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121 Nasmyth, James Hall
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 19 August 1808 Edinburgh, Scotlandd. 7 May 1890 London, England[br]Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor of the steam-hammer.[br]James Nasmyth was the youngest son of Alexander Nasmyth (1758–1840), the portrait and landscape painter. According to his autobiography he was named James Hall after his father's friend, the geologist Sir James Hall (1761–1832), but he seems never to have used his second name in official documents. He received an elementary education at Edinburgh High School, but left at the age of 12. He attended evening classes at the Edinburgh School of Arts for the instruction of Mechanics between 1821 and 1825, and gained experience as a mechanic at an early age in his father's workshop. He shared these early experiences with his brother George, who was only a year or so older, and in the 1820s the brothers built several model steam engines and a steam-carriage capable of carrying eight passengers on the public roads. In 1829 Nasmyth obtained a position in London as personal assistant to Henry Maudslay, and after Maudslay's death in February 1831 he remained with Maudslay's partner, Joshua Field, for a short time. He then returned to Edinburgh, where he and his brother George started in a small way as general engineers. In 1834 they moved to a small workshop in Manchester, and in 1836, with the aid of financial backing from some Manchester businessmen, they established on a site at Patricroft, a few miles from the city, the works which became known as the Bridgewater Foundry. They were soon joined by a third partner, Holbrook Gaskell (1813–1909), who looked after the administration of the business, the firm then being known as Nasmyths Gaskell \& Co. They specialized in making machine tools, and Nasmyth invented many improvements so that they soon became one of the leading manufacturers in this field. They also made steam locomotives for the rapidly developing railways. James Nasmyth's best-known invention was the steam-hammer, which dates from 1839 but was not patented until 1842. The self-acting control gear was probably the work of Robert Wilson and ensured the commercial success of the invention. George Nasmyth resigned from the partnership in 1843 and in 1850 Gaskell also resigned, after which the firm continued as James Nasmyth \& Co. James Nasmyth himself retired at the end of 1856 and went to live at Penshurst, Kent, in a house which he named "Hammerfield" where he devoted his time mainly to his hobby of astronomy. Robert Wilson returned to become Managing Partner of the firm, which later became Nasmyth, Wilson \& Co. and retained that style until its closure in 1940. Nasmyth's claim to be the sole inventor of the steam-hammer has been disputed, but his patent of 1842 was not challenged and the fourteen-year monopoly ensured the prosperity of the business so that he was able to retire at the age of 48. At his death in 1890 he left an estate valued at £243,805.[br]Bibliography1874, with J.Carpenter, The Moon Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite, London.1883, Autobiography, ed. Samuel Smiles, London.Further ReadingR.Wailes, 1963, "James Nasmyth—Artist's Son", Engineering Heritage, vol. I, London, 106–11 (a short account).J.A.Cantrell, 1984, James Nasmyth and the Bridgewater Foundry: A Study of Entrepreneurship in the Early Engineering Industry, Manchester (a full-length critical study).——1984–5, "James Nasmyth and the steam hammer", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 56:133–8.RTS -
122 Newcomen, Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. January or February 1663 Dartmouth, Devon, Englandd. 5 August 1729 London, England[br]English inventor and builder of the world's first successful stationary steam-engine.[br]Newcomen was probably born at a house on the quay at Dartmouth, Devon, England, the son of Elias Newcomen and Sarah Trenhale. Nothing is known of his education, and there is only dubious evidence of his apprenticeship to an ironmonger in Exeter. He returned to Dartmouth and established himself there as an "ironmonger". The term "ironmonger" at that time meant more than a dealer in ironmongery: a skilled craftsman working in iron, nearer to today's "blacksmith". In this venture he had a partner, John Calley or Caley, who was a plumber and glazier. Besides running his business in Dartmouth, it is evident that Newcomen spent a good deal of time travelling round the mines of Devon and Cornwall in search of business.Eighteenth-century writers and others found it impossible to believe that a provincial ironmonger could have invented the steam-engine, the concept of which had occupied the best scientific brains in Europe, and postulated a connection between Newcomen and Savery or Papin, but scholars in recent years have failed to find any evidence of this. Certainly Savery was in Dartmouth at the same time as Newcomen but there is nothing to indicate that they met, although it is possible. The most recent biographer of Thomas Newcomen is of the opinion that he was aware of Savery and his work, that the two men