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the patent applied for

  • 1 заявка на патент подана

    1) General subject: patent pending
    2) Mathematics: the patent applied for (...)
    3) Business: patent applied for

    Универсальный русско-английский словарь > заявка на патент подана

  • 2 trámite

    m.
    1 step, procedure, move, requirement.
    2 paperwork.
    3 passage, passageway.
    * * *
    1 (paso) step
    2 (formalidad) formality, requirement
    3 (negociación) procedures plural
    \
    * * *
    SM
    1) (=fase) step, stage
    2) (=formalidad) formality

    este examen es puro trámite, ya tienes el puesto asegurado — this exam is purely a formality, you've already got the job

    3) (=proceso) procedure

    de trámite: el gobierno se limita a resolver asuntos de trámite — the government is dealing only with routine business matters

    lo tenemos en trámite — we have the matter in hand, we are pursuing the matter

    patente en trámite — patent pending, patent applied for

    * * *
    masculino ( proceso) procedure; ( etapa) step, stage

    los trámites necesarios para su obtención — all the steps o formalities required to obtain it

    * * *
    Ex. To this end some consultative procedure is to be recommended.
    ----
    * en trámite = in the pipeline.
    * iniciar los trámites = initiate + action.
    * trámite burocrático = paperwork, red tape.
    * trámites = paper flow.
    * trámites legales = legal requirements.
    * trámites relacionados con la documentación = paper handling.
    * * *
    masculino ( proceso) procedure; ( etapa) step, stage

    los trámites necesarios para su obtención — all the steps o formalities required to obtain it

    * * *

    Ex: To this end some consultative procedure is to be recommended.

    * en trámite = in the pipeline.
    * iniciar los trámites = initiate + action.
    * trámite burocrático = paperwork, red tape.
    * trámites = paper flow.
    * trámites legales = legal requirements.
    * trámites relacionados con la documentación = paper handling.

    * * *
    (proceso) procedure; (etapa) step, stage
    el permiso está en trámite the permit application is being processed
    todos los trámites necesarios para la obtención del certificado all the steps o formalities required to obtain the certificate
    intentaremos acelerar los trámites we shall try to speed up the procedure
    para simplificar los trámites aduaneros in order to simplify customs procedures o formalities
    se iniciaron los trámites para su extradición extradition proceedings were begun
    la propuesta fue aceptada a trámite the proposal was accepted for consideration
    el recurso fue aceptado or admitido a trámite I/he was given leave to appeal
    * * *

     

    Del verbo tramitar: ( conjugate tramitar)

    tramité es:

    1ª persona singular (yo) pretérito indicativo

    tramite es:

    1ª persona singular (yo) presente subjuntivo

    3ª persona singular (él/ella/usted) presente subjuntivo

    3ª persona singular (él/ella/usted) imperativo

    Multiple Entries:
    tramitar    
    trámite
    tramitar ( conjugate tramitar) verbo transitivo ‹ préstamo› [ funcionario] to deal with;
    [ interesado] to arrange;

    trámite un permiso de trabajo [ organismo] to deal with a work permit application;

    [ interesado] to apply for one's work permit
    trámite sustantivo masculino ( proceso) procedure;
    ( etapa) step, stage;

    el préstamo está en trámite the loan application is being processed;
    tengo que hacer unos trámites en el centro I have some business to attend to in the centre
    tramitar vtr (un permiso, licencia, etc) to process: nos están tramitando el permiso, they are processing our licence
    Juan está tramitando su divorcio, Juan has started divorce proceedings
    trámite sustantivo masculino
    1 (gestión) step
    (procedimiento administrativo) procedure
    trámite de urgencia, urgent channels
    2 (formalidad) formality: la boda fue un mero trámite, the wedding was just a formality

    ' trámite' also found in these entries:
    Spanish:
    agilizar
    - formalidad
    - pura
    - puro
    - remitir
    - burocrático
    - concluir
    - cumplir
    - detener
    - gestión
    - legal
    - retrasar
    - seguir
    English:
    pending
    - procedure
    - channel
    - process
    * * *
    1. [gestión] formal step;
    sólo quedan un par de trámites más there are only a few formalities left;
    los trámites burocráticos the bureaucratic procedures;
    los trámites burocráticos para crear una empresa the paperwork involved in setting up a company;
    agilizar/iniciar los trámites to speed up/to start the bureaucratic process;
    estaban en trámites de separación they were in the process of getting separated;
    de trámite [acto, asunto] routine;
    es sólo cuestión de trámite it's purely routine, it's just a formality
    trámites aduaneros customs formalities
    2. [tramitación] processing;
    admitir una denuncia a trámite to agree to consider a complaint;
    el permiso de obras está pendiente de trámite a decision on the planning permission is pending;
    * * *
    m formality
    * * *
    : procedure, step
    * * *
    trámite n procedure

    Spanish-English dictionary > trámite

  • 3 Evans, Oliver

    [br]
    b. 13 September 1755 Newport, Delaware, USA
    d. 15 April 1819 New York, USA
    [br]
    American millwright and inventor of the first automatic corn mill.
    [br]
    He was the fifth child of Charles and Ann Stalcrop Evans, and by the age of 15 he had four sisters and seven brothers. Nothing is known of his schooling, but at the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a Newport wheelwright and wagon-maker. At 19 he was enrolled in a Delaware Militia Company in the Revolutionary War but did not see active service. About this time he invented a machine for bending and cutting off the wires in textile carding combs. In July 1782, with his younger brother, Joseph, he moved to Tuckahoe on the eastern shore of the Delaware River, where he had the basic idea of the automatic flour mill. In July 1782, with his elder brothers John and Theophilus, he bought part of his father's Newport farm, on Red Clay Creek, and planned to build a mill there. In 1793 he married Sarah Tomlinson, daughter of a Delaware farmer, and joined his brothers at Red Clay Creek. He worked there for some seven years on his automatic mill, from about 1783 to 1790.
    His system for the automatic flour mill consisted of bucket elevators to raise the grain, a horizontal screw conveyor, other conveying devices and a "hopper boy" to cool and dry the meal before gathering it into a hopper feeding the bolting cylinder. Together these components formed the automatic process, from incoming wheat to outgoing flour packed in barrels. At that time the idea of such automation had not been applied to any manufacturing process in America. The mill opened, on a non-automatic cycle, in 1785. In January 1786 Evans applied to the Delaware legislature for a twenty-five-year patent, which was granted on 30 January 1787 although there was much opposition from the Quaker millers of Wilmington and elsewhere. He also applied for patents in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Hampshire. In May 1789 he went to see the mill of the four Ellicot brothers, near Baltimore, where he was impressed by the design of a horizontal screw conveyor by Jonathan Ellicot and exchanged the rights to his own elevator for those of this machine. After six years' work on his automatic mill, it was completed in 1790. In the autumn of that year a miller in Brandywine ordered a set of Evans's machinery, which set the trend toward its general adoption. A model of it was shown in the Market Street shop window of Robert Leslie, a watch-and clockmaker in Philadelphia, who also took it to England but was unsuccessful in selling the idea there.
    In 1790 the Federal Plant Laws were passed; Evans's patent was the third to come within the new legislation. A detailed description with a plate was published in a Philadelphia newspaper in January 1791, the first of a proposed series, but the paper closed and the series came to nothing. His brother Joseph went on a series of sales trips, with the result that some machinery of Evans's design was adopted. By 1792 over one hundred mills had been equipped with Evans's machinery, the millers paying a royalty of $40 for each pair of millstones in use. The series of articles that had been cut short formed the basis of Evans's The Young Millwright and Miller's Guide, published first in 1795 after Evans had moved to Philadelphia to set up a store selling milling supplies; it was 440 pages long and ran to fifteen editions between 1795 and 1860.
    Evans was fairly successful as a merchant. He patented a method of making millstones as well as a means of packing flour in barrels, the latter having a disc pressed down by a toggle-joint arrangement. In 1801 he started to build a steam carriage. He rejected the idea of a steam wheel and of a low-pressure or atmospheric engine. By 1803 his first engine was running at his store, driving a screw-mill working on plaster of Paris for making millstones. The engine had a 6 in. (15 cm) diameter cylinder with a stroke of 18 in. (45 cm) and also drove twelve saws mounted in a frame and cutting marble slabs at a rate of 100 ft (30 m) in twelve hours. He was granted a patent in the spring of 1804. He became involved in a number of lawsuits following the extension of his patent, particularly as he increased the licence fee, sometimes as much as sixfold. The case of Evans v. Samuel Robinson, which Evans won, became famous and was one of these. Patent Right Oppression Exposed, or Knavery Detected, a 200-page book with poems and prose included, was published soon after this case and was probably written by Oliver Evans. The steam engine patent was also extended for a further seven years, but in this case the licence fee was to remain at a fixed level. Evans anticipated Edison in his proposal for an "Experimental Company" or "Mechanical Bureau" with a capital of thirty shares of $100 each. It came to nothing, however, as there were no takers. His first wife, Sarah, died in 1816 and he remarried, to Hetty Ward, the daughter of a New York innkeeper. He was buried in the Bowery, on Lower Manhattan; the church was sold in 1854 and again in 1890, and when no relative claimed his body he was reburied in an unmarked grave in Trinity Cemetery, 57th Street, Broadway.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    E.S.Ferguson, 1980, Oliver Evans: Inventive Genius of the American Industrial Revolution, Hagley Museum.
    G.Bathe and D.Bathe, 1935, Oliver Evans: Chronicle of Early American Engineering, Philadelphia, Pa.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Evans, Oliver

