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  • 81 Computers

       The brain has been compared to a digital computer because the neuron, like a switch or valve, either does or does not complete a circuit. But at that point the similarity ends. The switch in the digital computer is constant in its effect, and its effect is large in proportion to the total output of the machine. The effect produced by the neuron varies with its recovery from [the] refractory phase and with its metabolic state. The number of neurons involved in any action runs into millions so that the influence of any one is negligible.... Any cell in the system can be dispensed with.... The brain is an analogical machine, not digital. Analysis of the integrative activities will probably have to be in statistical terms. (Lashley, quoted in Beach, Hebb, Morgan & Nissen, 1960, p. 539)
       It is essential to realize that a computer is not a mere "number cruncher," or supercalculating arithmetic machine, although this is how computers are commonly regarded by people having no familiarity with artificial intelligence. Computers do not crunch numbers; they manipulate symbols.... Digital computers originally developed with mathematical problems in mind, are in fact general purpose symbol manipulating machines....
       The terms "computer" and "computation" are themselves unfortunate, in view of their misleading arithmetical connotations. The definition of artificial intelligence previously cited-"the study of intelligence as computation"-does not imply that intelligence is really counting. Intelligence may be defined as the ability creatively to manipulate symbols, or process information, given the requirements of the task in hand. (Boden, 1981, pp. 15, 16-17)
       The task is to get computers to explain things to themselves, to ask questions about their experiences so as to cause those explanations to be forthcoming, and to be creative in coming up with explanations that have not been previously available. (Schank, 1986, p. 19)
       In What Computers Can't Do, written in 1969 (2nd edition, 1972), the main objection to AI was the impossibility of using rules to select only those facts about the real world that were relevant in a given situation. The "Introduction" to the paperback edition of the book, published by Harper & Row in 1979, pointed out further that no one had the slightest idea how to represent the common sense understanding possessed even by a four-year-old. (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986, p. 102)
       A popular myth says that the invention of the computer diminishes our sense of ourselves, because it shows that rational thought is not special to human beings, but can be carried on by a mere machine. It is a short stop from there to the conclusion that intelligence is mechanical, which many people find to be an affront to all that is most precious and singular about their humanness.
       In fact, the computer, early in its career, was not an instrument of the philistines, but a humanizing influence. It helped to revive an idea that had fallen into disrepute: the idea that the mind is real, that it has an inner structure and a complex organization, and can be understood in scientific terms. For some three decades, until the 1940s, American psychology had lain in the grip of the ice age of behaviorism, which was antimental through and through. During these years, extreme behaviorists banished the study of thought from their agenda. Mind and consciousness, thinking, imagining, planning, solving problems, were dismissed as worthless for anything except speculation. Only the external aspects of behavior, the surface manifestations, were grist for the scientist's mill, because only they could be observed and measured....
       It is one of the surprising gifts of the computer in the history of ideas that it played a part in giving back to psychology what it had lost, which was nothing less than the mind itself. In particular, there was a revival of interest in how the mind represents the world internally to itself, by means of knowledge structures such as ideas, symbols, images, and inner narratives, all of which had been consigned to the realm of mysticism. (Campbell, 1989, p. 10)
       [Our artifacts] only have meaning because we give it to them; their intentionality, like that of smoke signals and writing, is essentially borrowed, hence derivative. To put it bluntly: computers themselves don't mean anything by their tokens (any more than books do)-they only mean what we say they do. Genuine understanding, on the other hand, is intentional "in its own right" and not derivatively from something else. (Haugeland, 1981a, pp. 32-33)
       he debate over the possibility of computer thought will never be won or lost; it will simply cease to be of interest, like the previous debate over man as a clockwork mechanism. (Bolter, 1984, p. 190)
       t takes us a long time to emotionally digest a new idea. The computer is too big a step, and too recently made, for us to quickly recover our balance and gauge its potential. It's an enormous accelerator, perhaps the greatest one since the plow, twelve thousand years ago. As an intelligence amplifier, it speeds up everything-including itself-and it continually improves because its heart is information or, more plainly, ideas. We can no more calculate its consequences than Babbage could have foreseen antibiotics, the Pill, or space stations.
       Further, the effects of those ideas are rapidly compounding, because a computer design is itself just a set of ideas. As we get better at manipulating ideas by building ever better computers, we get better at building even better computers-it's an ever-escalating upward spiral. The early nineteenth century, when the computer's story began, is already so far back that it may as well be the Stone Age. (Rawlins, 1997, p. 19)
       According to weak AI, the principle value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool. For example, it enables us to formulate and test hypotheses in a more rigorous and precise fashion than before. But according to strong AI the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states. And according to strong AI, because the programmed computer has cognitive states, the programs are not mere tools that enable us to test psychological explanations; rather, the programs are themselves the explanations. (Searle, 1981b, p. 353)
       What makes people smarter than machines? They certainly are not quicker or more precise. Yet people are far better at perceiving objects in natural scenes and noting their relations, at understanding language and retrieving contextually appropriate information from memory, at making plans and carrying out contextually appropriate actions, and at a wide range of other natural cognitive tasks. People are also far better at learning to do these things more accurately and fluently through processing experience.
       What is the basis for these differences? One answer, perhaps the classic one we might expect from artificial intelligence, is "software." If we only had the right computer program, the argument goes, we might be able to capture the fluidity and adaptability of human information processing. Certainly this answer is partially correct. There have been great breakthroughs in our understanding of cognition as a result of the development of expressive high-level computer languages and powerful algorithms. However, we do not think that software is the whole story.
       In our view, people are smarter than today's computers because the brain employs a basic computational architecture that is more suited to deal with a central aspect of the natural information processing tasks that people are so good at.... hese tasks generally require the simultaneous consideration of many pieces of information or constraints. Each constraint may be imperfectly specified and ambiguous, yet each can play a potentially decisive role in determining the outcome of processing. (McClelland, Rumelhart & Hinton, 1986, pp. 3-4)

    Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Computers

  • 82 Colpitts, Edwin Henry

    [br]
    b. 9 January 1872 Pointe de Bute, Canada
    d. 6 March 1949 Orange, New Jersey, USA
    [br]
    Canadian physicist and electrical engineer responsible for important developments in electronic-circuit technology.
    [br]
    Colpitts obtained Bachelor's degrees at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, and Harvard in 1894 and 1896, respectively, followed by a Master's degree at Harvard in 1897. After two years as assistant to the professor of physics there, he joined the American Bell Telephone Company. When the Bell Company was reorganized in 1907, he moved to the Western Electric branch of the company in New York as Head of the Physical Laboratories. In 1911 he became a director of the Research Laboratories, and in 1917 he became Assistant Chief Engineer of the company. During this time he invented both the push-pull amplifier and the Colpitts oscillator, both major developments in communications. In 1917, during the First World War, he spent some time in France helping to set up the US Signal Corps Research Laboratories. Afterwards he continued to do much, both technically and as a manager, to place telephone communications on a firm scientific basis, retiring as Vice-President of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1937. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1941 he was recalled from retirement and appointed Director of the Engineering Foundation to work on submarine warfare techniques, particularly echo-ranging.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Order of the Rising Sun, Japan, 1938. US Medal of Merit 1948.
    Bibliography
    1919, with E.B.Craft, "Radio telephony", Proceedings of the American Institution of Electrical Engineers 38:337.
    1921, with O.B.Blackwell, "Carrier current telephony and telegraphy", American Institute of Electrical Engineers Transactions 40:205.
    11 September 1915, US reissue patent no. 15,538 (control device for radio signalling).
    28 August 1922, US patent no. 1,479,638 (multiple signal reception).
    Further Reading
    M.D.Fagen, 1975, A History of Engineering \& Science in the Bell System, Vol. 1, Bell Laboratories.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Colpitts, Edwin Henry

  • 83 Yarrow, Sir Alfred Fernandez

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 13 January 1842 London, England
    d. 24 January 1932 London, England
    [br]
    English shipbuilder, naval architect, engineer and philanthropist.
    [br]
    At the conclusion of his schooling in the South of England, Yarrow became an indentured apprentice to the Thames engine-builder Ravenhill. During this five-year period various incidents and meetings sharpened his interest in scientific matters and he showed the skills that in later years were to be so beneficial to shipbuilding. For two years he acted as London representative for Ravenhill before joining up with a Mr Hedley to form a shipyard on the Isle of Dogs. The company lasted from 1868 until 1875 and in that period produced 350 small launches and other craft. This massive output enabled Yarrow to gain confidence in many aspects of ship design. Within two years of setting out on his own he built his first ship for the Royal Navy: a torpedo boat, then at the cutting edge of technology.
    In the early 1890s the company was building watertube boilers and producing destroyers with speeds in excess of 27 knots (50 km/h); it built the Russian destroyer Sokol, did pioneering work with aluminium and with high-tensile steels and worked on shipboard equipment to nullify vibrational effects. With the closure of most of the Thames shipyards and the run-down in skilled labour, Yarrow decided that the shipyard must move to some other part of the United Kingdom. After careful deliberation a green field site to the west of Glasgow was chosen, and in 1908 their first Clyde-built destroyer was launched. The company expanded, more building berths were arranged, boiler construction was developed and over the years they became recognized as specialists in smaller highspeed craft and in "knock down" ships for other parts of the world.
    Yarrow retired in 1913, but at the commencement of the First World War he returned to help the yard produce, in four years, twenty-nine destroyers with speeds of up to 40 knots (74 km/h). At the end of hostilities he gave of his time and money to many charities, including those for ex-servicemen. He left a remarkable industrial organization which remains to this day the most prolific builder of surface craft for the Royal Navy.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Created Baronet 1916. FRS 1922. Vice-President, Institution of Naval Architects 1896.
    Further Reading
    Lady Yarrow, 1924, Alfred Yarrow, His Life and Work, London: Edward Arnold. A.Borthwick, 1965, Yarrow and Company Limited, The First Hundred Years 1865–
    1965, Glasgow.
    B.Baxter, 1986, "Alfred Fernandez Yarrow", Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography, Vol. I, pp. 245–7, Slaven \& Checkland and Aberdeen University Press.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Yarrow, Sir Alfred Fernandez