had met by 1705 and that, although Newcomen could have taken out his own patent, he could not have operated his own engines without infringing Savery's patent. In the event, they came to an agreement by which Newcomen was enabled to sell his engines under Savery's patent.The first recorded Newcomen engine is dated 1712, although this may have been preceded by a good number of test engines built at Dartmouth, possibly following a number of models. Over one hundred engines were built to Newcomen's design during his lifetime, with the first engine being installed at the Griff Colliery near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.On the death of Thomas Savery, on 15 May 1715, a new company, the Proprietors of the Engine Patent, was formed to carry on the business. The Company was represented by Edward Elliot, "who attended the Sword Blade Coffee House in Birchin Lane, London, between 3 and 5 o'clock to receive enquiries and to act as a contact for the committee". Newcomen was, of course, a member of the Proprietors.A staunch Baptist, Newcomen married Hannah Waymouth, who bore him two sons and a daughter. He died, it is said of a fever, in London on 5 August 1729 and was buried at Bunhill Fields.[br]Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt and J.S.Allen, 1977, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen, Hartington: Moorland Publishing Company (the definitive account of his life and work).IMcN -
123 Pascal, Blaise
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 19 June 1623 Clermont Ferrand, Franced. 19 August 1662 Paris, France[br]French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher.[br]Pascal was the son of Etienne Pascal, President of the Court of Aids. His mother died when he was 3 years old and he was brought up largely by his two sisters, one of whom was a nun at Port Royal. They moved to Paris in 1631 and again to Rouen ten years later. He received no formal education. In 1654 he was involved in a carriage accident in which he saw a mystical vision of God and from then on confined himself to philosophical rather than scientific matters. In the field of mathematics he is best known for his work on conic sections and on the laws of probability. As a youth he designed a calculating machine of which, it is said, some seventy were made. His main contribution to technology was his elucidation of the laws of hydrostatics which formed the basis of all hydrostatic machines in subsequent years. Pascal, however, did not put these laws to any practical use: that was left to the English cabinet-maker and engineer Joseph Bramah more than a century later. Suffering from indifferent health, Pascal persuaded his brother-in-law Périer to repeat the experiments of Evangelista Torricelli on the pressure of the atmosphere. This involved climbing the 4,000 ft (1,220 m) of the Puy de Dôme, a mountain close to Clermont, with a heavy mercury-in-glass barometer. The experiment was reported in the 1647 pamphlet "Expériences nouvelles touchant le vide". The Hydrostatic Law was laid down by Pascal in Traité de l'équilibre des liqueurs, published a year after his death. In this he established the fact that in a fluid at rest the pressure is transmitted equally in all directions.[br]Bibliography1647, "Expériences nouvelles touchant le vide". 1663, Traité de l'équilibre des liqueurs.Further ReadingJ.Mesnard, 1951, Pascal, His Life and Works.I.McNeil, 1972, Hydraulic Power, London: Longmans.IMcN -
124 Preece, Sir William Henry
[br]b. 15 February 1834 Bryn Helen, Gwynedd, Walesd. 6 November 1913 Penrhos, Gwynedd, Wales[br]Welsh electrical engineer who greatly furthered the development and use of wireless telegraphy and the telephone in Britain, dominating British Post Office engineering during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.[br]After education at King's College, London, in 1852 Preece entered the office of Edwin Clark with the intention of becoming a civil engineer, but graduate studies at the Royal Institution under Faraday fired his enthusiasm for things electrical. His earliest work, as connected with telegraphy and in particular its application for securing the safe working of railways; in 1853 he obtained an appointment with the Electric and National Telegraph Company. In 1856 he became Superintendent of that company's southern district, but four years later he moved to telegraph work with the London and South West Railway. From 1858 to 1862 he was also Engineer to the Channel Islands Telegraph Company. When the various telegraph companies in Britain were transferred to the State in 1870, Preece became a Divisional Engineer in the General Post Office (GPO). Promotion followed in 1877, when he was appointed Chief Electrician to the Post Office. One of the first specimens of Bell's telephone was brought to England by Preece and exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1877. From 1892 to 1899 he served as Engineer-in-Chief to the Post Office. During this time he made a number of important contributions to telegraphy, including the use of water as part of telegraph circuits across the Solent (1882) and the Bristol Channel (1888). He also discovered the existence of