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121 Colpitts, Edwin Henry
[br]b. 9 January 1872 Pointe de Bute, Canadad. 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 DistinctionsOrder of the Rising Sun, Japan, 1938. US Medal of Merit 1948.Bibliography1919, 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 ReadingM.D.Fagen, 1975, A History of Engineering \& Science in the Bell System, Vol. 1, Bell Laboratories.See also: Hartley, Ralph V.L.KF -
122 Eisler, Paul
[br]b. 1907 Vienna, Austria[br]Austrian engineer responsible for the invention of the printed circuit.[br]At the age of 23, Eisler obtained a Diploma in Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna. Because of the growing Nazi influence in Austria, he then accepted a post with the His Master's Voice (HMV) agents in Belgrade, where he worked on the problems of radio reception and sound transmission in railway trains. However, he soon returned to Vienna to found a weekly radio journal and file patents on graphical sound recording (for which he received a doctorate) and on a system of stereoscopic television based on lenticular vertical scanning.In 1936 he moved to England and sold the TV patent to Marconi for £250. Unable to find a job, he carried out experiments in his rooms in a Hampstead boarding-house; after making circuits using strip wires mounted on bakelite sheet, he filed his first printed-circuit patent that year. He then tried to find ways of printing the circuits, but without success. Obtaining a post with Odeon Theatres, he invented a sound-level control for films and devised a mirror-drum continuous-film projector, but with the outbreak of war in 1939, when the company was evacuated, he chose to stay in London and was interned for a while. Released in 1941, he began work with Henderson and Spalding, a firm of lithographic printers, to whom he unwittingly assigned all future patents for the paltry sum of £1. In due course he perfected a means of printing conducting circuits and on 3 February 1943 he filed three patents covering the process. The British Ministry of Defence rejected the idea, considering it of no use for military equipment, but after he had demonstrated the technique to American visitors it was enthusiastically taken up in the US for making proximity fuses, of which many millions were produced and used for the war effort. Subsequently the US Government ruled that all air-borne electronic circuits should be printed.In the late 1940s the Instrument Department of Henderson and Spalding was split off as Technograph Printed Circuits Ltd, with Eisler as Technical Director. In 1949 he filed a further patent covering a multilayer system; this was licensed to Pye and the Telegraph Condenser Company. A further refinement, patented in the 1950s, the use of the technique for telephone exchange equipment, but this was subsequently widely infringed and although he negotiated licences in the USA he found it difficult to license his ideas in Europe. In the UK he obtained finance from the National Research and Development Corporation, but they interfered and refused money for further development, and he eventually resigned from Technograph. Faced with litigation in the USA and open infringement in the UK, he found it difficult to establish his claims, but their validity was finally agreed by the Court of Appeal (1969) and the House of Lords (1971).As a freelance inventor he filed many other printed-circuit patents, including foil heating films and batteries. When his Patent Agents proved unwilling to fund the cost of filing and prosecuting Complete Specifications he set up his own company, Eisler Consultants Ltd, to promote food and space heating, including the use of heated cans and wallpaper! As Foil Heating Ltd he went into the production of heating films, the process subsequently being licensed to Thermal Technology Inc. in California.[br]Bibliography1953, "Printed circuits: some general principles and applications of the foil technique", Journal of the British Institution of Radio Engineers 13: 523.1959, The Technology of Printed Circuits: The Foil Technique in Electronic Production.1984–5, "Reflections of my life as an inventor", Circuit World 11:1–3 (a personal account of the development of the printed circuit).1989, My Life with the Printed Circuit, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University Press.KF -
123 Ercker, Lazarus
[br]b. c.1530 Annaberg, Saxony, Germanyd. 1594 Prague, Bohemia[br]German chemist and metallurgist.[br]Educated at Wittenberg University during 1547–8, Ercker obtained in 1554, through one of his wife's relatives, the post of Assayer from the Elector Augustus at Dresden. From then on he took a succession of posts in mining and metallurgy. In 1555 he was Chief Consultant and Supervisor of all matters relating to mines, but for some unknown reason was demoted to Warden of the Mint at Annaberg. In 1558 he travelled to the Tyrol to study the mines in that region, and in the same year Prince Henry of Brunswick appointed him Warden, then Master, of the Mint at Goslar. Ercker later moved to Prague where, through another of his wife's relatives, he was appointed Control Tester at Kutna Hora. It was there that he wrote his best-known book, Die Beschreibung allfürnemisten mineralischen Ertz, which drew him to the attention of the Emperor Maximilian, who made him Courier for Mining and a clerk of the Supreme Court of Bohemia. The next Emperor, Rudolf II, a noted patron of science and alchemy, promoted Ercker to Chief Inspector of Mines and ennobled him in 1586 with the title Von Schreckenfels'. His second wife managed the mint at Kutna Hora and his two sons became assayers. These appointments gained him much experience of the extraction and refining of metals. This first bore fruit in a book on assaying, Probierbüchlein, printed in 1556, followed by one on minting, Münzbuch, in 1563. His main work, Die Beschreibung, was a systematic review of the methods of obtaining, refining and testing the alloys and minerals of gold, silver, copper, antimony, mercury and lead. The preparation of acids, salts and other compounds is also covered, and his apparatus is fully described and illustrated. Although Ercker used Agricola's De re metattica as a model, his own work was securely based on his practical experience. Die Beschreibung was the first manual of analytical and metallurgical chemistry and influenced later writers such as Glauber on assaying. After the first edition in Prague came four further editions in Frankfurt-am-Main.