кралският шотландски полк, Кралската флота

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{'rъiъl} I. 1. а кралски, царски; R. Institution Кралски британ

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царски; кралски;

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* * *

royal[´rɔiəl] I. adj кралски, царски; прен. царствен, величествен, разкошен, великолепен, чудесен; "царски"; R. Academy Кралска академия за изобразително изкуство; R. Society Кралско общество за естествени науки; R. Exchange зданието на Лондонската борса; R. Institution Кралски институт за разпространение на научни знания; \royal blue яркосиньо; \royal fern бот. царска папрат Osmunda regallis; \royal jelly пчелно млечице; \royal stag елен с напълно развити рога; \royal flush флош роял (при покер); \royal mast мор. бом-брамстенга (най-горното продължение на мачтата); \royal road най-лекият път (за постигане на нещо); "царският път"; we had a \royal time прекарахме чудесно (отлично), поживяхме си царски; FONT face=Times_Deutsch◊ adv royally; II. n 1. голям формат хартия; 2. мор. бом-брамсел (най-горното платно); 3. зоол. = \royal stag; • the R.s англ. кралският драгунски полк.

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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Faraday's father was a blacksmith recently moved south from Westmorland. The young Faraday's formal education was limited to attendance at "a Common Day School", and then he worked as an errand boy for George Riebau, a bookseller and bookbinder in London's West End. Riebau subsequently took him as an apprentice bookbinder, and Faraday seized every opportunity to read the books that came his way, especially scientific works.

A customer in the shop gave Faraday tickets to hear Sir Humphry Davy lecturing at the Royal Institution. He made notes of the lectures, bound them and sent them to Davy, asking for scientific employment. When a vacancy arose for a laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution, Davy remembered Faraday, who he took as his assistant on an 18- month tour of France, Italy and Switzerland (despite the fact that Britain and France were at war!). The tour, and especially Davy's constant company and readiness to explain matters, was a scientific education for Faraday, who returned to the Royal Institution as a competent chemist in his own right. Faraday was interested in electricity, which was then viewed as a branch of chemistry. After Oersted's announcement in 1820 that an electric current could affect a magnet, Faraday devised an arrangement in 1821 for producing continuous motion from an electric current and a magnet. This was the basis of the electric motor. Ten years later, after much thought and experiment, he achieved the converse of Oersted's effect, the production of an electric current from a magnet. This was magneto-electric induction, the basis of the electric generator.

Electrical engineers usually regard Faraday as the "father" of their profession, but Faraday himself was not primarily interested in the practical applications of his discoveries. His driving motivation was to understand the forces of nature, such as electricity and magnetism, and the relationship between them. Faraday delighted in telling others about science, and studied what made a good scientific lecturer. At the Royal Institution he introduced the Friday Evening Discourses and also the Christmas Lectures for Young People, now televised in the UK every Christmas.

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

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After education at King's College, London, in 1852 Preece entered the office of Edwin Clark with the intention of becoming a civil engineer, but graduate studies at the Royal Institution under Faraday fired his enthusiasm for things electrical. His earliest work, as connected with telegraphy and in particular its application for securing the safe working of railways; in 1853 he obtained an appointment with the Electric and National Telegraph Company. In 1856 he became Superintendent of that company's southern district, but four years later he moved to telegraph work with the London and South West Railway. From 1858 to 1862 he was also Engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company. When the various telegraph companies in Britain were transferred to the State in 1870, Preece became a Divisional Engineer in the General Post Office (GPO). Promotion followed in 1877, when he was appointed Chief Electrician to the Post Office. One of the first specimens of Bell's telephone was brought to England by Preece and exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1877. From 1892 to 1899 he served as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. During this time he made a number of important contributions to telegraphy, including the use of water as part of telegraph circuits across the Solent (1882) and the Bristol Channel (1888). He also discovered the existence of inductive effects between parallel wires, and with Fleming showed that a current (thermionic) flowed between the hot filament and a cold conductor in an incandescent lamp.

Preece was distinguished by his administrative ability, some scientific insight, considerable engineering intuition and immense energy. He held erroneous views about telephone transmission and, not accepting the work of Oliver Heaviside, made many errors when planning trunk circuits. Prior to the successful use of Hertzian waves for wireless communication Preece carried out experiments, often on a large scale, in attempts at wireless communication by inductive methods. These became of historic interest only when the work of Maxwell and Hertz was developed by Guglielmo Marconi. It is to Preece that credit should be given for encouraging Marconi in 1896 and collaborating with him in his early experimental work on radio telegraphy.