inductive effects between parallel wires, and with Fleming showed that a current (thermionic) flowed between the hot filament and a cold conductor in an incandescent lamp.Preece was distinguished by his administrative ability, some scientific insight, considerable engineering intuition and immense energy. He held erroneous views about telephone transmission and, not accepting the work of Oliver Heaviside, made many errors when planning trunk circuits. Prior to the successful use of Hertzian waves for wireless communication Preece carried out experiments, often on a large scale, in attempts at wireless communication by inductive methods. These became of historic interest only when the work of Maxwell and Hertz was developed by Guglielmo Marconi. It is to Preece that credit should be given for encouraging Marconi in 1896 and collaborating with him in his early experimental work on radio telegraphy.While still employed by the Post Office, Preece contributed to the development of numerous early public electricity schemes, acting as Consultant and often supervising their construction. At Worcester he was responsible for Britain's largest nineteenth-century public hydro-electric station. He received a knighthood on his retirement in 1899, after which he continued his consulting practice in association with his two sons and Major Philip Cardew. Preece contributed some 136 papers and printed lectures to scientific journals, ninety-nine during the period 1877 to 1894.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCB 1894. Knighted (KCB) 1899. FRS 1881. President, Society of Telegraph Engineers, 1880. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1880, 1893. President, Institution of Civil Engineers 1898–9. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1901–2.BibliographyPreece produced numerous papers on telegraphy and telephony that were presented as Royal Institution Lectures (see Royal Institution Library of Science, 1974) or as British Association reports.1862–3, "Railway telegraphs and the application of electricity to the signaling and working of trains", Proceedings of the ICE 22:167–93.Eleven editions of Telegraphy (with J.Sivewright), London, 1870, were published by 1895.1883, "Molecular radiation in incandescent lamps", Proceedings of the Physical Society 5: 283.1885. "Molecular shadows in incandescent lamps". Proceedings of the Physical Society 7: 178.1886. "Electric induction between wires and wires", British Association Report. 1889, with J.Maier, The Telephone.1894, "Electric signalling without wires", RSA Journal.1898, "Aetheric telegraphy", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.Further ReadingJ.J.Fahie, 1899, History of Wireless Telegraphy 1838–1899, Edinburgh: Blackwood. E.Hawkes, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen.E.C.Baker, 1976, Sir William Preece, F.R.S. Victorian Engineer Extraordinary, London (a detailed biography with an appended list of his patents, principal lectures and publications).D.G.Tucker, 1981–2, "Sir William Preece (1834–1913)", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 53:119–36 (a critical review with a summary of his consultancies).GW / KFBiographical history of technology > Preece, Sir William Henry
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125 Scheutz, George
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 23 September 1785 Jonkoping, Swedend. 27 May 1873 Stockholm, Sweden[br]Swedish lawyer, journalist and self-taught engineer who, with his son Edvard Raphael Scheutz (b. 13 September 1821 Stockholm, Sweden; d. 28 January 1881 Stockholm, Sweden) constructed a version of the Babbage Difference Engine.[br]After early education at the Jonkoping elementary school and the Weixo Gymnasium, George Scheutz entered the University of Lund, gaining a degree in law in 1805. Following five years' legal work, he moved to Stockholm in 1811 to work at the Supreme Court and, in 1814, as a military auditor. In 1816, he resigned, bought a printing business and became editor of a succession of industrial and technical journals, during which time he made inventions relating to the press. It was in 1830 that he learned from the Edinburgh Review of Babbage's ideas for a difference engine and started to make one from wood, pasteboard and wire. In 1837 his 15-yearold student son, Edvard Raphael Scheutz, offered to make it in metal, and by 1840 they had a working machine with two five-digit registers, which they increased the following year and then added a printer. Obtaining a government grant in 1851, by 1853 they had a fully working machine, now known as Swedish Difference Engine No. 1, which with an experienced operator could generate 120 lines of tables per hour and was used to calculate the logarithms of the numbers 1 to 10,000 in under eighty hours. This was exhibited in London and then at the Paris Great Exhibition, where it won the Gold Medal. It was subsequently sold to the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, for US$5,000 and is now in a Chicago museum.In England, the British Registrar-General, wishing to produce new tables for insurance companies, and supported by the Astronomer Royal, arranged for government finance for construction of a second machine (Swedish Difference Engine No. 2). Comprising over 1,000 working parts and weighing 1,000 lb (450 kg), this machine was used to calculate over 600 tables. It is now in the Science Museum.