  • 4 anmelden

    (trennb., hat -ge-)
    I v/t
    1. jemanden put s.o.’s name on the list, sign s.o. up; als Mitglied: join (up), subscribe; als Teilnehmer, Schüler: enrol(l) (zu for); SPORT: enter s.o.’s name (for); im Hotel: book in, Am. register; bei der Gemeinde: register; beim Arzt etc.: make an appointment ( bei with)
    2. (ankündigen) (Gäste) announce; bei jemandem: let s.o. know s.o. has arrived; seinen Besuch oder sein Kommen anmelden announce one’s arrival; würden Sie mich bei ihm anmelden? would you tell him I’m here, please; sich anmelden lassen (als Besucher) have o.s announced, send in one’s card förm.
    3. (Auto, Radio, Fernseher) get a licen|ce (Am. -se); (Telefon) get (a line) connected; (Patent) apply for, take out; (Gewerbe, Wohnsitz) register; (Waren) beim Zoll, (Vermögen) declare; ein Ferngespräch anmelden book a trunk call altm., Am. make an operator-assisted call; Konkurs anmelden declare o.s. bankrupt; zum Patent angemeldet patent pending ( oder applied for)
    4. fig. (Einwand, Zweifel) raise; (Wunsch) make; Ansprüche: assert, put forward
    II v/refl
    1. Person: siehe I 1; Baby: be on the way
    2. fig. announce itself
    * * *
    to register; to check in; to announce;
    sich anmelden
    to register
    * * *
    ạn|mel|den sep
    1. vt
    1) (= ankündigen) Besuch to announce

    einen Freund bei jdm anmelden — to let sb know that a friend is coming to visit

    2) (bei Schule, Kurs etc) to enrol (Brit), to enroll (US) (bei at, zu for)
    3) (= eintragen lassen) Patent to apply for; neuen Wohnsitz, Auto, Untermieter to register (bei at); Fernseher to get a licence (Brit) or license (US) for; Waffe to register
    4) (= vormerken lassen) to make an appointment for
    5) (TELEC)

    ein Gespräch nach Deutschland anmelden — to book a call to Germany

    6) (= geltend machen) Recht, Ansprüche to declare; (zu Steuerzwecken, bei Zoll) to declare; Bedenken, Zweifel, Protest to register; Wünsche, Bedürfnisse to make known

    ich melde starke Bedenken an — I have serious doubts about that, I'm very doubtful or dubious about that

    2. vr
    1) (= ankündigen) (Besucher) to announce one's arrival; (im Hotel) to book (in); (fig) (Baby) to be on the way; (Probleme, Zweifel etc) to appear on the horizon; (COMPUT in Netz) to log on (in +dat to)

    sich bei jdm anmelden — to tell sb one is coming

    2) (an Schule, zu Kurs etc) to enrol (Brit) or enroll (US) (oneself) (
    an +dat at, zu for)
    3) (= sich einen Termin geben lassen) to make an appointment
    * * *
    (to give the name of (another person or oneself) for a competition etc: He entered for the race; I entered my pupils for the examination.) enter
    * * *
    an|mel·den
    I. vt
    ▪ jdn/etw [bei jdm] \anmelden to announce sb/sth [to sb]
    einen Besuch \anmelden to announce a visit
    wen darf ich \anmelden? who shall I say is calling?
    ich bin angemeldet I have an appointment
    ▪ angemeldet announced
    angemeldete Hotelgäste registered hotel guests
    nicht angemeldete Patienten patients without an appointment
    ▪ jdn [bei etw dat/zu etw dat] \anmelden to enrol sb [at/in sth]
    sie meldete ihre Tochter zu diesem Kurs an she enrolled her daughter in [or for] [or on] this course
    Kinder müssen rechtzeitig bei einer Schule angemeldet werden children must be enrolled at a school in good time
    ▪ etw [für etw akk/zu etw dat] \anmelden to book sth in [for sth]
    3. ADMIN (polizeilich melden)
    ▪ jdn/etw [bei jdm] \anmelden to register sb/sth [with sb]
    4. (geltend machen)
    ▪ etw [bei jdm] \anmelden to assert sth [with sb]
    Ansprüche bei der Versicherung \anmelden to make a claim on one's insurance
    Bedenken/Proteste/Wünsche \anmelden to make [one's] misgivings/protests/wishes known
    ▪ etw [bei jdm] \anmelden to declare sth [to sb]
    II. vr
    ▪ sich akk [bei jdm] \anmelden to give notice of a visit [to sb]
    2. (sich eintragen lassen)
    ▪ sich akk [für etw akk/zu etw dat] \anmelden to apply [for sth]
    3. (sich einen Termin geben lassen)
    ▪ sich akk [bei jdm] \anmelden to make an appointment [with sb]
    4. ADMIN (sich registrieren lassen)
    ▪ sich akk [bei jdm] \anmelden to register [oneself] [with sb]
    * * *
    1) (als Teilnehmer) enrol

    jemanden/sich zu einem Kursus/in od. bei einer Schule anmelden — enrol somebody/enrol for a course/at a school

    sich schriftlich anmelden — register [in writing]

    2) (melden, anzeigen) license, get a licence for < television, radio>; apply for < patent>; register <domicile, car, trade mark>

    sich/seinen neuen Wohnsitz anmelden — register one's new address; s. auch Konkurs

    3) (ankündigen) announce

    sind Sie angemeldet? — do you have an appointment?

    4) (geltend machen) express, make known < reservation, doubt, wish>; put forward < demand>
    6) (Fernspr.) book
    * * *
    anmelden (trennb, hat -ge-)
    A. v/t
    1. jemanden put sb’s name on the list, sign sb up; als Mitglied: join (up), subscribe; als Teilnehmer, Schüler: enrol(l) (
    zu for); SPORT enter sb’s name (for); im Hotel: book in, US register; bei der Gemeinde: register; beim Arzt etc: make an appointment (
    bei with)
    2. (ankündigen) (Gäste) announce; bei jemandem: let sb know sb has arrived;
    sein Kommen anmelden announce one’s arrival;
    würden Sie mich bei ihm anmelden? would you tell him I’m here, please;
    sich anmelden lassen (als Besucher) have o.s announced, send in one’s card form
    3. (Auto, Radio, Fernseher) get a licence (US -se); (Telefon) get (a line) connected; (Patent) apply for, take out; (Gewerbe, Wohnsitz) register; (Waren) beim Zoll, (Vermögen) declare;
    ein Ferngespräch anmelden book a trunk call obs, US make an operator-assisted call;
    Konkurs anmelden declare o.s. bankrupt;
    zum Patent angemeldet patent pending ( oder applied for)
    4. fig (Einwand, Zweifel) raise; (Wunsch) make; Ansprüche: assert, put forward
    B. v/r
    1. Person: → A 1; Baby: be on the way
    2. fig announce itself
    * * *

    jemanden/sich zu einem Kursus/in od. bei einer Schule anmelden — enrol somebody/enrol for a course/at a school

    sich schriftlich anmelden — register [in writing]

    2) (melden, anzeigen) license, get a licence for <television, radio>; apply for < patent>; register <domicile, car, trade mark>

    sich/seinen neuen Wohnsitz anmelden — register one's new address; s. auch Konkurs

    3) (ankündigen) announce
    4) (geltend machen) express, make known <reservation, doubt, wish>; put forward < demand>
    6) (Fernspr.) book
    * * *
    v.
    to announce v.
    to declare v.
    to log on v.
    to register v.
    to report in v.