While still employed by the Post Office, Preece contributed to the development of numerous early public electricity schemes, acting as Consultant and often supervising their construction. At Worcester he was responsible for Britain's largest nineteenth-century public hydro-electric station. He received a knighthood on his retirement in 1899, after which he continued his consulting practice in association with his two sons and Major Philip Cardew. Preece contributed some 136 papers and printed lectures to scientific journals, ninety-nine during the period 1877 to 1894.

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GW / KF

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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After early education at Cupar in Fife, Meek commenced training as a naval architect, taking the then popular sandwich apprenticeship of alternate half years at the University of Glasgow (with a Caird Scholarship) and at a shipyard, in his case the Caledon of Dundee. On leaving Dundee he worked for five years with the British Ship Research Association before joining Alfred Holt \& Co., owners of the Blue Funnel Line. During his twenty-five years at Liverpool, he rose to Chief Naval Architect and Director and was responsible for bringing the cargo-liner concept to its ultimate in design. When the company had become Ocean Fleets, it joined with other British shipowners and looked to Meek for the first purpose-built containership fleet in the world. This required new ship designs, massive worldwide investment in port facilities and marketing to win public acceptance of freight containers, thereby revolutionizing dry-cargo shipping. Under the houseflag of OCL (now POCL), this pioneer service set the highest standards of service and safety and continues to operate on almost every ocean.

In 1979 Meek returned to the shipbuilding industry when he became Head of Technology at British Shipbuilders. Closely involved in contemporary problems of fuel economy and reduced staffing, he held the post for five years before his appointment as Managing Director of the National Maritime Institute. He was deeply involved in the merger with the British Ship Research Association to form British Maritime Technology (BMT), an organization of which he became Deputy Chairman.

Marshall Meek has held many public offices, and is one of the few to have been President of two of the United Kingdom's maritime institutions. He has contributed over forty papers to learned societies, has acted as Visiting Professor to Strathclyde University and University College London, and serves on advisory committees to the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Transport and Lloyd's Register of Shipping. While in Liverpool he served as a Justice of the Peace.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Murray was educated in Glasgow at Allan Glen's School and then at the University, from which he graduated in naval architecture in 1922. He served an apprenticeship simultaneously with Barclay Curle \& Co., rising to the rank of Assistant Shipyard Manager before leaving in 1927 to join Lloyd's Register of Shipping. After an initial year in Newcastle, he joined the head office in London, which was to be base for the remainder of his working life. Starting with plan approval, he worked his way to experimental work on ship structures and was ultimately given the massive task of revising Lloyd's Rules and placing them on a scientific basis. During the Second World War he acted as liaison officer between Lloyd's and the Admiralty. Throughout his career he presented no fewer than twenty-two papers on ship design, and of these nearly half dealt with hull longitudinal strength. This work won him considerable acclaim and several awards and was of fundamental importance to the shipping industry. The Royal Institution of Naval Architects honoured Murray in 1960 by inviting him to present one of the only two papers read at their centenary meeting: "Merchant ships 1860–1960". At Lloyd's Register he rose to Chief Ship Surveyor, and at the time of his death was Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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At the age of 8 Lodge entered Newport Grammar School, and in 1863–5 received private education at Coombs in Suffolk. He then returned to Staffordshire, where he assisted his father in the potteries by working as a book-keeper. Whilst staying with an aunt in London in 1866–7, he attended scientific lectures and became interested in physics. As a result of this and of reading copies of English Mechanic magazine, when he was back home in Hanley he began to do experiments and attended the Wedgewood Institute. Returning to London c. 1870, he studied initially at the Royal College of Science and then, from 1874, at University College, London (UCL), at the same time attending lectures at the Royal Institution.

In 1875 he obtained his BSc, read a paper to the British Association on "Nodes and loops in chemical formulae" and became a physics demonstrator at UCL. The following year he was appointed a physics lecturer at Bedford College, completing his DSc in 1877. Three years later he became Assistant Professor of Mathematics at UCL, but in 1881, after only two years, he accepted the Chair of Experimental Physics at the new University College of Liverpool. There began a period of fruitful studies of electricity and radio transmission and reception, including development of the lightning conductor, discovery of the "coherent" effect of sparks and improvement of Branly's coherer, and, in 1894, what is said to be the first public demonstration of the transmission and reception (using a coherer) of wireless telegraphy, from Lewis's department store to the clock tower of Liverpool University's Victoria Building. On 10 May 1897 he filed a patent for selective tuning by self-in-ductance; this was before Marconi's first patent was actually published and its priority was subsequently upheld.