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Paris Exhibition Medal of Honour (jointly with Edvard) 1856. Annual pension of 1,200 marks per annum awarded by King Carl XV 1860.Bibliography1825, "Kranpunpar. George Scheutz's patent of 14 Nov 1825", Journal for Manufacturer och Hushallning 8.1855, with E.S.Scheutz, Machine à calcul qui présente les résultats en les imprimantellemême, Stockholm.Further ReadingR.C.Archibald, 1947, "P.G.Scheutz, publicist, author, scientific mechanic and Edvard Scheutz, engineer. Biography and Bibliography", MTAC 238.U.C.Merzbach, 1977, "George Scheutz and the first printing calculator", SmithsonianStudies in History and Technology 36:73.M.Lindgren, 1990, Glory and Failure (the Difference Engines of Johan Muller, Charles Babbage and George \& Edvard Scheutz), Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.KF -
126 Skinner, Halcyon
[br]b. 6 March 1824 Mantua, Ohio, USAd. 28 November 1900 USA[br]American inventor of a machine for making Royal Axminster and other carpets.[br]Halcyon was the son of Joseph and Susan Skinner. When he was 8 years old, his parents moved to Stockbridge in Massachusetts, where he obtained education locally and worked on farms. In 1838 his father moved to West Farms, New York, where Halcyon helped his father make violins and guitars for seven years. He then worked as a general carpenter for eight years until he was hired in 1849 by Alexander Smith, a carpet manufacturer. Skinner designed and constructed a hand loom that could weave figured instead of striped carpets, and by 1851 Smith had one hundred of these at work. Skinner was retained by Smith for forty years as a mechanical expert and adviser.Weaving carpets by power started in the 1850s on enormous and complex machines. Axminster carpets had traditionally been produced in a similar way to those made by hand in Persia, with the tufts of woollen yarn being knotted around vertical warp threads. To mechanize this process proved very difficult, but Skinner patented a loom in 1856 to weave Axminster carpets although, it was not working successfully until 1860. Then in 1864 he developed a loom for weaving ingrain carpets, and c. 1870 he altered some imported English looms for weaving tapestry carpets to double their output.His most important invention was conceived in 1876 and patented on 16 January 1877. This was the Moquette or Royal Axminster loom, which marked yet another important step forward and enabled the use of an unlimited number of colours in carpet designs. This type of loom became known as the Spool Axminster because of the endless chain of spools carrying lengths of coloured yarns, wound in a predetermined order, from which short pieces could be cut and inserted as the tufts. It put Smith's company, Alexander Smith \& Sons, Yonkers, New York, in the lead among American carpet manufacturers. This type of loom was introduced to Britain in 1878 by Tomkinson \& Adam and spread rapidly. Skinner virtually retired in 1889 but continued to live in Yonkers.[br]Further ReadingBiography, American Machinist 23.Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII.G.Robinson, 1966, Carpets, London (for the history and techniques of carpet weaving).A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London (includes a section on pile weaving which covers some types of carpets).RLH -
127 Sperry, Elmer Ambrose
[br]b. 21 October 1860 Cincinnatus, Cortland County, New York, USAd. 16 June 1930 Brooklyn, New York, USA[br]American entrepreneur who invented the gyrocompass.[br]Sperry was born into a farming community in Cortland County. He received a rudimentary education at the local school, but an interest in mechanical devices was aroused by the agricultural machinery he saw around him. His attendance at the Normal School in Cortland provided a useful theoretical background to his practical knowledge. He emerged in 1880 with an urge to pursue invention in electrical engineering, then a new and growing branch of technology. Within two years he was able to patent and demonstrate his arc lighting system, complete with its own generator, incorporating new methods of regulating its output. The Sperry Electric Light, Motor and Car Brake Company was set up to make and market the system, but it was difficult to keep pace with electric-lighting developments such as the incandescent lamp and alternating current, and the company ceased in 1887 and was replaced by the Sperry Electric Company, which itself was taken over by the General Electric Company.In the 1890s Sperry made useful inventions in electric mining machinery and then in electric street-or tramcars, with his patent electric brake and control system. The patents for the brake were important enough to be bought by General Electric. From 1894 to 1900 he was manufacturing electric motor cars of his own design, and in 1900 he set up a laboratory in Washington, where he pursued various electrochemical processes.In 1896 he began to work on the