    Deutsch-Englisch Wörterbuch > anmelden

  • 5 Edison, Thomas Alva

    [br]
    b. 11 February 1847 Milan, Ohio, USA
    d. 18 October 1931 Glenmont
    [br]
    American inventor and pioneer electrical developer.
    [br]
    He was the son of Samuel Edison, who was in the timber business. His schooling was delayed due to scarlet fever until 1855, when he was 8½ years old, but he was an avid reader. By the age of 14 he had a job as a newsboy on the railway from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles (101 km). He worked a fourteen-hour day with a stopover of five hours, which he spent in the Detroit Free Library. He also sold sweets on the train and, later, fruit and vegetables, and was soon making a profit of $20 a week. He then started two stores in Port Huron and used a spare freight car as a laboratory. He added a hand-printing press to produce 400 copies weekly of The Grand Trunk Herald, most of which he compiled and edited himself. He set himself to learn telegraphy from the station agent at Mount Clements, whose son he had saved from being run over by a freight car.
    At the age of 16 he became a telegraphist at Port Huron. In 1863 he became railway telegraphist at the busy Stratford Junction of the Grand Trunk Railroad, arranging a clock with a notched wheel to give the hourly signal which was to prove that he was awake and at his post! He left hurriedly after failing to hold a train which was nearly involved in a head-on collision. He usually worked the night shift, allowing himself time for experiments during the day. His first invention was an arrangement of two Morse registers so that a high-speed input could be decoded at a slower speed. Moving from place to place he held many positions as a telegraphist. In Boston he invented an automatic vote recorder for Congress and patented it, but the idea was rejected. This was the first of a total of 1180 patents that he was to take out during his lifetime. After six years he resigned from the Western Union Company to devote all his time to invention, his next idea being an improved ticker-tape machine for stockbrokers. He developed a duplex telegraphy system, but this was turned down by the Western Union Company. He then moved to New York.
    Edison found accommodation in the battery room of Law's Gold Reporting Company, sleeping in the cellar, and there his repair of a broken transmitter marked him as someone of special talents. His superior soon resigned, and he was promoted with a salary of $300 a month. Western Union paid him $40,000 for the sole rights on future improvements on the duplex telegraph, and he moved to Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey, where he employed a gathering of specialist engineers. Within a year, he married one of his employees, Mary Stilwell, when she was only 16: a daughter, Marion, was born in 1872, and two sons, Thomas and William, in 1876 and 1879, respectively.
    He continued to work on the automatic telegraph, a device to send out messages faster than they could be tapped out by hand: that is, over fifty words per minute or so. An earlier machine by Alexander Bain worked at up to 400 words per minute, but was not good over long distances. Edison agreed to work on improving this feature of Bain's machine for the Automatic Telegraph Company (ATC) for $40,000. He improved it to a working speed of 500 words per minute and ran a test between Washington and New York. Hoping to sell their equipment to the Post Office in Britain, ATC sent Edison to England in 1873 to negotiate. A 500-word message was to be sent from Liverpool to London every half-hour for six hours, followed by tests on 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of cable at Greenwich. Only confused results were obtained due to induction in the cable, which lay coiled in a water tank. Edison returned to New York, where he worked on his quadruplex telegraph system, tests of which proved a success between New York and Albany in December 1874. Unfortunately, simultaneous negotiation with Western Union and ATC resulted in a lawsuit.
    Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for a telephone in March 1876 while Edison was still working on the same idea. His improvements allowed the device to operate over a distance of hundreds of miles instead of only a few miles. Tests were carried out over the 106 miles (170 km) between New York and Philadelphia. Edison applied for a patent on the carbon-button transmitter in April 1877, Western Union agreeing to pay him $6,000 a year for the seventeen-year duration of the patent. In these years he was also working on the development of the electric lamp and on a duplicating machine which would make up to 3,000 copies from a stencil. In 1876–7 he moved from Newark to Menlo Park, twenty-four miles (39 km) from New York on the Pennsylvania Railway, near Elizabeth. He had bought a house there around which he built the premises that would become his "inventions factory". It was there that he began the use of his 200- page pocket notebooks, each of which lasted him about two weeks, so prolific were his ideas. When he died he left 3,400 of them filled with notes and sketches.
    Late in 1877 he applied for a patent for a phonograph which was granted on 19 February 1878, and by the end of the year he had formed a company to manufacture this totally new product. At the time, Edison saw the device primarily as a business aid rather than for entertainment, rather as a dictating machine. In August 1878 he was granted a British patent. In July 1878 he tried to measure the heat from the solar corona at a solar eclipse viewed from Rawlins, Wyoming, but his "tasimeter" was too sensitive.
    Probably his greatest achievement was "The Subdivision of the Electric Light" or the "glow bulb". He tried many materials for the filament before settling on carbon. He gave a demonstration of electric light by lighting up Menlo Park and inviting the public. Edison was, of course, faced with the problem of inventing and producing all the ancillaries which go to make up the electrical system of generation and distribution-meters, fuses, insulation, switches, cabling—even generators had to be designed and built; everything was new. He started a number of manufacturing companies to produce the various components needed.
    In 1881 he built the world's largest generator, which weighed 27 tons, to light 1,200 lamps at the Paris Exhibition. It was later moved to England to be used in the world's first central power station with steam engine drive at Holborn Viaduct, London. In September 1882 he started up his Pearl Street Generating Station in New York, which led to a worldwide increase in the application of electric power, particularly for lighting. At the same time as these developments, he built a 1,300yd (1,190m) electric railway at Menlo Park.
    On 9 August 1884 his wife died of typhoid. Using his telegraphic skills, he proposed to 19-year-old Mina Miller in Morse code while in the company of others on a train. He married her in February 1885 before buying a new house and estate at West Orange, New Jersey, building a new laboratory not far away in the Orange Valley.
    Edison used direct current which was limited to around 250 volts. Alternating current was largely developed by George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, using transformers to step up the current to a higher voltage for long-distance transmission. The use of AC gradually overtook the Edison DC system.
    In autumn 1888 he patented a form of cinephotography, the kinetoscope, obtaining film-stock from George Eastman. In 1893 he set up the first film studio, which was pivoted so as to catch the sun, with a hinged roof which could be raised. In 1894 kinetoscope parlours with "peep shows" were starting up in cities all over America. Competition came from the Latham Brothers with a screen-projection machine, which Edison answered with his "Vitascope", shown in New York in 1896. This showed pictures with accompanying sound, but there was some difficulty with synchronization. Edison also experimented with captions at this early date.
    In 1880 he filed a patent for a magnetic ore separator, the first of nearly sixty. He bought up deposits of low-grade iron ore which had been developed in the north of New Jersey. The process was a commercial success until the discovery of iron-rich ore in Minnesota rendered it uneconomic and uncompetitive. In 1898 cement rock was discovered in New Village, west of West Orange. Edison bought the land and started cement manufacture, using kilns twice the normal length and using half as much fuel to heat them as the normal type of kiln. In 1893 he met Henry Ford, who was building his second car, at an Edison convention. This started him on the development of a battery for an electric car on which he made over 9,000 experiments. In 1903 he sold his patent for wireless telegraphy "for a song" to Guglielmo Marconi.
    In 1910 Edison designed a prefabricated concrete house. In December 1914 fire destroyed three-quarters of the West Orange plant, but it was at once rebuilt, and with the threat of war Edison started to set up his own plants for making all the chemicals that he had previously been buying from Europe, such as carbolic acid, phenol, benzol, aniline dyes, etc. He was appointed President of the Navy Consulting Board, for whom, he said, he made some forty-five inventions, "but they were pigeonholed, every one of them". Thus did Edison find that the Navy did not take kindly to civilian interference.
    In 1927 he started the Edison Botanic Research Company, founded with similar investment from Ford and Firestone with the object of finding a substitute for overseas-produced rubber. In the first year he tested no fewer than 3,327 possible plants, in the second year, over 1,400, eventually developing a variety of Golden Rod which grew to 14 ft (4.3 m) in height. However, all this effort and money was wasted, due to the discovery of synthetic rubber.
    In October 1929 he was present at Henry Ford's opening of his Dearborn Museum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the incandescent lamp, including a replica of the Menlo Park laboratory. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He died in 1931 at his home, Glenmont; throughout the USA, lights were dimmed temporarily on the day of his funeral.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Member of the American Academy of Sciences. Congressional Gold Medal.
    Further Reading
    M.Josephson, 1951, Edison, Eyre \& Spottiswode.
    R.W.Clark, 1977, Edison, the Man who Made the Future, Macdonald \& Jane.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Edison, Thomas Alva