  • 84 мировоззрение

    с
    world outlook, world view

    нау́чное мировоззре́ние — the scientific view of the world

    Русско-английский учебный словарь > мировоззрение

  • 85 división2

    2 = divide, division, partition, split, splitting up, cleavage, rift, segmentation, splitting, splintering, splinter, balkanization, fault line, parting, divided line.
    Ex. Nevertheless, this basic divide remains a useful distinction between two major categories of indexing systems.
    Ex. In simple terms, the essence of subject organisation is the division of literature (or references to literature) into manageable, or scannable categories, with each category being associated with an index term.
    Ex. It is concluded that the choice of citation and co-citation thresholds can be influenced by formal considerations which ensure statistically meaningful partitions rather than arbitrary decision which can produce meaningless interpretations.
    Ex. The information note may consist of a brief history of a corporate body, highlighting changes in the body's name, mergers with other bodies, splits within or between bodies, etc.
    Ex. New topics develop not merely by fission -- the splitting up of established subjects -- but also by fusion -- the merging of previously distinct subjects.
    Ex. After the Civil War, Emerson saw in collegiate education 'a cleavage occurring in the hitherto firm granite of the past'.
    Ex. Chief among these challenges is the technological rift that exists between the Third World and on-line systems that have their roots in technologically advanced societies.
    Ex. Using this method, the segmentation of natural keywords can be handled flexibly.
    Ex. The most obvious threat is the splitting of the media sector into separate information and entertainment sectors.
    Ex. This splintering of membership hinders the development of library unionism as a factor within the profession.
    Ex. However, others see the splinters in the discipline as a step in its revitalization.
    Ex. This shifts in emphasis mirror the general balkanization of modern American society.
    Ex. These views underlie the fault line that divides British politics today.
    Ex. A brief selection of possible scientific explanations for a number of biblical miracles -- Noah's flood, the parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, the ten plagues, manna from heaven, and the raising of Lazarus -- is provided.
    Ex. The 1944 Education Act established free, universal secondary education but on the divided lines suited to the needs of capitalism.
    ----
    * división cultural, la = cultural divide, the.
    * división del mercado por grupos de consumidores = market segmentation.
    * división del trabajo = division of labour.
    * división de opiniones = division of opinion, split decision, divided opinions.
    * división de poderes = division of powers.
    * división digital, la = digital divide, the.
    * división + no estar clara = blur + division.
    * división política = political division.
    * división territorial = land division.
    * haber división de opiniones = be split on, opinion + be divided.
    * haber división de opiniones entre los críticos = critics + be divided.
    * hacer desaparecer una división = blur + division.
    * punto de división = break.
    * salvar la división = bridge + the divide.

    Spanish-English dictionary > división2

  • 86 división

    f.
    1 division, sharing out, distribution, partition.
    2 separation, division, disunion, split-up.
    3 division.
    4 division, branch, subsidiary.
    5 partition, division, wall.
    6 department, sector, division.
    7 scission, division.
    8 splitting, division.
    La división del átomo The splitting of the atom.
    9 division, military division.
    10 Division.
    11 cleavage.
    * * *
    1 division
    2 figurado division, divergence
    \
    división acorazada/blindada MILITAR armoured (US armored) division
    división de honor DEPORTE league of honour (US honor)
    primera/segunda división DEPORTE first/second division
    * * *
    noun f.
    * * *
    SF
    1) (=separación) [de célula] division; [de átomo] splitting; [de gastos, ganancias] division
    2) (Mat) division

    hacer una división — to divide, do a division

    3) (=desunión) [de partido, familia] division, split
    4) (Dep) division

    división de honor — top division; (Ftbl) premier division

    5) (Mil) division
    6) (Com) (=sección) division
    7) (Bio) (=categoría) category
    8) (=zona)

    división administrativa, división territorial — administrative region

    * * *
    a) (Mat) division
    b) ( desunión) division
    c) ( del átomo) splitting; ( de célula) division, splitting; ( de herencia) division, sharing (out)
    d) (Adm, Dep, Mil) division
    * * *
    a) (Mat) division
    b) ( desunión) division
    c) ( del átomo) splitting; ( de célula) division, splitting; ( de herencia) division, sharing (out)
    d) (Adm, Dep, Mil) division
    * * *
    división1

    Ex: Computers have circuits for performing arithmetic operations, such as: addition, subtraction, division, multiplication and exponentiation.

    división2
    2 = divide, division, partition, split, splitting up, cleavage, rift, segmentation, splitting, splintering, splinter, balkanization, fault line, parting, divided line.

    Ex: Nevertheless, this basic divide remains a useful distinction between two major categories of indexing systems.

    Ex: In simple terms, the essence of subject organisation is the division of literature (or references to literature) into manageable, or scannable categories, with each category being associated with an index term.
    Ex: It is concluded that the choice of citation and co-citation thresholds can be influenced by formal considerations which ensure statistically meaningful partitions rather than arbitrary decision which can produce meaningless interpretations.
    Ex: The information note may consist of a brief history of a corporate body, highlighting changes in the body's name, mergers with other bodies, splits within or between bodies, etc.
    Ex: New topics develop not merely by fission -- the splitting up of established subjects -- but also by fusion -- the merging of previously distinct subjects.
    Ex: After the Civil War, Emerson saw in collegiate education 'a cleavage occurring in the hitherto firm granite of the past'.
    Ex: Chief among these challenges is the technological rift that exists between the Third World and on-line systems that have their roots in technologically advanced societies.
    Ex: Using this method, the segmentation of natural keywords can be handled flexibly.
    Ex: The most obvious threat is the splitting of the media sector into separate information and entertainment sectors.
    Ex: This splintering of membership hinders the development of library unionism as a factor within the profession.
    Ex: However, others see the splinters in the discipline as a step in its revitalization.
    Ex: This shifts in emphasis mirror the general balkanization of modern American society.
    Ex: These views underlie the fault line that divides British politics today.
    Ex: A brief selection of possible scientific explanations for a number of biblical miracles -- Noah's flood, the parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, the ten plagues, manna from heaven, and the raising of Lazarus -- is provided.
    Ex: The 1944 Education Act established free, universal secondary education but on the divided lines suited to the needs of capitalism.
    * división cultural, la = cultural divide, the.
    * división del mercado por grupos de consumidores = market segmentation.
    * división del trabajo = division of labour.
    * división de opiniones = division of opinion, split decision, divided opinions.
    * división de poderes = division of powers.
    * división digital, la = digital divide, the.
    * división + no estar clara = blur + division.
    * división política = political division.
    * división territorial = land division.
    * haber división de opiniones = be split on, opinion + be divided.
    * haber división de opiniones entre los críticos = critics + be divided.
    * hacer desaparecer una división = blur + division.
    * punto de división = break.
    * salvar la división = bridge + the divide.

    división3
    3 = unit, division.