[br]BibliographyDie Beschreibung allfürnemisten mineralischen Ertz, Prague. 1556, Probierbuchlein.1563, Munzbuch.Further ReadingP.R.Beierlein, 1955, Lazarus Ercker, Bergmann, Hüttenmann und Münzmeister im 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin (the best biography, although the chemical details are incomplete).J.R.Partington, 1961, History of Chemistry, London, Vol. II, pp. 104–7.E.V.Armstrong and H.Lukens, 1939, "Lazarus Ercker and his Probierbuch", J.Chem. Ed.16: 553–62.LRD -
124 Fabricius (of Aquapendente), Hieronymus
SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology[br]b. 20 May 1537 Aquapendente, central Italyd. 21 May 1619 Padua, Italy[br]Italian physician and anatomist, teacher of William Harvey, first known exponent of tracheotomy.[br]Of well-to-do origins, Fabricius studied at the University of Padua and obtained his doctorate in medicine and philosophy c.1559. He succeeded his master Fallopius in the Chair of Surgery at Padua in 1565 and was created Professor Supraordinarius for life c.1600. His discoveries and researches embraced a wide range of subjects, from the course and valves of blood-vessels to the embryology of the chick. He also covered a great variety of surgical innovations. His description of the technique of tracheotomy is clearly based on practical experience and sets out the contraindications as well as the practical requirements. He also wrote extensively on the senses, the mechanics of body movement, the mechanism of respiration and the language of animals.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighthood of St Mark of Venice.Bibliography1617, Opera chirurgica in duas partes divisa, Padua. 1621, The Formation of the Egg and of the Chick, Padua.Further ReadingZimmerman and Veith, 1961, Great Ideas in the History of Surgery, Baltimore.MGBiographical history of technology > Fabricius (of Aquapendente), Hieronymus
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125 Fairlie, Robert Francis
[br]b. March 1831 Scotlandd. 31 July 1885 Clapham, London, England[br]British engineer, designer of the double-bogie locomotive, advocate of narrow-gauge railways.[br]Fairlie worked on railways in Ireland and India, and established himself as a consulting engineer in London by the early 1860s. In 1864 he patented his design of locomotive: it was to be carried on two bogies and had a double boiler, the barrels extending in each direction from a central firebox. From smokeboxes at the outer ends, return tubes led to a single central chimney. At that time in British practice, locomotives of ever-increasing size were being carried on longer and longer rigid wheelbases, but often only one or two of their three or four pairs of wheels were powered. Bogies were little used and then only for carrying-wheels rather than driving-wheels: since their pivots were given no sideplay, they were of little value. Fairlie's design offered a powerful locomotive with a wheelbase which though long would be flexible; it would ride well and have all wheels driven and available for adhesion.The first five double Fairlie locomotives were built by James Cross \& Co. of St Helens during 1865–7. None was particularly successful: the single central chimney of the original design had been replaced by two chimneys, one at each end of the locomotive, but the single central firebox was retained, so that exhaust up one chimney tended to draw cold air down the other. In 1870 the next double Fairlie, Little Wonder, was built for the Festiniog Railway, on which C.E. Spooner was pioneering steam trains of very narrow gauge. The order had gone to George England, but the locomotive was completed by his successor in business, the Fairlie Engine \& Steam Carriage Company, in which Fairlie and George England's son were the principal partners. Little Wonder was given two inner fireboxes separated by a water space and proved outstandingly successful. The spectacle of this locomotive hauling immensely long trains up grade, through the Festiniog Railway's sinuous curves, was demonstrated before engineers from many parts of the world and had lasting effect. Fairlie himself became a great protagonist of narrow-gauge railways and influenced their construction in many countries.Towards the end of the 1860s, Fairlie was designing steam carriages or, as they would now be called, railcars, but only one was built before the death of George England Jr precipitated closure of the works in 1870. Fairlie's business became a design agency and his patent locomotives were built in large numbers under licence by many noted locomotive builders, for narrow, standard and broad gauges. Few operated in Britain, but many did in other lands; they were particularly successful in Mexico and Russia.Many Fairlie locomotives were fitted with the radial valve gear invented by Egide Walschaert; Fairlie's role in the universal adoption of this valve gear was instrumental, for he introduced it to Britain in 1877 and fitted it to locomotives for New Zealand, whence it eventually spread worldwide. Earlier, in 1869, the Great Southern \& Western Railway of Ireland had built in its works the first "single Fairlie", a 0–4–4 tank engine carried on two bogies but with only one of them powered. This type, too, became popular during the last part of the nineteenth century. In the USA it was built in quantity by William Mason of Mason Machine Works, Taunton, Massachusetts, in preference to the double-ended type.Double Fairlies may still be seen in operation on the Festiniog Railway; some of Fairlie's ideas were far ahead of their time, and modern diesel and electric locomotives are of the powered-bogie, double-ended type.