  • 6 Johnson, Thomas

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    fl. 1800s England
    d. after 1846
    [br]
    English developer of the sizing and beaming machine, and improver of the hand loom.
    [br]
    Thomas Johnson was an assistant to William Radcliffe c.1802 in his developments of the sizing machine and hand looms. Johnson is described by Edward Baines (1835) as "an ingenious but dissipated young man to whom he [Radcliffe] explained what he wanted, and whose fertile invention suggested a great variety of expedients, so that he obtained the name of the “conjuror” among his fellow-workmen". Johnson's genius, and Radcliffe's judgement and perseverance, at length produced the dressing-machine that was soon applied to power looms and made their use economic. Cotton warps had to be dressed with a starch paste to prevent them from fraying as they were being woven. Up to this time, the paste had had to be applied as the warp was unwound from the back of the loom, which meant that only short lengths could be treated and then left to dry, holding up the weaver. Radcliffe carried out the dressing and beaming in a separate machine so that weaving could proceed without interruption. Work on the dressing-machine was carried out in 1802 and patents were taken out in 1803 and 1804. These were made out in Johnson's name because Radcliffe was afraid that if his own name were used other people, particularly foreigners, would discover his secrets. Two more patents were taken out for improvements to hand looms. The first of these was a take-up motion for the woven cloth that automatically wound the cloth onto a roller as the weaver operated the loom. This was later incorporated by H.Horrocks into his own power loom design.
    Radcliffe and Johnson also developed the "dandy-loom", which was a more compact form of hand loom and later became adapted for weaving by power. Johnson was the inventor of the first circular or revolving temples, which kept the woven cloth at the right width. In the patent specifications there is a patent in 1805 by Thomas Johnson and James Kay for an improved power loom and another in 1807 for a vertical type of power loom. Johnson could have been involved with further patents in the 1830s and 1840s for vertical power looms and dressing-machines, which would put his death after 1846.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1802, British patent no. 2,684 (dressing-machine).
    1803, British patent no. 2,771 (dressing-machine).
    1805, with James Kay, British patent no. 2,876 (power-loom). 1807, British patent no. 6,570 (vertical powerloom).
    Further Reading
    There is no general account of Johnson's life, but references to his work with Radcliffe may be found in A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London; and in E.Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, London.
    D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s, Oxford (for the impact of the dressing-machine in America).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Johnson, Thomas

  • 7 Arnold, Aza

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. 4 October 1788 Smithfield, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA
    d. 1865 Washington, DC, USA
    [br]
    American textile machinist who applied the differential motion to roving frames, solving the problem of winding on the delicate cotton rovings.
    [br]
    He was the son of Benjamin and Isabel Arnold, but his mother died when he was 2 years old and after his father's second marriage he was largely left to look after himself. After attending the village school he learnt the trade of a carpenter, and following this he became a machinist. He entered the employment of Samuel Slater, but left after a few years to engage in the unsuccessful manufacture of woollen blankets. He became involved in an engineering shop, where he devised a machine for taking wool off a carding machine and making it into endless slivers or rovings for spinning. He then became associated with a cotton-spinning mill, which led to his most important invention. The carded cotton sliver had to be reduced in thickness before it could be spun on the final machines such as the mule or the waterframe. The roving, as the mass of cotton fibres was called at this stage, was thin and very delicate because it could not be twisted to give strength, as this would not allow it to be drawn out again during the next stage. In order to wind the roving on to bobbins, the speed of the bobbin had to be just right but the diameter of the bobbin increased as it was filled. Obtaining the correct reduction in speed as the circumference increased was partially solved by the use of double-coned pulleys, but the driving belt was liable to slip owing to the power that had to be transmitted.
    The final solution to the problem came with the introduction of the differential drive with bevel gears or a sun-and-planet motion. Arnold had invented this compound motion in 1818 but did not think of applying it to the roving frame until 1820. It combined the direct-gearing drive from the main shaft of the machine with that from the cone-drum drive so that the latter only provided the difference between flyer and bobbin speeds, which meant that most of the transmission power was taken away from the belt. The patent for this invention was issued to Arnold on 23 January 1823 and was soon copied in Britain by Henry Houldsworth, although J.Green of Mansfield may have originated it independendy in the same year. Arnold's patent was widely infringed in America and he sued the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals, machine makers for the Lowell manufacturers, for $30,000, eventually receiving $3,500 compensation. Arnold had his own machine shop but he gave it up in 1838 and moved the Philadelphia, where he operated the Mulhausen Print Works. Around 1850 he went to Washington, DC, and became a patent attorney, remaining as such until his death. On 24 June 1856 he was granted patent for a self-setting and self-raking saw for sawing machines.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    28 June 1856, US patent no. 15,163 (self-setting and self-raking saw for sawing machines).
    Further Reading
    Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 1.
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (a description of the principles of the differential gear applied to the roving frame).
    D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830, Oxford (a discussion of the introduction and spread of Arnold's gear).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Arnold, Aza

  • 8 Berliner, Emile

    SUBJECT AREA: Recording
    [br]
    b. 20 May 1851 Hannover, Germany
    d. 3 August 1929 Montreal, Canada
    [br]
    German (naturalized American) inventor, developer of the disc record and lateral mechanical replay.
    [br]
    After arriving in the USA in 1870 and becoming an American citizen, Berliner worked as a dry-goods clerk in Washington, DC, and for a period studied electricity at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York. He invented an improved microphone and set up his own experimental laboratory in Washington, DC. He developed a microphone for telephone use and sold the rights to the Bell Telephone Company. Subsequently he was put in charge of their laboratory, remaining in that position for eight years. In 1881 Berliner, with his brothers Joseph and Jacob, founded the J.Berliner Telephonfabrik in Hanover, the first factory in Europe specializing in telephone equipment.
    Inspired by the development work performed by T.A. Edison and in the Volta Laboratory (see C.S. Tainter), he analysed the existing processes for recording and reproducing sound and in 1887 developed a process for transferring lateral undulations scratched in soot into an etched groove that would make a needle and diaphragm vibrate. Using what may be regarded as a combination of the Phonautograph of Léon Scott de Martinville and the photo-engraving suggested by Charles Cros, in May 1887 he thus demonstrated the practicability of the laterally recorded groove. He termed the apparatus "Gramophone". In November 1887 he applied the principle to a glass disc and obtained an inwardly spiralling, modulated groove in copper and zinc. In March 1888 he took the radical step of scratching the lateral vibrations directly onto a rotating zinc disc, the surface of which was protected, and the subsequent etching created the groove. Using well-known principles of printing-plate manufacture, he developed processes for duplication by making a negative mould from which positive copies could be pressed in a thermoplastic compound. Toy gramophones were manufactured in Germany from 1889 and from 1892–3 Berliner manufactured both records and gramophones in the USA. The gramophones were hand-cranked at first, but from 1896 were based on a new design by E.R. Johnson. In 1897–8 Berliner spread his activities to England and Germany, setting up a European pressing plant in the telephone factory in Hanover, and in 1899 a Canadian company was formed. Various court cases over patents removed Berliner from direct running of the reconstructed companies, but he retained a major economic interest in E.R. Johnson's Victor Talking Machine Company. In later years Berliner became interested in aeronautics, in particular the autogiro principle. Applied acoustics was a continued interest, and a tile for controlling the acoustics of large halls was successfully developed in the 1920s.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    16 May 1888, Journal of the Franklin Institute 125 (6) (Lecture of 16 May 1888) (Berliner's early appreciation of his own work).
    1914, Three Addresses, privately printed (a history of sound recording). US patent no. 372,786 (basic photo-engraving principle).
    US patent no. 382,790 (scratching and etching).
    US patent no. 534,543 (hand-cranked gramophone).
    Further Reading
    R.Gelatt, 1977, The Fabulous Phonograph, London: Cassell (a well-researched history of reproducible sound which places Berliner's contribution in its correct perspective). J.R.Smart, 1985, "Emile Berliner and nineteenth-century disc recordings", in Wonderful
    Inventions, ed. Iris Newson, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, pp. 346–59 (provides a reliable account).
    O.Read and W.L.Welch, 1959, From Tin Foil to Stereo, Indianapolis: Howard W.Sams, pp. 119–35 (provides a vivid account, albeit with less precision).
    GB-N