    Ex: Therefore, during the concluding phase of the revision project, the representatives of ALA units and other organizations will function as a single group.

    Ex: She did not know at the time that she would never return to that department, or to the larger division that later incorporated it.
    * característica de división = characteristic of division.
    * de la división = divisional.
    * división canónica = canonical division.
    * división de forma = form division.
    * división de honor = premiership.
    * división del censo = census tract.
    * división de país = country division.
    * División de Préstamo de la Biblioteca Británica (BLLD) = British Library Lending Division (BLLD).
    * División de Servicios Bibliográficos de la Biblioteca Británica (BLBSD) = British Library Bibliographic Services Division (BLBSD).
    * división en departamentos = departmentation.
    * división en secciones = departmentation.
    * división enumerada = enumerated division.
    * división geográfica = geographical division.
    * jugador de primera división = major league player.
    * primera división = premiership.
    * Primera División, la = First Division, the.
    * sin división espacial = spatially unstructured.

    * * *
    1 ( Mat) division
    tengo que hacer cinco divisiones I have to do five divisions o division sums
    2 (desunión) division
    hay divisiones/hay una división en el seno del partido there are divisions/there is a division within the party
    3 (del átomo) splitting; (de una célula) division, splitting; (de una herencia) division, sharing, sharing out
    4 ( Mil) division
    la División Azul the Blue Division
    5 ( Dep) division
    la Primera División the First Division
    6 ( Adm) division
    la división financiera the financial division o section
    Compuestos:
    administrative region
    separation of powers
    division of labor*
    administrative region
    * * *

     

    división sustantivo femenino ( en general) division;

    división sustantivo femenino division: la división acorazada está en camino, the armoured division is on the way

    ' división' also found in these entries:
    Spanish:
    casta
    - interfase
    - partición
    - tercera
    - cabeza
    - compás
    - condado
    - decir
    - distribución
    - intendencia
    - ocupar
    - repartición
    - sección
    - separación
    - separar
    English:
    border
    - bracket
    - counterpart
    - division
    - into
    - part
    - relegate
    - severance
    - split
    - act
    - partition
    - season
    - state
    - tracking
    * * *
    1. [repartición] division;
    [partición] splitting up; [de átomo] splitting;
    hablaron sobre la división de la herencia they talked about how the inheritance was to be divided
    división de poderes separation of powers;
    división del trabajo division of labour
    2. [diversidad]
    hubo división de opiniones opinion was divided;
    aquí hay división de gustos musicales people have different tastes in music here
    3. [desunión] division;
    hay mucha división en el partido the party is very divided, there's a lot of division in the party
    4. [departamento] division, department;
    la división comercial de la empresa the firm's commercial department o division
    5. [matemática] division
    6. [militar] division
    división acorazada armoured division
    7. [deportiva] division;
    primera/segunda división first/second division;
    bajar a segunda división to be relegated to the second division
    la división de honor the first division, Br ≈ the Premier League
    * * *
    f
    1 MAT, MIL, DEP division
    2
    :
    hubo división de opiniones there were differences of opinion
    * * *
    división nf, pl - siones : division
    * * *
    división n division

    Spanish-English dictionary > división

  • 87 мировоззрение

    1. weltanschauung
    2. Weltanschauung; world view; ideology
    Синонимический ряд:
    миропонимание (сущ.) идеологию; идеология; миропонимание; убеждение

    Русско-английский большой базовый словарь > мировоззрение

  • 88 Clerk, Sir Dugald

    [br]
    b. 31 March 1854 Glasgow, Scotland
    d. 12 November 1932 Ewhurst, Surrey, England
    [br]
    Scottish mechanical engineer, inventor of the two-stroke internal combustion engine.
    [br]
    Clerk began his engineering training at about the age of 15 in the drawing office of H.O.Robinson \& Company, Glasgow, and in his father's works. Meanwhile, he studied at the West of Scotland Technical College and then, from 1871 to 1876, at Anderson's College, Glasgow, and at the Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds. Here he worked under and then became assistant to the distinguished chemist T.E.Thorpe, who set him to work on the fractional distillation of petroleum, which was to be useful to him in his later work. At that time he had intended to become a chemical engineer, but seeing a Lenoir gas engine at work, after his return to Glasgow, turned his main interest to gas and other internal combustion engines. He pursued his investigations first at Thomson, Sterne \& Company (1877–85) and then at Tangyes of Birmingham (1886–88. In 1888 he began a lifelong partnership in Marks and Clerk, consulting engineers and patent agents, in London.
    Beginning his work on gas engines in 1876, he achieved two patents in the two following years. In 1878 he made his principal invention, patented in 1881, of an engine working on the two-stroke cycle, in which the piston is powered during each revolution of the crankshaft, instead of alternate revolutions as in the Otto four-stroke cycle. In this engine, Clerk introduced supercharging, or increasing the pressure of the air intake. Many engines of the Clerk type were made but their popularity waned after the patent for the Otto engine expired in 1890. Interest was later revived, particularly for application to large gas engines, but Clerk's engine eventually came into its own where simple, low-power motors are needed, such as in motor cycles or motor mowers.
    Clerk's work on the theory and design of gas engines bore fruit in the book The Gas Engine (1886), republished with an extended text in 1909 as The Gas, Petrol and Oil Engine; these and a number of papers in scientific journals won him international renown. During and after the First World War, Clerk widened the scope of his interests and served, often as chairman, on many bodies in the field of science and industry.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1917; FRS 1908; Royal Society Royal Medal 1924; Royal Society of Arts Alber Medal 1922.
    Further Reading
    Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, no. 2, 1933.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Clerk, Sir Dugald