[br]Bibliography1864, British patent no. 1,210 (Fairlie's master patent).1864, Locomotive Engines, What They Are and What They Ought to Be, London; reprinted 1969, Portmadoc: Festiniog Railway Co. (promoting his ideas for locomotives).1865, British patent no. 3,185 (single Fairlie).1867. British patent no. 3,221 (combined locomotive/carriage).1868. "Railways and their Management", Journal of the Society of Arts: 328. 1871. "On the Gauge for Railways of the Future", abstract in Report of the FortiethMeeting of the British Association in 1870: 215. 1872. British patent no. 2,387 (taper boiler).1872, Railways or No Railways. "Narrow Gauge, Economy with Efficiency; or Broad Gauge, Costliness with Extravagance", London: Effingham Wilson; repr. 1990s Canton, Ohio: Railhead Publications (promoting the cause for narrow-gauge railways).Further ReadingFairlie and his patent locomotives are well described in: P.C.Dewhurst, 1962, "The Fairlie locomotive", Part 1, Transactions of the Newcomen Society 34; 1966, Part 2, Transactions 39.R.A.S.Abbott, 1970, The Fairlie Locomotive, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.PJGRBiographical history of technology > Fairlie, Robert Francis
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126 Graham, George
SUBJECT AREA: Horology[br]b. c.1674 Cumberland, Englandd. 16 November 1751 London, England[br]English watch-and clockmaker who invented the cylinder escapement for watches, the first successful dead-beat escapement for clocks and the mercury compensation pendulum.[br]Graham's father died soon after his birth, so he was raised by his brother. In 1688 he was apprenticed to the London clockmaker Henry Aske, and in 1695 he gained his freedom. He was employed as a journeyman by Tompion in 1696 and later married his niece. In 1711 he formed a partnership with Tompion and effectively ran the business in Tompion's declining years; he took over the business after Tompion died in 1713. In addition to his horological interests he also made scientific instruments, specializing in those for astronomical use. As a person, he was well respected and appears to have lived up to the epithet "Honest George Graham". He befriended John Harrison when he first went to London and lent him money to further his researches at a time when they might have conflicted with his own interests.The two common forms of escapement in use in Graham's time, the anchor escapement for clocks and the verge escapement for watches, shared the same weakness: they interfered severely with the free oscillation of the pendulum and the balance, and thus adversely affected the timekeeping. Tompion's two frictional rest escapements, the dead-beat for clocks and the horizontal for watches, had provided a partial solution by eliminating recoil (the momentary reversal of the motion of the timepiece), but they had not been successful in practice. Around 1720 Graham produced his own much improved version of the dead-beat escapement which became a standard feature of regulator clocks, at least in Britain, until its supremacy was challenged at the end of the nineteenth century by the superior accuracy of the Riefler clock. Another feature of the regulator clock owed to Graham was the mercury compensation pendulum, which he invented in 1722 and published four years later. The bob of this pendulum contained mercury, the surface of which rose or fell with changes in temperature, compensating for the concomitant variation in the length of the pendulum rod. Graham devised his mercury pendulum after he had failed to achieve compensation by means of the difference in expansion between various metals. He then turned his attention to improving Tompion's horizontal escapement, and by 1725 the cylinder escapement existed in what was virtually its final form. From the following year he fitted this escapement to all his watches, and it was also used extensively by London makers for their precision watches. It proved to be somewhat lacking in durability, but this problem was overcome later in the century by using a ruby cylinder, notably by Abraham Louis Breguet. It was revived, in a cheaper form, by the Swiss and the French in the nineteenth century and was produced in vast quantities.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1720. Master of the Clockmakers' Company 1722.BibliographyGraham contributed many papers to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in particular "A contrivance to avoid the irregularities in a clock's motion occasion'd by the action of heat and cold upon the rod of the pendulum" (1726) 34:40–4.Further ReadingBritten's Watch \& Clock Maker's Handbook Dictionary and Guide, 1978, rev. Richard Good, 16th edn, London, pp. 81, 84, 232 (for a technical description of the dead-beat and cylinder escapements and the mercury compensation pendulum).A.J.Turner, 1972, "The introduction of the dead-beat escapement: a new document", Antiquarian Horology 8:71.E.A.Battison, 1972, biography, Biographical Dictionary of Science, ed. C.C.Gillespie, Vol. V, New York, 490–2 (contains a résumé of Graham's non-horological activities).DV -