    Biographical history of technology > Berliner, Emile

  • 9 De Forest, Lee

    [br]
    b. 26 August 1873 Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA
    d. 30 June 1961 Hollywood, California, USA
    [br]
    American electrical engineer and inventor principally known for his invention of the Audion, or triode, vacuum tube; also a pioneer of sound in the cinema.
    [br]
    De Forest was born into the family of a Congregational minister that moved to Alabama in 1879 when the father became President of a college for African-Americans; this was a position that led to the family's social ostracism by the white community. By the time he was 13 years old, De Forest was already a keen mechanical inventor, and in 1893, rejecting his father's plan for him to become a clergyman, he entered the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. Following his first degree, he went on to study the propagation of electromagnetic waves, gaining a PhD in physics in 1899 for his thesis on the "Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires", probably the first US thesis in the field of radio.
    He then joined the Western Electric Company in Chicago where he helped develop the infant technology of wireless, working his way up from a modest post in the production area to a position in the experimental laboratory. There, working alone after normal working hours, he developed a detector of electromagnetic waves based on an electrolytic device similar to that already invented by Fleming in England. Recognizing his talents, a number of financial backers enabled him to set up his own business in 1902 under the name of De Forest Wireless Telegraphy Company; he was soon demonstrating wireless telegraphy to interested parties and entering into competition with the American Marconi Company.
    Despite the failure of this company because of fraud by his partners, he continued his experiments; in 1907, by adding a third electrode, a wire mesh, between the anode and cathode of the thermionic diode invented by Fleming in 1904, he was able to produce the amplifying device now known as the triode valve and achieve a sensitivity of radio-signal reception much greater than possible with the passive carborundum and electrolytic detectors hitherto available. Patented under the name Audion, this new vacuum device was soon successfully used for experimental broadcasts of music and speech in New York and Paris. The invention of the Audion has been described as the beginning of the electronic era. Although much development work was required before its full potential was realized, the Audion opened the way to progress in all areas of sound transmission, recording and reproduction. The patent was challenged by Fleming and it was not until 1943 that De Forest's claim was finally recognized.
    Overcoming the near failure of his new company, the De Forest Radio Telephone Company, as well as unsuccessful charges of fraudulent promotion of the Audion, he continued to exploit the potential of his invention. By 1912 he had used transformer-coupling of several Audion stages to achieve high gain at radio frequencies, making long-distance communication a practical proposition, and had applied positive feedback from the Audion output anode to its input grid to realize a stable transmitter oscillator and modulator. These successes led to prolonged patent litigation with Edwin Armstrong and others, and he eventually sold the manufacturing rights, in retrospect often for a pittance.
    During the early 1920s De Forest began a fruitful association with T.W.Case, who for around ten years had been working to perfect a moving-picture sound system. De Forest claimed to have had an interest in sound films as early as 1900, and Case now began to supply him with photoelectric cells and primitive sound cameras. He eventually devised a variable-density sound-on-film system utilizing a glow-discharge modulator, the Photion. By 1926 De Forest's Phonofilm had been successfully demonstrated in over fifty theatres and this system became the basis of Movietone. Though his ideas were on the right lines, the technology was insufficiently developed and it was left to others to produce a system acceptable to the film industry. However, De Forest had played a key role in transforming the nature of the film industry; within a space of five years the production of silent films had all but ceased.
    In the following decade De Forest applied the Audion to the development of medical diathermy. Finally, after spending most of his working life as an independent inventor and entrepreneur, he worked for a time during the Second World War at the Bell Telephone Laboratories on military applications of electronics.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Institute of Electronic and Radio Engineers Medal of Honour 1922. President, Institute of Electronic and Radio Engineers 1930. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Edison Medal 1946.
    Bibliography
    1904, "Electrolytic detectors", Electrician 54:94 (describes the electrolytic detector). 1907, US patent no. 841,387 (the Audion).
    1950, Father of Radio, Chicago: WIlcox \& Follett (autobiography).
    De Forest gave his own account of the development of his sound-on-film system in a series of articles: 1923. "The Phonofilm", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 16 (May): 61–75; 1924. "Phonofilm progress", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 20:17–19; 1927, "Recent developments in the Phonofilm", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 27:64–76; 1941, "Pioneering in talking pictures", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 36 (January): 41–9.
    Further Reading
    G.Carneal, 1930, A Conqueror of Space (biography).
    I.Levine, 1964, Electronics Pioneer, Lee De Forest (biography).
    E.I.Sponable, 1947, "Historical development of sound films", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 48 (April): 275–303 (an authoritative account of De Forest's sound-film work, by Case's assistant).
    W.R.McLaurin, 1949, Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry.
    C.F.Booth, 1955, "Fleming and De Forest. An appreciation", in Thermionic Valves 1904– 1954, IEE.
    V.J.Phillips, 1980, Early Radio Detectors, London: Peter Peregrinus.
    KF / JW

    Biographical history of technology > De Forest, Lee

  • 10 Heilmann, Josué (Joshua)

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. 1796 Alsace
    d. 1848
    [br]
    Alsatian inventor of the first machine for combing cotton.
    [br]
    Josué Heilmann, of Mulhouse, was awarded 5,000 francs offered by the cotton spinners of Alsace for a machine that would comb cotton. It was a process not hitherto applied to this fibre and, when perfected, enabled finer, smoother and more lustrous yarns to be spun. The important feature of Heilmann's method was to use a grip or nip to hold the end of the sliver that was being combed. Two or more combs passed through the protruding fibres to comb them thoroughly, and a brush cylinder and knife cleared away the noils. The combed section was passed forward so that the part held in the nip could then be combed. The combed fibres were joined up with the length already finished. Heilmann obtained a British patent in 1846, but no machines were put to work until 1851. Six firms of cotton spinners in Lancashire paid £30,000 for the cotton-combing rights and Marshall's of Leeds paid £20,000 for the rights to comb flax. Heilmann's machine was used on the European continent for combing silk as well as flax, wool and cotton, so it proved to be very versatile. Priority of his patent was challenged in England because Lister had patented a combing machine with a gripper or nip in 1843; in 1852 the parties went to litigation and cross-suits were instituted. While Heilmann obtained a verdict of infringement against Lister for certain things, Lister also obtained one against Heilmann for other matters. After this outcome, Heilmann's patent was bought on speculation by Messrs Akroyd and Titus Salt for £30,000, but was afterwards resold to Lister for the same amount. In this way Lister was able to exploit his own patent through suppressing Heilmann's.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1846, British patent no. 11,103 (cotton-combing machine).
    Further Reading
    For descriptions of his combing machine see: W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London; T.K.Derry and T.I.Williams, 1960, A Short History of Technology from the Earliest Times to AD 1900, Oxford; and C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol.
    IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Heilmann, Josué (Joshua)