  • 89 Dakin, Henry Drysdale

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 12 March 1880 Hampstead, England
    d. 10 February 1952 Scarborough-on-Hudson, New York, USA
    [br]
    English biochemist, advocate and exponent of the treatment of wounds with antiseptic fluid, Dakin's solution (Eusol).
    [br]
    The youngest of a family of eight of moderate means, Dakin received his early education in Leeds experiencing strict scientific training as a public analyst. He regarded this as having been of the utmost value to him in his lifelong commitment to the emerging discipline of biochemistry.
    He was one of the earliest to specialize in the significance of optical activity in organic chemistry, and obtained his BSc from Manchester in 1901. Following this, he worked at the Lister (Jenner) Institute of Preventive Medicine and at Heidelberg. He then received an invitation to join Christian Herter in a private research laboratory that had been established in New York. There, for the rest of his life, he continued his studies into a wide variety of biochemical topics. Christian Herter died in 1910, and six years later his widow and Dakin were married.
    Unable to serve in the First World War, he made a major contribution, in collaboration with Carrel, with the technique for the antiseptic irrigation of wounds with a buffered hypochlorite solution (Eusol), a therapy which in the 1990s is still an accepted approach to the treatment of infected wounds. The original trials were carried out on the liner Aquitania, then serving as a hospital ship in the Dardanelles.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Fellow of the Royal Society 1917. Davy Medal 1941. Honorary doctorates, Yale, Leeds and Heidelberg Universities.
    Bibliography
    1915, "On the use of certain antiseptic substances in the treatment of infected wounds", British Medical Journal.
    1915, with A.Carrel, "Traitement abortif de l'infection des plaies", Bulletin of the
    Academy of Medicine.
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Dakin, Henry Drysdale

  • 90 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

  • 91 Fife, William

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 15 June 1857 Fairlie, Scotland
    d. 11 August 1944 Fairlie, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish naval architect and designer of sailing yachts of legendary beauty and performance.
    [br]
    Following his education at Brisbane Academy in Largs, William Fife (the third generation of the name) became apprenticed at the age of 14 to the already famous yacht-building yard owned by his family at Fairlie in Ayrshire. On completion of his apprenticeship, he joined the Paisley shipbuilders John Fullerton \& Co. to gain experience in iron shipbuilding before going on as Manager to the Marquis of Ailsa's Culzean Steam Launch and Yacht Works. Initially the works was sited below the famous castle at Culzean, but some years later it moved a few miles along the Ayrshire Coast to Maidens. The Culzean Company was wound up in 1887 and Fife then returned to the family yard, where he remained for the rest of his working life. Many outstanding yachts were the product of his hours on the drawing board, including auxiliary sailing cruisers, motor yachts and well-known racing craft. The most outstanding designs were for two of Sir Thomas Lipton's challengers for the America's Cup: Shamrock I and Shamrock III. The latter yacht was tested at the Ship Model Experiment Tank owned by Denny of Dumbarton before being built at their Leven Shipyard in 1903. Shamrock III may have been one of the earliest America's Cup yachts to have been designed with a high level of scientific input. The hull construction was unusual for the early years of the twentieth century, being of alloy steel with decks of aluminium.
    William Fife was decorated for his service to shipbuilding during the First World War. With the onset of the Great Depression the shipyard's output slowed, and in the 1930s it was sold to other interests; this was the end of the 120-year Fife dynasty.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    OBE c.1919.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Fife, William

  • 92 Hunter, John

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 14 (registered 13) February 1728 East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, Scotland
    d. 16 October 1793 London, England
    [br]
    Scottish surgeon and anatomist, pioneer of experimental methods in medicine and surgery.
    [br]
    The younger brother of William Hunter (1718–83), who was of great distinction but perhaps of slightly less achievement in similar fields, he owed much of his early experience to his brother; William, after a period at Glasgow University, moved to St George's Hospital, London. In his later teens, John assisted a brother-in-law with cabinet-making. This appears to have contributed to the lifelong mechanical skill which he displayed as a dissector and surgeon. This skill was particularly obvious when, after following William to London in 1748, he held post at a number of London teaching hospitals before moving to St George's in 1756. A short sojourn at Oxford in 1755 appears to have been unfruitful.
    Despite his deepening involvement in the study of comparative anatomy, facilitated by the purchase of animals from the Tower menagerie and travelling show people, he accepted an appointment as a staff surgeon in the Army in 1760, participating in the expedition to Belle Isle and also serving in Portugal. He returned home with over 300 specimens in 1763 and, until his appointment as Surgeon to St George's in 1768, was heavily involved in the examination of this and other material, as well as in studies of foetal testicular descent, placental circulation, the nature of pus and lymphatic circulation. In 1772 he commenced lecturing on the theory and practice of surgery, and in 1776 he was appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to George III.
    He is rightly regarded as the founder of scientific surgery, but his knowledge was derived almost entirely from his own experiments and observations. His contemporaries did not always accept or understand the concepts which led to such aphorisms as, "to perform an operation is to mutilate a patient we cannot cure", and his written comment to his pupil Jenner: "Why think. Why not trie the experiment". His desire to establish the aetiology of gonorrhoea led to him infecting himself, as a result of which he also contracted syphilis. His ensuing account of the characteristics of the disease remains a classic of medicine, although it is likely that the sequelae of the condition brought about his death at a relatively early age. From 1773 he suffered recurrent anginal attacks of such a character that his life "was in the hands of any rascal who chose to annoy and tease him". Indeed, it was following a contradiction at a board meeting at St George's that he died.
    By 1788, with the death of Percival Pott, he had become unquestionably the leading surgeon in Britain, if not Europe. Elected to the Royal Society in 1767, the extraordinary variety of his collections, investigations and publications, as well as works such as the "Treatise on the natural history of the human teeth" (1771–8), gives testimony to his original approach involving the fundamental and inescapable relation of structure and function in both normal and disease states. The massive growth of his collections led to his acquiring two houses in Golden Square to contain them. It was his desire that after his death his collection be purchased and preserved for the nation. It contained 13,600 specimens and had cost him £70,000. After considerable delay, Par-liament voted inadequate sums for this purpose and the collection was entrusted to the recently rechartered Royal College of Surgeons of England, in whose premises this remarkable monument to the omnivorous and eclectic activities of this outstanding figure in the evolution of medicine and surgery may still be seen. Sadly, some of the collection was lost to bombing during the Second World War. His surviving papers were also extensive, but it is probable that many were destroyed in the early nineteenth century.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1767. Copley Medal 1787.
    Bibliography
    1835–7, Works, ed. J.F.Palmer, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London.
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Hunter, John