In 1900 he became the first Principal of the new University of Birmingham, where he remained until his retirement in 1919. In his later years he was increasingly interested in psychical research.

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See also: Hertz, Heinrich Rudolph

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Kenneth Barnaby was an eminent naval architect, as were his father and grandfather before him: his grandfather was Sir Nathaniel Barnaby KGB, Director of Naval Construction, and his father was Sydney W.Barnaby, naval architect of John I. Thornycroft \& Co., Shipbuilders, Southampton. At one time all three were members of the Institution of Naval Architects, the first time that this had ever occurred with three members from one family.

Kenneth Barnaby served his apprenticeship at the Thornycroft shipyard in Southampton and later graduated in engineering from the Central Technical College, South Kensington, London. He worked for some years at Le Havre and at John Brown's shipyard at Clydebank before rejoining his old firm in 1916 as Assistant to the Shipyard Manager. In 1919 he went to Rio de Janeiro as a chief ship draughtsman, and finally he returned to Thornycroft, in 1924 he succeeded his father as Naval Architect, and remained in that post until his retirement in 1955, having been appointed a director in 1950.

Barnaby had a wide knowledge and understanding of ships and ship design and during the Second World War he was responsible for much of the development work for landing craft, as well as for many other specialist ships built at the Southampton yard. His experience as a deep-sea yachtsman assisted him. He wrote several important books; however, none can compare with the Centenary Volume of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. In this work, which is used and read widely to this day by naval architects worldwide, he reviewed every paper presented and almost every verbal contribution made to the Transactions during its one hundred years.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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With an early bias towards science, Daniell's interest in chemistry was formed when he joined a relative's sugar-refining business. He formed a lifelong friendship with W.T.Brande, Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, and together they revived the journal of the Royal Institution, to which Daniell submitted many of his early papers on chemical subjects. He made many contributions to the science of meteorology and in 1820 invented a hydrometer, which became widely used and gave precision to the measurement of atmospheric moisture. As one of the originators of the Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Daniell edited several of its early publications. His work on crystallization established his reputation as a chemist and in 1831 he was appointed the first Professor of Chemistry at King's College, London, where he was largely responsible for establishing its department of applied science. He was also involved in the Chemical Society of London and served as its Vice-President. At King's College he began the research into current electricity with which his name is particularly associated. His investigations into the zinc-copper cell revealed that the rapid decline in power was due to hydrogen gas being liberated at the positive electrode. Daniell's cell, invented in 1836, employed a zinc electrode in dilute sulphuric acid and a copper electrode in a solution of copper sulphate, the electrodes being separated by a porous membrane, typically an unglazed earthenware pot. He was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his invention which avoided the "polarization" of the simple cell and provided a further source of current for electrical research and for commercial applications such as electroplating. Although the high internal resistance of the Daniell cell limited the current and the potential was only 1.1 volts, the voltage was so unchanging that it was used as a reference standard until the 1870s, when J. Lattimer Clark devised an even more stable cell.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Laithwaite's education at Kirkham Grammar School and Regent Street Polytechnic, London, was followed by service in the Royal Air Force. After entering Manchester University in 1946 and graduating in 1949, he joined the university staff and became Secretary to the Inaugural Conference of the Ferranti Mark I computer. In 1964 he moved to Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and became Professor of Heavy Electrical Engineering. From 1967 to 1976 he also held the post of External Professor of Applied Electricity at the Royal Institution. Research into the use of linear induction motors as shuttle drives in weaving looms was followed by investigations into their application to conveyors in industrial processes and as high-speed propulsion units for railway vehicles. With considerable involvement in a tracked hovercraft project in the 1960s and 1970s, he proposed the concept of transverse flux and the magnetic river high-speed linear induction machine. Linear motors and electromagnetic levitation have been applied to high-speed propulsion in the United States, France and Japan.

Laithwaite has written five books and over one hundred papers on the subjects of linear motors and electromagnetic levitation. Two series of Christmas lectures were presented by him at the Royal Institution.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Mining and extraction technology

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Educated at the Latin School at Penzance and from 1792 at Truro Grammar School, Davy was apprenticed to a surgeon in Penzance. In 1797 he began to teach himself chemistry by reading, among other works, Lavoisier's elementary treatise on chemistry. In 1798 Dr Thomas Beddoes of Bristol engaged him as assistant in setting up his Pneumatic Institution to pioneer the medical application of the newly discovered gases, especially oxygen.