  • 11 Haynes, Elwood

    [br]
    b. 14 October 1857 Portland, Indiana, USA
    d. 13 April 1925 Kokomo, Indiana, USA
    [br]
    American inventor ofStellite cobalt-based alloys, early motor-car manufacturer and pioneer in stainless steels.
    [br]
    From his early years, Haynes was a practising Presbyterian and an active prohibitionist. He graduated in 1881 at Worcester, Massachusetts, and a spell of teaching in his home town was interrupted in 1884–5 while he attended the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1886 he became permanently diverted by the discovery of natural gas in Portland. He was soon appointed Superintendent of the local gas undertaking, and then in 1890 he was hired by the Indiana Natural Gas \& Oil Company. While continuing his gas-company employment until 1901, Haynes conducted numerous metallurgical experiments. He also designed an automobile: this led to the establishment of the Haynes- Apperson Company at Kokomo as one of the earliest motor-car makers in North America. From 1905 the firm traded as the Haynes Automobile Company, and before its bankruptcy in 1924 it produced more than 50,000 cars. After 1905, Haynes found the first "Stellite" alloys of cobalt and chromium, and in 1910 he was publicizing the patented material. He then discovered the valuable hardening effect of tungsten, and in 1912 began applying the "improved" Stellite to cutting tools. Three years later, the Haynes Stellite Company was incorporated, with Haynes as President, to work the patents. It was largely from this source that Haynes became a millionaire in 1920. In April 1912, Haynes's attempt to patent the use of chromium with iron to render the product rustless was unsuccessful. However, he re-applied for a US patent on 12 March 1915 and, although this was initially rejected, he persevered and finally obtained recognition of his modified claim. The American Stainless Steel Company licensed the patents of Brearley and Haynes jointly in the USA until the 1930s.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    John Scott Medal 1919 (awarded for useful inventions).
    Bibliography
    Haynes was the author of more than twenty published papers and articles, among them: 1907, "Materials for automobiles", Proceedings of the American Society of Mechanical
    Engineers 29:1,597–606; 1910, "Alloys of nickel and cobalt with chromium", Journal of Industrial Engineering
    and Chemistry 2:397–401; 1912–13, "Alloys of cobalt with chromium and other metals", Transactions of the American Institute of 'Mining Engineers 44:249–55;
    1919–20, "Stellite and stainless steel", Proceedings of the Engineering Society of West
    Pennsylvania 35:467–74.
    1 April 1919, US patent no. 1,299,404 (stainless steel).
    The four US patents worked by the Haynes Stellite Company were: 17 December 1907, patent no. 873,745.
    1 April 1913, patent no. 1,057,423.
    1 April 1913, patent no. 1,057, 828.
    17 August 1915, patent no. 1,150, 113.
    Further Reading
    R.D.Gray, 1979, Alloys and Automobiles. The Life of Elwood Haynes, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society (a closely documented biography).
    JKA

    Biographical history of technology > Haynes, Elwood

  • 12 Armstrong, Edwin Howard

    [br]
    b. 18 December 1890 New York City, New York, USA
    d. 31 January 1954 New York City, New York, USA
    [br]
    American engineer who invented the regenerative and superheterodyne amplifiers and frequency modulation, all major contributions to radio communication and broadcasting.
    [br]
    Interested from childhood in anything mechanical, as a teenager Armstrong constructed a variety of wireless equipment in the attic of his parents' home, including spark-gap transmitters and receivers with iron-filing "coherer" detectors capable of producing weak Morse-code signals. In 1912, while still a student of engineering at Columbia University, he applied positive, i.e. regenerative, feedback to a Lee De Forest triode amplifier to just below the point of oscillation and obtained a gain of some 1,000 times, giving a receiver sensitivity very much greater than hitherto possible. Furthermore, by allowing the circuit to go into full oscillation he found he could generate stable continuous-waves, making possible the first reliable CW radio transmitter. Sadly, his claim to priority with this invention, for which he filed US patents in 1913, the year he graduated from Columbia, led to many years of litigation with De Forest, to whom the US Supreme Court finally, but unjustly, awarded the patent in 1934. The engineering world clearly did not agree with this decision, for the Institution of Radio Engineers did not revoke its previous award of a gold medal and he subsequently received the highest US scientific award, the Franklin Medal, for this discovery.
    During the First World War, after some time as an instructor at Columbia University, he joined the US Signal Corps laboratories in Paris, where in 1918 he invented the superheterodyne, a major contribution to radio-receiver design and for which he filed a patent in 1920. The principle of this circuit, which underlies virtually all modern radio, TV and radar reception, is that by using a local oscillator to convert, or "heterodyne", a wanted signal to a lower, fixed, "intermediate" frequency it is possible to obtain high amplification and selectivity without the need to "track" the tuning of numerous variable circuits.
    Returning to Columbia after the war and eventually becoming Professor of Electrical Engineering, he made a fortune from the sale of his patent rights and used part of his wealth to fund his own research into further problems in radio communication, particularly that of receiver noise. In 1933 he filed four patents covering the use of wide-band frequency modulation (FM) to achieve low-noise, high-fidelity sound broadcasting, but unable to interest RCA he eventually built a complete broadcast transmitter at his own expense in 1939 to prove the advantages of his system. Unfortunately, there followed another long battle to protect and exploit his patents, and exhausted and virtually ruined he took his own life in 1954, just as the use of FM became an established technique.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Institution of Radio Engineers Medal of Honour 1917. Franklin Medal 1937. IERE Edison Medal 1942. American Medal for Merit 1947.
    Bibliography
    1922, "Some recent developments in regenerative circuits", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 10:244.
    1924, "The superheterodyne. Its origin, developments and some recent improvements", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 12:549.
    1936, "A method of reducing disturbances in radio signalling by a system of frequency modulation", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 24:689.
    Further Reading
    L.Lessing, 1956, Man of High-Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong, pbk 1969 (the only definitive biography).
    W.R.Maclaurin and R.J.Harman, 1949, Invention \& Innovation in the Radio Industry.
    J.R.Whitehead, 1950, Super-regenerative Receivers.
    A.N.Goldsmith, 1948, Frequency Modulation (for the background to the development of frequency modulation, in the form of a large collection of papers and an extensive bibliog raphy).
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Armstrong, Edwin Howard

  • 13 Dawson, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. mid-eighteenth century
    d. c.1805 London, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the notched wheel for making patterns on early warp knitting machines.
    [br]
    William Dawson, a Leicester framework knitter, made an important addition to William Lee's knitting machine with his invention of the notched wheel in 1791. Lee's machine could make only plain knitting; to be able to knit patterns, there had to be some means of mechanically selecting and operating, independently of all the others, any individual thread, needle, lever or bar at work in the machine. This was partly achieved when Dawson devised a wheel that was irregularly notched on its edge and which, when rotated, pushed sprung bars, which in turn operated on the needles or other parts of the recently invented warp knitting machines. He seems to have first applied the idea for the knitting of military sashes, but then found it could be adapted to plait stay laces with great rapidity. With the financial assistance of two Leicester manufacturers and with his own good mechanical ability, Dawson found a way of cutting his wheels. However, the two financiers withdrew their support because he did not finish the design on time, although he was able to find a friend in a Nottingham architect, Mr Gregory, who helped him to obtain the patent. A number of his machines were set up in Nottingham but, like many other geniuses, he squandered his money away. When the patent expired, he asked Lord Chancellor Eldon to have it renewed: he moved his workshop to London, where Eldon inspected his machine, but the patent was not extended and in consequence Dawson committed suicide.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1791, British patent no. 1,820 (notched wheel for knitting machine).
    Further Reading
    W.Felkin, 1867, History of Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacture (covers Dawson's invention).
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (provides an outline history of the development of knitting machines).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Dawson, William

  • 14 Wasborough, Matthew

    [br]
    b. 1753 Bristol, England
    d. 21 October 1781 Bristol, England
    [br]
    English patentee of an application of the flywheel to create a rotative steam engine.
    [br]
    A single-cylinder atmospheric steam engine had a power stroke only when the piston descended the cylinder: a means had to be found of returning the piston to its starting position. For rotative engines, this was partially solved by the patent of Matthew Wasborough in 1779. His father was a partner in a Bristol brass-founding and clockmaking business in Narrow Wine Street where he was joined by his son. Wasborough proposed to use some form of ratchet gear to effect the rotary motion and added a flywheel, the first time one was used in a steam engine, "in order to render the motion more regular and uniform". He installed one engine to drive the lathes in the Bristol works and another at James Pickard's flour mill at Snow Hill, Birmingham, where Pickard applied his recently patented crank to it. It was this Wasborough-Pickard engine which posed a threat to Boulton \& Watt trying to develop a rotative engine, for Wasborough built several engines for cornmills in Bristol, woollen mills in Gloucestershire and a block factory at Southampton before his early death. Matthew Boulton was told that Wasborough was "so intent upon the study of engines as to bring a fever on his brain and he dyed in consequence thereof…. How dangerous it is for a man to wade out of his depth" (Jenkins 1936:106).
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1779, British patent no. 1,213 (rotative engine with flywheel).
    Further Reading
    J.Tann, 1978–9, "Makers of improved Newcomen engines in the late 18th century, and R.A.Buchanan", 1978–9, "Steam and the engineering community in the eighteenth century", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 50 ("Thomas Newcomen. A commemorative symposium") (both papers discuss Wasborough's engines).
    R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (examines his patent).
    R.Jenkins (ed.), 1936, Collected Papers, 106 (for Matthew Boulton's letter of 30 October 1781).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Wasborough, Matthew