  • 93 Maxwell, James Clerk

    [br]
    b. 13 June 1831 Edinburgh, Scotland
    d. 5 November 1879 Cambridge, England
    [br]
    Scottish physicist who formulated the unified theory of electromagnetism, the kinetic theory of gases and a theory of colour.
    [br]
    Maxwell attended school at the Edinburgh Academy and at the age of 16 went on to study at Edinburgh University. In 1850 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated four years later as Second Wrangler with the award of the Smith's Prize. Two years later he was appointed Professor at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he married the Principal's daughter. In 1860 he moved to King's College London, but on the death of his father five years later, Maxwell returned to the family home in Scotland, where he continued his researches as far as the life of a gentleman farmer allowed. This rural existence was interrupted in 1874 when he was persuaded to accept the chair of Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge. Unfortunately, in 1879 he contracted the cancer that brought his brilliant career to an untimely end. While at Cambridge, Maxwell founded the Cavendish Laboratory for research in physics. A succession of distinguished physicists headed the laboratory, making it one of the world's great centres for notable discoveries in physics.
    During the mid-1850s, Maxwell worked towards a theory to explain electrical and magnetic phenomena in mathematical terms, culminating in 1864 with the formulation of the fundamental equations of electromagnetism (Maxwell's equations). These equations also described the propagation of light, for he had shown that light consists of transverse electromagnetic waves in a hypothetical medium, the "ether". This great synthesis of theories uniting a wide range of phenomena is worthy to set beside those of Sir Isaac Newton and Einstein. Like all such syntheses, it led on to further discoveries. Maxwell himself had suggested that light represented only a small part of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves, and in 1888 Hertz confirmed the discovery of another small part of the spectrum, radio waves, with momentous implications for the development of telecommunication technology. Maxwell contributed to the kinetic theory of gases, which by then were viewed as consisting of a mass of randomly moving molecules colliding with each other and with the walls of the containing vessel. From 1869 Maxwell applied statistical methods to describe the molecular motion in mathematical terms. This led to a greater understanding of the behaviour of gases, with important consequences for the chemical industry.
    Of more direct technological application was Maxwell's work on colour vision, begun in 1849, showing that all colours could be derived from the three primary colours, red, yellow and blue. This enabled him in 1861 to produce the first colour photograph, of a tartan. Maxwell's discoveries about colour vision were quickly taken up and led to the development of colour printing and photography.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Most of his technical papers are reprinted in The Scientific Papers of J.Clerk Maxwell, 1890, ed. W.D.Niven, Cambridge, 2 vols; reprinted 1952, New York.
    Maxwell published several books, including Theory of Heat, 1870, London (1894, 11th edn, with notes by Lord Rayleigh) and Theory of Electricity and Magnetism, 1873, Oxford (1891, ed. J.J.Thomson, 3rd edn).
    Further Reading
    L.Campbell and W.Garnett, 1882, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, London (the standard biography).
    J.J.Thomson (ed.), 1931, James Clerk Maxwell 1831–1931, Cambridge. J.G.Crowther, 1932, British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century, London.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Maxwell, James Clerk

  • 94 Reason, Richard Edmund

    [br]
    b. 21 December 1903 Exeter, Devon, England
    d. 20 March 1987 Great Bowden, Leicestershire, England
    [br]
    English metrologist who developed instruments for measuring machined-surface roughness.
    [br]
    Richard Edmund Reason was educated at Tonbridge School and the Royal College of Science (Imperial College), where he studied under Professor A.F.C.Pollard, Professor of Technical Optics. After graduating in 1925 he joined Taylor, Taylor and Hobson Ltd, Leicester, manufacturers of optical, electrical and scientific instruments, and remained with that firm throughout his career. One of his first contributions was in the development, with E.F.Fincham, of the Fincham Coincidence Optometer. At this time the firm, under William Taylor, was mainly concerned with optical instruments and lens manufacture, but in the 1930s Reason was also engaged in developing means for measuring the roughness of machined surfaces. The need for establishing standards and methods of measurement of surface finish was called for when the subcontracting of aero-engine components became necessary during the Second World War. This led to the development by Reason of an instrument in which a stylus was moved across the surface and the profile recorded electronically. This was called the Talysurf and was first produced in 1941. Further development followed, and from 1947 Reason tackled the problem of measuring roundness, producing the first Talyrond machine in 1949. The technology developed for these instruments was used in the production of others such as the Talymin Comparator and the Talyvel electronic level. Reason was also associated with the development of optical projection systems to measure the profile of parts such as gear teeth, screw threads and turbine blades. He retired in 1968 but continued as a consultant to the company. He served for many years on committees of the British Standards Institution on surface metrology and was a representative of Britain at the International Standards Organization.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    OBE 1967. FRS 1971. Honorary DSc University of Birmingham 1969. Honorary DSc Leicester University 1971.
    Further Reading
    D.J.Whitehouse, 1990, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 36, London, pp. 437–62 (an illustrated obituary notice listing Reason's eighty-nine British patents, published between 1930 and 1972, and his twenty-one publications, dating from 1937 to 1966).
    K.J.Hume, 1980, A History of Engineering Metrology, London, 113–21 (contains a shorter account of Reason's work).
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Reason, Richard Edmund