practical application of the principle of the gyroscope, where Sperry achieved his most notable inventions, the first of which was the gyrostabilizer for ships. The relatively narrow-hulled steamship rolled badly in heavy seas and in 1904 Ernst Otto Schuck, a German naval engineer, and Louis Brennan in England began experiments to correct this; their work stimulated Sperry to develop his own device. In 1908 he patented the active gyrostabilizer, which acted to correct a ship's roll as soon as it started. Three years later the US Navy agreed to try it on a destroyer, the USS Worden. The successful trials of the following year led to widespread adoption. Meanwhile, in 1910, Sperry set up the Sperry Gyroscope Company to extend the application to commercial shipping.At the same time, Sperry was working to apply the gyroscope principle to the ship's compass. The magnetic compass had worked well in wooden ships, but iron hulls and electrical machinery confused it. The great powers' race to build up their navies instigated an urgent search for a solution. In Germany, Anschütz-Kämpfe (1872–1931) in 1903 tested a form of gyrocompass and was encouraged by the authorities to demonstrate the device on the German flagship, the Deutschland. Its success led Sperry to develop his own version: fortunately for him, the US Navy preferred a home-grown product to a German one and gave Sperry all the backing he needed. A successful trial on a destroyer led to widespread acceptance in the US Navy, and Sperry was soon receiving orders from the British Admiralty and the Russian Navy.In the rapidly developing field of aeronautics, automatic stabilization was becoming an urgent need. In 1912 Sperry began work on a gyrostabilizer for aircraft. Two years later he was able to stage a spectacular demonstration of such a device at an air show near Paris.Sperry continued research, development and promotion in military and aviation technology almost to the last. In 1926 he sold the Sperry Gyroscope Company to enable him to devote more time to invention.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsJohn Fritz Medal 1927. President, American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1928.BibliographySperry filed over 400 patents, of which two can be singled out: 1908. US patent no. 434,048 (ship gyroscope); 1909. US patent no. 519,533 (ship gyrocompass set).Further ReadingT.P.Hughes, 1971, Elmer Sperry, Inventor and Engineer, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (a full and well-documented biography, with lists of his patents and published writings).LRD -
128 Watson, George Lennox
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 1851 Glasgow, Scotlandd. 12 November 1904 Glasgow, Scotland[br]Scottish designer of some of the world's largest sailing and powered yachts, principal technical adviser to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.[br]Almost all of Watson's life was spent in or around the City of Glasgow; his formal education was at the city's High School and at the age of 16 he entered the yard and drawing offices of Robert Napier's Govan Shipyard. Three years later he crossed the River Clyde and started work in the design office of the Pointhouse Shipyard of A. \& J.Inglis, and there received the necessary grounding of a naval architect. Dr John Inglis, the Principal of the firm, encouraged Watson, ensured that he was involved in advanced design work and allowed him to build a yacht in a corner of the shipyard in his spare time.At the early age of 22 Watson set up as a naval architect with his own company, which is still in existence 120 years later. In 1875, assisted by two carpenters, Watson built the 5-ton yacht Vril to his own design. This vessel was the first with an integral heavy lead keel and its success ensured that design contracts flowed to him for new yachts for the Clyde and elsewhere. His enthusiasm and increasing skill were recognized and soon he was working on the ultimate: the America's Cup challengers Thistle, Valkyrie II, Valkyrie III and Shamrock II. The greatest accolade was the contract for the design of the J Class yacht Britannia, built by D. \& W.Henderson of Glasgow in 1893 for the Prince of Wales.The company of G.L.Watson became the world's leading designer of steam yachts, and it was usual for it to offer a full design service as well as supervise construction in any part of the world. Watson took a deep interest in the work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and was its technical consultant for many years. One of his designs, the Watson Lifeboat, was a stalwart in its fleet for many years. In public life he lectured, took an active part in the debates on yacht racing and was recognized as Britain's leading designer.[br]Bibliography1881, Progress in Yachting and Yacht-Building, Glasgow Naval and Marine Engineering Catalogue, London and Glasgow: Collins.1894, The Evolution of the Modern Racing Yacht, Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes, Vol. 1, London: Longmans Green, pp. 54–109.Further ReadingJohn Irving, 1937, The King's Britannia. The Story of a Great Ship, London: Seeley Service.FMW
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