  • 15 Huygens, Christiaan

    SUBJECT AREA: Horology
    [br]
    b. 14 April 1629 The Hague, the Netherlands
    d. 8 June 1695 The Hague, the Netherlands
    [br]
    Dutch scientist who was responsible for two of the greatest advances in horology: the successful application of both the pendulum to the clock and the balance spring to the watch.
    [br]
    Huygens was born into a cultured and privileged class. His father, Constantijn, was a poet and statesman who had wide interests. Constantijn exerted a strong influence on his son, who was educated at home until he reached the age of 16. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at Ley den University from 1645 to 1647, and continued his studies at the Collegium Arausiacum in Breda until 1649. He then lived at The Hague, where he had the means to devote his time entirely to study. In 1666 he became a Member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and settled there until his return to The Hague in 1681. He also had a close relationship with the Royal Society and visited London on three occasions, meeting Newton on his last visit in 1689. Huygens had a wide range of interests and made significant contributions in mathematics, astronomy, optics and mechanics. He also made technical advances in optical instruments and horology.
    Despite the efforts of Burgi there had been no significant improvement in the performance of ordinary clocks and watches from their inception to Huygens's time, as they were controlled by foliots or balances which had no natural period of oscillation. The pendulum appeared to offer a means of improvement as it had a natural period of oscillation that was almost independent of amplitude. Galileo Galilei had already pioneered the use of a freely suspended pendulum for timing events, but it was by no means obvious how it could be kept swinging and used to control a clock. Towards the end of his life Galileo described such a. mechanism to his son Vincenzio, who constructed a model after his father's death, although it was not completed when he himself died in 1642. This model appears to have been copied in Italy, but it had little influence on horology, partly because of the circumstances in which it was produced and possibly also because it differed radically from clocks of that period. The crucial event occurred on Christmas Day 1656 when Huygens, quite independently, succeeded in adapting an existing spring-driven table clock so that it was not only controlled by a pendulum but also kept it swinging. In the following year he was granted a privilege or patent for this clock, and several were made by the clockmaker Salomon Coster of The Hague. The use of the pendulum produced a dramatic improvement in timekeeping, reducing the daily error from minutes to seconds, but Huygens was aware that the pendulum was not truly isochronous. This error was magnified by the use of the existing verge escapement, which made the pendulum swing through a large arc. He overcame this defect very elegantly by fitting cheeks at the pendulum suspension point, progressively reducing the effective length of the pendulum as the amplitude increased. Initially the cheeks were shaped empirically, but he was later able to show that they should have a cycloidal shape. The cheeks were not adopted universally because they introduced other defects, and the problem was eventually solved more prosaically by way of new escapements which reduced the swing of the pendulum. Huygens's clocks had another innovatory feature: maintaining power, which kept the clock going while it was being wound.
    Pendulums could not be used for portable timepieces, which continued to use balances despite their deficiencies. Robert Hooke was probably the first to apply a spring to the balance, but his efforts were not successful. From his work on the pendulum Huygens was well aware of the conditions necessary for isochronism in a vibrating system, and in January 1675, with a flash of inspiration, he realized that this could be achieved by controlling the oscillations of the balance with a spiral spring, an arrangement that is still used in mechanical watches. The first model was made for Huygens in Paris by the clockmaker Isaac Thuret, who attempted to appropriate the invention and patent it himself. Huygens had for many years been trying unsuccessfully to adapt the pendulum clock for use at sea (in order to determine longitude), and he hoped that a balance-spring timekeeper might be better suited for this purpose. However, he was disillusioned as its timekeeping proved to be much more susceptible to changes in temperature than that of the pendulum clock.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1663. Member of the Académie Royale des Sciences 1666.
    Bibliography
    For his complete works, see Oeuvres complètes de Christian Huygens, 1888–1950, 22 vols, The Hague.
    1658, Horologium, The Hague; repub., 1970, trans. E.L.Edwardes, Antiquarian
    Horology 7:35–55 (describes the pendulum clock).
    1673, Horologium Oscillatorium, Paris; repub., 1986, The Pendulum Clock or Demonstrations Concerning the Motion ofPendula as Applied to Clocks, trans.
    R.J.Blackwell, Ames.
    Further Reading
    H.J.M.Bos, 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C.C.Gillispie, Vol. 6, New York, pp. 597–613 (for a fuller account of his life and scientific work, but note the incorrect date of his death).
    R.Plomp, 1979, Spring-Driven Dutch Pendulum Clocks, 1657–1710, Schiedam (describes Huygens's application of the pendulum to the clock).
    S.A.Bedini, 1991, The Pulse of Time, Florence (describes Galileo's contribution of the pendulum to the clock).
    J.H.Leopold, 1982, "L"Invention par Christiaan Huygens du ressort spiral réglant pour les montres', Huygens et la France, Paris, pp. 154–7 (describes the application of the balance spring to the watch).
    A.R.Hall, 1978, "Horology and criticism", Studia Copernica 16:261–81 (discusses Hooke's contribution).
    DV

    Biographical history of technology > Huygens, Christiaan

  • 16 Murdock (Murdoch), William

    [br]
    b. 21 August 1754 Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland
    d. 15 November 1839 Handsworth, Birmingham, England
    [br]
    Scottish engineer and inventor, pioneer in coal-gas production.
    [br]
    He was the third child and the eldest of three boys born to John Murdoch and Anna Bruce. His father, a millwright and joiner, spelled his name Murdock on moving to England. He was educated for some years at Old Cumnock Parish School and in 1777, with his father, he built a "wooden horse", supposed to have been a form of cycle. In 1777 he set out for the Soho manufactory of Boulton \& Watt, where he quickly found employment, Boulton supposedly being impressed by the lad's hat. This was oval and made of wood, and young William had turned it himself on a lathe of his own manufacture. Murdock quickly became Boulton \& Watt's representative in Cornwall, where there was a flourishing demand for steam-engines. He lived at Redruth during this period.
    It is said that a number of the inventions generally ascribed to James Watt are in fact as much due to Murdock as to Watt. Examples are the piston and slide valve and the sun-and-planet gearing. A number of other inventions are attributed to Murdock alone: typical of these is the oscillating cylinder engine which obviated the need for an overhead beam.
    In about 1784 he planned a steam-driven road carriage of which he made a working model. He also planned a high-pressure non-condensing engine. The model carriage was demonstrated before Murdock's friends and travelled at a speed of 6–8 mph (10–13 km/h). Boulton and Watt were both antagonistic to their employees' developing independent inventions, and when in 1786 Murdock set out with his model for the Patent Office, having received no reply to a letter he had sent to Watt, Boulton intercepted him on the open road near Exeter and dissuaded him from going any further.
    In 1785 he married Mary Painter, daughter of a mine captain. She bore him four children, two of whom died in infancy, those surviving eventually joining their father at the Soho Works. Murdock was a great believer in pneumatic power: he had a pneumatic bell-push at Sycamore House, his home near Soho. The pattern-makers lathe at the Soho Works worked for thirty-five years from an air motor. He also conceived the idea of a vacuum piston engine to exhaust a pipe, later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company's railway and the forerunner of the atmospheric railway.
    Another field in which Murdock was a pioneer was the gas industry. In 1791, in Redruth, he was experimenting with different feedstocks in his home-cum-office in Cross Street: of wood, peat and coal, he preferred the last. He designed and built in the backyard of his house a prototype generator, washer, storage and distribution plant, and publicized the efficiency of coal gas as an illuminant by using it to light his own home. In 1794 or 1795 he informed Boulton and Watt of his experimental work and of its success, suggesting that a patent should be applied for. James Watt Junior was now in the firm and was against patenting the idea since they had had so much trouble with previous patents and had been involved in so much litigation. He refused Murdock's request and for a short time Murdock left the firm to go home to his father's mill. Boulton \& Watt soon recognized the loss of a valuable servant and, in a short time, he was again employed at Soho, now as Engineer and Superintendent at the increased salary of £300 per year plus a 1 per cent commission. From this income, he left £14,000 when he died in 1839.
    In 1798 the workshops of Boulton and Watt were permanently lit by gas, starting with the foundry building. The 180 ft (55 m) façade of the Soho works was illuminated by gas for the Peace of Paris in June 1814. By 1804, Murdock had brought his apparatus to a point where Boulton \& Watt were able to canvas for orders. Murdock continued with the company after the death of James Watt in 1819, but retired in 1830 and continued to live at Sycamore House, Handsworth, near Birmingham.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Society Rumford Gold Medal 1808.
    Further Reading
    S.Smiles, 1861, Lives of the Engineers, Vol. IV: Boulton and Watt, London: John Murray.
    H.W.Dickinson and R.Jenkins, 1927, James Watt and the Steam Engine, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    J.A.McCash, 1966, "William Murdoch. Faithful servant" in E.G.Semler (ed.), The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Murdock (Murdoch), William