In 1799 he discovered the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, discovered not long before by the chemist Joseph Priestley. He also noted its intoxicating qualities, on account of which it was dubbed "laughing-gas". Two years later Count Rumford, founder of the Royal Institution in 1800, appointed Davy Assistant Lecturer, and the following year Professor. His lecturing ability soon began to attract large audiences, making science both popular and fashionable.

Davy was stimulated by Volta's invention of the voltaic pile, or electric battery, to construct one for himself in 1800. That enabled him to embark on the researches into electrochemistry by which is chiefly known. In 1807 he tried decomposing caustic soda and caustic potash, hitherto regarded as elements, by electrolysis and obtained the metals sodium and potassium. He went on to discover the metals barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium by the same means. Next, he turned his attention to chlorine, which was then regarded as an oxide in accordance with Lavoisier's theory that oxygen was the essential component of acids; Davy failed to decompose it, however, even with the aid of electricity and concluded that it was an element, thus disproving Lavoisier's view of the nature of acids. In 1812 Davy published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he presented his chemical ideas without, however, committing himself to the atomic theory, recently advanced by John Dalton.

In 1813 Davy engaged Faraday as Assistant, perhaps his greatest service to science. In April 1815 Davy was asked to assist in the development of a miner's lamp which could be safely used in a firedamp (methane) laden atmosphere. The "Davy lamp", which emerged in January 1816, had its flame completely surrounded by a fine wire mesh; George Stephenson's lamp, based on a similar principle, had been introduced into the Northumberland pits several months earlier, and a bitter controversy as to priority of invention ensued, but it was Davy who was awarded the prize for inventing a successful safety lamp.

In 1824 Davy was the first to suggest the possibility of conferring cathodic protection to the copper bottoms of naval vessels by the use of sacrificial electrodes. Zinc and iron were found to be equally effective in inhibiting corrosion, although the scheme was later abandoned when it was found that ships protected in this way were rapidly fouled by weeds and barnacles.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Bryan Donkin was the eldest son of John Donkin (1802–54) and grandson of Bryan Donkin I (1768–1855). He was educated at University College, London, and at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Métiers in Paris, and then served an apprenticeship in the firm established by his grandfather. He assisted his uncle, Bryan Donkin II (1809–93), in setting up paper mills at St Petersburg. He became a partner in the Donkin firm in 1868 and Chairman in 1889, and retained this position after the amalgamation with Clench \& Co. of Chesterfield in 1900. Bryan Donkin was one of the first engineers to carry out scientific tests on steam engines and boilers, the results of his experiments being reported in many papers to the engineering institutions. In the 1890s his interests extended to the internal-combustion engine and he translated Rudolf Diesel's book Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor. He was a frequent contributor to the weekly journal The Engineer. He was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, as well as of many other societies, including the Royal Institution, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Société Industrielle de Mulhouse and the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. In his experimental work he often collaborated with others, notably Professor A.B.W.Kennedy (1847–1928), with whom he was also associated in the consulting engineering firm of Kennedy \& Donkin.

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SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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Educated at Westminster College, in 1904 Tizard went to Magdalen College, Oxford, gaining Firsts in mathematics and chemistry. After a period of time in Berlin with Nernst, he joined the Royal Institution in 1909 to study the colour changes of indicators. From 1911 until 1914 he was a tutorial Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, but with the outbreak of the First World War he joined first the Royal Garrison Artillery, then, in 1915, the newly formed Royal Flying Corps, to work on the development of bomb-sights. Successively in charge of testing aircraft, a lieutenant-colonel in the Ministry of Munitions and Assistant Controller of Research and Experiments for the Royal Air Force, he returned to Oxford in 1919 and the following year became Reader in Chemical Thermodynamics; at this stage he developed the use of toluene as an air-craft-fuel additive.

In 1922 he was appointed an assistant secretary at the government Department of Industrial and Scientific Research, becoming Principal Assistant Secretary in 1922 and its Permanent Director in 1927; during this time he was also a member of the Aeronautical Research Committee, being Chairman of the latter in 1933–43. From 1929 to 1942 he was Rector of Imperial College. In 1932 he was also appointed Chairman of a committee set up to investigate possible national air-defence systems, and it was largely due to his efforts that the radar proposals of Watson-Watt were taken up and an effective system made operational before the outbreak of the Second World War. He was also involved in various other government activities aimed at applying technology to the war effort, including the dam-buster and atomic bombs.