  • 95 Shannon, Claude Elwood

    [br]
    b. 30 April 1916 Gaylord, Michigan, USA
    [br]
    American mathematician, creator of information theory.
    [br]
    As a child, Shannon tinkered with radio kits and enjoyed solving puzzles, particularly crypto-graphic ones. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1936 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and electrical engineering, and earned his Master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1937. His thesis on applying Boolean algebra to switching circuits has since been acclaimed as possibly the most significant this century. Shannon earned his PhD in mathematics from MIT in 1940 with a dissertation on the mathematics of genetic transmission.
    Shannon spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then in 1941 joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he began studying the relative efficiency of alternative transmission systems. Work on digital encryption systems during the Second World War led him to think that just as ciphers hide information from the enemy, "encoding" information could also protect it from noise. About 1948, he decided that the amount of information was best expressed quantitatively in a two-value number system, using only the digits 0 and 1. John Tukey, a Princeton colleague, named these units "binary digits" (or, for short, "bits"). Almost all digital computers and communications systems use such on-off, or two-state logic as their basis of operation.
    Also in the 1940s, building on the work of H. Nyquist and R.V.L. Hartley, Shannon proved that there was an upper limit to the amount of information that could be transmitted through a communications channel in a unit of time, which could be approached but never reached because real transmissions are subject to interference (noise). This was the beginning of information theory, which has been used by others in attempts to quantify many sciences and technologies, as well as subjects in the humanities, but with mixed results. Before 1970, when integrated circuits were developed, Shannon's theory was not the preferred circuit-and-transmission design tool it has since become.
    Shannon was also a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, claiming that computing machines could be used to manipulate symbols as well as do calculations. His 1953 paper on computers and automata proposed that digital computers were capable of tasks then thought exclusively the province of living organisms. In 1956 he left Bell Laboratories to join the MIT faculty as Professor of Communications Science.
    On the lighter side, Shannon has built many devices that play games, and in particular has made a scientific study of juggling.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    National Medal of Science. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor, Kyoto Prize.
    Bibliography
    His seminal paper (on what has subsequently become known as information theory) was entitled "The mathematical theory of communications", first published in Bell System Technical Journal in 1948; it is also available in a monograph (written with Warren Weaver) published by the University of Illinois Press in 1949, and in Key Papers in the Development of Information Theory, ed. David Slepian, IEEE Press, 1974, 1988. For readers who want all of Shannon's works, see N.J.A.Sloane and A.D.Wyner, 1992, The
    Collected Papers of Claude E.Shannon.
    HO

    Biographical history of technology > Shannon, Claude Elwood

  • 96 Wood, Henry Alexander Wise

    SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing
    [br]
    b. 1 March 1866 New York, USA
    d. 9 April 1939 USA
    [br]
    American manufacturer and inventor of printing machinery, including a stereotype casting machine.
    [br]
    The son of a Congressman and mayor of New York, Wood was educated at Media Academy in Pennsylvania, specializing in scientific subjects. The death of his father in 1881 prevented his going on to college and he went to work at the Campbell Printing and Manufacturing Company, of which he became President in 1896. In the meantime, he had married the daughter of J.L.Brower, the previous head of the company. Later business consolidations brought into being the Wood Newspaper Machine Corporation.
    Wood was responsible for a series of inventions that brought great benefit to the newspaperprinting processes. Most notable was the Autoplate, patented first in 1900 and finally in 1903. This enabled a whole page of newspaper type to be cast in metal at once, saving much time and effort in the forming of stereotypes; this invention earned him the Elliott Cresson gold medal of the Franklin Institute in 1909. Other inventions were the Autoreel, a high-speed press-feeder device, and the Autopaster, which automatically replaced a spent paper roll with a new one in a newspaper press, without the need to stop the press. Wood's improved presses and inventions increased the speed of newspaper production from 24,000 to 60,000 copies per hour, printed and folded.
    He was also much interested in aviation and was an early member of the Aero Club of America, becoming its Vice-President for six years. He helped to found the magazine Flying and was its Editor from 1911 to 1919. He had predicted the part played by aircraft and submarines during the Second World War and was invited to join a panel of consulting inventors and engineers to assist the development of the US Navy. He was soon at odds with the authorities, however, and he resigned in 1915. After the war, he spent time in vigorous campaigning against immigration, America's entry into the League of Nations and on many other issues, in all of which he was highly controversial. Nevertheless, he retained his interest in the newspaper-machinery business, remaining President of his company until 1935 and Chairman of the Board thereafter. In 1934 he became Chairman of the NRA Code Authority of the newspaper-machine industry.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1939, New York Times (10 April). Obituary, 1939, New York Herald Tribune (10 April).
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Wood, Henry Alexander Wise