127 Herschel, John Frederick William
SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics[br]b. 7 March 1792 Slough, Englandd. 11 May 1871 Collingwood, England[br]English scientist who introduced "hypo" (thiosulphate) as a photographic fixative and discovered the blueprint process.[br]The only son of Sir William Herschel, the famous astronomer, John graduated from Cambridge in 1813 and went on to become a distinguished astronomer, mathematician and chemist. He left England in November 1833 to set up an observatory near Cape Town, South Africa, where he embarked on a study of the heavens in the southern hemisphere. He returned to England in the spring of 1838, and between 1850 and 1855 Herschel served as Master of the Royal Mint. He made several notable contributions to photography, perhaps the most important being his discovery in 1819 that hyposulphites (thiosulphates) would dissolve silver salts. He brought this property to the attention of W.H.F. Talbot, who in 1839 was using a common salt solution as a fixing agent for his early photographs. After trials, Talbot adopted "hypo", which was a far more effective fixative. It was soon adopted by other photographers and eventually became the standard photographic fixative, as it still is in the 1990s. After hearing of the first photographic process in January 1839, Herschel devised his own process within a week. In September 1839 he made the first photograph on glass. He is credited with introducing the words "positive", "negative" and "snapshot" to photography, and in 1842 he invented the cyanotype or "blueprint" process. This process was later to be widely adopted by engineers and architects for the reproduction of plans and technical drawings, a practice abandoned only in the late twentieth century.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order 1831. Baronet 1838. FRS 1813. Copley Medal 1821.Further ReadingDictionary of National Biography, 1968, Vol. IX, pp. 714–19.H.J.P.Arnold, 1977, William Henry Fox Talbot, London; Larry J.Schaaf, 1992, Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot and the Invention of Photography, Newhaven and London (for details of his contributions to photography and his relationship with Talbot).JWBiographical history of technology > Herschel, John Frederick William
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128 Howe, Elias
[br]b. 9 July 1819 Spencer, Massachusetts, USAd. 3 October 1867 Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA[br]American inventor of one of the earliest successful sewing machines.[br]Son of Elias Howe, a farmer, he acquired his mechanical knowledge in his father's mill. He left school at 12 years of age and was apprenticed for two years in a machine shop in Lowell, Massachusetts, and later to an instrument maker, Ari Davis in Boston, Massachusetts, where his master's services were much in demand by Harvard University. Fired by a desire to invent a sewing machine, he utilized the experience gained in Lowell to devise a shuttle carrying a lower thread and a needle carrying an upper thread to make lock-stitch in straight lines. His attempts were so rewarding that he left his job and was sustained first by his father and then by a partner. By 1845 he had built a machine that worked at 250 stitches per minute, and the following year he patented an improved machine. The invention of the sewing machine had an enormous impact on the textile industry, stimulating demand for cloth because making up garments became so much quicker. The sewing machine was one of the first mass-produced consumer durables and was essentially an American invention. William Thomas, a London manufacturer of shoes, umbrellas and corsets, secured the British rights and persuaded Howe to come to England to apply it to the making of shoes. This Howe did, but he quarrelled with Thomas after less than one year. He returned to America to face with his partner, G.W.Bliss, a bigger fight over his patent (see I.M. Singer), which was being widely infringed. Not until 1854 was the case settled in his favour. This litigation threatened the very existence of the new industry, but the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important patent-pooling arrangement in American history, changed all this. For a fee of $5 on every domestically-sold machine and $1 on every exported one, Howe contributed to the pool his patent of 1846 for a grooved eye-pointed needle used in conjunction with a lock-stitch-forming shuttle. Howe's patent was renewed in 1861; he organized and equipped a regiment during the Civil War with the royalties. When the war ended he founded the Howe Machine Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut.[br]Further ReadingObituary, 1867, Engineer 24.Obituary, 1867, Practical Magazine 5.F.G.Harrison, 1892–3, Biographical Sketches of Pre-eminent Americans (provides a good account of Howe's life and achievements).N.Salmon, 1863, History of the Sewing Machine from the Year 1750, with a biography of Elias Howe, London (tells the history of sewing machines).F.B.Jewell, 1975, Veteran Sewing Machines, A Collector's Guide, Newton Abbot (a more modern account of the history of sewing machines).C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. V, Oxford: Clarendon Press (covers the mechanical developments).D.A.Hounshell, 1984, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. TheDevelopment of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore (examines the role of the American sewing machine companies in the development of mass-production techniques).RLH
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