  • 17 Howe, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering
    [br]
    b. 12 May 1803 Spencer, Massachusetts, USA
    d. 19 September 1852 Springfield, Massachusetts, USA
    [br]
    American bridge engineer.
    [br]
    He was uncle of Elias Howe and spent his youth in the neighbourhood of his birthplace, primarily as a farmer. In 1838 he was commissioned to build a bridge at Warren, Massachusetts, for the Boston \& Albany Railway. He worked on this for two years, incorporating some novel features for which he applied for patents. His design was a truss with wooden diagonals and vertical iron ties in single and double systems which was said to be an improvement on the Long type of truss, introduced by Colonel Stephen Long in 1830. Howe was the first to incorporate the rectangular truss frame. Soon after this, he was to use his patent truss over the Connecticut River at Springfield for the Western Railroad. So successful was he that he became engaged for the rest of his life in the design of bridges and roof trusses, which, together with selling royalties for the rights to his patents, brought to him a considerable fortune. Many Howe truss bridges were built until the introduction of the iron bridge. In 1846 he took out a third patent for an improvement in the original rectangular truss, consisting of a curved timber member rising from each buttress to the centre of the span and greatly adding to the strength.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    Dictionary of American Biography, 1932–3, New York: Charles Scribner.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Howe, William

  • 18 Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de

    [br]
    b. 9 May 1845 Orsa, Sweden
    d. 2 February 1913 Stockholm, Sweden
    [br]
    Swedish inventor of an advanced cream separator and a steam turbine.
    [br]
    Gustaf de Laval was educated at the Stockholm Technical Institute and Uppsala University. He proved to have an unfailing vigour and variety in his inventive talent, for his interests ranged from electric lighting and electrometallurgy to aerodynamics. In the 1890s he employed over one hundred engineers to develop his inventions, but he was best known for two: the cream separator and a steam turbine. In 1877 he invented the high-speed centrifugal cream separator, which was probably the greatest advance in butter-making up to that time. By 1880 the separators were being successfully marketed all over the world, for they were quickly adopted in larger dairies where they effected enormous savings in labour and space. He followed this with various devices for the dairy industry, including a vacuum milking machine perfected in 1913. In c. 1882, de Laval invented a turbine on the principle of Hero's engine, but he quickly turned his attention to the impulse type, which was like Branca's, with a jet of steam impinging on a set of blades around the periphery of a wheel. He applied for a British patent in 1889. The steam was expanded in a single stage from the initial to the final pressure: to secure economy with the steam issuing at high velocity, the blades also had to rotate at high velocity. An early 5 hp (3.7 kW) turbine rotated at 30,000 rpm, so reduction gearing had to be introduced. Production started in Sweden in 1893 and in other countries at about the same time. In 1892 de Laval proposed employing one of his turbines of 15 hp (11 kW) in an experimental launch, but there is no evidence that it was ever actually installed in a vessel. However, his turbines were popular for powering electric generating sets for lighting textile mills and ships, and by 1900 were available in sizes up to 300 bhp (224 kW).
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1889, British patent no. 7,143 (steam turbine).
    Further Reading
    T.Althin, 1943, Life of de Laval, Stockholm (a full biography).
    T.I.Williams (ed.), 1969, A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, London: A. \& C. Black (contains a brief biography).
    R.M.Neilson, 1902, The Steam Turbine, London: Longmans, Green \& Co. (fully covers the development of de Laval's steam turbine).
    H.W.Dickinson, 1938, A Short History of the Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (contains a short account of the development of the steam turbine).
    R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (contains a short account).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de

  • 19 Kelly, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. 1790s Lanark, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish pioneer in attempts to make Crompton 's spinning mule work automatically.
    [br]
    William Kelly, a Larnack clockmaker, was Manager of David Dale's New Lanark cotton-spinning mills. He was writing to Boulton \& Watt in 1796 about the different ways in which he heated the mills and the New Institution. He must also have been responsible for supervising the millwrights' and mechanics' shops where much of the spinning machinery for the mills was constructed. At one time there were eighty-seven men employed in these shops alone. He devised a better method of connecting the water wheel to the line shafting which he reckoned would save a quarter of the water power required. Kelly may have been the first to apply power to the mule, for in 1790 he drove the spinning sequence from the line shafting, which operated the gear mechanism to turn the rollers and spindles as well as draw out the carriage. The winding on of the newly spun yarn still had to be done by hand. Then in 1792 he applied for a patent for a self-acting mule in which all the operations would be carried out by power. However, winding the yarn on in a conical form was a problem; he tried various ways of doing this, but abandoned his attempts because the mechanism was cumbersome and brought no economic advantage as only a comparatively small number of spindles could be operated. Even so, his semi-automatic mule became quite popular and was exported to America in 1803. Kelly was replaced as Manager at New Lanark by Robert Owen in 1800.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1792, British patent no. 1,879 (semi-automatic mule).
    Further Reading
    R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (includes Kelly's own account of his development of the self-acting mule).
    H.Catling, 1970, The Spinning Mule, Newton Abbot (describes some of Kelly's mule mechanisms).
    J.Butt (ed.), 1971, Robert Owen, Prince of Cotton Spinners, Newton Abbot (provides more details about the New Lanark mills).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Kelly, William

  • 20 Pilcher, Percy Sinclair

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 16 January 1867 Bath, England
    d. 2 October 1899 Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, England
    [br]
    English designer and glider aeronaut.
    [br]
    He was educated at HMS Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, from 1880 to 1882. He sailed on HMS Duke of Wellington, Agincourt, Northampton and other ships and resigned from the navy on 18 April 187 after seven years at sea. In June 1887 he was apprenticed at Randolph, Elder \& Co.'s shipyard at Govan, and was then an apprentice moulder at Cairn \& Co., Glasgow. For some time he "studied" at London University (though there is no official record of his doing so) while living with his sister at Phillbeck Gardens, South Kensington. In May 1890 he was working for John H.Biles, Manager of the Southampton Naval Works Ltd. Biles was later appointed Professor of Naval Architecture at Glasgow University with Pilcher as his Assistant Lecturer. In 1895 he was building his first glider, the Bat, which was built mainly of Riga pine and weighed 44 lb (20 kg). In succeeding months he travelled to Lichterfelde to study the gliders made by the German Lilienthal and built a further three machines, the Beetle, the Gull and the Hawk. In 1896 he applied for his only aeronautical patent, for "Improved flying and soaring machines", which was accepted on March 1897. In April 1896 he resigned his position at Glasgow University to become Assistant to Sir Hiram Maxim, who was also doing experiments with flying machines at his Nordenfeld Guns and Ammunition Co. Ltd at Crayford. He took up residence in Artillery Mansions, Victoria Street, later taken over by Vickers Ltd. Maxim had a hangar at Upper Lodge Farm, Austin Eynsford, Kent: using this, Pilcher reached a height of 12 ft (3.66m) in 1899 with a cable launch. He planned to build a 2 hp (1.5 kW) petrol engine In September 1899 he went to stay with Lord Braye at Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, where many people came to see his flying machine, a triplane. The weather was far from ideal, windy and raining, but Pilcher would not disappoint them. A bracing wire broke, the tail collapsed and the pilot crashed to the ground suffering two broken legs and concussion. He did not regain consciousness and died the following day. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1896, British patent no. 9144 "Improved flying and soaring machines".
    Further Reading
    P.Jarrett, 1987, Another Icarus. Percy Pilcher and the Quest for Flight, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
    A.Welch and L.Welch, 1965, The Story of Gliding, London: John Murray.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Pilcher, Percy Sinclair

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