  • 97 Ford, Henry

    (1863–1947) Gen Mgt
    U.S. industrialist. Founder of the Ford Motor Company, who organized the assembly line along the scientific management principles of Frederick Winslow Taylor and recorded his philosophy in My Life and Work (1922)
         After spending time as a machinist’s apprentice, a watch repairer, and a mechanic, Ford built his first car in 1896. He quickly became convinced of the vehicle’s commercial potential and started his own company in 1903. His first car was the Model A. After a year in business he was selling 600 a month.
         In 1907 Ford professed that his aim was to build a motor car for the masses. In 1908 his Model T was born. Through innovative use of new mass-production techniques, 15 million Model Ts were produced between 1908 and 1927.
         At that time, Ford’s factory at Highland Park, Michigan, was the biggest in the world. Over 14,000 people worked on the 57-acre site. He was quick to establish international operations as well. Ford’s first overseas sales branch was opened in France in 1908 and, in 1911, Ford began making cars in the United Kingdom.
         In 1919 Henry Ford resigned as the company’s president, letting his son, Edsel, take over. By then the Ford company was making a car a minute and Ford’s market share was in excess of 57%.

    The ultimate business dictionary > Ford, Henry

  • 98 industrialization

    Gen Mgt
    the change from a society based on agriculture to one based on manufacturing. Industrialization is the process undergone in much of the developed world during the Industrial Revolution. Features of the process include automation, scientific development, the introduction of factories, the division of labor, the replacement of barter with a money-based economy, a more mobile workforce, and the growth of urban centers. The phase of development following industrialization is the postindustrial society.

    The ultimate business dictionary > industrialization

  • 99 Boot, Henry Albert Howard

    [br]
    b. 29 July 1917 Birmingham, England
    d. 8 February 1983 Cambridge, England
    [br]
    English physicist who, with John Randall, invented the cavity magnetron used in radar systems.
    [br]
    After secondary education at King Edward School, Birmingham, Boot studied physics at Birmingham University, obtaining his BSc in 1938 and PhD in 1941. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he became involved with Randall and others in the development of a source of microwave power suitable for use in radar transmitters. Following unsuccessful attempts to use klystrons, they turned to investigation of the magnetron, and by adding cavity resonators they obtained useful power on 21 February 1940 at a wavelength of 9.8 cm. By May a cavity magnetron radar system had been constructed at TRE, Swanage, and in September submarine periscopes were detected at a range of 7 miles (11 km).
    In 1943 the physics department at Birmingham resumed its research in atomic physics and Boot moved to BTH at Rugby to continue development of magnetrons, but in 1945 he returned to Birmingham as Nuffield Research Fellow and helped construct the cyclotron there. Three years later he took up a post as a Principal Scientific Officer (PSO) at the Services Electronic Research Laboratories at Baldock, Hertfordshire, becoming a Senior PSO in 1954. He remained there until his retirement in 1977, variously carrying out research on microwaves, magnetrons, plasma physics and lasers.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Society of Arts Thomas Gray Memorial Prize 1943. Royal Commission Inventors Award 1946. Franklin Institute John Price Wetherill Medal 1958. City of Pennsylvania John Scott Award 1959. (All jointly with Randall.)
    Bibliography
    1976, with J.T.Randall, "Historical notes on the cavity magnetron", Transactions of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ED-23: 724 (provides an account of their development of the cavity magnetron).
    Further Reading
    E.H.Dix and W.H.Aldous, 1966, Microwave Valves.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Boot, Henry Albert Howard

  • 100 Carothers, Wallace Hume

    [br]
    b. 27 April 1896 Burlington, Iowa, USA
    d. 29 April 1937 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
    [br]
    American chemist, inventor of nylon.
    [br]
    After graduating in chemistry, Carothers embarked on academic research at several universities, finally at Harvard University. His earliest published papers, from 1923, heralded the brilliance and originality of his later work. In 1928, Du Pont de Nemours persuaded him to forsake the academic world to lead their new organic-chemistry group in a programme of fundamental research at their central laboratories at Wilmington, Delaware. The next nine years were extraordinarily productive, yielding important contributions to theoretical organic chemistry and the foundation of two branches of chemical industry, namely the production of synthetic rubber and of wholly synthetic fibres.
    Carothers began work on high molecular weight substances yielding fibres and introduced polymerization by condensation: polymerization by addition was already known. He developed a clear understanding of the relation between the repeating structural units in a large molecule and its physical chemical properties. In 1931, Carothers found that chloroprene could be polymerized much faster than isoprene, the monomer in natural rubber. This process yielded polychloroprene or neoprene, a synthetic rubber with improved properties. Manufacture began the following year, and the material has continued to be used for speciality rubbers.
    There followed many publications announcing new condensations polymers. On 2 January 1935, he obtained a patent for the formation of new polyamides, including one from adipic acid and hexamethylenediamene. After four years of development work, which cost Du Pont some $27 million, this new polyamide, or nylon, reached the stage of commercial production, beginning on 23 October 1938. Nylon stockings appeared the following year and 64 million were sold during the first twelve months. However, Carothers saw none of this spectacular success: he had died by his own hand in 1937, after a long history of gradually intensifying depression.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Elected to the National Academy of Science 1936 (he was the first industrial organic chemist to be so honoured).
    Bibliography
    H.M.Whitby and G.S.Whitby, 1940, Collected Papers of Wallace H.Carothers on Polymerisation, New York.
    Further Reading
    R.Adams, 1939, memoir, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 20:293–309 (includes a complete list of Carothers's sixty-two scientific papers and most of his sixty-nine US patents).
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Carothers, Wallace Hume

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