President of Magdalen College in 1942–7, he then returned again to Whitehall, serving as Chairman of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy and of the Defence Research Policy Committee. Finally, in 1952, he became Pro-Chan-cellor of Southampton University.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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John Millington was Professor of Mechanics at the Royal Institution, London, from 1817 to 1829. He gave numerous courses on natural philosophy and mechanics and supported the introduction of coal gas for lighting. In 1823 he testified to a Select Committee of the House of Commons that the spread of gas lighting would greatly benefit the preservation of law and order, and with the same utilitarian and penal inclination he devised a treadmill for use in the Bedfordshire House of Correction. Millington was appointed the first Professor of Engineering and the Application of Mechanical Philosophy to the Arts at the newly founded University of London in 1828, but he speedily resigned from the post, preferring to go to Mexico in 1829. Like Trevithick and Robert Stephenson before him, he was attracted to the New World by the possibility of using new techniques to reopen old mines, and he became an engineer to some Mexican mining projects. In 1837 he went to Williamsburg in the United States, being appointed Professor of Chemistry, and it was there that he died in 1868. Millington wrote extensively on scientific subjects.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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After education in Sweden at the High School and University of Lund and the Royal Institution of Technology in Stockholm, Alexanderson took a postgraduate course at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Engineering College. In 1901 he began work for the Swedish C \& C Electric Company, joining the General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York, the following year. There, in 1906, together with Fessenden, he developed a series of high-power, high-frequency alternators, which had a dramatic effect on radio communications and resulted in the first real radio broadcast. His early interest in television led to working demonstrations in his own home in 1925 and at the General Electric laboratories in 1927, and to the first public demonstration of large-screen (7 ft (2.13 m) diagonal) projection TV in 1930. Another invention of significance was the "amplidyne", a sensitive manufacturing-control system subsequently used during the Second World War for controlling anti-aircraft guns. He also contributed to developments in electric propulsion and radio aerials.

He retired from General Electric in 1948, but continued television research as a consultant for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), filing his 321st patent in 1955.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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As a youth, Dyer constructed an unsinkable life-boat but did not immediately pursue his mechanical bent, for at 16 he entered the counting-house of a French refugee named Nancrède and succeeded to part of the business. He first went to England in 1801 and finally settled in 1811 when he married Ellen Jones (d. 1842) of Gower Street, London. Dyer was already linked with American inventors and brought to England Perkins's plan for steel engraving in 1809, shearing and nail-making machines in 1811, and also received plans and specifications for Fulton's steamboats. He seems to have acted as a sort of British patent agent for American inventors, and in 1811 took out a patent for carding engines and a card clothing machine. In 1813 there was a patent for spinning long-fibred substances such as hemp, flax or grasses, and in 1825 there was a further patent for card making machinery. Joshua Field, on his tour through Britain in 1821, saw a wire drawing machine and a leather splitting machine at Dyer's works as well as the card-making machines. At first Dyer lived in Camden Town, London, but he had a card clothing business in Birmingham. He moved to Manchester c.1816, where he developed an extensive engineering works under the name "Joseph C.Dyer, patent card manufacturers, 8 Stanley Street, Dale Street". In 1832 he founded another works at Gamaches, Somme, France, but this enterprise was closed in 1848 with heavy losses through the mismanagement of an agent. In 1825 Dyer improved on Danforth's roving frame and started to manufacture it. While it was still a comparatively crude machine when com-pared with later versions, it had the merit of turning out a large quantity of work and was very popular, realizing a large sum of money. He patented the machine that year and must have continued his interest in these machines as further patents followed in 1830 and 1835. In 1821 Dyer had been involved in the foundation of the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) and he was linked with the construction of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He was not so successful with the ill-fated Bank of Manchester, of which he was a director and in which he lost £98,000. Dyer played an active role in the community and presented many papers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He helped to establish the Royal Institution in London and the Mechanics Institution in Manchester. In 1830 he was a member of the delegation to Paris to take contributions from the town of Manchester for the relief of those wounded in the July revolution and to congratulate Louis-Philippe on his accession. He called for the reform of Parliament and helped to form the Anti-Corn Law League. He hated slavery and wrote several articles on the subject, both prior to and during the American Civil War.

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See also: Arnold, Aza